https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/arts/yale-grand-strategy-resignation.html
Should each mention of a person’s name in a news article be prefaced with that person’s title, e.g., “Professor” or “Mr.”?
I just finished reading the attached NYT article about a political clash between academics and donors at Yale. But more than the content of the article, what stood out for me when reading it was the manner in which the various characters were referenced.
If I read an article about the CEO of Facebook, I might expect that the first time his name is mentioned, it would be as “Mark Zuckerberg,” and that subsequently he would be referred to simply as “Zuckerberg,” not as “Mr. Zuckerberg” every time his name comes up.
In the NYT article, each and every time the protagonist’s last name is mentioned, it is prefaced with her title of “Professor,” except for the first time her name is used, when it appears as “Beverly Gage.” Never is she simply “Gage.” Similarly, the antagonists of the piece, “Nicholas F. Brady, a former U.S. Treasury secretary under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush” and “ Charles B. Johnson, a mutual fund billionaire and leading Republican donor who in 2013 made a $250 million donation to Yale” are referred to throughout the article as “Mr. Brady” and “Mr. Johnson,” never as “Brady” or “Johnson.” Kissinger also plays a role in this article. At first he is described as “Henry A. Kissinger, the former secretary of state under President Richard M. Nixon,” and ever-after he is “Mr. Kissinger,” never “Secretary Kissinger” or just “Kissinger.”
Is this concern with titles considered a journalistic best practice or is it a journalistic tic of this particular article’s author, Jennifer Schuessler, “a culture reporter covering intellectual life and the world of ideas” at the Times?
In reading the article, it seemed to me that this constant repetition of titles showed undue deference to educated, wealthy, or powerful people. The mandatory “Mr.” or “Professor” title struck me as a show of respect where none was necessarily due. If the same journalist wrote an article about homeless people, would each homeless person be named as “Mr. Jones” or “Ms. Smith”? I wonder.