The commentary posts

[rknil]

This thread will contain most of the items from the Commentary section of this site.

[rknil]

Report: University to eliminate Chief
 
A Web site is reporting the University of Illinois Board of Trustees will eliminate Chief Illiniwek as the school's mascot on Friday, Feb. 16.
 
Illinipundit.com, citing off-the-record sources, says the board, which is not scheduled for a regular meeting, will make the move to drop the controversial mascot unless the Champaign County Circuit Court grants an injunction that blocks the action.
 
The Wenalway site does not report rumors. In this case, confidence is being shown in the Illinipundit site's connection with knowledgeable officials, as well as the fact that two students are seeking the court injunction. The combination of these factors lends credibility to the report.
 
If the move takes place, it would potentially bring a conclusion to a debate that has grown since 1990.

[rknil]

Chronicle reporters avoid jail
 
After a defense lawyer admitted to leaking secret grand jury documents, two San Francisco Chronicle reporters have found a way to avoid serving jail time.
 
Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, authors of the book "Game of Shadows", refused to divulge the source who provided them the documents. Because that source has come forward, the two no longer face a jail sentence.
 
This outcome is probably the best of the likely possibilities. A jail sentence likely would have heightened the call for a federal shield law, while journalists would have continued to ignore the obvious, blatant flaws that pervade the industry. And at least in this case, the circumstances apparently led to the revelation of someone who should not be representing clients as a defense attorney. With a shield law in place, the writers likely would not have been placed at risk of a jail sentence, and their source probably would not have faced the same severity of pressure to come forward.
 
And I guess we should be happy these writers at least used sourced material to establish their claims. (Of course, they relied on someone who now has pleaded guilty to four counts of obstruction of justice. And they and their editors must have known these circumstances when they were handling the information.)
 
Given what we've been told is acceptable, though, this approach may still rate above what's come down the pike recently. For example, in August 2006, Mike Nadel of Copley News Service offered the following in regard to Mark McGwire:
 
"Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa still dare detractors to offer proof. There was proof against Rafael Palmeiro, yet he rejected the findings.
 
"Enough! To heck with proof. From here on out, I'll stick with good, old common sense.
 
"Common sense tells me McGwire didn't go from injury-prone beanpole to Bunyanesque ball-launcher without using "slugger's little helpers." Period.
 
"I sure wish I and other journalists had used more common sense when covering McGwire, Sosa, Bonds, Canseco and other icons of the Steroid Era."
 
Since Nadel normally writes with a lot more "common sense" than he did here, I thought he might have been less than 100 percent serious with this column. But if he is genuine, he is saying journalists no longer need proof when making accusations. And that is simply wrong.
 
Here's hoping the developments in San Francisco don't overshadow the truly obvious: There's a lot of improvement needed in the coverage of steroid use in sports. Nadel may wish things had been done differently when the baseballs were flying out of the park, but disregarding basic tenets is not the proper approach.

[rknil]

Tribune punts away logic
 
As the Chicago Bears prepare for at least one home playoff game, the Chicago Tribune has found ways to descend into new depths with its coverage.
 
The worst example appeared recently after the arrest of defensive lineman Tank Johnson on gun possession charges. When the team announced Johnson would sit out a second game but would remain on the squad, columnist Rick Morrissey proceeded to compare the decision to the firing of a Fox Sports employee at the end of last season.
 
This comparison is flat-out moronic. The two events are completely unrelated, as Fox fired the employee after he erroneously leaked advance information about the Bears' starting quarterback, which the team provided in good will to allow the network to prepare for its broadcast. Morrissey knows this and writes this, yet he stumbles forward with some weak hand-wringing about the lack of fairness.
 
These sorts of angles are becoming pervasive and tiresome. Lately too many media outlets are turning their sports coverage into Another Somebody Done Some Sportswriter Wrong Song. It's unprofessional and immature, and I doubt the whining holds many readers' interests for long. Morrissey's column did draw some letters, at least one of which referred to the topic as "ridiculous."
 
Even before this column, the Tribune's coverage had displayed the same pattern of inaccuracies we saw during the baseball season. A recent article referred to the Bears losing two of their last four games, when in reality they had gone 3-1 during a difficult stretch that included three consecutive road games. Again, when the newspaper makes a mistake, it leans toward the negative. In addition, a recent photo referred to Alex Brown as No. 97, even though the picture clearly showed his jersey number to be 96. We've seen this time and time again with the Tribune sports pages; they often appear as they've been slapped together hurriedly and gone unread before being shipped out.
 
As these mistakes multiply, the newspaper shows no indication of fixing them or even realizing they exist. Recently the Tribune trumpeted its new Bears coverage pattern, which includes formatted graphics and text instead of a game article. As a result, we get quarter-by-quarter analysis that foolishly balances a zero-point quarter with a 20-point one. Only the visually myopic would endorse this approach.
 
That opinion is reinforced by the newspaper's hiring of Mike Kellams to be its new sports editor. Kellams is described as "an accomplished visual journalist" who designed the cover of a section about Michael Jordan. Somehow these accomplishments don't seem to fit with what the Tribune desperately needs -- someone to halt the myriad inaccuracies that keep appearing.
 
I have a feeling the Tribune's glaring mistakes will continue to be a talking point here well into 2007. And that's tragic.

[rknil]

Terry Greenberg: Same old story
 
Shortly after Veterans Day, I received an e-mail regarding a hoax perpetuated on the Avalanche-Journal of Lubbock, Texas. The newspaper was duped by someone claiming to be a Vietnam War POW.
 
It is very unfortunate there are people who would concoct a story like the one told to A-J reporter Ray Westbrook. But that being said, the article should have failed the sniff test. Only one source was quoted throughout, and no indication is given of any attempt to contact anyone else to verify facts. That source, identified as Clarence Lee, tells a wild tale of being beaten by the enemy and hearing racial slurs from his bunkmate, who Lee claims was killed in combat.
 
But subsequent checks revealed no Clarence Lee on a POW/MIA list, nor is there any evidence of the man Lee identified as his bunkmate being killed in battle. The newspaper printed a follow-up story admitting to these flaws, but it gave no indication as to whether these facts had been checked before the original article was printed.
 
This appears to be yet another example of a newspaper focusing more on presentation than content. In a subsequent column, the newspaper's editor, Terry Greenberg, mentions discussing the story on Nov. 10 during a planning meeting. He says he read the article that day. But apparently he was content with the article citing only one source.
 
And we've seen this sort of thing before from Greenberg, when he was the editor of the Pantagraph in Bloomington, Illinois. During the Pantagraph's Summer of Red, when nearly every edition featured a glaring error, the newspaper annoyed many Mitsubishi workers by printing a photo of the local plant when a vehicle recall was announced. But the local plant did not manufacture the model that was recalled. Greenberg's weak defense after this major mistake was the usual design doublespeak of "We have to run a photo with stories." I guess it doesn't matter if the photo is correct.
 
At the end of Greenberg's recent column, he bemoans that he'll have to wonder if future stories from veterans are true. But the newspaper's readers will now have to do the same thing because proper care was not taken with the original article. I guess some editors are concerned with other things.

[rknil]

They're so sorry they screwed up
 
One of the things that really bothers me about today's newspapers is the tireless pursuit of apologies. The rationale of panting for after-the-fact remorse seems like a waste of time and effort that could be better spent pursuing solutions.
 
So when I saw the headline of "Some apologies are a bit sorrier than others" on the Chicago Tribune's Nov. 24 Commentary page, I knew I'd likely find some examples of newspaper folks running down a misguided path. I hit pay dirt with an item about President Clinton discussing his efforts to eliminate Osama bin Laden.
 
But the newspaper mixes up its villains and refers erroneously to former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. So instead, Clinton is quoted as saying he authorized a finding for the CIA to kill Hussein. This would be an impeachable offense, as it is no longer legal for a president to authorize an assassination of an elected leader. This error in facts also takes the air out of Clinton's statement he "got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since." Clearly Clinton was referring to bin Laden, or at least that's clear to everyone except writers Charles M. Madigan and Kristin Samuelson and anyone at the Tribune who might have read this column before it was published.
 
Maybe instead of agonizing over apologies, the Tribune's editorial staff should seek solutions to its recent pattern of botching the facts and acting like dung beetles. Running a timely correction for this latest error would be a step in the right direction.

[rknil]

Phil Rosenthal, Tribune shill
 
A valuable skill in journalism these days seems to be an ability to gloss over the obvious while presenting a version of ivory-tower reality. (See Institute, Poynter, underachieving.)
 
Phil Rosenthal, a Chicago Tribune business columnist, displays his mastery of this skill in a recent column about the changing of the guard at the Los Angeles Times, a rapidly declining piece of the Tribune's crumbling empire. In this case, the truly obvious would be the following: The newspaper will make cuts, probably deep ones, and the quality of the product will suffer. Then the dunces at Tribune Tower will scratch their empty heads and ponder why revenue continues to decline.
 
If Rosenthal has learned these business skill basics, he does not display them in the column. Instead, he discusses the application of antiseptic as a metaphor for the Tribune's thinly disguised arrival of the hatchet man, James O'Shea. Were Rosenthal to interpret the slightest shred of reality, he would have an intensely mixed metaphor on his hands, for we all know this process is not about healing, as the headline indicates.
 
Again: There will be cuts. The product will decline. The woodenheads will pretend to have a solution.
 
O'Shea told the Times staff it should focus on what it can control: quality journalism. Again, we have a loose definition of reality here. The staff can't control quality in today's newsrooms because whenever it catches its breath, the higher-ups look for new ways to slash the staff. It's a modern-day version of Sisyphus and the rock, except the Tribune Tower geniuses probably view that as a business model.
 
These points should be made in the column. Rosenthal does not do this, and we should not be surprised. To be fair, it is asking a lot for a Trib writer to give us the true story. In the last few months, we've seen the newspaper's writers acting more like dung beetles, spinning whatever speck they can clench into a larger ball of mud and excrement. The worst of the metamorphosis from quality metro figure to antenna-waving insect can be seen in the newspaper's shoddy baseball coverage. With the Cubs' re-signing of third baseman Aramis Ramirez, whom the dung beetles have maligned for months, the writers have now completed the circle of being wrong from the opening of spring training to the start of winter meetings. All Paul Sullivan has to do now is confuse the salt and pepper at an offseason banquet, and his 2006 will be complete.
 
In the meantime, the staff in L.A. is left to twist in the wind. O'Shea believes the paper will be purchased and expects some of his decisions to be unpopular. At least one person seems to have a grasp of the firmly obvious, but that person has a firm grasp on the cutting ax.

[rknil]

Idiocy: Growing trend at Poynter
 
Would newspapers move their copy editing tasks overseas? This is the question posed by Joe Grimm of the Detroit Free Press at the receptacle for half-baked ideas, the underachieving Poynter Institute.
 
Grimm, long a sycophant of Poynter's float-in-the-clouds approach, continues his approach of straddling that delicate line between Newspaper Everyman and Management Toadie with this piece. He gives us the "pros" of outsourcing: The costs are low, more editors could be used, and ... well, there aren't any more. The "con," of course, is the steep drop in quality and control, and Grimm handles this pesky issue deftly by completely glossing over it. After all, people in India can learn how to edit calendar listings, he spins, and as we all know, those are the lifeblood of today's newspapers.
 
The rest of the article is an atrocious pep rally for copy editors to fight for their right to proofread. For Grimm, this is actually one of his better efforts. He's long offered recruiting "advice" featuring his forte: keeping his head buried firmly in the sand. In his tightly insulated world, everyone would spend 2.56 years, no more and certainly no less, at a newspaper, then proceed like a Monopoly pawn to the next square. There are never any bumps such as layoffs, buyouts or personal relationships that require a move. In this sense, he's a true Poynterbot through and through. Ignore reality; full speed ahead!
 
When the Free Press was acquired by Gannett, I really had hoped the chain would release the hot air in Grimm's balloon. But he's now moved his tiny tips over to Poynter, where he's truly a pea in a pod. For some reason, people keep seeking his repetitive responses, and he keeps issuing them like a Pez dispenser.
 
In an environment where experienced people are losing their positions, only to be replaced by the recent college graduates the industry covets, relics like Grimm should have been deposited in the junkyard long ago. But he's found a niche as a crack filler between the bricks of Poynter's ivory tower. So he'll be OK, as long as he can keep straddling that line in the clouds.

[rknil]

Chronicle reporters receive prison sentence
 
In a move sure to spawn plenty of emotion-driven editorials and columns, a judge has sentenced two San Francisco Chronicle reporters to 18 months in prison for failing to divulge the source of leaked grand jury testimony.
 
We've seen this before. Recently, in fact, when Judith Miller of The New York Times was sentenced to jail time when she refused to divulge the source of material protected by law. Read that again: Protected by law. Unfortunately for many journalists who ignore the facts, there are circumstances where printing something leads to penalties. Hence, there are libel laws on the books.
 
The First Amendment does not guarantee the right to print anything at any time. Those who work in the journalism field should be aware of this; that responsibility comes with the territory. Unfortunately, this concept gets overlooked as soon as the gavel falls on a sentence for a reporter. Last fall, we even saw Associated Press writers signing a petition calling for the release of Judith Miller, as well as a federal shield law to protect journalists. These signings came before the full picture was clear: The details were given to Miller as part of a political, ax-grinding agenda. Once this development surfaced, the call for petitions and federal shield laws eroded faster than the training budget in most newsrooms.
 
Now the push for a federal shield law will certainly start again. We will hear the following argument again and again: The government should not police the journalism industry. But those who pay attention should know one thing: It already does, with or without the shield law.
 
The one, true way to pursue a shield law is for newspapers to do a far better job of policing themselves. Right now, there are no industrywide guidelines, unless you count the lemming-like drive to cut costs and put out a poorer product. Those pushing for a shield law will claim product quality and government protection are unrelated, but they go hand-in-hand. The public belief in newspaper content has plummeted, and most politicians are not going to ignore their constituencies for long.
 
Thus, we have the sad reality: Had newsrooms chosen to enforce quality standards and protect their credibility, the chances of a federal shield law would be higher. Most newsrooms chose not do so. The seeds of that decision were planted some time ago, and harvest time is coming. The crop, like many newspapers, will be stunted, largely inedible and barren of substance.

[rknil]

Oakland Press dumps 3 staffers
 
With glee, I discovered The Oakland Press in Pontiac, Michigan, finally got around to cutting three of its editors (and that term is used loosely).
 
Ever since the Journal Register Company purchased this sinking ship, I've been waiting for the ax to fall. And it finally has on "Editor" Neil Munro, Features "Editor" Dolly Moiseeff, and Managing Editor Susan Belniak Hood. Of those three, only Hood was doing work comparable with the holding of an editorial position. Munro's contribution was writing an editorial five days a week and a Sunday column. He couldn't even be bothered to submit his Monday editorial either in advance or in person, often transmitting it via modem and inconveniencing the Sunday evening staff. (Inconvenience will be a common theme throughout this segment, by the way; many Oakland Press staffers were allowed to take shortcuts or simply not do their jobs, and these transgressions were frequently ignored.)
 
Moiseeff apparently believed the role of editor involved writing book reviews and delegating the rest of the work onto others. From what one staffer told me, she could not edit for facts or for grammar. Her one "strength" was suggesting revisions to the copy. She also went to lunch with the newspaper's "in" crowd, but I guess her midday will now consist of a diet of soap operas.
 
Hood served as the gatekeeper for the newspaper's local copy. This allowed her to present information about the day's stories during the news staff's frequent meetings. Unfortunately, too often she played favorites, allowing reporters such as Bob "50-Inch" Gross to hog the limited space available in the edition. As a result, timely stories had to be held or pushed farther back into the newspaper than they should have been. Hood also ignored the chronic underperformance of staffers such as Moiseeff.
 
Also complicit in allowing employees to earn pay disproportionate to their work was former Executive Editor Garry Gilbert, who left recently to join the faculty at Michigan State. Apparently Gilbert knew just when to leave a sinking ship. (Insert comparison here.) Far too often, a few staffers were doing the work of several others. When the newspaper started cutting positions in early 2001, this imbalance became obvious as entire departments were swept out the door, and no one could figure out exactly what those people had been doing with their time.
 
Comparing the online staff box of a few weeks ago to today is a humorous endeavor. For example, "reporter" Jena Passut now has bounced from the news copy desk to the features copy desk to a reporter slot. The paper no longer lists a Features, Sports or Business section in its directory, so I tend to assume there may be more cuts in the near future. In addition, many of the reporters who were listed a few weeks ago are no longer in the directory. Are they still with the newspaper? We shall see.
 
The newspaper also is being criticized sharply by its former adviser, Jack Lessenberry, who served as a type of Poynterbot when he was in Pontiac. Like Poynter, he would make suggestions from on high, knowing the newspaper did not have the intention nor the staff to implement them. Lessenberry claims the Press used to beat the Detroit Free Press, another sharply declining newspaper, on "its own turf." I find this assertion quite humorous. For one thing, shouldn't the local newspaper always win on its own turf? And too often, these "victories" would consist of overly lengthy, poorly written articles.
 
Lessenberry makes a couple of cognizant points. First, he says JRC overpaid for the Press and the rest of the Michigan newspapers it acquired. Then he adds the topper: The Oakland Press and its weaker siblings are now effectively surrounded by Gannett newspapers. Of course, those other newspapers include the declining Free Press and the declining Detroit News, so it's sort of like Bill and Ted being surrounded by the Three Stooges. But nevertheless, the encirclement is in place.
 
So let's look toward the bleak future of this underachieving newspaper. Gilbert and Hood have left behind a solid group of underachievers, buffoons and self-important writers who couldn't meet a deadline or a 15-inch requirement if their next meal depended upon it. It'll be fun to see who gets tossed out the door next by JRC. This ownership and this staff truly deserve each other.

[rknil]

How the credibility was lost
 
A recent survey reveals something hardly surprising to those paying attention: The credibility of newspapers is declining sharply.
 
The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press survey, cited at http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2006/08/credibility-chasm.html, shows national newspapers were rated as believable by 21.3 percent of respondents, a steep drop from the 32 percent figure of eight years ago. In the category of "Your daily paper", the response of believable dropped from 29 percent to 19 percent.
 
So what's happened since 1998? Well, newspapers went into a binge-and-purge hiring cycle right about that time. A lot of fresh college graduates were hired. Then newspapers purged many of their older, more experienced employees when the economy went kerblooey a couple of years later. These moves did wonders for the books and the pockets of greedy publishers, but they did not do much for the average quality of the work done in the newsroom.
 
Also, newspapers have been really, really busy promoting their design agendas, in which fact-checking and editing are shunned in favor of skyboxes, huge cutouts and lots of headlines featuring bad puns or giant numerals. Designers LOVE giant numerals. Of course, they often do little to tell readers what the story is about. And going lax on fact-checking tends to hurt the credibility.
 
Since 2000, we have seen major errors in quite a few national stories. The 2000 presidential election coverage was botched badly. The 2004 election was poorly handled as well, although there is no single, huge error that stands out. But especially since 2004, the results have been dismal. The death toll in the wake of Hurricane Katrina was grossly exaggerated, and I tend to believe there are still many newspapers that never corrected all of their errors in fact and judgment. At the start of 2006, The Associated Press mishandled the story about coal miners dying in an accident, and that organization has never taken full responsibility for its mistakes. Why should readers believe articles when they are so wrong, and no one will correct them? The aftertaste tends to be a little bitter when too much garbage is forced down one's throat.
 
So what are newspapers doing to fix these problems? Apparently very little. Layoffs and cutbacks are continuing, and as I say in the Introduction (linked above), cuts could be useful if the poor performers were fired. But rarely does that happen. Instead, newsrooms push their experienced staffers out the door. Some of these people have been coasting on fumes, but others are productive employees who either embrace the opportunity to leave a sinking ship or are forced to leave so the organization can continue to pursue unrealistic profit goals.
 
Where should changes be made? Unfortunately, I think too many newsrooms are set in their ways: Hire inexperienced, cheaper staffers, then wonder why the quality of coverage declines. Promote figureheads to important positions like city editor and managing editor, then act astonished when the corrections start rolling in. And of course, push as much work as possible onto understaffed copy desks. Be sure to have those people designing as well as editing, and if they can chase cutlines and photos and tone those photos, then fix whatever else comes up "in their spare time," you've reached Newsroom Nirvana, 21st century style!
 
If the readers knew more about how the product was made (which they don't, despite newspaper idiots' bleating about "transparency"), that 19 percent believability response might drop to single digits. Newsroom figureheads everywhere should keep hoping those details do not emerge; they would look awfully ridiculous.

[rknil]

Tribune mix-up raises many questions
 

Eddie Johnson


Back in the days when I thought people in newsrooms cared about accuracy, I used to share a story: A newspaper once printed an article saying someone had been arrested on charges of child molestation. An address for the man was printed. Residents threw rocks through the windows and damaged the house at this address. Turns out there were two people with the same name, and the wrong address was printed.
 
The man sued the newspaper and won. End of story. Usually after I shared this story, most staffers would shrug their shoulders and go back to writing headlines off the first paragraph of an article, then wondering why their works of genius were changed by the slot editor.
 
I guess little has changed. Recently the Chicago Tribune made a major mistake by referring to a "former Illini star" in a headline about a man arrested on charges of sexual assault involving a child. And once again, it was a case of right name, wrong person.
 
The former Illini star, Eddie Johnson, has been dealing with this unfortunate misidentification for years. But now, the combination of a more serious charge against the other Eddie Johnson and a much less diligent media has him thinking of pursuing a lawsuit.
 
As I've noted in many previous posts, I have no idea what passes for fact-checking in the Sports section of the Chicago Tribune. And I find it somewhat suspicious that the Trib jumps to the worst possible conclusion, often incorrectly, when the subject of the University of Illinois comes up. But the latest example is far more serious than making an unresearched claim about a team's NCAA performance. This time, someone who is described as an all-around good guy is dealing with a lot of stupid crap because a headline writer did not bother to check the facts. It's dumb, and it shouldn't be tolerated.
 
The Tribune did publish an apology to Johnson and the readers. But the apology did not refer specifically to the mistake, nor did it say what actions the newspaper had taken to try to prevent this sort of thing from happening again.
 
Will Johnson sue? He sounds very unhappy about the whole turn of events, and apparently he has spoken with a lawyer about possible recourse. As entertaining as the Tribune's presentation of a defense might be, though, I think Johnson should just move on. The Tribune has demonstrated time and again recently it's a sinking ship. Why waste time and money fighting with an entity that seems to be its own worst enemy?
 
Then again, Johnson has slain giants before. His game-winning heroics include a last-second shot to defeat No. 1 Michigan State and Magic Johnson. Maybe this time he can take down an opponent that's proved it's not very magical, especially when it comes to getting the facts right.

[rknil]

The decline of the Romenesko empire
 
A recent link from poynter.org to a blog has again shown the hypocrisy of the underachieving Poynter Institute.
 
The blog item accused the Indianapolis Star of blocking 911 calls from the newsroom. It claimed these calls had to be routed through security, and that this rerouting presented a problem when a newsroom employee needed urgent medical attention. The employee later died.
 
Poynter's Jim Romenesko linked to the blog item, apparently without verifying any of the claims and without talking with Star management. Later, Romenesko's site did add a comment from Star editor Dennis Ryerson, and then the original blog item was updated with revised information about the incident. But the original claims were already making their rounds of the Internet by the time the new links were established.
 
If any other organization had done something like this, Poynter would be all over it, wringing its hands about a breach of ethics and throwing down judgment from its ivory tower. Poynterbot Bill Mitchell offers the following: "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."
 
These were serious allegations. I don't understand how there can be any excuse for not trying to confirm the details.
 
The result? While Romenesko's blog will continue to provide the few glimpses we ever have of an industry that does no self-policing outside of inconsistent, patchwork discipline in individual newsrooms, his credibility has taken a serious hit. We see that he and Poynter, with their failure to observe basic news-gathering guidelines, are the epitome of the emperor with no clothes.

[rknil]

Hilarity from the design camp
 
I haven't posted a full-scale slam on page designers here for some time for a variety of reasons, but today I feel the need.
 
First, some background: Recently Ashley Dinges resigned as the managing editor of the student newspaper at the University of Michigan. Apparently she had a problem with the lead editor's membership in a campus organization. That part is her call, and I don't criticize it.
 
Where it gets funny, though, is her unintentionally hilarious mention of her intention to "take some art classes" when she gets back to campus. I find it tragicomically sad that someone who considers herself to be a journalist thinks this is any kind of groundbreaking moment. "I'm out of this newsroom; I'm going to go draw!" Very amusing.
 
It gets sadder, though. Bonita Burton, the assistant managing editor of drawing and sketching at the Orlando Tribune Sentinel Eunuch, has chimed in at Dinges' site about how "principled" Dinges must be. Uh, Bonita, she's taking art classes! This isn't exactly going to rank on the list of Greatest Student Protests.
 
Bonita, bless her design-obsessed soul, hasn't exactly shown herself to be the sharpest crayon in the box. I bring to you Bobo's advice for improving the design of business pages:
 
"If you've ever worked the room at a party and avoided the intellectual in the corner who's completely out of place in a decades-old leisure suit, you can empathize with the experience many readers have flipping through the newspaper and encountering the business section. ... The problem with allowing the geek in the glasses to remain a visual wallflower is that he actually is a great conversationalist with some really fascinating stuff to say."
 
Boy, that's deep. Bobo must have watched "The Breakfast Club" or "Sixteen Candles" a number of times to come up with that. Here's a hint, Bobo: Many people leave the teen-age stereotypes behind when they grow up. Don't worry; you might get there someday. Just keep trying.
 
To be fair, though, let's look at a couple of Bobo Ringwald's other "points:"
 
"For many visual journalists, working in business is like visiting a foreign country." Bobo, you could substitute the name of any section for the word business, and the sentence would still be accurate. Just because the designers can't figure it out means nothing. Newspapers are about conveying information, Bobo, not dumbing things down. Like it or not, some events in the business world ARE complex.
 
"My motto, written in large letters on the front page of my sketchbook is: "PITY THE READER."" Good to see yet another person in the newsroom has such a high opinion of the reading public. I guess if Bobo Ringwald can't understand what the stories are about, no one can.
 
I'm just curious if Bobo has ever read a stock table, or a quarterly report, or a balance sheet or an income statement. I really don't know the answer to that one, so if anyone does, feel free to send an e-mail to admin@wenalway.com.

[rknil]

A holiday from catching mistakes
 
I also found a column from The Arizona Daily Star in Tucson that offers an explanation for a botched news quiz that appeared in the paper. The reader advocate, Debbie Kornmiller, takes us through the process that led to the mistakes.
 
Not surprisingly, we get the same "blame the copy desk" mentality that pervades most of today's dysfunctional newsrooms. Kornmiller needs a mere two sentences to absolve the writer and line editor of blame, and then she goes right for the jugular. In her world, the copy editor should have tried to solve the erroneous quiz. I agree with that philosophy, but the problem never should have gotten to that stage.
 
She also falls back on the old "blame the holiday" approach and throws a wrench into her own argument in the process. "In this case, two slot editors were asked to take particular care as it was Friday and lots of last-minute work was under way due to the July Fourth holiday," Kornmiller says. Sounds like bad planning to me; a news quiz is hardly a breaking news item, and thus it should have been written carefully and submitted well in advance. Plus, if so much care needed to be taken, why didn't the writer and the line editor watch for the mistakes before the story was passed along? The column indicates the writer was aware of the possibility of mistakes but simply passed the buck instead of fixing them herself.
 
Don't get me wrong; the desk does appear to deserve some blame. But instead of pointing fingers, why not fix the process that led to the mistakes? I am beyond weary of newspapers that treat the holiday as a pseudovacation from publication and simply heap work onto the unfortunate staffers who already have to work those shifts. It's irresponsible and yet another example of newsroom managers failing to be proactive.
 
On a side note, I sent an e-mail to Kornmiller asking some of these questions. I was told I obviously know little about how the business works, but I was invited to come to the newspaper's Page 1 meeting so I could see how well the editors conduct their business. Alas, I live nowhere near Tucson, so I'll have to pass.