New York Times staffers have until August 15th to take some time away from inventing anonymous sources and playing catchup to last year’s lifestyle trends to take a mandatory ethics quiz.
Everyone, from HR folks to newsroomers, is required to grab their No. 2 pencils to struggle through 10 questions measuring morality — and that’s after the prep questions. Once they’ve completed the test, staffers will be awarded a “Certificate of Completion,” which sounds only slightly less rewarding than getting your byline in Week in Review.
So what’s on this very Times-esque Times test?
They cover subjects including circulation padding (hint: it????????s wrong), bribery (also wrong) and insider trading (wrong, wrong, wrong)????????but not plagiarism, faking datelines from a Brooklyn apartment, or hiring a stringer to do your legwork.
The test, unnervingly, still manages to prove much more rigorous than our own. If it weren’t for our transparent bribery policy we’d never be able to pay sources enough to allow us to make up lies about them.