About a month ago, I answered my phone and on the other end was a newspaper editor wondering what to do about a misguided, yet talented journalist who had been caught plagiarizing.
No it wasn’t Howell Raines calling about Jayson Blair. It was Oliver Wiest, editor of the Sedalia (Mo.) Democrat. He was calling about Michael Kinney, 29, one of his favorite reporters, a man he’d hired into the sports department 18 months earlier and nurtured along.
Watching Wiest travel the path toward a decision provided a glimpse of a newsroom leader wrestling with conflicting instincts and values. A compassionate boss who believes in second chances, Wiest knows he must settle for nothing less than honesty from his staff. He recognized a man’s career was at stake, never a responsibility to be taken lightly. The more Wiest learned about what Kinney had done, however, the more comfortable the editor became with the difficult step he had hoped to avoid.
On the surface, Oliver Wiest and Howell Raines seem quite different. This is not surprising. Sedalia and New York City are pretty different places. Raines is described as a forceful, hard-charging editor who ran the New York Times (circulation 1.1 million) with an iron fist. Wiest seems like a deliberate, thoughtful editor who runs the Democrat (circulation 12,000) with a patience that is a survival skill for a newsman in Sedalia. Whatever their differences, Wiest and Raines faced some similar challenges.
Kinney, the Sedalia sports writer, arrived at the paper with some experience as a stringer and a lot of confidence. His reporting was solid and creative. He seemed to have a pretty good work ethic too, Wiest said. Last fall, the reporter took on the responsibility of a weekly movie review, which complemented his passion for cinema.
There was a never a question about the reporter’s credibility until a reader called one Sunday night. Chas Geary, a copy editor, answered the phone. The reader said his son noticed similarities between a staff-written movie review in the Democrat and the work of Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert. The paper checked it out. Sure enough, there were word-for-word duplications. When Wiest checked out the previous month’s movie reviews, he discovered other similarities.
By e-mail, Wiest described his reaction:
“My first impulse when I read the memo from the copy editor was to cry, but being a big strong man I did not. My initial impulse was to accept Mike’s explanation that he had cribbed material from Ebert’s column when he was up against deadline. However, I already had evidence that he had lifted material in the three movie reviews published before the one that prompted the reader complaint. I still wanted to believe him after I asked him to explain the other instances of plagiarism. I trusted Mike and believed he was honest and truthful.
“I did not want to believe that he was actively attempting to deceive me about the extent of his plagiarism.”
By the time Wiest called me, he was inclined to punish the reporter severely, put him through some sort of remedial ethics training and keep him on staff. “I think he’s redeemable,” Wiest told me in our first conversation. We talked about what it takes to teach a new reporter with little experience the foundations of journalism ethics. Wiest was blaming himself and his newsroom. There’s hardly any money for training. Probably no one had ever discussed journalism values with the reporter. Wasn’t that the newsroom’s failure?
I suggested he put Kinney on notice and do a more thorough investigation. Make sure he knows how serious this is, I told Wiest. Impress upon Kinney the importance of full disclosure at this point if he wants to save his job. I was worried about the message Wiest would send to the rest of his staff if he weren’t appropriately forceful. I was also suspicious. From Wiest’s description, it seemed likely this reporter had more transgressions in his past.
Wiest: “My first thought was that reviewing all his work was unnecessary and that I was on the receiving end of lofty advice delivered from the ivory tower of Poynter. With evidence to the contrary staring me in the face, I was still inclined to view Michael’s explanation in the best possible light. After speaking with you, I analyzed what (he) had told me in light of the facts I had. His explanation did not explain much. I knew that he was withholding information.”
Weighing heavily on Wiest was the fact that Kinney was the first black journalist ever to work at the Sedalia Democrat. When Wiest hired Kinney, he was pleased to be setting a good example for Sedalia, a town he describes as having “a long history of de facto and institutional racism, where white-collar blacks are a rarity.”
Wiest: “I hired Michael because he was the best applicant I had; that he is black was a bonus. I mentioned race in my first conversation with you because I know the emphasis placed on diversity in the news business and thought that race was something that you would want to factor in. At a paper this size, in this community, I can’t recruit for diversity. It’s strictly the luck of the draw, as in Mike’s case. I anticipated the possibility that the newspaper and I would be criticized for hiring a black sports guy then firing him for an infraction which our critics would say would not have led to the dismissal of a white person. (Not true, at all.) I guess it was a pragmatic consideration, rather than one rooted in some moral value. Fact is I was willing to give Mike the benefit of the doubt and a second chance for any number of reasons, most of which I mentioned previously, but race was not one of them.”
I told Wiest it was possible he was hurting his newsroom and his community by keeping a questionable reporter on the staff. It could also sabotage and undermine the value of diversity, if other staff members thought the reporter received special treatment. Wiest told me how well Kinney had done on the sports beat, how eager and energetic the young reporter was, and how much the community appreciated Kinney’s work. We ended the conversation on a cautionary note. We talked about the pot that was about to boil over at the New York Times. We agreed that whatever Wiest decided, he needed to be sure he had all the facts.
Wiest: “I took a week off shortly after (this) business came up. I brooded about it quite a bit at first and realized I had been avoiding the job of investigating his work. I took the clips home with me but decided I was not going to delve into them on my time off. Shortly after I returned, I closed the door to my office and spent about five hours matching suspect phrases with stuff published on the Web. When I finished I knew I was going to fire him.”
In several of Kinney’s trend stories for the sports desk, the work that made Wiest most proud, there were more instances of plagiarism.
I left a message on Kinney’s voicemail at home, but had not heard back by Friday afternoon.
It takes a lot to challenge your gut reaction. Wiest did so not when he fired the writer, but when he worked through his initial instincts and completed his investigation. He asked questions he didn’t really want to answer. Taking a skeptical approach to a well-liked employee was uncomfortable and even painful. As journalists, it’s our job to be skeptical about the news but it’s often difficult to turn that skepticism toward our staffs. There is a balance to strike. Too much doubt would paralyze us, and make it impossible to do our jobs. Too little doubt, particularly when it comes to our own abilities, results in an arrogance that will topple the mightiest journalist in the business.
