By Kelcey Sexton
On Sept. 20, 2013, a column titled “Found, a Soul Mate” was published in the “Vows” section of the New York Times, chronicling the relationship of two yoga-lovers, Erika Halweil and Corey De Rosa, in Sag Harbor, N.Y. Halweil meets and begins regularly bumping into De Rosa, “an intense, thoughtful yoga teacher” with his own yoga studio in Sag Harbor, while her marriage is crumbling and she is grasping for a form of stability in yoga. The two begin developing a close relationship, but De Rosa asks Halweil to discontinue classes at his studio. Later – when Halweil is divorced – De Rosa decides he’s ready to “reconnect” and calls her. The two begin dating, later move in with one another and have a daughter. They are married as of Sept. 6, after having one “civil ceremony” and another a “homemade spiritual ceremony,” with flute music and Halweil in a “pigeon-blood red” wedding dress.
The column appears to be written in the “dreamy New Age language,” as New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan put it, of the couple, and that style is carried on throughout. Halweil is described by the writer to be “Naturally pretty, she probably doesn’t have many [bad hair days],” and De Rosa says Tapovana, his deep red-colored yoga studio, “[is] like a womb.” However, I think the column at one point enters disturbing territory with the explanation of Halweil’s becoming a regular at Tapovana – the incident driving Halweil to begin taking daily classes at the studio being her hitting and killing a 5-year-old girl whose red wagon rolled down a driveway and into the path of Halweil’s car in 2008. She relays the accident, said the writer, in a “calm, philosophical and open demeanor” and speaks “In an almost plaintive voice.” “It was clear sky, clear road. I saw a flash of red coming toward my car,” Halweil said. “I got out of the car and this really beautiful little girl with pale skin and blue eyes was laying in the road. Her eyes were glazed over. I knew the spirit had left her body.”
To me, the issue with this article isn’t whether or not it should have been written or published in the first place, as the writer broke no laws or rules, but rather how the reporter should have gone about writing the article. Yes, this section of the New York Times focuses on the retellings of couples meeting, falling in love and getting married. However, the reference to Halweil’s hitting and killing a 5-year-old child is brief, to say the least, and that the column again mentions in passing that “(the child died and Ms. Halweil was not charged)” does not help and to me instead adds to the odd and disturbing factor. In my opinion, the girl’s death in this column is being romanticized, as it is the incident that is responsible for bringing the couple together and should have been handled differently and touched upon more.
The New York Times has received several complaints about the column, one being reader Alia Hannah Habib’s that “this bump in the road is presented as part of the bride’s journey toward spiritual happiness and a deeper understanding of her destiny.” In fact, there have been enough complaints for the public editor to address it and attempt to excuse it. According to Sullivan’s aforementioned column, Bob Woletz, editor of society news at the Times, was responsible for editing “Found, a Soulmate” “carefully because of the mention of the child’s death” and said he “[asked] the writer to expand on that aspect and to explain it further.” He also said “To gloss over it seemed even worse.” He went on to say the column needed to reflect the voice of Halweil (Sullivan, as I mentioned before, described the language of the couple as “dreamy New Age language” and said it “[was] missing the kind of down-to-earth expression of sadness or remorse about the accident that might have made this article less objectionable”), but the fact that the writer in fact does “gloss over” the subject of the child’s death, and readers may assume that Halweil does as well, makes this an ethically problematic article.
By writing the column this way, the reporter has focused on loyalties solely to Halweil and De Rosa, and since their relationship was the focus, it does make sense. However, I believe there were other loyalties at hand that should have been further taken into account, such as the parents and family of the 5-year-old girl Halweil ran over and killed that day, and others who knew her, as well as the newspaper’s readers in general. By not taking those loyalties into account, the writer is forgoing including a sense of compassion and respect as well as a more human element to the story.
Reporters have a duty to ask the tough questions during an interview, and, in this case, I think the tough questions revolved around that incident. When reading the small paragraph of the column mentioning it, one gets the impression that the interviewer asked Halweil one question: What happened that day? There appear to be no follow-up questions, no questions regarding whether she met with the family and offered her condolences or how she coped apart from yoga, and that makes it seem as though neither party cared enough to expand on the subject. It may have been that the reporter did ask Halweil more about the aftermath of the accident (apart from whether or not she was charged), and she refused to talk more about it. If that was the case, I feel it is important to let readers know why the incident is only mentioned in passing. Let the readers know that you asked the questions they hope you did, that you were asked to “to expand on that aspect and to explain it further,” but Halweil wanted to move on to something else or still has trouble talking about it, so it wasn’t possible do so. Inform readers that you meant no insensitivity through not covering the topic further or that perhaps you chose not to focus on it because you felt other aspects of Halweil’s story were more important.
Through publishing the article as is, the New York Times loses in that it has received numerous complaints from appalled readers. However, I think it also wins because it hasn’t remained silent regarding the quality of the column and has offered excuses and opinions on the matter. The writer of the column loses due to the “staggeringly bizarre,” as Gawker called it, way the story is written and handled by the apparent reluctance to talk or to get Halweil to talk more about the accident and the death of the young girl. The family loses because the girl’s death is as quickly dismissed as it is mentioned and is being used as a mean of getting to the love story of the couple. But I also feel that in a sense the family could win as well because by complaining about the article, some readers are calling for the 5-year-old girl’s story to be told in a more sensitive, tasteful manner.
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