On July 7, 2021, The New York Times published an op-ed1 by Ohio attorney general Dave Yost titled “Let’s Make Google a Public Good”. In it, Yost explained the anti-trustesque lawsuit he filed against Google and advocated that the search engine be classified as a public utility, or a common carrier, which would impose new constraints on how the search engine could do business.
Reading Yost's essay, I was curious how it came to be. Who first reached out to whom — Yost or The Times? What editorial standards did The Times hold Yost to? How does a state attorney general’s office communicate with America’s newspaper of record and vice versa?
To find out, I filed a public records request asking for all communications between Yost’s office and The Times. Within a few weeks, a 129-page PDF landed in my inbox. The document — comprising a series of email exchanges between Yost staffers and Times editors — offers a unique inside look at how media and government operate and interact.
The op-ed was initiated not by Yost or his team, but by The Times. On June 23, Sid Mahanta, then a Times opinion editor, emailed Bethany McCorkle, Yost’s communications director, under the subject line “Hello, from NYT Opinion”:
From: Siddhartha Mahanta
Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2021 9:30 AM
To: Bethany McCorkle
Subject: Hello, from NYT Opinion
Bethany,
I hope you're well! My name is Sid Mahanta, and I oversee tech and business coverage for the Times Opinion page.
I wondered if Attorney General Yost might be interested in penning an 800-word piece arguing for making Google a common carrier. I'd love to hear how this would improve competition and be better for consumers, and perhaps draw out the railroad analogy that, as I understand it, Mr. Yost is using to help illustrate his case (great, historical metaphors are always an asset!)
If anything, I think our readers will be fascinated to hear a case for smart government regulation, argued by a prominent Republican official. As you no doubt know, we're seeing interesting legal challenges against Google from Texas, too; there's something very interesting happening among state AGs and tech, and I'd love to explore this a bit if you all are game ...
Thanks so much,
Sid
Mahanta’s reaching-out email is interesting in its own right. It’s long enough not to be ignored, and it’s personal, clear, and directed. Mahanta begins with a pleasantry (“I hope you’re well”), before introducing himself and his position. Then he states why he is writing. Throughout the email, he is professional while also casual-within-reason (“great, historical metaphors are always an asset!”, “if you all are game,” the use of ellipses).
McCorkle gets back within two hours:
From: Bethany McCorkle
Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2021 11:23 AM
To: Siddhartha Mahanta
Subject: RE: Hello, from NYT Opinion
Absolutely, we’d love to put a piece together for you. When do you think it would run? We can probably turn something around relatively quickly.
Mahanta responds 6 minutes later:
From: Siddhartha Mahanta
Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2021 11:29 AM
To: Bethany McCorkle
Subject: Re: Hello, from NYT Opinion
Great! How about early next week?
Before you get to writing, I'd love to know exactly what sort of thesis statement you'd want to write to -- I imagine it's more or less what I suggested or close to it, but obviously would want to have a clear idea before greenlighting this.
Cheers,
Sid
As it would turn out, Yost & Co. were already working on an op-ed, making the Times’s reaching out “very timely”:
From: Bethany McCorkle
Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2021 2:06 PM
To: Siddhartha Mahanta
Subject: RE: Hello, from NYT Opinion
I said I could turn something around quickly because we were writing something to shop around so your email was very timely. The thesis would be something like below. I’ve attached a draft of what it looks like but if you’re interested in running it and would like some revisions by all means let me know.
Thesis is: common law common carrier designation is “light touch” regulation that simply establishes the general legal framework that will govern Google’s heightened duties to users and competitors (while reducing Google’s first amendment defenses). The precise scope of Google’s duties would develop on a case-by-case basis until Congress, federal regulators or state legislatures act to impose a regulatory regime.
She attaches an 860-word draft. Mahanta writes back that he’d “like to run this, with some edits” (which he attaches). He states that the piece is looking at a “July 8/9” publication date and attaches a contract for Yost’s office to fill out. That contract lays out The Times’s fact-checking policy. It makes it clear that The Times:
will work to verify the facts in your Guest Essay, but as the writer, you bear the ultimate responsibility for the accuracy of your work. We cannot “fix” anything post-publication without appending a correction — and corrections are permanently archived. Past errors are a factor when we consider whether to accept future work from a writer.
We’ll hear more about fact-checking soon. For now, Mahanta and McCorkle and sending drafts back and forth with edits and revisions. A sampling of Mahanta’s comments:
In the course of Mahanta and McCorkle exchanging manuscripts, the former informs the latter that he is now looking at a July 11 publication date. He follows that up with a new potential date, July 6th:
From: Siddhartha Mahanta
Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2021 1:16 PM
To: Bethany McCorkle
Subject: Re: Google revisions
Actually: I may have a slot for it on July 6th, depending on how overloaded the copy editing team is... let's plan for that for now.
McCorkle is satisfied:
From: Bethany McCorkle
Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2021 1:35 PM
To: Siddhartha Mahanta
Subject: RE: Google revisions
That would be awesome, keep me posted. Thanks!
McCorkle and Mahanta have their final manuscript exchange — Mahanta asking for sources or suggesting edits and McCorkle revising — on June 30, exactly a week after Mahanta’s initial reaching-out. From here out, Mahanta will stay in the process, but he’s handed the reins of editing down the line, to Glyn Peterson, a Times staff editor who will be fact-checking the piece.
Peterson reaches out on July 6:
From: Glyn Peterson
Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 2021 10:35 AM
To: Bethany McCorkle
Subject: Fact-Checking Inquiry Re: Mr. Yost's Piece for NYT Opinion
Good morning Bethany,
I hope this email finds you well. I'm reaching out because I'm fact-checking Dave Yost's piece on Google as a public utility. There are a couple sources that would be very helpful to to have during this process:
1. Can I get sourcing for everything Mr. Yost writes about Cornelius Vanderbilt?
2. It would also be helpful to have sourcing that I can use to better understand what Mr. Yost
writes in the paragraph that begins with "To curb such predations...," especially what he writes about statutory regulation vs common law in Ohio.
And if there are any other sources that you think would be helpful aside from the ones that are
already linked in the piece, please share them. I'll let you know if anything else comes up! Thank you in advance for your help— I'm looking forward to working with you on this.
My best,
Glyn
From here, Peterson will ask for a few further items, each of which McCorkle will go provide a source (or a few) to. At one point, McCorkle asks when the piece will run:
From: Bethany McCorkle
Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 2021 5:34 PM
To: Glyn Peterson
Subject: RE: Fact-Checking Inquiry Re: Mr. Yost's Piece for NYT Opinion
Any idea when this might run? Just trying to let my folks here know. Thanks.
To which Peterson responds:
From: Glyn Peterson
Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 2021 6:07 PM
To: Bethany McCorkle
Subject: Re: Fact-Checking Inquiry Re: Mr. Yost's Piece for NYT Opinion
We're aiming to publish this at 3pm tomorrow.
The next morning, there seems to have been a miscommunication, but things are cleared up by 10:30. Peterson reaches out at 11:31 requesting additional sourcing:
From: Glyn Peterson
Date: Wednesday, Jul 07, 2021, 11:31 AM
To: Bethany McCorkle, Siddhartha Mahanta
Subject: 07yost playback (attached)
Hi Bethany,
Here is the latest draft, with a few queries and suggested edits. If you could get back to us in the next couple hours, that would be great as we want publish this at 3pm ET.
Thank you,
Glyn
Peterson attaches a file with 12 comments on various claims in the article. Peterson was fastidious, seemingly checking every source. When Yost’s folks wrote that Bing “claims a mere 5 percent of the U.S. market,” Peterson pointed out that the listed source gave that figure as 5.67% and thus that the figure would “round up to 6.”
In another spot, Yost makes reference to a bridge owned by the rail titan Cornelius Vanderbilt. Yost writes that Vanderbilt closed his bridge in 1866. Not even such a minor detail was overlooked by the Times fact-checker. Peterson writes in a comment that "I think this actually happened in 1867 [not 1866] but I've seen mixed reporting on it, so I hedged this": Peterson replaced the year with "in the late 1860s." Suppose this had gone un-checked, and the final article kept the 1866 year. Would anybody have noticed?
At any rate, Yost’s folks have 12 sources to find. Maybe given the short timeframe, McCorkle brings in someone else from the office: Charles Miller, counsel to the AG. He sends McCorkle sourcing; she passes it along to Peterson.
At 2:02, less than an hour before The Times wants to publish the piece, Peterson asks McCorkle to clarify a source and proposes a change to the writing for McCorkle to approve: Yost’s op-ed describes the objection that Ohio is “using its law to attempt to control the [other states].” Peterson wants that to read “in a manner that burdens interstate commerce.”
This is where the paper trail runs cold. The last email in the correspondence came at 3:10 on July 7:
From: Bethany McCorkle
Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2021 3:10 PM
To: Glyn Peterson
Subject: RE: 07yost playback (attached)
Is it going up today?
Sent with BlackBerry Work
(www.blackberry.com)
Finally, the piece is published. Metadata I extracted from the article indicates that it went up at exactly 3:00. The Internet Archive confirms that it went live sometime between 2:46 and 4:09. The article garners 298 reader comments on the Times website and is spread a good bit on Twitter. Even foreign outlets and users — writing variously in Spanish, Afrikaans, German, and French — share the article. The next day, at 7:55 a.m., Yost himself tweets the essay:
Google has become a public utility, with legal duties to operate without bias, like a railroad.
— Attorney General Dave Yost (@DaveYostOH) July 8, 2021
In this essay, I lay out the history and the argument in plain English (no legalese!) and explain Ohio’s lawsuit. https://t.co/KoVIW83ltd
(Interestingly, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported in 2017 that Yost “is only one with the password to his Twitter account.”)
Four days after being published online, on Sunday, July 11, the piece also makes it to the print edition of The Times.
Reading these documents, I’m left with three closing thoughts:
Op-eds like this can be written on down-to-the-wire deadlines. The quick turn-around between revision is impressive. Edits were being made within hours the piece going online.
Yost himself was barely involved in the nuts and bolts of writing the op-ed. The closest he gets to being mentioned is in an email McCorkle sends stating that “[h]e does prefer Dave vs David for what its [sic] worth.” Of course, Yost likely played a hand in writing the article, and he surely reviewed and approved it. If he himself isn’t the one corroborating this or that claim for the fact-checkers, I don’t think that’s a scandal. After all, isn’t that what a staff (in this case, a communications team) is for?
I can't help but wonder if there is a more efficient way to process the different drafts, edits, and revisions that the article went through. Rather than sending Microsoft Word files back and forth with names like Yost2a.docx, Yost3a.docx and 07yost.docx, could The Times have an interface for op-ed writers? Even a Google Doc would work better, I imagine. Of course, much of the world — from academia to art to business to, yes, the offices of state attorneys general — operates on emails and .docx files, and The Times wants to be as accessible as possible. It’s a tough balance.
All the same, these documents, taken together, are, in a sense, inspiring. The fastidiousness of The Times folks is admirable. Likewise, Yost's people are competent, professional, and dedicated to sharing their case with the people. Public records laws are often hailed for their potential to unveil wrongdoing. But using them to find rightdoing is just as interesting.
You can read the emails here.
1 The Times retired the term “op-ed” about three months before Yost’s piece came out, replacing it with “guest essay.” (The Times called the term “a relic of an older age and an older print newspaper design” and an example of “clubby newspaper jargon.” Still, the move drew minor controversy, with some accusing the paper of more sinister motives.) I am using the word “op-ed” in this piece since that remains the most descriptive and commonly used term, the Times’s branding preferences notwithstanding.