(I posted this one at Rathergate.com.)

The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) reveals to us that six of the 61 books listed in the nonfiction portion of the New York Times’ “100 Notable Books of the Year” for 2005 were written by Times staffers. Another four were written by regular contributors to the paper. Several were published by the paper’s own publishing line, Times Books.

read on…

All the big guns are included in the list, like Maureen Dowd’s Are Men Necessary? Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat and Times art critic Michael Kimmelman’s The Accidental Masterpiece. Then there is Kurt Eichenwald’s Conspiracy of Fools and two more self-serving picks: 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers, by Timesmen Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn, and Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun’s Supreme Court Journey by staffer Linda Greenhouse.

The paper admits the books written by staffers but is quiet about the rest.

But the water gets a bit murkier when dealing with writers who are not on staff but who are currently under contract with the Times, sometimes as regular contributors. Take, for example, Freakonomics, which makes the paper’s list. It’s hardly a secret that the authors of the book, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, have been writing a monthly column since June for the Times Magazine called — have you guessed it? — “Freakonomics.”

Then there is George Packer’s The Assassins’ Gate — admittedly a CJR Daily staff favorite — which makes the list without the Times giving a nod to the fact that Packer’s reporting for the Times Magazine on Iraq led directly to his writing the book. And there is Times contributor Jonathan Mahler’s Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning, which also makes the list, again without a nod by the paper to the relationship.

The CJR concludes that all this “seems to stretch the limits of credibility,” what with all the other non-fiction works out there not written by Times-affiliated writers.

I’ll counter: Stretching the limites of WHAT credibility? We’re talking about the New York Times, that most in-credible of major dailies. Doing ad-work for friends is one of the perquisites of jotting words for a corrupt news organization.