About Poynter

By Bill Mitchell
Editor of Poynter Online

It began with the death of Mpozi Tolbert, a 34 year-old photographer who collapsed and died in the newsroom of The Indianapolis Star on July 3.

Three weeks later, debate over the circumstances of his death has raised two sets of questions. The first deals with the facts of what happened that night.
      
Ruth Holladay, a former Star columnist used her personal Web site to accuse the paper’s management of failing to maintain safety standards that might have saved Tolbert’s life. Dennis Ryerson, editor and vice president of the Star, dismissed her charges as "reprehensible… erroneous and hurtful."

The second set of questions deals with what's happened, journalistically, since that night. Specifically, the questions involve links from the Romenesko page on Poynter Online to the allegations Holladay published on her blog. Ryerson denounced Poynter’s handling of the links in e-mail messages to Poynter’s Jim Romenesko and Bob Steele.
 
Editor and Publisher reported Wednesday that state safety officials are investigating Tolbert’s death, but this article will focus on issues involving journalism as opposed to workplace safety.
 
Poynter’s links to Holladay’s blog raise questions about how journalists in general -- and Poynter in particular -- should handle coverage of the kind of important but often unconfirmed – and sometimes just plain wrong -- comments that populate some of the new media landscape.
 
The questions reflect some of the tensions we’ve felt at Poynter for some time, with some of our critics – and occasionally some of our faculty -- charging that Poynter Online at times fails to measure up to the same journalistic standards taught in Poynter seminars.

If you’re suspicious that I have too much of a personal stake in this debate to present myself as an independent analyst, you’re right. As Jim Romenesko’s editor and a member of the leadership group at the Institute, I’m in the middle of the controversy. What follows is my own perspective on how we’ve handled such questions so far and where we’ll go from here. I invite you to provide your own take on all this in the feedback area attached to this article. You should also feel free to challenge anything in this article with my boss, Poynter President Karen Brown Dunlap.

I sent Dunlap, Steele and Romenesko a draft of this article and asked if they'd like to add anything. They all responded by e-mail.

Said Romenesko: "That does the job."

Dunlap wrote: "We’re a school known for addressing ethics and values. We also publish online and we’re determined to practice what we teach.  This case presented the right time to pause and reflect on our practices."

Steele said he believes "the values of accuracy and fairness are paramount," and that "it was important to contact the accused given the source and nature of the accusations before deciding if and what to post on Poynter Online."

Here’s how things unfolded in the case at hand: Nineteen days after Tolbert died, Holladay posted an item to her personal blog just after 7 on a Saturday morning. Holladay, who retired from the Star just three days before Tolbert died (and was remembered fondly by Ryerson in his column that Sunday), blamed Tolbert's death on what she characterized as the “profit-driven, cheap, small-minded” corporate owners of the newspaper, Gannett Co. Inc.

Tipped off to the blog item by Holladay and others, Romenesko posted a brief item to the left rail of his site on Poynter Online three days later.

Romenesko was familiar with Holladay as a veteran journalist who spent 28 years at the Star. He regarded her as a credible source of information about developments at the paper.

All of which raises several questions: Did Romenesko try to independently verify Holladay’s allegations? Did a Poynter Online editor review Romenesko's link before he published it? Did Romenesko seek comment from someone at the Star before publishing the item?

The answer to each of those questions is No. In each case, Romenesko followed the guidelines we adopted for Poynter publishing in March 2004, specifically as reflected in some of the scenarios we imagined in an accompanying FAQ.
  
At some point after Romenesko posted the Holladay item Tuesday morning, it caught the attention of Steele, who founded Poynter’s ethics program and serves now as the Institute’s Nelson Poynter Scholar for Journalism Values.

Linking to such charges against the Star set off immediate alarm bells for Steele -- and he called me. I had not yet seen the item, but followed Romenesko’s link to Holladay’s blog. I followed up with Romenesko, suggesting he seek comment from Ryerson.

Romenesko did so and, within a few minutes, received a response from Ryerson saying he would not dignify Holladay’s charges with any comment. Ryerson reconsidered, though, and followed up a couple of hours later with an e-mail to Romenesko that included this statement:

All of us at the Star are deeply saddened by the passing of our friend and colleague, Mpozi. We feel it is imperative to correct false statements made on the internet. Any Star employee can call 911 from Star phones. In fact, employees and our security staff used Star phones to make calls that night.

Ryerson remained upset that Poynter had linked to the Holladay blog in the first place, though, and called Steele later Tuesday to express his outrage. Neither Romenesko nor I have ever met Ryerson, but he and Steele had gotten to know each other at ASNE conferences and as a result of ethics workshops that Steele had done on a private, consulting basis at the Star.

Ryerson’s call and subsequent e-mail to Steele were private, but he gave Steele permission to share their contents with Dunlap and me. I don’t believe it violates his confidence to summarize his point of view as angry surprise that Poynter would link to Holladay’s charges.

So where does that leave us? 

In a paper Steele and I wrote on the ethics of blogging for a January 2005 conference at the Shorenstein Center, we concluded that a key responsibility of a blogger is to be clear with the audience about the standards and protocols guiding his or her blog. And then the blogger must hold himself or herself accountable to measuring up to those standards.

We also suggested that bloggers engage their audience in shaping the standards they’ll follow. That’s part of what this article is all about -- an invitation to help us revise our guidelines.

Guidelines don’t mean much if they’re not rooted in values. You’ll find the seven core values we’ve identified for Poynter publishing here. That document also provides details on the standards and practices we follow, supplemented by the FAQ that seeks to address as many specific circumstances as possible. We provide additional information about the Romenesko page here, linked from an About Romenesko header in the left rail of Romenesko.

Our current guidelines require us -- especially Romenesko, the most frequent recipient of letters critical of the work of others -- to seek comment from the individual being criticized. The guidelines also say: “In the case of criticism of an organization or a particular article or portion thereof, Romenesko posts the letter without inviting response. He welcomes subsequent comments from anyone whose work has been challenged or criticized, and posts them promptly and prominently.”

Reflecting on the current case involving criticism of the Star, and its parent company, Gannett, Steele argues that the nature of the charges against the organizations -- blame for the death of one of their employees -- reached a threshhold that should have prompted Romenesko and his editor (me) to seek comment from someone at the Star before deciding whether to publish a link to Holladay’s charges. 

In retrospect, Romenesko and I agree with Steele.

We don't know how things would have turned out if we had contacted Ryerson or another top executive at The Star before publishing the link. If Ryerson declined comment -- as he did when we contacted him after the link was published -- it might be that we would have gone ahead with a link and simply noted his refusal to comment. But if we had asked and he had responded in some detail, we could have used that information in deciding what to do. 

No set of guidelines can anticipate every circumstance, especially as new forms of media present new kinds of ethical challenges.

What publishers can do is muster as much transparency as possible, and remain open to adjusting their guidleines to circumstances as they unfold. That’s what we’ll do in this case.

We invite reaction and counsel from Holladay, Ryerson and anyone else -- either in the public feedback area below, by e-mail or by phone to Dunlap, Steele, Romenesko or me.