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Posted by Kevin Craver

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A terrible idea
For Article: Senate Hearing Weighs Newspapers as Nonprofits
Posted by Kevin Craver 5/6/2009 5:48:55 PM

The same newspapers that in 2005 dropped the columns of conservative columnists who rather foolishly accepted government money from Bush-era programs are now talking about government bailouts and government-granted NFP status to keep them afloat.

I think America's newspapers owe Maggie Gallagher, Mike McManus and Charles Chieppo an apology. Turns out they weren't unethical hacks at all, but visionaries ahead of their time.

Government interference in our business is a terrible idea. End of story. Newspapers that function as NFPs now are suffering just as much.

Any newspaper that takes advantage of bailouts of NFP status should also be required to inform their readers of such on each day's front page above the fold, and their editorial planning meetings should be open to the public under their states' open meetings laws.

Minor correction
For Article: Campaigns Putting News to Use
Posted by Kevin Craver 1/18/2008 2:43:22 PM

One small thing � both the Northwest Herald and the Daily Herald are in Illinois, not Indiana.

Wow.
For Article: How Safe Is Your Newsroom?
Posted by Kevin Craver 10/21/2007 4:34:47 PM

The apocalypse is truly upon us.

Poynter, which is obsessed about newsroom "diversity" ad nauseum, actually let a columnist write about newsrooms needing diversity of political opinion? That, oh, I don't know, maybe newsrooms should have people who think like America as well as look like it?

Don't get me wrong. This is a great column. The problem is that it should have been written 20 years ago.

Now the conservative half of the country has the Internet, and I'm sorry to say, they're not coming back. Why would they?

Mr. Ward, I applaud thet you apparently were able to sneak this column in without your supervisors spiking it. And don't let the dirty looks you get from the journos at Poynetr and the St. Pete times get you down.

P.S. -- I'd make your column required reading in St. Pete's newsroom. They seem to need political diversity more than anyone.

Albom can share the blame
For Article: Portrait of the Columnist as a Pampered Athlete
Posted by Kevin Craver 4/8/2005 9:34:50 PM

You're right about Albom's detractors coming out of the woodwork here at Poynter. He must vote Republican or something.

Albom screwed up. But I am also pondering how this column slipped by editors. The Freep must have laid out the pages at least the day before the game. No one noticed?

To paraphrase the CBS Memogate report, here is the journalistic "perfect storm" that I believe made this happen:

1) Albom is just too darned busy with books, speaking engagements, radio shows, ESPN, etc. He wrongly commits said shortcut.

2) Editors give the star columnist's work a glance at most, and pass it on, and in the rush of things, it gets placed on the page.

What kind of editorial oversight do Freep columnists receive? I know bringing up Patricia Smith is uncomfortable at diversity-obsessed Poynter, but the Globe's superstar also fell through the editing cracks -- her editors were never on duty when her columns were supposed to be fact-checked, an extra layer that was added in the wake of long-standing allegations of fabrication.

I have said it here many times -- from Jayson Blair to Mike Gallagher to Smith, Barnacle, Jack Kelley, ad nauseum, almost every major journalism screw-up can be blamed on the newspaper's "star system" that every editor insists does not exist.

I'll bet a bottle of Jack Daniel's that the Freep would have caught a rookie columnists trying to pull this off.

The report did more than Mapes said
For Article: Mapes: Decision to Air National Guard Story Was Made by CBS Superiors, Including Heyward
Posted by Kevin Craver 1/11/2005 5:18:42 PM

"Indeed, in the end, all the panel did conclude was that there were many red flags that counseled against going to air quickly..." -- Mary Mapes

No, the panel also concluded that Mapes was misleading her supervisors, co-workers and sources.

The panel also concluded that Mapes' contacting the Kerry campaign at Burkett's request was ethically wrong.

The panel also concluded that CBS' 12 days of stonewalling was a public relations black eye almost as bad as the discredited Sept. 8 report.

Funny how Mapes does not mention the allegations of duplicity and her contacting Joe Lockhart in her defense.

Like The New York Times and USA Today, CBS must look at Mapes' previous stories. I'll never buy the whopper that partisan bias had no bearing on this debacle, but I believe even less that this is the first time in 15 years with the network that Mapes fudged things for a story.

Accuracy ?!
For Article: What Bloggers Can Learn From Journalists
Posted by Kevin Craver 12/28/2004 2:42:49 AM

Mr. Outing seems to believe that a lack of oversight is a problem for bloggers. As a blogger and a journalist, I can testify that it is not.

If a blogger makes a mistake, we or a reader correct it quickly. If a blog is written by a liar who cannot get his or her facts straight, people will not visit the site.

It's exactly the same tenet of mainstream journalism -- credibility is the sole currency. Without it, a blogger has no traffic, regardless of writing skills.

The comment on "oversight" sounds like code for "bloggers are likely to be irresponsible because no editor is looking over their shoulder".

Jayson Blair, Janet Cooke, Jack Kelley, Stephen Glass, Patricia Smith, Mike Barnacle, Mike Gallagher, Mary Mapes, and the gang that assembled the fraudulent CNN "Tailwind" story all had oversight.

Bloggers and journalists can teach each other about accuracy, Mr. Outing. Given this constant stream of mainstream media blunders, teaching about responsibility and ethics is far from a one-way street.

Crazy idea
For Article: Journalists: More Ethical than People Realize?
Posted by Kevin Craver 12/21/2004 4:03:32 PM

These Gallup polls are skewed. Where do Americans get this crazy idea that we in the media are ethically challenged? What have we done, I mean besides Dan Rather passing off laughably bad forgeries, CBS stonewalling the investigation in true Nixon fashion, Jack Kelley making up people at USA Today, Edward Pitts coaching soldiers talking to Donald Rumsfeld, CBS planning to release an 18-month-old story on missing explosives 36 hours before the polls opened, Jayson Blair making up people at the New York Times, 24-7 coverage of Michael Jackson, Scott Peterson and other garbage, and reporters in general using their copy as a personal political soapbox?

Where do our silly, childish readers and viewers get the idea that we can't be trusted? Where, I ask you? Where?

Good article
For Article: Beyond Alienation: Four Virtues That Can Help
Posted by Kevin Craver 12/2/2004 11:50:00 AM

Roy, everyone in this business should take the time to read this article. Unlike a lot of Fourth Estate denizens, it really looks like you took the time to take out your soul and look at it.

I will admit that I did not have high hopes for your follow-up article. Your first article, "Confessions of an Alienated Journalist", was a between-the-lines textbook example about how out of touch we have become ("piety and patriotism, with more than a dash of racism and homophobia", "Red, White, and Blue transformed by others into Guns, God, and Gays", etc. etc. etc.).

This article transcends politics and religion. True, most of the media still look at Christians, conservatives and gun owners as anomalies to be examined in a laboratory, but the article shows we can all learn something new by opening our minds.

In the end, it just makes us better storytellers and better people. And maybe, just maybe, one person at a time, we can regain some of our trust and credibility.

Another Tiffany black eye
For Article: Pre-empting Pre-emptions
Posted by Kevin Craver 11/21/2004 6:08:33 PM

Mr. Libin's article is good, but misses a serious point that I have been scratching my head about regarding the Tiffany Network.

Let me get this straight. At CBS, breaking into programming for a dead terrorist is a firing offense. But if you:

a) ... air a shoddy hit piece based on poorly-forged memos,

b) ... circle around the wagons and stonewall for two weeks rather than admit the evidence cannot be confirmed,

c) ... commit a serious ethical lapse and put the source of the memos in contact with a political campaign, and

d) ... label the source as "unimpeachable," despite his reputation in the Beltway as a nut,

... you keep your job at CBS.

I'm glad the network decided to re-air CSI-NY. At this rate, CBS needs strong shows, because people sure as heck aren't going to be tuning in for news.

Confession is good for the soul
For Article: Confessions of an Alienated Journalist
Posted by Kevin Craver 11/11/2004 6:15:19 PM

I admire your confession, Mr. Clark. As a journalist who moonlights as one of those ignorant, intolerant "red-staters", I am glad you have finally discovered the obvious:

1) Young people don't vote. Never have, never will -- the "youth voting bloc" is a perpetuated Big Media urban legend. P. Diddy told our youth to "Vote or Die," and they chose death.

2) Most polls are crapola. You fell for them. Hey, it happens to everybody.

3) You got snookered in by celebrities and a few left-wing rock stars. I am glad you have discovered that Americans are not stupid sheep who vote a certain way because The Boss told us to. Most of us ignorant conservatives love good music and good movies, but we don't give a rip about what actors think about anything.

Truth be told, all you have to do is watch a week of "Celebrity Jeopardy" to discover that most celebrities could lose an IQ test to a brick wall.

You have tackled the first two steps of the 12-step bias recovery program: Admit you have a problem, and believe in a higher power. I encourage your further enlightenment.

Methinks that if Poynter were serious about true newsroom diversity, i.e. diversity of opinion, maybe you would have run into a red-stater or two by the water cooler who could have opened your eyes a crack. Maybe Nov. 2 would not have been such a shock.

I won't be watching
For Article: The CBS Hearings: A New Twist in Reality Television
Posted by Kevin Craver 9/24/2004 8:22:19 AM

If CBS did take such an unprecedented step, I myself would not waste a few hours of my life to watch. This commission, like practically every other commission formed to audit a big-time journalism screw-up, will dance around the true issue here -- namely, whether a pack of journalists rushed this malarkey onto the airwaves to hurt a President they despise.

We in the Fourth Estate would learn nothing from public hearings, just as we've learned zip from this ongoing streak of high-profile journalism humiliations. We would, to coin a phrase from Dan Rather's old presidential nemesis, deny, deny, deny. The American public is just too stupid to understand us all-powerful wordsmiths, or so we like to think.

I visit the Media Research Center, timeswatch.org and Accuracy in Media daily. They are the only reality check I need that we are on the fast track to not being believed about anything. To heck with watching hearings.

If Rather and his producers would step out of Manhattan for once and talked to some real people, maybe they would understand the deep credibility trouble they are in right now.

Stopping the liars
For Article: Preventing the Next Scandal
Posted by Kevin Craver 4/26/2004 11:15:14 AM

There have been some great ideas here as to how to stop the Blairs and the Kelleys and the Smiths. Here are mine:

1) Harder j-schools is not enough. I have a dozen journalism awards, and I never took a journalism class. It has to happen at the real-world level.

2) Hey, editors, don't just have an open-door policy in your policy manual -- enforce it. An editor who refuses to listen to his co-workers (I had the privilege of watching one get fired) won't be an editor once someone is caught whith his/her hand in the liar jar.

3) Put your ethics policy on your newspaper's Web site, and print in the paper's correction section how readers can access it.

4) Hire ombudsmen and "public editors" who will listen to people. With the exception of NYT's Daniel Okrent, most ombudsmen columns are dry and defensive ("we're not biased/wrong/arrogant, you readers are just too stupid to understand us").

5) Publishers, draft and enforce a fraternization policy. If editors are being too chummy with "star" reporters, step in. Editors aren't there to make friends, they're there to enforce standards.

6) Stop the star system. In almost every high-profile journalism screw-up, from Kelley to Blair to Gallagher, etc. etc., editors were instead enablers. Editors, if your newsroom's pampered pet hands you a story with anonymous sources and you don't bother to ask for their identittes, find another line of work.

7) Hire a graphics designer so copy editors can do their jobs and carefully read copy. Most copy editors I've worked under have a great nose for fishy items or factual errors. That ability is lessened when they are too busy creating outboxes, points of entry and other miscellaneous stuff.

8) Take the time in a weekly writers' group or two to make The Siegel Report (NYT) and USAT's analysis of Kelley required reading among newsroom staff.

We need to get serious FAST, kids. How much more before America just plain refuses to believe us?

Favoritism the root of many problems
For Article: Making It By Making It Up: The Only Path to Glory?
Posted by Kevin Craver 3/28/2004 11:52:52 AM

Blair, Glass and Kelley all had one thing in common: They were beneficiaries of a newsroom star system.

You all know the type. They can do no wrong, editors pamper their egos and the reporter spends just as much time hanging around with said editors as he/she does out on the beat.

This happens at every job, journalism or not. But it tends to foster environments ripe for corruption.

I like to think that for every fabricator who gets caught, there are a hundred reporters doing their jobs right. But like it or not, the media's credibility and public image is at an all-time low, and the conduct of these charlatans reflects on us all.

Howell shares blame
For Article: Beyond the Firestorm: Fury and the Future
Posted by Kevin Craver 3/5/2004 2:30:16 PM

Yes, Jayson Blair is a liar. Yes, he will profit from it. Yes, he is a little punk that did for journalism's credibility what the Boston Massacre did for colonial/British unity.

But some writers here are saying Blair brought down Howell Raines. That's only partially true. Howell Raines brought down Howell Raines.

First off, Raines found himself fresh out of friends when l'affaire Blair hit, thanks to what blogger Andrew Sullivan called his "imperial meddling, diversity obsessions and mercurial management style."

Second, what kind of an editor allows a story to run that sends shock waves nationwide -- Blair's now infamous sniper confession story -- and does not ask the writer for the identities of any of his anonymous sources?

Third, what kind of an editor does not inform a troubled reporter's immediate supervisor of the employee's problems?

Fourth, the Blair debacle was not Raines' top disgrace during his tenure. That "honor" goes to Raines' advocacy-journalism crusade against the Augusta National Golf Club. Times friends and foes alike, even reporters, agree that it was comically overdone and was a Times-created phenomenon.

This can go on and on. Blair's race is an easy hot-button topic for people to jump on, but that's only the top layer of the onion that had little to do with what happened in the grand scheme of things.

Blair is a cheat and a liar. I'd love to smack him around a bit myself. But this would never had happened if Raines was so dead-set against listing to people's advice outside his sun-god hand-picked cabal of adoring syncophants.

Raines would still have a job if he listened to editor Jonathan Landman's sage adivce: "We have to stop Jayson form writing for the Times. Right now."

Blair did end some careers. I can;t speak for Boyd, but Raines had it coming.

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