Public Editor Clark Hoyt in yesterday’s New York Times:

With my assistant, Michael McElroy, I took another look at the issue [of anonymous sources] after the Times was burned this year by anonymous sources peddling false information about Caroline Kennedy. Given the examples we found — nonessential and even trivial information attributed to anonymous sources, personal attacks, and inadequate details about a source’s credibility — I think it is time again for a forceful rededication to the newspaper’s own standards. “We need to do better,” [Bill] Keller agreed.

Also, Dean Baquet, the Times’ Washington bureau chief, “said he was thinking of holding a bureau meeting to discuss pushing back against the city’s prevailing culture of anonymity.”