GOODY TWO SHOES: Another Conflict Of Interest Scandal Brewing At The Wall Street Journal?
Just days after OpinionJournal.com editor James Taranto came clean in a roundabout way about a longstanding conflict of interest involving girlfriend Heather Robinson’s repeated promotional exposure in “Best of the Web Today,” comes word that Tina Gaudoin, named to launch a new Wall Street Journal lifestyle quarterly for the superrich, is herself agnostic about the ethical practice of disclosing one’s interest or stake in a person, product or event to readers. Reports Columbia Journalism Review:
[Gaudoin] quoted her business partner in a Times of London column and mentioned their business - a small chain of yoga studios - in other columns without telling readers of her interest in it. … [She] was a lifestyle editor and regular columnist for the Times Saturday magazine since 2003 and had written for the paper off and on since at least the late ’90s. Last June, she was named to run the Times’s own magazine for the rich, Luxx.
She also is a co-founder and co-owner of Triyoga, a three-studio chain in London. …
Her column “Coolhunter,” in the Times Saturday magazine, was light and didn’t pretend to be consequential. It pointed readers to trends and fashionable products and services …
[S]he mentioned Triyoga five times since 2000, quoting her business partner in an October 2005 piece on mixing yoga with other exercises. …
Meanwhile, other Times reporters offered several plugs for the popular Triyoga chain in the news pages while Gaudoin was a Times employee. …
Dow Jones & Co., the Journal’s parent, has one of the most restrictive ethics policies in the news business and is not shy about proclaiming that fact.
Indeed. Now if only Dow Jones & Co. wasn’t shy about actually enforcing its Code of Conduct with vigor and alacrity.
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