Howell Raines told the meeting, described as a "town hall-style" of meeting, that he accepted his responsibility for the damage to the institution that is the New York Times, after reporter Jayson Blair was revealed to have filed stories with false datelines, fabricated quotations and plagiarised material.
Raines told the meeting: "The first thing I'm going to tell you is that I'm here to listen to your anger, wherever it's directed. To tell you that I know that our institution has been damaged, that I accept my responsibility for that, and I intend to fix it."
However, Raines made it clear that he would not be resigning and Arthur Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times and also present at the meeting, said that he would not accept Raines' resignation if it were tendered.
An account of the meeting is published in the New York Times today. Over the weekend, the newspaper published a detailed account of Blair's false reporting. He resigned from the newspaper on May 1, after a soldier who was injured in the war in Iraq made it known that he had never spoken to Blair, despite the fact he was quoted in one of Blair's reports.
Blair also filed a number of false reports about the Washington sniper case last year. With the Washington story, as with many others that Blair filed from around the US, he never left New York. Instead, he used a laptop computer and a mobile phone to file reports.
Yesterday's meeting also addressed wider issues of Raines' management style. Raines admitted to the meeting: "You view me as inaccessible and arrogant. You believe the newsroom is too hierarchical, that my ideas get acted on and others get ignored."
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