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Topic: Letters Sent to Romenesko
Date/Time: 5/22/2006 5:27:45 PM
Title: E&P's line about Luna was unfair
Posted By: Jim Romenesko
 
From STEVEN A. SMITH, editor, Spokesman-Review: First, a disclaimer. Rich Luna was my managing editor when I was editor in Salem. I like Rich a lot and consider him a friend.

He screwed up in Ventura. Big time. He knows that. So does the rest of
the industry. Had he still been in my newsroom, discipline would have
been swift and certain and, almost certainly, public.

Rich has apologized for screwing up and will move on to try to rebuild
his career. Time will tell if that's possible. He's a good newsman and a
good editor and I wish him luck.

I'm writing, however, to note the snarky and unnecessary line taken by
Mark Fitzgerald in his E&P piece today. What a shot to declare that Rich was disliked by many in the newsroom who then stood around and watched his "walk of shame."

I don't know an editor anywhere to which the "disliked by many" line
would not apply. For Christ's sake, when did being liked by the majority
of a newsroom staff mean diddly. Good editors had damn well better be
disliked by some on the staff, ought to make their bosses nervous and
piss off readers. If this were a popularity contest most of the editors
I know, including me, would be out of work, too, ethical problems or no.

Newsroom staff, bless their hearts, are like piranhas. When they smell
blood in the water, they feed, especially when the hapless victim is one
of their bosses. I have no problem with that. It's the culture to which
I've devoted my life. But I do have a problem with E&P making a sad
problem all the more pitiable by framing their story around the venting
of the malcontents. Focus on the ethics violation and while they're at
it, ask some questions of Ventura's upper management who, from day one, didn't seem to have a clue about how to handle this problem. [Permalink]

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