NYT editor defends Morgenson

Wall Street Journal columnist Holman W. Jenkins Jr. took a swipe at New York Times business journalist Gretchen Morgenson last week in one of his columns, albeit without naming her.

On Wednesday, the Journal published a letter from Times executive editor Bill Keller defending his reporter, saying the column “casualty insulted one of the best journalists in the business.”

Keller wrote, “As for Gretchen Morgenson, who is a particular object of Mr. Jenkins’s scorn, I’m not sure which is the best evidence of her immense civic value: the legions of Wall Street executives who read her with respectful dread, because she understands them so well; the testimony of ordinary investors and other readers who look to her as one of the markets’ shrewdest and most fearless guides; the Pulitzer she won for a body of work that Mr. Jenkins calls ‘relentless but unanalytical’ and the Pulitzer Board called ‘trenchant and incisive’; or the efforts of just about every business editor in town to hire her away from us.”

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