| Rick braggs nytimes problem Original Source Link: (May no longer be active) http://www.nydailynews.com/news/story/86119p-78592c.htmlhttp://www.nydailynews.com/news/story/86119p-78592c.html
New woe for brass at Times By PAUL D. COLFORD DAILY NEWS BUSINESS WRITER The New York Times has another reporter problem. This time, it's Rick Bragg.
The paper will publish an editor's note today stating that the Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent did not do all the reporting on a story from rural Florida that carried only his byline.
Bragg - a friend and favorite of the executive editor, fellow Alabaman Howell Raines - could bring a heap of extra trouble on the top Timesman if the writer's stories are questioned.
It was unclear last night whether Bragg faced any punishment.
The Florida story investigated by Times editors was published last year and datelined Apalachicola.
It bore the Bragg trademarks of colorful rustics viewed in their environs, describing how second-generation oysterman Bobby Varnes pursued his hard trade against threats to the water posed by growing development.
However, the word at The Times was that Bragg did not do all the legwork on the story, but may have woven in material gathered at the scene by a stringer, or nonstaff contributor to the paper.
The Times is believed to have zeroed on the story in response to a complaint that came in after the paper published a four-page Mother's Day chronicle of Jayson Blair's serial fabrications.
Blair was forced to resign May 1 because he plagiarized a story from a Texas paper.
The Times invited readers and news sources who, as the paper put it, "know of defects in additional articles" to E-mail the paper at retrace@nytimes.com.
Bragg, who joined The Times in 1994 and won a Pulitzer in 1996 for feature writing, is based in New Orleans. He was among the staffers who attended a March reception in Manhattan celebrating Raines' wedding.
Bragg could not be reached in New Orleans last night.
Originally published on May 23, 2003
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