Poynter Ethics Journal

CORRECTION: A previous version of this column incorrectly referred to the Oregon Symphony Orchestra as the Portland Symphony. It also incorrectly characterized the position and and standing of the late violinist, Marty Jennings. He played in the first section, but was not first chair. The article should have described him as one of the most talented violinists to grow up in Portland, not the most talented. 
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David Stabler knew he wasn't being completely truthful with his readers. As he typed in the words, "the medical examiner has not released the cause of death," Stabler was both relieved and anxious.

The Portland Oregonian's classical music critic was writing the obituary of Marty Jennings, 32, first section violinist in the Oregon Symphony Orchestra. Neither of Jennings' parents wanted the newspaper to list the suspected cause of death: heroin overdose. Since officials had yet to rule on the case, the line offered Stabler an escape hatch.

"It was a little weird, we knew, but we couldn't say" how he died, Stabler said this week in a phone interview from the Oregonian newsroom.

Eventually the medical examiner filed a death certificate documenting the overdose. And Stabler convinced Jennings' father, his girlfriend and his ex-wife to be interviewed for a more in-depth story. The mother, Polly Jennings, remained adamant. She did not want to participate in a story. Without her, Stabler knew his story would be incomplete. Polly Jennings had nurtured her son's training throughout childhood and documented his professional career.

Still, his narrative instincts told him the story was a compelling one. Classical music and heroin aren't often mentioned in the same breath.  Jennings was legendary in Portland, one of the best violinists who had ever grown up in the city. As Stabler pursued the story, he learned more about heroin and junkies than most police reporters. He visited methadone clinics and drove the back alleys that Jennings had searching for drugs.

On a Sunday afternoon, two days before his story was scheduled to run, he called Polly Jennings at home, to "alert her to the story." He told her he planned to present as full a portrait of Marty Jennings as he could.

"How can you make it full without me?" she asked.

"Can I come talk to you?" Stabler asked. "Today?"

She agreed and that afternoon the reporter and the grieving mother spent more than two hours poring over scrapbooks and photo albums.

"She was very forthcoming about Marty's music, drug addiction, a lot of specifics. I guess she felt if it’s going to happen … "

Still, Stabler knew the mother was a reluctant participant. If she could have vetoed the story idea, she would have.

"I kept thinking, 'What are her rights?'" he said. "It didn't make (the interview and writing the story) feel easy. It was really tough."

From the onset, Stabler said he was conscious of the sensational elements of the story and steered away from them. After writing the obit, Stabler said he thought the story would be about the toll that talent exacts from extremely gifted young people. But the deeper the reporting went, the less he was able to back up that claim.

"We tried really hard to be transparent about what we didn't know," he said. "We said things like, 'We'll never know what demons pursued Marty.'" In the end, the story was framed as the tale of a man who lived to extremes.

While Stabler and his editor, Jack Hart, were working on the story, another editor stopped by and announced the package was in consideration for the centerpiece slot on A1.

"I was ambivalent about A1. Music critics don't often get out on the front page. On the other hand, I didn’t really want to sensationalize this story," Stabler said. "I said 'If it's going to be the centerpiece, let's underplay the headline.  We can’t glamorize this.'"

It was during that conversation that editors decided on the headline: "In Two Worlds." (The story was published Aug. 5 and is no longer available free online.)

The story generated a lot of response. Addicts called and thanked Stabler for his sensitivity. Mothers called to talk about their own children who are struggling with drugs.

Polly Jennings was not pleased. She was shocked to see her son's tragedy so big on the front page. Although she agreed it was accurate and well-written, she questioned the story's value. Jennings' girlfriend also reported that she was not pleased with the story. She thought it failed to capture the destruction that heroin inflicts and instead glorified drug use. Oregonian Public Editor Michael Arrietta-Walden later documented their complaints in a column.

Stabler describes himself as the kind of person who is never sure of his decisions. Reading the public editor's column sent him to a new level of second-guessing. "It was very hard to read that Polly was horrified."

Arrietta-Walden's column explored the tension between an individual's privacy and a journalist's freedom to tell a story. Caught in the middle is the unwilling source, the column explained.

"I did think at the beginning that I might have some rights," Polly Jennings told Arrietta-Walden. "And apparently the only right I had was not to talk."

That might be true in the legal world. But sources, even unwilling ones, do have rights in the journalistic process. They have the right to courteous and polite conversation. They have the right to make their case to the journalist. They have the right to participate in a limited fashion, to determine on which topics they speak and on which ones they remain silent.

When working with private individuals, journalists are obligated to present unwilling sources with as many alternatives as possible. Sometimes journalists mistake the act of giving sources choices with giving up journalistic independence. The two don't have to go hand-in-hand.

Stabler hardly seems the stereotypic bulldog reporter who runs over his sources in pursuit of a good yarn. He did his best to show care and concern for Polly Jennings.

He agrees now that in addition to telling Polly Jennings when the story was going to run, he should have warned her where and what it would look like. "The impact of an A1 story is going to be pretty overwhelming."

The reporter and his editor could have given more consideration to running a sidebar or an information box with resources for addicts. Even the willing family members participated because they hoped that others would learn from their story. Hart, the story's editor, argued that including that information would detract from the power of the narrative. Yet it's disingenuous to promise sources a story will fulfill their need to educate others, then not provide readers with information about community resources because it detracts from the newsroom's goal of creating a good narrative.

Being the subject of the public editor's column gave Stabler a taste of Polly Jennings' experience.

"I think I'm OK with it now.  But that's a very uncomfortable feeling," he said. "Because I wasn't sure we did right thing in the first place. So to have someone go back and second-guess …

"I hope I never have to write another story like it."