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The problem with anonymous comments

4/9/2009 2:33:34 PM

From CLARK KAUFFMAN: I see that a former Washington Post website editor is defending unmoderated, anonymous comments by saying there are "dark forces are out there and that it is too easy to forget that truth by imposing rules that obscure it." Do anonymous, unsubstantiated allegations help expose the truth? I'd argue that the opposite is true and that's why newspapers are staffed by trained, skilled reporters, editors and fact-checkers, and not by anonymous individuals randomly plucked off the street.

In January 2008, I wrote to Gannet's senior vice president of news at the time, Phil Currie, to explain my own personal concerns about the unmoderated "story chats" embraced by the company. Mr. Currie didn't respond, but there's little or nothing I said then that wouldn't apply to newspapers today. Here's that letter:

Mr. Currie,

As a Gannett reporter, I was happy to see your NewsWatch column about responsible journalism. I was particularly encouraged to see you argue that we need to help the public "see the difference between shouting matches and sound journalism, and underscore that the second version - while perhaps not quite as visually or viscerally entertaining - in the long run is far more informative and important to us all."

I hope I'm not out of line here, but from my perspective, it looks as if Gannett's newspapers are determined to erase the line that once separated sound journalism from uninformed commentary, unsubstantiated accusations and anonymous allegations.

Like other Gannett papers, the Register has turned its newsroom into an "Information Center," in part by publishing rumors, half-truths and outright lies submitted by anonymous folks with screen names like "Hugh G. Rekshon." Not long ago, we had a reader who decided to publish on our site the juvenile court record of a young woman, complete with references to drug testing, psychological exams and the girl's one-time status as a juvenile ward of the state. We routinely publish comments questioning the virtue of female criminal defendants and the citizenship of anyone who seems to have a Hispanic surname. We call that "community conversation." Others see it as a public stoning, hosted by a newspaper that grants all of the attackers complete anonymity.

And like other Gannett papers, the Register is cutting back on content produced by trained, professional journalists while encouraging community members to submit photos, columns and blogs. A few of our community bloggers have used this forum to write about the details of their drug use and their sexual activities. Most of our contributors choose their topics more carefully, but again, they're not professionals. Not everyone who can type is a reporter. Not everyone with a cell-phone camera is a photographer. But in the Information Center, we're all part of a homogenized team of "content providers" -- some of whom, not coincidentally, work for free. A well-researched Register news article is published on the same Web page as a reader's step-by-step instructions as to how a local woman under a psychiatrist's care should commit suicide using carbon monoxide. /CONTINUED

The problem with anonymous comments

4/9/2009 2:29:13 PM

The Register also has government officials writing copy for its news columns. Last week, I interviewed a state department head who told me about the health columns his workers are writing, at taxpayer expense, for my employer. I know we've also had city officials contribute bylined columns. These are public officials working for a private, for-profit business on the taxpayers' dime. That's the sort of thing Gannett should uncover and report. It's not the sort of thing Gannett should facilitate.

We also have advertisers working directly for our newsroom. A few weeks ago, an editor had to ask one of "our" health columnists, who actually works for the Hy-Vee grocery store chain, to stop using the column to shill for Hy-Vee brand merchandise.

Don't get me wrong: We still do great things here at the Register, day in and day out. I'm proud to work here. But just as our best journalism enhances our reputation in the community, these other contributions diminish the standing of the institution and the people who work here. More important, they contribute to this problem of readers and viewers confusing all the shouting, name calling and misinformation on the Web with the actual news you're paying people like myself to produce.

Somehow, in the transition from ink-on-paper to pixels-on-a-screen, we threw away almost all of our standards related to content and professionalism. We're no longer willing to act as a gatekeeper, apparently because some of our competitors on the Web aren't willing to act as one. They publish unverified allegations from anonymous individuals, and now, so do we. They make no distinction between mere information and actual news, between stenography and reporting, between press releases and news articles, between analysis and uninformed speculation ... and now we seem to be doing the same. How can we expect our readers to distinguish between all these variations in information dissemination when we're unable to do so ourselves?

In 1897, the New York Times decided the best way to compete with all of the scandal sheets in the city was to openly promote the fact that it was going to act as a gatekeeper and would decide what sort of news was worthy of publication. While other papers tried to compete by publishing the most outrageous and unverified stories, the Times actively promoted the fact that it was willing to print only the news that it deemed "fit to print." The paper used its high standards to set itself apart from all of its competitors, and before long it was recognized as the most reliable and accurate source of news in the city.

I wish Gannett would take that same approach to the competition we face today. Instead, it is systematically dismantling its professionally staffed newsrooms and replacing them with Information Centers staffed in part by unpaid (and sometimes anonymous) contributors. I know financial pressures are driving this, but the result is as predictable as it is unavoidable: a lower quality news product.

One final point: I don't mean to preach, but our lack of liability for publishing "story chat" material doesn't lessen our moral responsibility. I know everyone at Gannett understands that. But do they realize that the people subjected to the most inflammatory reader comments on news sites are often violent criminals or people with mental health problems whose troubles have put them in the news? In that context, a murder or suicide that stems from something posted to one of our sites is a real possibility. As noted in the example cited above, there's no shortage of people out there who will use our story chat to figuratively yell "Jump!" at someone standing on a ledge. We haven't had a MySpace-type incident yet, but I think it's only a matter of time.

Well, as I said, I was pleased to read your column. I suspect there may not be many people at the corporate level who share my concerns, but I think they're indicative of these larger problems you mentioned in your column. And as a lifelong Iowan who appreciates the role of The Des Moines Register in this state's history, these are the things that keep me up at night.

Clark Kauffman, reporter
Des Moines Register

[Permalink]

Time to do something different

4/9/2009 2:01:24 PM

From JAY RODRIGUEZ: I resigned from my reporting career last Friday because of my principles. You won't read my name in the headlines as a 10-year reporter who resigned from his post as a reporter. But it's a story, I think, that can resonate with Romenesko readers.

Our editor posed a question to us as we rung in 2009: "What do you want to be known for this year?" After careful consideration, I discovered than in order to know what I wanted to be known for, I had to re-discover what I stood for as a journalist and as a person. I found out quickly, which was somehow buried in the hustle and bustle of daily life as a reporter, that what I stood for and what the company stood for were two different things. I realized that I got into the journalism industry to "watch out" for the very companies that were running newspapers.

I realized that I needed to do something different. Not when the time was right with the economy. Now.

I am publicly launching a freelance writing career later this month and discovered an inner passion as an entrepreneur that I never knew I had. The rest of "my story" can be found here.

Importantly, I am not letting my love and passion fall by the wayside. In the fall, I will be part of the change I want to see and teach "Writing for Media" courses at Chicago area junior and community colleges.

From watching our presses run on-site for the last time (a historic news item our paper did not cover) to a shortened deadline that has forced early news to become the day's news, I just couldn't comfortably look readers in the eye and tell them we were delivering the daily news they have come to pay for and expect from our product. [Permalink]

A unique service that newspaper can fill

4/3/2009 4:12:00 PM

From CRAIG PYES: The Globe's Marty Baron's acknowledgment that good journalism is "shockingly expensive" reminds me of an interview that (now New York Times) reporter Kevin Sack and I did with Editor & Publisher 2 1/2 years ago after we published a lengthy two-part series on a Special Forces abuse case in Afghanistan in The Los Angeles Times. We warned that continuous budget cutting put this kind of reporting at risk. I explained that the year-long project had run in to the "hundreds of thousands"� of dollars, a comment which sent at least one LAT editor frothing because I had publicly released this dirty secret.

The impact on the quality of reporting is obvious when foreign bureaus are shuttered or pared down. Marty Baron's cost examples were based on domestic investigations. But what is seldom acknowledged is the great failure of the American media to engage in sustained international investigative reporting, although the country's future is increasingly tied to globalization. Foreign investigative reporting is vastly different than what a foreign correspondent does. But it is a void that no blogger or online aggregator can fill, and its importance for the health and well-being of the country can't be underestimated.

For example, while based in Paris for The New York Times, I was able to increasingly predict the probability of terrorist attacks on the United States by al Qaeda several years prior to 9/11 through investigation of the jihadi underground in Europe and its ties to Afghanistan. Consciousness in America about the rise of a global jihad was virtually nil, and the Bush diplomatic corps repeatedly assured me that al Qaeda did not represent a national security threat.

But Europe had been dealing with the consequences of militant jihadis for years. There were confidential police and intelligence reports, copies of al Qaeda-produced terrorist manuals, and access to Islamic militants outside of a jailhouse setting, which together told an entirely different story. But if domestic investigations are "shockingly expensive," overseas or cross-border investigations are shockingly, shockingly expensive. But it is a unique service that newspapers can fill. [Permalink]

View from the cornfields

4/2/2009 10:47:14 AM

From HOWARD TYNER: Following the reactions to VF's profile of Arthur Sulzberger jr. reminds those of us who toil out here in the cornfields that according to the most-quoted commentators in our industry, nothing of journalistic significance ever occurs west of the Hudson River. For instance, I may be wrong, but didn't the Chicago Tribune and the San Jose Mercury-News begin publishing full editions of their newspapers online (and on AOL) in 1992-1993? Didn't the Tribune--and possibly the Mercury-News--start filing breaking news on the web soon thereafter? I was not aware that the New York Times had a web operation at that time. Soon I expect to read it was the forward-looking Mr. Sulzberger who invented the Internet, not Al Gore. [Permalink]

Why does Gore ban the press from his speeches

3/20/2009 4:32:45 PM

From SASCHA SEGAN: As PCMag.com�s mobile phone expert, I'm attending the CTIA Wireless mobile phone industry trade show, where Al Gore is giving a keynote speech in front of 4,000 people. He's barred "press coverage" of the speech, which means people with press passes won�t be allowed in -- though it's been unclear how this applies to the many other people at the show who will have blog-capable smart phones. I've been going to CTIA for years -- 4,000 people at that show means 4,000 smart phones, even without a single press pass.

CTIA are a generally press-friendly group and say this was all Gore's doing. Gore has apparently been trying to block the press from events for years, and failing. I've got some links in my blog. I blogged the story here:

The official Gore word is here.

"Special Notice: Photography, recording, webcasting and any other reproduction of Vice President Al Gore's speaking appearance is strictly prohibited. VP Gore's keynote address is closed to the press."

I'm still waiting for more word from Gore's people, but do you or anyone else know why he bars press from these events? [Permalink]

Toilet metaphor -- not toilet humor

3/20/2009 2:21:14 PM

From ERIC ALTERMAN: Randy Siegel writes: "When Denver recently lost its second newspaper, The Rocky Mountain News, leaving the city with one relatively strong newspaper, The Denver Post, CNN ran a huge story on its home page: "The Rocky Mountain News was the latest victim in an era of shutdowns, layoffs and cutbacks plaguing the newspaper industry. 'It's in a free fall and nobody knows where the bottom is. It's kind of like water in the toilet swirling around and nobody knows what�s left when you�re done flushing,' media critic Eric Alterman said. Newspapers across the country are under pressure as readership declines, along with advertising revenue, while more and more Americans get their information online."

At least give CNN credit for using toilet humor to trash the competition and advance their own agenda, which includes promoting their new wire service for newspapers, CNN Wire."

For the purposes of clarification, CNN did that interview with me so long ago that when they used it in connection with the fall of the RMN, I thought for a moment they had made it up. I couldn't remember having said it, and I certainly did not say it in connection with the collapse of that paper. Siegel could not have known that. But the rest of what he says about the quote is sloppy. In the first place, it's a toilet metaphor, not "toilet humor." There's nothing funny about it. In the second place, no one is trashing the competition, merely describing an increasingly desperate situation. In the third place, CNN is not responsible for what I say, and I sure as hell was not promoting their agenda, pr news service, of which I was not even aware when I gave CNN the quote. It's not as if I deserve any medals for this, but I've been among those sound the alarms about the prospect of a newspaperless world now, for years. Siegel may have thought this quote convienient, but in proper context, it was entirely inappropriate to the point he was seeking to make.

What was it Felix Unger said happens about when you assume too much? [Permalink]

GM challenges WSJ's reporting

3/20/2009 8:01:50 AM

From TOM WILKINSON, director, GM News Relations: We are starting to suspect that the pressure to "break news" at The Wall Street Journal is having an impact on the balance of their coverage.

Throughout the soap opera that has been the auto crisis (or Carpocalypse as Jalopnik calls it), the news pages of The Journal have been pushing bankruptcy as a viable option for GM. (See attached.) We have had a series of discussions with them about their misrepresentation of GM's position on this highly sensitive issue. We have finally resorted to taking them on in one of our corporate blogs.

I spent years writing for and editing trade magazines, and I understand all too well the temptation to slant a story for a fiery headline and a great lead. I guess I am old fashioned enough to expect better from The Journal. [Permalink]

AP's biggest fan?

3/11/2009 3:05:54 PM

From OMAR SOFRADZIJA, editorial adviser, The State News, Michigan State U.: Every time someone complains that newspapers can't do real-time news updates and adhere to traditional standards and ethics, I'd bet somebody at The Associated Press laughs out loud. The AP has forever been filing in real time and following with more thorough, thoughtful pieces via electronic platforms, even when the platform was a telegraph wire. Would anybody seriously denigrate The AP's commitment to quality? And a 24/7 model of news dissemination isn't much different from the "get me rewrite" days of multiple and frequent daily editions, street hawkers and extras. Really, the new model for daily print journalism is simply an old one, using new tools. So why do too many of us act as if the challenge is incompatible with our professional culture? [Permalink]

Horgan "nailed it" with Bellow tribute

3/11/2009 2:06:11 PM

From GARY DRETZKA: Just finished reading Denis Horgan's wonderful tribute to Jim Bellows. He nailed it.

What struck me in all of the traditional obits I've read is how much respect Jim was accorded, simply for doing more things well, with fewer resources, than any of his peers. After making history at the Herald-Tribune, and overseeing the production of "soft" feature inside the Velvet Coffin, he oversaw newspapers with skeletal budgets, tightening news holes, megalomaniacal owners, non-competitive wage scales, diminishing advertising support and chronic second- and thirtitis. Sound familiar?

Even in the face of such obstacles, Jim challenged everyone around him to find news where the competition wasn't looking, write headlines that tickled the curiosity of fickle readers and report gossip that sometimes bordered on the truthy, to coin a current phrase.

More than anything else, though, our mandate was to have fun. If we were having fun, it meant we were doing something right and folks might want to come along for the ride. On those days when the news above the Page 1 fold didn't strike a chord at the honor box, any reader already familiar with the product knew something inside would be worth perusing, be it Page 2, Mud's musings, the observations of a writer-in-residence, a snarky review, an irreverent celebrity profile or the late scratches at Santa Anita. (And, of course, it didn't weigh as much as the LATimes.)

If there was anything Jim seemed to enjoy more than beating the competition -- in our case, the Times and entertainment trades -- it was receiving covert intelligence on how much those scoops and his columnists' barbs had pissed off editors at the higher-priced spread ... especially those whose public face required they never admit to having read the Her-Ex.

Today, in every new and increasingly more depressing dispatch about layoffs and shop closings found on Romenesko -- the Boot Hill of the MSM -- we are asked to buy at face value the bald-faced lies of the incompetent executives and newsroom flunkies who survived. Typically, they argue, "We're still a great paper and won't shortchange our subscribers when it comes to news. In fact, they'll embrace the changes we're making to survive in these hard times ... even though we've fired our top reporters, decimated the copy desks and eliminated many of the features, comics and columns they paid to read. But, hey, check out our swell website, which is loaded with AP stories and blog items our overtaxed staffers churn out, regardless of news value or coherence." (OK, maybe I should have inserted an end-quote before the first set of ellipses.)

The truth is, I don't know of anyone who worked under Jim Bellows, who hasn't, in the last two years, wished he were fit enough to strap on the armor one more time and ride his steed (was it is Gringolet or Rocinante?) into the newsroom of a thoroughly mismanaged paper in an important American city. Once in place, at a drowning ship such as the Chicago Sun-Times or Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Philly Inquirer or Daily News, Miami Herald, LA Times or LA Daily News, how could he not demonstrate, once and for all, how it's possible to sell papers and Internet content, even after those snazzy redesigns have failed?

Other questions come to mind: Can diminished resources and non-existent morale still be trumped by healthy doses of imagination, enthusiasm and grit? Could the man who launched Prodigy's on-line newsroom, nearly 20 years ago, convince today's deep-thinkers that print and pixels are compatible? Has anyone, by now, figured out that Gawker and HuffPo might be far less entertaining if the Ear and Page 2 hadn't re-drawn the gossip template decades earlier? How difficult would it be to compare Jim's plans for "Entertainment Tonight" with the putrid puff plantation the show became after he left it?

(Certainly, given the current economic malaise, some of the more unfortunate among us might have agreed to work under him for the same pay we received in the 1970s.)

Yes, Jim will be missed for all of the reasons mentioned in Denis' column. At Friday's service, I suspect, he'll also be remembered as someone who might have been succeeded today, as well, with or without the assistance of some dopey new Internet strategy or economic model.

He knew that people sold papers, whether they delivered them to a doorstep, snapped photographs or cranked out copy, not economic models or focus groups. Without people, the Internet would be of service primarily to the geeks at Caltech, MIT and the Pentagon as a medium for sharing jokes. Jim's people were encouraged to turn the cacophony of bylines and credit lines, headlines and deadlines, into poetry. Sometimes, that's exactly what we did. [Permalink]

Right church, wrong pew

3/10/2009 1:02:55 PM

From WALT WASILEWSKI, adjunct instructor, Syracuse University: I find NYU prof Jonathan Zimmerman's a notion intriguing. He thinks that newspapers ought to harness scholars' expertise to enlighten readers and simultaneously fill newshole for free.

He's in the right church but the wrong pew.

My students at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications every semester write and produce a prodigious amount of stories, both for print and multimedia. I give extra credit for every story that's published either in the campus press or in for-profit publications. Much of what they write is compelling and focused on local people and issues. Newspapers publish some of their stories (but not all). They rarely pay the students.

The payoff is huge, however, when newspapers publish the stories. The students hone their skills and the community gets accurate, compelling stories told from a diversity of vantage points.

Many of the journalism profs with whom I teach also write freelance stories. Doing what we teach keeps our edges sharp. Newspapers, magazines and online publications usually pay us for what we write. But divide the paycheck by the hours spent writing a quality piece and, well, none of us is getting rich.

So I'm suggesting a slightly different tactic for newsrooms hit by falling profits and disappearing staffs. They should look at more of the great work about their towns produced by campus writers, both students and faculty, and use more of it. But not for free. That really would be anti-labor. None of us are interested in pushing any more of our brothers and sisters in the professional press closer to the edge of oblivion through unfair competition.

But we are interested in shining more light on our communities. Sure, there ought to be a price for our work, but beleaguered newspapers might find the price is right for everyone concerned. [Permalink]

Wrong about profs

3/10/2009 10:29:45 AM

From ERIC ALTERMAN: I agree with Betty Medsger that the notion of professors replacing journalists is sufficiently misguided as to be silly. But I have trouble believing that she really believes "most professors would not be interested in pursuing the meticulous research and verification the job entails, day in and day out." This is exactly, almost perfectly, wrong. As someone who has spent his adult life shuttling between journalism and academia, and finding much to admire in both, I can promise you, the standards of research and verification in the latter are so much higher than in the former so as to brook no comparison. This is one reason it takes so much longer to produce. Academic research is footnoted, for starters, and often peer reviewed, while even the front page of the New York Times will often use the phrases "Some claim," or "sources say" and the weasel words "seems" or "appears" to hide the fact that the reporter is completely making shit up. I'm not saying that academic standards would have helped save journalism from dying, but it might have saved the lives of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had they been applied to the Bush adminstration�s lies in 2003, for starters. [Permalink]

Let's hope the prof's rescue plan is a joke

3/10/2009 9:49:28 AM

From BETTY MEDSGER: Here is a link to a column in yesterday's Christian Science Monitor that says professors could rescue newspapers by replacing journalists. It is not clear if Professor Zimmerman is joking. I hope he is, for his recommendations are very strange.

He states the problem: newspapers are dying. One result of their dying, of course, is that thousands of journalists, many of them highly qualified, are losing their jobs. Professor Zimmerman's solution: professors will take over these jobs -- presumably on the newspapers that are going out of existence...huh? -- and write for no pay. Talk about wild anti-labor practices. Not to mention the fact that most professors would not be interested in pursuing the meticulous research and verification the job entails, day in and day out. And, most of them -- even many who possess great expertise in their fields -- would need to learn to write, a skill out-of-work journalists could teach them between trips to their local soup kitchen.

Many professors are fine analysts in their fields, and some are great at explaining new developments and insights in their fields. That expertise is valuable, and journalists often call on it as they research stories that involve diverse sources.

A surprise for Professor Zimmerman: journalists also have expertise. Often it involves translating the writing and speeches of professors and other specialists who may be brilliant but whose expertise may not extend to clear expression. Now, in this rather apocalyptic time in newsroom economics, it would be helpful for professors with unique expertise in economics, business and technology to volunteer their expertise in an effort to create new economic models so journalists can continue to be paid for their work � wherever it is produced, in newspapers or the web -- rather than be replaced by professors who want to reconstitute journalism as volunteer work. [Permalink]

Cheap arguments

3/6/2009 11:09:23 AM

From SETH KAPLAN: Regarding Jon Stewart's attack on Rick Santelli and CNBC, consider Jon's attack in reverse: Rick Santelli argues that homeowners should not be bailed out. Jon Stewart rebuts that CNBC was completely wrong about the state of economy with a series of damning clips.

What does one have to do with the other? Jon doesn't really say. Couldn't Jon's argument be used to refute nearly anything Santelli has said or ever said? Did Santelli cheer for the other bailouts? The piece doesn't say. In fact, the piece doesn't include any clips of Santelli at all. I find Santelli's arguments to be cheap and Stewart's more of the same.

It seems that the same mainstream media that dutifully reported whatever big business had to say about the economy... has now dutifully reported whatever Jon Stewart had to say about CNBC. [Permalink]

Nothing wrong with pumping gas

3/3/2009 4:49:40 PM

From JUDY BACHRACH: I can't believe I heard right. In a piece on the dismal economy, Charles Gibson interviewed a man whose job had evaporated and was pumping gas for a living.

"Demeaning?" asked the anchor.

And the guy said, Yes, pumping gas was indeed demeaning.

I want to know: Since when has earning an honest living become "demeaning"? What is wrong with this country? And what is wrong with ABC? [Permalink]

What's going on, New York Press?

3/3/2009 2:17:30 PM

From DAVID MACARAY: It was recently brought to my attention that the New York Press is posting older articles on its website, but deleting the bylines. I checked it out and found that two articles I'd written for the paper (one an interview with legendary comedian Mort Sahl in '04, the other a more recent article on singer-satirist Roy Zimmerman) were included in the NYP archives but no longer had my byline. There was no mention of any "author." Presented in this manner, they appear to have been written by unnamed NYP staffers.

I've written twice to NYP editors, asking for an explanation, but haven't gotten a reply. Has anyone ever encountered such a thing? I was paid for both pieces, so technically NYP owns the material. Still, I would love to know why they saw fit to post the pieces as "anonymous." [Permalink]

Thanks for the coverage, but...

3/3/2009 2:01:49 PM

From KEVIN G. KEANE, vice president of news, Bay Area News Group - East Bay: While I'm appreciative of the national spotlight given the Chauncey Bailey Project by the New York Times, it's important to correct the record about the role fulltime news organizations play in the success of the project. The story leaves readers with the clear impression that investigative journalism is dead among mainstream media in the Bay Area given the recent spat of staff cuts in our news organizations. That's hogwash. And our commitment to the Bailey Project proves it.

Among the many things lost in the Times report was the fact that the Oakland Tribune and the Contra Costa Times, sister papers under the Bay Area News Group- East Bay banner, assigned their most experienced investigative reporter to work on the project full time for the past 18 months. The reporter, Tom Peele, is still following up leads in the case, and will continue to do so until all the investigative threads have been pulled.

Peele has been the investigative catalyst for the project, and BANG-EB was the only news organization to dedicate one of its reporters to the stories fulltime. Why? Because watchdog journalism still matters to us � despite the economic turmoil in the industry.

A half dozen other reporters and photographers from our newspapers have contributed significantly to the stories and presentations as well. In addition, BANG-East Bay Projects Editor Mike Oliver has dedicated hundreds of man hours helping reporters navigate the investigation and editing stories, and he had plenty of assists from other editors in the organization along the way, including Tribune Editor Martin Reynolds.

Robert Rosenthal of the Center for Investigative Reporting played an important role, but Rosey would be the first to admit that the project wouldn't have gotten off the ground -- and sustained its momentum over the past 18 months -- if it weren't for the commitment the BANG-East Bay news staff, a commitment that cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in payroll expenses. Indeed, Rosey sent a personal letter to MediaNews Group Vice Chairman W. Dean Singleton personally thanking him for the contribution made by his staff to the investigation.

The Times story also does a disservice to the work put in by other fulltime journalists in the Bay Area who put in countless hours developing leads, including KTVU Channel 2 and the Bay Guardian newspaper. (As noted in the Times� online correction, the San Francisco Chronicle contributed a significant number of important stories independent of the project.)

While freelancers and independent journalists contributed and continue to contribute to the project -- retired reporter Mary Fricker and freelance radio reporter Bob Butler, most notably -- the Chauncey Bailey Project is not a charity case. It�s a collaboration among journalists of all stripes who care about their craft and were unwilling to let the brazen shooting of an American newspaper editor go unanswered.

We're very proud of the Bailey Project and what it says about the priorities of Bay Area News Group � East Bay and our project partners. All it takes is a commitment to doing what�s right. [Permalink]

Maggs translates WP mag's editor's note

2/23/2009 11:34:37 AM

From JOHN MAGGS: Subject: Washington Post Magazine editor's note, translated. Who could have guessed that our silly illustration would have come out in the midst of a spasm of discussion over ugly racial epithets that (we thought) were in the past? First, let's (inexplicably) apologize to chimpanzee owners the world over as some fancy misdirection, then gently walk up to the question of what exactly might be offensive about our illustration. Why did we choose an apparently African-American woman to be slung over the shoulder of an amorous ape? It is the Post's informal rules on the proportion of White/African-American/Other people in its illustrations. Bad Luck! Of course, there is nothing in Weingarten's article that remotely echoes the nasty innuendo that suggests African-Americans are less than human, but let's risk confusing readers to make sure that no one can include us in the drubbing that the New York Post is getting. [Permalink]

Lesson from NYT's crash coverage

2/16/2009 12:25:51 PM

From DARRYL McGRATH: After reading the New York Times coverage of the Buffalo plane crash, (Fifty Varied Lives, Feb. 13), I come away with this lesson: If I have to die in a plane crash, I should at least make sure it's in a glamorous location.

The irrelevant and speculative statement that Buffalo "was perhaps not
the most glamorous of destinations" makes me wonder if the crash would have been any less tragic if it had been in, say, Paris, San Francisco or Rio? I'm sure the 50 dead people would have gladly taken Buffalo as a destination, glamorous or otherwise, if only they could have survived the flight. (The writer is a former reporter for the Buffalo News, and a member of the journalism faculty at the State University of New York at Albany.) [Permalink]

How did Toner do it?

2/16/2009 12:17:04 PM

From TIA MITCHELL: Back in December, Todd Purdum wrote an obituary about Robin Toner, who died at the age of 54. In the article, he makes it a point to talk about Ms. Toner's reputation for turning in clean, mistake-free copy consistently. At the time I thought it was interesting, but it then the words resonated more when just a day or so later I made a really stupid mistake in a story.

Purdum's article says that Ms. Toner "devised a meticulous personal method for checking and re-checking names, dates, facts and figures in her own raw copy, a step few reporters take. As a result: only half a dozen published corrections over the years, on more than 1,900 articles with her byline."

I really would like to know more about Ms. Toner's methods for fact-checking. I tried to email Purdum from the Web site soon after he wrote the article, but I never got a response. Ms. Toner's methods could help me and a lot of other journalists, and accuracy is how we keep our credibility. And our credibility is the one thing newspapers have that keeps us in business in this wave of ever-present and varying forms of news information. Thanks in advance for any help you could give. [Permalink]

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