Raised in Alabama, Raines spent the last quarter-century with the paper, busily grooming himself for the top job. That included high-profile stints as bureau chief in London and Washington, as well as eight years as the Times' editorial page editor. Along the way, Raines pocketed a Pulitzer for writing, and forged a remarkably close relationship with his current boss, Times publisher Sulzberger.

In those years, Raines developed a reputation for arrogance -- and that trait can be a vivid part of his public persona. At the Berkely forum, a professor asked Raines a clear, albeit longwinded, question about the Times' Middle East coverage. When the query was met with clapping from the audience, Raines quipped: "I assume that applause is because somebody understood the question."

The Times has never been known for its friendly work environment. Indeed, its aggressive reporters and editors are among the most talented and fiercely competitive in the business. But Raines' ascension unleashed fear as he took over the top spot and shuffled the staff, reassigning scores of staffers. Several respected reporters, such as Atlanta bureau chief Kevin Sack and Los Angeles correspondent Jim Sterngold, balked at Raines' work requests and jumped to the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe and the San Francisco Chronicle. Then, in the months following Sept. 11, Raines had to quell festering resentment from the Washington bureau, which felt a small group of Raines-loyal editors in New York had seized too much power inside the newspaper.

Determined that the Times make a difference in the world, Raines demands a more muscular brand of journalism from his troops, with deep impact being a top priority: In 2001, he reportedly told his business staff that the unfolding Enron story would be their Sept. 11 to cover. As a son of the South who grew up during an era of segregation, he reportedly was struck by the efforts of some women's rights groups to end Augusta's exclusionary policy, and he ordered the paper to make the battle a high priority.

"Having interviewed Howell Raines many times, I know the issues of social justice and diversity and discrimination are very much on his top 10 list," says Tifft. "He has a real sense of mission. He feels like his destiny is to be head of the New York Times. If you feel that way about your job, you don't sit back. Instead, you have a command-and-control kind of style."

But that crusading streak has taken Raines, and the paper, down some regrettable paths. During the '90s, as editorial page editor, Raines helped launch crusades against President Clinton, including Whitewater and the China spy and fundraising scandal. Neither conspiracy ever lived up to the Times' hype, partly because the newspaper, including the editorial page, routinely blew events out of proportion and leaned heavily on innuendo.

Despite countless, and breathless, columns to the contrary, Clinton did not defraud anybody as part of a long-ago Arkansas land deal, and his administration did not look the other way while campaign contributors leaked national security secrets to China. That same pattern was on display during the newspaper's unseemly crusade against Los Alamos nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, accused of stealing secrets. In each case, and particularly with Clinton, the attacking editorials were often written with a strangely personal venom, as if Raines and his team were trying to settle a weird score with a fellow Southerner who made good, rather than trying to uncover the truth.

Raines never did apologize for the Clinton crusades he helped champion. Asked at the same UC-Berkeley forum if he would go back and change anything regarding his Clinton coverage, Raines had a simple answer: "No."

"Raines has a history of going off on quixotic crusades," says Gene Lyons, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist whose 1996 book "Fools For Scandal," a book sympathetic to Clinton, spotlighted the Times' questionable Whitewater reporting. "Nobody really complained when he did it before. What's changed now is who he's attacking."

Perhaps the difference this time is that the targets of Raines' supposed campaigns are on the right: President Bush, the war against Iraq and the restrictive, men-only membership policy of the Augusta National Golf Course.

"I sometimes feel sorry for Howell," says one longtime Times watcher. "He gets the worst of both worlds; he's seen as the prototype of liberal bias in the media by conservatives, and seen as an utter scoundrel by the left because of his Clinton stances."

Nonetheless, Raines is facing more fierce, sustained attacks -- including catcalls from mainstream press outlets such as Slate and Newsweek, which rarely questioned the Times' off-kilter Whitewater obsession -- for allegedly launching crusades in the news pages.

Those allegations, which preceded the issue of spiked Augusta columns, seem odd in some respects. Since the Times hasn't been accused of botching the facts or stooping to insinuation as it too often did in the '90s, the oft-heard crusading charges ignore the fact that newspaper editors for generations have used news pages to ride their hobby horses, often for great public good. And particularly when so many major metro newspapers today are relentlessly boring and passive, the charge that the Times is too aggressive and passionate rings hollow.

Recent Stories