Introduction

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Writing concisely

I want to address a subject in sort of a "Here's a tip" fashion. I don't do this very often, but I'm making an exception now.

Many newspaper stories are too long. I say this because someone in the design camp who's not worth naming or linking to has thrown out the usual fare we see from comprehension-challenged designers who shouldn't be working with words in the newspaper business. Her tired, one-note argument is the usual: Anyone who doesn't favor the current obsession with design, often at the expense of credibility, simply wants more words. And that's simply not true.

I often become weary when I see stories that drag on and on and on, often because the reporter felt the need to empty out his or her notebook. This is a terrible way to write most stories. It gives too much importance to trivial statements, and it makes the newspaper much more painful to read. Good city editors would rein in these people, but unfortunately, too many city editors really don't edit. They view their job as supervising and scheduling, and that's flat-out wrong, too.

The weak, design-based way to deal with long stories is to break them up with subheds. Sometimes this approach can work, but far too often, they simply break up the flow of a story that already resembles molasses in January. The real solution is to cut relentlessly. Unfortunately, this is a time-consuming approach to use on a nightly basis. And to cut properly, the entire story must be read, which already eliminates 75 percent of the design camp from contention.

Writing shouldn't be a "one size fits all" craft, but most articles should be 12 to 15 inches. Going past 15 is rarely justified. Of course, I've seen newspapers that tried to enforce this rule, and it was a lost cause. Too often, these types of rules are shunned for no reason other than the writer wanting to shun them. Sadly, this overwriting has led to a mistaken belief on the part of the design camp that they are there to "save" the articles and make them readable. It's a flawed concept that should be eradicated from newsrooms.

The best thing to do in the current environment is to ignore most of what the design camp has to say about writing. These people have made it clear they do not respect the writing and editing portion of the job, and listening to their "tips" for how to write an article has more potential for harm than good.

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.

Tribune mix-up raises many questions

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.

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.

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.

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.

I’ll make a counteroffer, though. I’ll do some research in order to identify the writer who failed to fix the mistakes in her own copy. Then I’ll put her name on this site as yet another example of a journalist who can’t be bothered to do her own job but benefits from the shallow “blame the desk” mentality that should have been dealt with long ago.

Al cracks down on foul balls

Somewhere Recycler Al Tompkins is smiling.

After weeks of Al’s chanting about the cost of making a penny, USA Today printed a feature about the topic. The article made sure to mention another factor in considering the usefulness of minting pennies: Inflation has rendered pennies to a lower worth. Al has generally failed to mention this in his mediocre Poynterblog, probably because he was busy playing the Road Warrior in search of coverage of the precious scrap metal.

Al’s been casting the net lately, desperately trying to seize upon an interesting topic. He’s written about boating safety, although he claimed “no one” who doesn’t already know the facts would be interested. Them’s designin’ words, Recycler Al. I can just see the cutout being created for the story package.

Today Al is off and tumbling about the space program. Why aren’t more people interested, he asks? He admits to being a “low-level space geek,” even though only one of those words is really necessary. He then offers several links to what the space program accomplishes.

I just have a couple of questions: Aren’t these supposed to be topics newspapers can localize? How can a story about the international space station be localized with this information?

At the end of the Friday Regurgitation Meeting, Al discusses a true hazard to the American way of life: foul balls at baseball games. I can just picture Al tumbling out of the way, his precious pennies spilling from his silk pockets, as a high pop-up descends toward his box seat near home plate. The end of this segment is truly hilarious, as Al and his Poynterbots launch into the writing version of the Robot:

Occasionally, balls make their way into parking lots and windshields, and the car owner is left to pay. I suspect a windshield-repair company could turn you on to the most prolific ball fields to find broken windshields this time of year.

I suspect otherwise, as I doubt the repair companies keep track, nor do they have any reason to do so. This is a common flaw in the Alblog; Tompkins assumes there are easily accessible records for things when they likely don’t exist.

Finally, I’d like to praise Alex Dering for calling Recycler Al on his point about people not being able to name who’s been on the space station. When the media don’t provide this information, they have no business blaming people for being ignorant about it.

Poynter puts its head in the sand again

The underachieving Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, has been awfully quiet during the Jay Mariotti-Ozzie Guillen feud that has been blown way out of proportion. So far, Poynter has given us only a link to a letter Mariotti’s father wrote to a Pittsburgh newspaper. Jay’s dad informs readers Mariotti’s freedom of speech is being threatened with all of the opposition he faces. Somehow I don’t see the ACLU taking up the cause just yet.

Meanwhile, what has Poynter been up, or, more accurately, down to?

Thomas Huang writes about the Asian characters in “Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle.” He tells us White Castle is the place where small hamburgers are sold on square buns. Thanks, Tom.
Recycler Al Tompkins is STILL tumbling about the theft of copper for sale as scrap metal! Does he ever get tired of rehashing the same topic again and again? Maybe he should take this fascinating story to the big screen. I can just see Al behind the wheel as The Road Warrior, going from junkyard to trash pile across the United States to collect his precious copper. He could even cast some down-to-earth, well-meaning Asian characters to appease Mr. Huang.
Kelly McBride is quoted in an article about ethics. I cannot possibly care less, so if someone wants to read the article, that would make one of us.
Roy Peter Clark is trumpeting his Fifty Writing Tools, which will be published in book form. It’s a strong accomplishment, but what good does it do in the many newsrooms that don’t focus on writing and content? I’d be interested to know how many newspapers have used these tools regularly since they have been posted at Poynter.

Clark is removing the tools from the Poynter site at the end of the month, so in true Recycler Al style, I’d like to preserve one of my comments from March 2005, when Clark delivered his sermon on (drum roll, please) creating questions for stories to answer:

“This is another of these that sparks mixed feelings.

More stories do need an engine.

But using 4-5 paragraphs to add some saccharin and add a fake crescendo to the start of a story shouldn't be the way to "start the engine."

If you're going to mislead readers into thinking there's some big, unanswered question, go write for a supermarket tabloid.

News should be about getting the facts and presenting them. Save the false bravado for "The Bachelorette" or some other cheesy reality TV show. News stories shouldn't be cheesy.

News stories shouldn't be about creating questions; they should be about answering them.”

We don’t get many answers from the Poynter site these days, only blathering about the same tired PC topics. The watchdog is still sleeping peacefully as the Mariottis avoid the clubhouse, the Alboms write futuristic fiction that no copy editors change and the McBrides focus on personal agendas rather than the issues holding back newsrooms.

One other note: Rumors are circulating about Mariotti’s fate. Wenalway does not report rumors. Once there are facts to mention, the site will be updated.

He wants PC at PNC Park

While searching for the latest about the Jay Mariotti controversy, I found yet another example of the PC police at work, this time in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Columnist/free speech hypocrite Ron Cook blathers about the injustice of White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen being allowed to lead his team against the Pittsburgh Pirates this week. I guess in Cook’s world, Guillen should be suspended at the commissioner’s whim and given no chance to appeal. Nice open mind there, Mr. Cook.

Cook continues: “Certainly, Guillen deserved more than a fine and a directive from Selig to attend sensitivity training, especially after he thumbed his nose at Selig's authority by saying he had no plans to attend the classes.” And then Guillen said he would take English classes before attending the sensitivity training. Cook omits this fact.

But even if he had chosen to include it, he simply would have dismissed it with a phrase or two. One of my least favorite things about the media today is the blatantly ignorant way in which too many writers refuse to consider any gray area. Any potential complication, such as whether Guillen would benefit from the sensitivity training, is simply brushed off as an excuse.

But getting back to the column: The middle of it is an absolute disgrace to what’s left of professional writing in today’s newspapers. Cook writes: “This isn't a free-speech issue. No one is suggesting Guillen be jailed for his remarks.” What? He wants him banned from the ballpark where he makes his living because of something he said, yet it’s not a free-speech issue? How is it not? Because the government’s not involved?

Cook then claims this is not a PC matter, but he spares us any lame attempt to justify that claim. Later, though, he exposes his rah-rah, “journalists are always right; damn the facts” hypocrisy when he criticizes the Kansas City Royals for revoking game credentials of two reporters when they asked tough questions at a news conference.

Cook’s lack of basic logic is simply stunning. OK, the KC reporters probably did not call anyone a “fag.” But how is it OK to ban someone from the park for one comment, yet it’s not OK to regulate credentials? If Guillen’s comment is not a free-speech issue, then how is the Kansas City decision infringing upon free speech? Seems to me officials have a right to decide whom to take questions from.

In short, this is yet another example of what’s wrong with sports coverage today. Ron Cook omits important facts, such as Mariotti’s apparent avoidance of the clubhouse, argues both sides of the fence and claims he’s not defending PC principles when he’s doing precisely that. His conclusion, where he claims Guillen won’t get the respect he deserves until he “stops caring what pieces of excrement like (journalists) think,” is the one solid point. Pieces of excrement like Cook’s column, though, should make it easier for Guillen and many others not to care.

A tale of one city

As if we needed more reason to avoid the baseball coverage in the Chicago Tribune, now we have a war brewing between the Tribune and the Sun-Times.

Thank White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen for this. Apparently Guillen’s frustration with Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti boiled over after Mariotti wrote a column saying Cubs manager Dusty Baker should be fired. Then Guillen called Mariotti a “fag.”

This triggered several levels of response, many of which illustrate how terrible print journalism has become and how infested it is with PC concerns that interfere with covering the news.

First, the Tribune apparently refuses to print the word “fag.” I guess that decision can be justified. But Friday’s edition featured a potpourri of “analysis” about how various media outlets reported on what Guillen said and specifically how they referred to his use of the word in question.

I think this choice was simply idiotic. If the paper wants to exclude a word, fine. But spare us the running tally of who did what and why. It’s simply a waste of space that serves little purpose for the readers, who by now all know what Guillen said.

Second, we discovered that Mariotti apparently does not go to the clubhouse to get quotes when he covers an event. The need for a baseball manager to bring this to our attention is telling. Media outlets, including the Tribune and the Sun-Times, must have known of Mariotti’s avoidance for some time, yet this is just now coming to light. (The Tribune’s Rick Morrissey made sure to seize upon the issue in a Friday column, as if it were a newly discovered development.) Great job, media! But then, this is a group that has botched the coverage of the steroid issue since at least 1998. It’s no wonder they would wink at a major media figure’s failure to do his job the way it’s intended to be done.

Third, we got the inevitable cries from the PC police for Guillen to be suspended. As I said in one of the first items written here, I find it extremely hypocritical when a group that benefits from the right of free speech then wants to deny those same rights to others. What Guillen said was idiotic, but that is not enough reason for him to be suspended. Otherwise the powers that be would need to regulate White Sox buffoon announcers Hawk Harrelson and Darrin Jackson, Cubs commentator Bob Brenly and Tribune writers Phil Rogers and Paul Sullivan. The latter two have been responsible for absolutely pathetic coverage of the Cubs this season, including getting beat on a story by a blogger during spring training and continually suggesting moronic ways for the Cubs to “improve.”

In short, it’s time once again to hope for the PC police to get out of sports coverage and move on to other areas. Some of us want to read about sports in the Sports section. And if Mariotti can’t be bothered to go to the clubhouse after games, maybe someone else can write inflammatory columns calling for others to be fired. After all, isn’t it usually good to have someone who is doing his or her job properly evaluating whether others aren’t?

More Tribune idiocy

The end of a Page 1 headline in Sports reads: “… a teamsmate to die for.” Not only did they botch a word, but they also failed to insert the pun about Jermaine Dye, which was the whole point for writing the headline with that phrasing.

Sometimes I wonder just what the people in that department are thinking about, or if they think about anything at all.

They keep grabbing at straws

Underperforming newspaper editors continue to cling to half-baked ideas for trying to win back readers. An article in the American Journalism Review spotlights some of the tricks editors try:

“At the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, page one has a weekday feature called "Have you heard?", a brief summary of three to five stories that editors think people will talk about around the water cooler.” Comment: Do people even talk about newspaper stories at the water cooler? And couldn’t the people read the stories and talk about them without seeing the summary? The Strib needs to stick to pinching the thieves in its own newsroom.
“At the Washington Post and New York Times, the front page used to have seven stories, but now has six or sometimes even five, giving way to more refers and bigger key boxes.” Comment: OK, I’m all for lower story counts. But are we really to believe more refers and bigger key boxes are going to lure readers? Pathetic.
“Karen Magnuson, editor and vice president for news at the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle in New York, says her newspaper is using a variety of techniques to make page one more inviting. … In March, for a story during Sunshine Week, reporters went to local school districts and asked for public documents to see if officials would hand them over. The page-one story was illustrated with a large flashlight shining on a document that contained the story; as the text continued, the flashlight theme was used to highlight key points. …” Comment: She thinks an illustration of a flashlight will make all the difference! You can’t write comedy this good! Magnuson will be here all week, and try the veal.
Magnuson “sees the paper's efforts to make itself more reader-friendly as a good thing, in large part because she thinks it gives her staff a better feel for what readers want.” Comment: There’s a prime example of circular logic. How do we know it’s reader-friendly? Why, it fits into the newspaper’s design-based agenda, so it HAS to be reader-friendly! And this person is an editor who is supposed to be able to deal with facts.
“Much of what they've found might not be surprising. For example, more papers are sold when they contain breaking news, exclusive stories or "some type of human drama" on the front page, Magnuson says.” Comment: Wait, those things all sound like (drum roll, please) … CONTENT! So why is Magnuson clinging to illustrations of flashlights?
“But aren't these stories that the paper would cover anyway? "Sure we would," she replies. "But being aware of what our readers are interested in and what seems to sell helps us better package those kinds of stories." And package they do: …” Comment: Oh, that’s right; silly me. Focusing on content is simply boring, and we can’t have that. We need to package stories; this gives the design dolts a mission to complete. After all, we can’t have those people editing, now can we? (Also, do I detect a tinge of sarcasm from AJR itself at the end of that sentence?)
· According to the article, the Wisconsin State Journal is allowing readers to vote online for their favorite story. Very few people are responding, though. In addition, editor Ellen Foley says she is surprised by the readers’ choices. “One day, for example, she was sure that the "Can you find love via instant messaging?" story would get the most votes. But it got creamed by "FEMA wasted millions in disaster aid." "I thought, 'Wow, wow!'" Foley says with a laugh.” Comment: That might have been me laughing — at an editor who thinks readers would favor IM romance over FEMA’s problems.

Foley is unfazed by the lack of response. (You have to admire these editors; they stick with the same failing ideas as long as they can.) "I'm not ready to give up on it," she says. "Even if there aren't 5,000 people voting, it's just a tremendous tool inside the newsroom, to have conversations about the daily changes in our lives." Comment: I wonder if the conversation goes something like this: “We let the votes of two dozen readers shape our coverage?”

Foley says the only complaints about the initiative have come from journalists who question giving so much influence to readers. "They say, 'You are abandoning your responsibility an as editor,' and I say to them, 'God, I thought we had learned our lesson — the readers are smart.'" Comment: She says they are smart, but she thinks they prefer IM lovin’ to FEMA wastin’?

I could go on and on with this, but I think we see a common theme: Editors who have poor news judgment and try to mask it with visual voodoo and other nonsense.

It may be too late for newspapers to win back readers. But why not try focusing on content? Newsrooms seem to be bent on doing everything but that, and circulation and credibility are plummeting. Editors seem to be stumbling around in the dark, and Karen Magnuson’s flashlight is not going to light the way.

Summer of their messed content

With Memorial Day weekend approaching, it’s time for another newspaper tradition: Running short-staffed until August!

Because newspapers are not proactive, they do not have sufficient staff to cover vacations during the summer. The results are often hilarious: Who could forget The Pantagraph’s Summer of Red when the newspaper botched its Mitsubishi coverage, featured errors in photo captions on a daily basis and unveiled a short-lived, additional section front?

The upcoming rise in mistakes should make doing this site even more fun. I may even ask for readers to help out because I’d like to set up a system to track some of the more frequent errors. When the site update is complete, I’ll have more details about how the tracking system will work.

Also, if you don’t see new content during the next few days, it’s just because I’m taking a holiday break. Newspapers will still be badly, obviously flawed.

Another bad week for journalism

Let us count the ways:

Richard Luna was dismissed as editor of the Ventura County Star in California after accusations of ethical violations.
As Luna was packing to leave his office, many more people were in the office than usual for a Sunday. That’s because the newspaper was not able to print its news and sports sections in time for distribution. Once again, a newspaper fails to be proactive, and the newspaper and its customers suffer.
Warren Buffett says the industry is in “permanent decline.” Gee, you think? Just because circulation is plummeting, errors abound and the alleged leaders of the industry think obsessing about tiny design details is the solution? Say it isn’t so.
The underachieving Poynter Institute features an article called “Unleash the Watchdogs!” In Poynter’s case, you’d have to wake up the watchdog first. The institute has been blissfully asleep as the industry crumbles into ruin.
Speaking of Poynter, lead design chanter Anne Van Wagener is leaving the underachieving institute. The ad for her replacement mentions that editing and writing skills would be a plus. Those skills also would be a marked difference over what we’ve seen from that position.
After Tribune Co. of Chicago was forced to pay a tax bill, its debt rating was lowered to “negative.”
A Toledo Blade reporter admitted sending an anonymous letter to the Pulitzer Prize Board to cite problems with a Blade series that was a finalist in the public service category.

One of the sources for the above information is Editor & Publisher, which seems to be having a difficult time editing its online articles. Too often, I have to interpret poorly written sentences and read past glaring omissions of punctuation.

In summary, we see an industry paying the price for failing to set up basic standards and adhere to them. When the product can’t even be published on time, and when editing and writing skills are deemed optional, and when a staffer feels he has to police his own newspaper to keep it from winning a Pulitzer Prize, then something is really, really wrong.

I’m sure we’ll see some fast action, though. Redesigns are always in the works, and editors welcome the chance for hand-wringing while doing after-the-fact critiques.

Jet article isn’t flying high

Recycler Al Tompkins’ latest regurgitation suggests looking into airports that are “overbuilt and underused.” The story he cites as an example refers to Toronto and Amsterdam, though. I guess Al believes he’s addressing an international audience.

So for the fun of it, I did a Google search to see if I could find a similar story with slightly more appeal to U.S. newspapers. The article I found illustrates many of the problems with today’s news coverage.

Jenni Glenn of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette leads with the following: “A canceled flight prevented David Kerr from traveling Friday to the Northeast Indiana Innovation Center to describe a plan to relieve the overwhelmed commercial air-travel system.” It’s overwhelmed? I’m glad we established that without using a source.

Later, we get a similar conclusion: “Demand for air travel will likely double in the next decade, Kerr said.” Hmm. Shocking that the person who is backing an air taxi proposal would say this. Maybe using another source to confirm this information would have been a good idea.

The story also has conflicting facts. We’ve already been told Kerr couldn’t travel on Friday, but later the story says bad weather on Thursday night grounded the flight. Well, which is it?

Adding even more amusement is the obligatory photo that has little to nothing to do with the story. The cutline (caption) for the photo says: “Jared Pontius helps Mohamad Elzein with a flight simulator Friday at Smith Field. A symposium discussed emerging air-travel options.” And what does a flight simulator have to do with this article?

In short, this article is basically a commercial for the proposal promoted by Kerr. The only facts that even scrape the surface of the other side of the story refer to the cost of the plan. We are told the cost of a Cessna Citation or a small jet, but we are not told how long it will take companies to recoup these investments.

All in all, it’s a very shabby job of reporting. Apparently little background information was obtained, and the photographer, obviously clueless about the topic of the article, simply took a picture of what was available and tried to link it to the article. Readers deserve far better than this type of effort.

Missouri redesign brings misery

Not long ago, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch unveiled what many shortsighted editors consider to be a solution: a redesign. In an outcome that comes as no surprise, the St. Louis Journalism Review reports the following:

Even readers complain about the layout and typographical changes and selection of front-page feature stories that seem inappropriate for a big city newspaper.

When readers are complaining about the layout, it’s time to re-evaluate the paper. Clearly the redesign has failed. Often the layouts appear haphazard, with columnist cutouts popping up willy-nilly like the gopher in “Caddyshack.”

Unfortunately, the solution to the problem is similar to what created the problem: A redesign. But this time, the editors need to focus on content, which is what matters to readers. Unfortunately, too many designers have hijacked newsrooms in order to promote their own agendas: little to no editing; lots of blathering about planning without following through in any concrete manner; and an unhealthy obsession with creating Picassos For A Day and critiquing editions after they are published, when it’s conveniently too late to fix problems.

This Monday morning quarterbacking should be criticized, but too many editors are afraid to confront the problem. Thus, we have another mess coming to fruition across the state in Kansas City, where the Star is preparing to unveil its own redesign. The previews consist of pages loaded with color, and they seem to be slightly more organized than the recent messes in St. Louis or Bakersfield, which is not saying a whole lot.

However, apparently a whole lot of money has been spent on KC’s bid to bring the spectrum band to its pages. In a time when newspapers are claiming to be strapped for cash, you would think the alleged watchdogs like Editor & Publisher and Poynter would be doing a little dance and making a little noise about this design disco. But so far, they are sleeping peacefully, as they usually do.

When the revamped Star hits the streets, it’ll be interesting to see how much bounce it gets from its new look. If it fails, though, you can bet the facts will be swept under the rug, as they usually are when the design-based agenda fails, as it almost always does.

But other than that batting title …

Phil Rogers manages to sink even lower with a column in this weekend’s editions of the Chicago Tribune. (The newspaper’s Sports section contains much of the same information on Sunday as it does on Saturday.)

Rogers hopes the readers will have selective amnesia and forget the 2005 season. He claims the Cubs made a big mistake by not signing first baseman Jim Thome as a free agent after the 2003 season.

However, I don’t have amnesia, so I’ll compare Thome’s performance to the person whom the Cubs acquired: Derrek Lee.

2004: Lee: Overcame a slow start to hit 32 home runs and drive in 98 runs. Thome: Hit 42 home runs and drove in 105 runs.
2005: Lee: Hit 46 home runs and drove in 107 runs. Won the National League batting title with a .335 average. And Thome? He was hurt most of the year and hit only seven home runs.

And in true selective columnist fashion, Rogers ignores a glaring fact: Thome is now a designated hitter and likely could not replace the injured Lee at first base!

This poorly thought-out column, combined with the Tribune’s previous blathering about other “obvious” miscues such as not re-signing Nomar Garciaparra, who also was hurt most of last season, is yet another example of the Tribune’s glaring inability to cover the team it owns. Previously, I thought a Tribune writer should switch places with manager Dusty Baker. That was erroneous; a trade of Rogers for the batboy would be a far better match of skills.

Recycler Al draws the line

Poynter’s Al Tompkins throws down in his mediocre Alblog:

Note from Al: I am sick of MySpace hype and, barring some big honking development that I cannot ignore, I promise I won't mention it again for at least a month.

Note from Al: I am also sick of the iPod hype. Again, barring some big honking development that I cannot ignore, I won't mention iPods again for at least a month on Al's Morning Meeting.

I’ll believe this when the month has passed. Part of Recycler Al’s charm is blathering about the same topics over and over and over. He has few original ideas, but since many newspaper editors have even fewer, they rely on his repetitive scraps about metal and his nose for feces stories.

I guess Al can always fall back on his mythical reading of 100 newspapers a day. If he’s lucky, he might come up with an idea or two.

Maybe I’m not amazed

The ACES fiddlers are back at it on their new discussion board. Now they are debating whether song lyrics are grammatically correct.

I can’t stomach reading the whole thread, but someone named Jim Thomsen, who apparently has A LOT of time on his hands, posts the following:

· From "Maybe I'm Amazed":

Quote:
Maybe I'm a man and maybe I'm a lonely man
Who's in the middle of something
That he doesn't really understand

That or which?

Then we get a response from Niko Dugan:

· I vote "that" as well. The "doesn't really understand" is essential to the rest of the sentence. If laid out as such and put in first person, we get "I'm in the middle of something that I don't really understand." Changing it to the "which" form would also require a comma: "I'm in the middle of something, which I don't really understand," and that changes the meaning altogether.

Somehow I doubt Paul McCartney was concerned about whether his lyrics would require a comma, but I guess the fiddlers have to say, say, say whatever they can in order to put on their brave face. After all, they’ve proved they can’t take a sad article and make it better.

Live and let die, you say? OK, I’ll let it be.

But I have to link to the “singing” performance from the ACES conference a few weeks ago. Warning: It contains audible profanity, but you’ll be cringing for reasons other than that.

http://www.copydesk.org/2006conference/Hardouthereontherim.mov

If you listened to that, I apologize. But I find it amusing that people who have allowed their job descriptions to be bastardized into designer/editor roles are taking it out on the writers. Let’s just hope this band goes on the run and never comes back.

Tribune whiffs on baseball coverage

Six weeks into the baseball season, the Chicago Tribune is still trying to find its stroke. In addition to continuing to get game times wrong (including for the team it owns), the newspaper is struggling to find ways to second-guess the Cubs and their manager, Dusty Baker.

One of the more amusing tactics is the newspaper’s constant hand-wringing over Baker refusing to move an outfielder to first base while starter Derrek Lee recovers from a broken wrist. There’s a newspaper solution: Put someone in an unfamiliar situation and hope it works. I guess Baker wants to try to do things in a sensible way, rather than what would be done in a newspaper office.

The Tribune also has been slow to urge the team to do what it should have done weeks ago: Make a trade to acquire a replacement for Lee. Again, that should hardly come as a surprise. The newspaper mentality calls for leaving positions vacant as long as possible, so I’m surprised the Tribune hasn’t suggested a rule change that would have the second baseman covering two bases at the same time.

The articles about the other teams have hardly been spectacular, either. A reader was quick to criticize a story saying the White Sox were headed for a tough stretch of games; the next four teams on the schedule were all below .500 when the article was written. To be fair, the article was a replacement after that night’s game was rained out, but the reader’s question is still valid.

Maybe the Tribune braintrust should have Baker and one of the baseball writers switch positions. That way, the newspaper could try out its “solutions” on the field, and Baker could try his hand at something else. Based on the season’s results so far, the newspaper and the team could hardly fare any worse than they have.

Poynter’s week that wasn’t

The underachieving Poynter Institute, an organization that purports to be a journalism watchdog, brought us another week to remember:

An editor in Ventura County, California, has been accused of using his staff to get media credentials for him to attend high-profile events, including the Final Four in Indianapolis. Poynter has linked to articles about the issue, including the requisite meaningless apology from the editor, but it has yet to address the issue itself. The underachievers even linked to a letter to the editor, where the writer accused the Ventura newspaper of hypocrisy for its handling of the issue. I guess the ethics “experts” at Poynter are too busy posting other articles that feature a paragraph where they’ve been quoted.
Recycler Al Tompkins is back with his half-baked story ideas. Now he is tumbling over the idea that people wear shoes that are bad for them. Boy, that’s a revelation. I know we need Poynter and Al to relay that idea to newsrooms around the country.
Poynter never linked to the University of Michigan editor’s blog item about the shortcomings of the Detroit Free Press. Instead, it ran an item from a Free Press editor about a real tragedy: It’ll be harder to make hats out of newspapers, as they keep shrinking in width. I know that’s a vital blow to the industry, much more so than when a metro daily like the Freep shows a precipitous drop in circulation and quality over a 10-year period. But I guess Poynter protects its pals. I’m sure the Freep sends plenty of people to Poynter’s “training” seminars, so Poynter looks the other way as one of the worst newspapers in America continues its steady decline.

Measure twice, cut once

You don’t need Al Tompkins to tell you this file is long. Perhaps too long.

The site update is in progress. It was slowed by an Internet outage recently, but I hope to get it back on schedule this week.

In the meantime, I did cut the “Six years ago today …” piece. It served a purpose, but I don’t think it fit well with the rest of the commentary. I have saved it, and I might bring it back (with some edits) when it fits better with related content.

On another note, I have requested tax records from Poynter and Visual Editors. As non-profit organizations, they are required to provide copies of Form 990 to people who request them.

Poynter complied immediately with the request, so I have already been able to view some of the records. However, the user agreement at the site where they are displayed implies that I cannot republish the information. If I pay a “nominal fee,” I can acquire my own copies of the information. I’m still considering whether I want to do that.

Visual Editors responded by banning my IP address at the Web site. It’s a small-minded move, though, since I can return to the site whenever I wish, at least when it’s up and running. Plus, the Internal Revenue Service regulations are quite clear on the release of the records, so ignoring the request will accomplish little other than making me work a little harder to get the information. But I’ll do it. After all, this is not a newsroom where the designers can ignore the rules as the managing editor cowers in his or her office and does critiques. If I want the information, I’ll get it. It’s that simple.

The Beaver Two hit the wall-y

The poll created by the two disgruntled Beaver County staff members has been removed (or concealed from view) at visualeditors.com. I guess the editors who have to worry about more than rule lines and the pretty design decided they weren’t thrilled with the newspaper being called out at a design site.

All of this underscores what I’ve known for some time: Designers are out of their league when they have to deal with any serious issues. In this case, they picked the wrong method for expressing their concerns, and then that method was promptly stamped out, probably by the editors described above, who always have and always will hold the cards in any legitimate newsroom.

Leave it to Beaver County

After writing the summary of the Freep’s latest “advances,” I noticed yet another item about the Beaver County Times in western Pennsylvania. I’ll try to blend two unrelated events together with some cohesiveness.

On Sunday, I discovered the following excerpt from the newspaper’s Web site:

“While viewers were suffering through the Pirates' 6-0 loss in Washington on Friday, the TV crew was amusing itself following the amorous adventures of a young couple in the upper deck of RFK Stadium.

”Kids in love should be warned - not only are there TV cameras all over stadiums, there's a real good chance a camera operator might be easily distracted during a Pirates-Nationals game.”

This seems innocuous, but apparently the camera operator in question had posted about the “distractions” at another message board. (It’s named on this site; for now I’m leaving it out of this example.) The combination of those posts and this excerpt apparently was not received well in television land.

Skip forward to Monday. While doing my painful yet mandatory scan of the visual journalism sites, I found a jointly written complaint from two designers at the Beaver County Times. Their concerns are sadly valid (if true), as they mention repeatedly chasing after photos and information about articles.

I’ve been on that side of the fence, and it isn’t fun. For now, I won’t mention the newspaper, but it also is mentioned on this site under the headline: “They’re bad, boys and girls.” Night after night, I would receive edited stories to run with photos. However, the only information at the top of the story was “w/art.” This was entirely unacceptable, as it simply deferred the task of chasing down photos to the people who were already busy building pages, writing headlines, editing stories and, after the Cutbacks of 2001, toning photos.

Eventually I went to the people who were supposed to be resolving these issues and persuaded them to start doing the jobs they were being paid to do. Fortunately, the photo editor at this newspaper was doing his job, so I started off the meeting by praising his efforts. (Always good to have an ally or two when going into battle.) For the most part, the problems faded, although one night editor continued to be as non-helpful as always. I guess he was too busy writing 56-inch articles about deer hunts at the metroparks to do his job properly. Funny how he made the effort to convey information about his own articles, almost as if he knew when to flip the switch from “obtuse” to “benevolent.”

Anyway, back to Beaver County. If the process of putting this paper together consists of what’s described at www.visualeditors.com (this link purposely put as low as possible to show my disdain for the site) and surfing message boards to find apparently unverified items, then something is amiss.

Maybe it’s time to get out the cleaver in Beaver.

Students bash the Free Press

Ever wanted to just hire willy-nilly, regardless of the results, then keep watering down your product? Then you should work at the Detroit Free Press, which has seen an alarming decline in quality and circulation during the last few years.

If the journalism world had the sense to have any sort of oversight board, the Freep would be high on its watch list. In addition to the newspaper’s precipitous drop in readership, it’s also been the cause of a major scandal –- Mitch Albom’s ill-fated look into the future that never came to be –- that affected many other newspapers. (It also demonstrated that very few copy desks are doing what they should, but that point continues to be driven home by the ACES idiots who continue to argue about topics covered in seventh-grade English class.)

Editions of the Freep regularly feature numerous examples of shoddy editing and poor news judgment. The newspaper has only two paths to choose from:

Fade away quickly.
Fade away painfully.

Apparently we’ll get to see the hapless crew of has-beens and never-will-bes stumble down Path No. 2. The newspaper recently trotted out its first Sunday edition free of a painfully awkward joint operating agreement it had with the Detroit News, another newspaper that has seen far better days.

This development was “greeted” by a solidly negative analysis from the editor in chief of the University of Michigan’s student newspaper. This is not new, either, as I’ve seen many student critiques that shred the Freep. This newspaper simply cannot conceal how awful it is.

Here’s the problem: Students in Michigan will continue to flock to the Freep as long as it continues to invite them. Unless these recent college grads who are so desired (primarily to reduce the bottom line, although the RCGs are loathe to realize and admit this) are extremely talented, quality will continue to plummet at the Freep. Hiring the cheapest does not equate to hiring the best.

So if the Michigan Daily really wants to change things, it should write an editorial consisting of two sentences:

“Do not work at the Detroit Free Press under any circumstances. We warned you.”

Unfortunately, I fear even this would not work. The RCGs will continue to lap up this opportunity to claim the “prestige” of working at the Freep. Many of them will likely realize they have boarded a sinking ship, though, and will flee to other opportunities. Then the newspaper can continue to hire RCGs, and the spiral of decline can continue.

The best action would be to avoid the Freep. Let’s hope the grads have the foresight to realize this.

Of Mannings and men

Some quick updates:

To the Bears fans who keep complaining about the team’s failure to draft a tight end: Please stop. The team desperately needed someone to return kicks, and that need was filled. Danieal Manning, the team’s first pick, would not have lasted past the first day. The team could not have signed him as an undrafted free agent.
I try to keep the comments about radio and TV at the site’s forum (www.wenalway.com/introduction), but I have one wish for the Cubs coverage, directed specifically to commentator Bob Brenly. Stop telling us the team is better off when the pitcher does not lead off an inning early in the game. We get it, and we got it the first 200 times you told us.
I’ve often ridiculed page designers for trying to create Picassos For A Day, as if readers hang the pages from their walls as works of art, but www.newsdesigner.com has an example of someone who really believes this. The link even refers to the “Page Three Sutra.” Some people simply have way too much time and too little ability to grasp the big picture.
Public Service Announcement No. 1 to the younger folks: When making out in the aisle of a store, please move away from the items people are trying to get from the shelves. Thank you for your courtesy.
PSA No. 2 to the newspapers trying to appeal to the younger folks: Enough with the stories about proper work attire. Some get it, and some don’t, but the rest of us don’t need to keep reading about it.
PSA No. 3 to the newspapers trying desperately to appeal to anyone: We know it’s tough with so many celebrities having given birth. This depletes your pool of topics considerably. But please, try to put something relevant in your editions. My interest level is waning considerably.

NCAA smashes one past UI

A recent ruling by the NCAA is forcing the University of Illinois to do what it has avoided for at least 15 years: Take some sort of action regarding Chief Illiniwek, the school’s mascot. (The University tries to claim the Chief is a “symbol,” which is merely a weak semantic excuse to avoid change.)

The ruling has been out for several days, but I waited to comment so I could see if the NCAA means business. Apparently it does, as the university will not be allowed to host an upcoming tennis tournament. The university spent a good deal of money constructing a tennis center for the purpose of hosting these events, so this is not a small penalty.

I take no pleasure in this action, but I think a lot of people should have seen this coming. Year after year, the university clung to the status quo rather than finding some way to address the problem. That is an attitude I cannot defend in any aspect of life. It’s simply being ignorant and cowardly. In this case, the university was afraid of the reaction from its alumni if it took action to retire the Chief. This way, the university can blame the NCAA. How bold.

My personal feelings about the Chief are irrelevant to the greater issue, but since this is my site, I’ll discuss them briefly. When I was younger, I thought the Chief’s halftime performance was fun to watch. But over time, it lost its magic. I don’t intend to go into a cultural lecture here, but learning about Native American history does take the fun out of watching the Chief perform.

That being said, I think the anti-Chief people are going to find this to be a hollow victory. They’ll get what they want when the university comes to its senses and makes a long-needed change, but then what? After a season or two of pointing to the field or court where the Chief isn’t performing, there’s really no substantive victory. That’s because behind all the empty rhetoric, the Chief was nowhere near the symbol of hatred as which it’s been vilified. Its continuing presence riled some because it showed a lack of progress and dialogue, and it kept the university entangled in negative publicity.

There really haven’t been any winners in this debacle, but the university will continue to lose as long as it keeps clinging to a mascot that lost its meaning some time ago. It’s time to move on; let’s hope the university finally realizes that.

When wishes come true

Most of my attention recently has been on the NFL draft, so I haven’t had a chance to look for new targets for updates. And the Sunday mediocre columnist check has fallen by the wayside with Terry Greenberg doing the Texas two-step and Dan McCaleb doing who knows what. (Place your bets on being a figurehead.) There goes the ready-made comedy material.

So I’ll present brief summaries of two topics:

The San Antonio Express-News is banning pun headlines. Apparently there will be disciplinary action taken against editors and senior headline writers if they don’t quit with the quips. I think this is overkill, but I wouldn’t be surprised if several milder warnings have been ignored. Even if that’s the case, though, I will be checking out this newspaper’s pages from time to time to see if the edict is being ignored and also to scan for juvenile design efforts.
This site’s mock draft (www.wenalway.com/introduction) identified 28 of the 32 players selected in the first round, placing it ahead of nearly all of the big-time pundits’ predictions. (Note: I edited the previous sentence after doing a recount; originally I thought 27 picks were correct.) The New England Patriots did their part to throw me off, as they took RB Laurence Maroney in the first round, then grabbed WR Chad Jackson in the second round. That added a RB to the first-round picks, as the Colts had a need at that position, and it left a defensive back available for later in the round. Miami also took a secondary player rather than a wide receiver. Still, this was the first time I’d tried to do this, so I’d call it a success.

ACES: They do one thing (poorly)

Over at www.copydesk.org, the ACES nitwits are back to doing what they do best: Fiddling. The most substantive discussion concerns whether copy editors should write columns.

The column presented as an example is fairly awful, but it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever read. The fiddlers also believe copy editors should not spend time filling in as editors on the city desk.

OK, even if these arguments are valid, I have one question: Where was all this indignation when copy editors were turned into designers/paginators? I find it unusual that the fiddlers have a problem with branching out into writing and editing, but then they lap up the tasks of drawing rule lines and boxes. It’s yet another example of why ACES has never and will never resolve any real issues that affect copy editors.

To honor the occasion, I’ve come up with a little song parody (some ACES members probably think the word is spelled “parity”). With apologies to Peter, Paul and Mary, here it is:

They dig
Talkin’ bout commas
While the work and stories pile up

They think
Talkin’ bout commas
Shows that they know how to write

But then they miss the mistakes
That show up every day,
Instead of facts;
They paginate!

They blink
While the newsroom
Gives them menial tasks

They stink
At spotting errors;
Don’t even know what to fix

And when they build their pages
They listen to the sages
Who tell them,
‘It only matters how it looks!’

Talktalk
Commacommacomma
Try to sound
Like they’re smart

Talktalk
Commacommacomma

(fade into a night of pagination and letting major errors get into the paper)

Al bangs his head; his metal ‘help’ drives us mad

The Recycler’s Alblog continues to be heavy on metal. Now he’s tumbling over a New York Times story saying it costs more than a penny to mint a penny.

Al doesn’t seem to be current on the content of pennies, though. He says pennies “are mostly made of zinc.” This is not news, except maybe to Al. In 1982, the composition was changed to an alloy of 97.5 percent zinc and 2.5 percent copper, according to www.pennies.org. (See what research can do for you, Al? Poynterbots?)

One thing I don’t need to research: Contrary to what Al implies, the United States did not make pennies from steel during all of World War II. That happened during 1943, and I believe a limited number of 1944 pennies contained steel, but that was the extent of the change.

Way to check those facts, Recycler!

Recycler Al hurls a 60-footer

Mere hours after I wrote a segment praising Poynter, Recycler Al Tompkins comes back with a clunker.

The Alblog is marking its fifth birthday, and the Recycler offers up some entertaining points (some intentionally humorous):

“Bosses often tell me funny stories about reporters who arrive at editorial meetings late, with no ideas, and whip out a story pitch. …” If only it were even that good. At one newspaper, even the bosses came in with no ideas and whipped out Al’s lame, unusable ideas. Of course, they made up for it by starting the meeting 5-10 minutes early so half the staff was continually streaming into a tiny conference room. But I digress. Back to the Recycler …
“It is what I hope to do -- help reporters who are in a pinch. Trust me, I have been there.” And to some of us, Al, it seems like you never left.
“I estimate that there are 7,000 story ideas in our archive now. Dozens of them are even usable.” If I were the auctioneer, I’d be lowering that bid considerably.
“As I like to say, the column is free -- and well worth the price!” Except for the time spent reading Al’s dreck. It’s time wasted.
After these fine points, Al cites some goals for his recycling effort, then he thanks a staffer for helping him. Seems she found an error in some data in a federal study. He says “some lucky news organization should snap her up.” If this anecdote is accurate, she’d be better than 75 percent of the copy editors out there.
“Lots of readers ask me how I come up with story ideas every day.” Never have, but since you mention it …
“I read/skim about 100 newspapers a day …” Nope. Sorry. I’m not buying this one, Recycler Al. Let’s do some basic math. Even if Al spends only 5 minutes on each newspaper, it would take 500 minutes to “skim” 100 newspapers. That’s 8 hours, 20 minutes. The only way this could happen is if his Poynterbot is reading papers and clipping stories that Recycler Al adds to his count.

If Al’s blog lasts another five years, let’s hope he gets better at spinning yarns.

Poynter breaks off a curveball

Out of the blue today, I received an e-mail from the Poynter Institute about its NewsU program. The Web site offers programs for interactive learning.

As regular readers may have inferred, I’m not a big fan of Poynter. So the following is very hard to say:

I played the Be A Reporter game, and it was very entertaining. I did have to reload it a couple of times, but after that it worked just fine.

The game has the user pursuing a hot anonymous tip about students going to the hospital with food poisoning. More facts become apparent as you progress (unless you simply decide to file your story without verifying anything, which I decided not to try).

The exercise is a little simplistic; I only wish sources would hand over information as readily as the people in the game do. But obviously this is a training exercise and not meant to simulate reality. (Must … avoid … taking stab at Poynter.)

Anyway, I recommend it. I may even go back and complete a few more of the exercises. And if someone from Poynter is keeping track, I should mention I may make an intentional mistake or two just to see what happens.

They didn’t stop the fire

Well, the mighty ACES convention has ended, and the blog still has only one item with much substance. And even that discussion seems to be plagued with the usual “We want to make changes; BUT WE CAN’T” nonsense.

But the convention accomplished its usual purpose for the attending fiddlers: Give them a couple days to act important before returning to their newsrooms, where they will allow themselves to be steamrollered by the design-based agenda and any other pointless fads.

I find it tragic that this group considers itself to be accomplishing anything. Most of the fiddlers will spend the next 363 days arguing about commas before the next convention comes along. Here’s hoping they finally master seventh-grade English and move on to another topic. Although, judging from the condition of some of the e-mail I’ve received from a few of the fiddlers (Bill Chronister, this means you, you writing- and typing-challenged CE), they have a long, LONG way to go.

Fiddling while Rome burns

This week, the all talk, little action crowd can be found in Cleveland, where the American Copy Editors Society is having its annual convention.

I’ve checked out the convention blog and found little that surprised me. The one substantive entry concerns the goal of making copy editors into editors once again. For those who don’t know, newspapers decided a while back to enter the 20th century and do their pages on the computer, rather than pasting them up. Unfortunately, they decided to dump this work onto copy editors.

As a result, most copy editors spend their time building pages rather than doing the jobs they went to school to do. Even worse, the obsession with page design means even more time is spent on rule lines and cutouts. Add in cutbacks, and you have newspapers filled with copy editors who don’t do much editing at all.

Of course, as soon as someone proposes fixing the problem, you get the “We can’t do that” responses. Check them out yourself at www.copydesk.org.

I also see where the fiddlers have started a new discussion forum. (It looks amazingly like the one for this site, located at www.wenalway.com/introduction). I encourage anyone and everyone who thinks editors should edit to register and fill the board with posts. Otherwise, the fiddlers will go right back to debating commas and semicolons, and proper punctuation won’t fix the myriad problems in today’s newsrooms. I’m continually amazed that people pay dues to organizations like ACES that accomplish so little.

They have brought the heart of talk and bull to Cleveland, though. (It had to be said.)

Drawing the line on details

Over at the site for the underachieving Poynter Institute, an article discusses AP’s reference to “Roman Catholic prep schools” attended by two of the suspects in the Duke rape accusations. The article also questions the use of the word “scandal” to discuss the case.

The article is not written by one of the Poynterbots, though. This allows the underachievers to avoid the obvious question of hypocrisy since their “ethics expert,” Kelly McBride, can’t seem to keep the agendas out of her writing when it comes to rape accusations.

I think the reference to the schools being parochial is unnecessary. However, I don’t see the problem in referring to this mess as a “scandal.” The lacrosse coach quit. Two people have been arrested. The media have again panted and drooled all over themselves while stumbling in their quest for facts. I think it’s a scandal, Watson.

I’ve seen this problem before, though, albeit on a far smaller scale. In Kokomo, a Drano bomb was set off under some bleachers during a track meet. No one was hurt, and the incident was the result of some students trying to be funny. But administrators were not amused.

At least two of the people accused in the incident were members of the football team. Dan McCaleb, master of goose feces and authority on How A Community Should React When Gays Want To Row On the Lake, apparently decided the players’ stats from the previous season should be part of the story. So they were.

The reaction to this decision was not good. The stats had little to offer to the rest of the story, other than to trumpet the “accomplishment” of showing those athletes the newspaper meant business. But then, that’s the way of newspapers like Kokomo, chains like CNHI and editors like McCaleb. I guess I should be glad that Steve Kozarovich didn’t decide to make an info box out of those details or order cutouts of the players in question.

When it comes to stories like this one or the Duke case, I tend to think erring on the side of caution is the best thing. One rule when writing headlines is to come up with a bikini rather than a business suit. In other words, you cover the main points. If this policy had been followed with the Kokomo story, that would have meant referring to the players as simply starters or reserves on the team.

But then, as the media have shown time and time again, salacious details are preferred over the substantive ones.

Kurt Cobain is still dead

So I picked up this magazine called Details because there was an article about Generation X. I believe it made a reference to a lost generation (as if being called Generation X wasn’t enough of a clue).

Sadly the article barely scratched the surface. I suspected problems right away when three paragraphs were about Queensryche being surpassed by Nirvana. The article was barely more than two pages, so I knew the scope couldn’t be too wide to begin with. (I guess we Gen X slackers can’t be relied upon to stay focused on a LONG article.)

One of the few good points, albeit quite brief, discussed the true pleasure of being caught between two stock market crashes in 1987 and 2000. This splendid turn of events meant some of us got to graduate into a recession, then watch a few years later as those grads commenced into a hot job market. Then in 2000, when the market cooled, the brief move up the career ladder became much harder.

In the hiring-challenged newspaper world, this gave clueless hiring execs an excuse to load up on new grads in the late 1990s and early, uh, 00s. Later these people were in high demand, primarily because they were lower on the salary scale, and in the newspaper world, that trumps quality. In addition, many of the hiring execs seem to lack the ability to analyze trends. In their opinion, these people HAD to be good because they got hired straight out of school at larger papers. Love that myopia!

The article made a very brief mention of this, too, saying the concept of paying dues even has become outdated. I wish I had known a few years ago that simply going into an interview with a sense of absolute entitlement was the key to success. Sadly, though, I bought into the dues-paying idea. But since most newspapers are plummeting in readership, revenue and quality, I guess a lot of the fleet is sinking.

I should clarify that I don’t lump all of Generation Y into the whining sense-of-entitlement category. And I have a little respect for some of the people (with skills) who decided: “You know, we know more than some of these editors who don’t read copy and are simply taking up space until they retire.” Unfortunately, though, many (with few skills) have taken their “We deserve this because we say so” attitude to the design camp, where they don’t seem to grasp the concept of originality and standards. Which brings me to …

Thank you, Stevie

I’d like to thank Stevie Komives, Orlando Tribune Eunuch design chanter, for drawing out the responses that show what I have known for some time: Designers don’t get it and never will.

Even in the face of absolute evidence of plagiarism, they are trying to make up new rules or claim there are none. Fabulous! That segment of www.newsdesigner.com has done more to prove my point than this site has in six months.

Thanks again, designers! I knew you would continue to entertain me!

A blessing for Bloomington

While preparing for my weekly check of the mediocre columnists, I discovered wonderful news: Terry Greenberg has left the Pantagraph! Greenberg is headed to Lubbock, Texas, to be the editor of that newspaper.

Here’s hoping the Pantagraph realizes it has alienated many of its readers by cutting news and adding fluff. Before heading down the highway, Greenberg claimed he had increased local coverage, which is debatable at best and ridiculous at worst.

For the sake of good writing, I plead for the Pantagraph to hire someone who can discuss topics other than newspapers or the newsroom in some fashion that might engage a reader or two. Greenberg was a colossal failure in this regard; the few times he did try his hand at another topic, he came across as an out-of-touch elitist.

Also, mark my words: If the paper brings in someone who continually spouts off about visual nonsense while doing nothing to improve content, then that “editor” will replace Greenberg as a subject of this site’s regular analysis.

Visual copying, Take 3

One of my old pals, Stevie Komives, is rattling his sabre about all the duplicate Picassos For A Day lately. It seems that page designers are just not shrewd enough to realize that if they copy a page, then post it as a work of art on a Web site, their glaring lack of originality will be on display for all of us. And some of us don’t drink the “rah-rah, visuals” Kool-Aid, if you haven’t noticed.

The latest back-and-forth can be found at www.newsdesigner.com. This is the third time I’ve mentioned that site here, so I expect Michael Keaton to appear from an alternative dimension at some point.

Seriously, though, this whole thing was inevitable. Designers have operated without rules and objectivity for so long that nearly anything, even blatant plagiarism, seems OK to them. If you don’t believe me, check out some of the lame excuses and justification offered as comments.

Also, I wonder why Komives, design editor at the Orlando Tribune Sentinel Eunuch, has taken the lead in this effort. Most of the other design wonks seem awfully quiet about the whole issue.

Anyway, my first hope is for the copying and plagiarism to stop. If it doesn’t, then someone needs to be fired. If that doesn’t serve as a wake-up call to the design camp, then it’s time for that group to come under serious scrutiny.

Rape issue confuses media again

Those of you who think any accusation constitutes a crime, followed by an immediate, harsh penalty, should probably skip down to “Today’s Alblog idiocy.”

OK. Once again, the media has shown it cannot stay objective long enough to report factually about a rape accusation. This time around, the suspects are members of the Duke lacrosse team. From the start, the assumption was the usual: Accusation = crime.

So the analysis began: The team members drank, even though they were underage! Durham, North Carolina, has racial tension, as well as tension between students and townies! Wealthy students attend the university!

Anyone with a speck of sense knows all of these problems can be found in most college communities. But reporting the issue THAT way is just boring, and newspapers will do anything to avoid being boring, even ignoring facts and sense.

Alas, after several days of deep probing into the “issues,” evidence to contradict the accusation was discovered. So now the media who botched the initial coverage are wishing and hoping that there will be some sort of charges, not because that would be justice, but because it would mask yet another pattern of faulty coverage.

These problems are not new to the coverage of a rape accusation. In 2003, NBA star Kobe Bryant was facing a criminal charge. Eventually some media chose to name the accuser. This brought a lot of controversy, and the underachieving Poynter Institute decided to take a stand.

Kelly McBride, Poynter’s alleged ethics expert, then wrote a badly flawed piece in which she referred to accusers as “rape victims” at least nine times. This terminology violates most style rules and all impartiality rules. (Good to see that objectivity in place for the ethics expert!) As of today, Poynter still has not corrected these references, and even has offered the lame excuse of not writing “retroactive corrections.”

I’m lost on this one. Aren’t all corrections retroactive? The only exception I can think of is when a section is preprinted, and the newspaper finds an error, then runs a correction in the same edition. And even that is retroactive.

Unfortunately for McBride, the accuser and Bryant eventually reached a settlement, so the criminal case was never tried. Which means there was legally no rape victim, which means the pinnacle of ethics was wrong, even if every style rule in the book is ignored.

But because today’s newspapers allow personal agendas to dictate coverage, these types of problems will continue. Ultimately this could even hurt the handling of a case in which there would be a conviction, as a jury could be more skeptical of evidence. Somehow, I don’t see that as progress.

Today’s Alblog idiocy

“Look at major bridges in your area. What is the track record for suicides? How accessible are the places from which jumpers most often leap?”

Yes, it’s more unintentional humor from Poynter’s feces expert, Recycler Al Tompkins.

Too bad for Al that most newspapers don’t report on nonpublic suicides. So unless someone jumps from a bridge when people are driving by, there will be no published archives. Failed attempts may or may not be documented, but again, many newspapers don’t go out of their way to publicize the intention of suicide.

I guess Recycler Al thinks police in every community have someone in the records department just waiting to hand over these details. As I’ve said before, I wish Al would follow through on his pledge to spend a week in a real newsroom rather than the Poynter ivory tower. Then he could report on how he was the laughingstock of that newsroom.

Two sides of Strib stupidity

Ever thought of stealing from your employer, then trying to defend it? No?

Well, then you don’t belong at the Star-Tribune in Minneapolis. According to www.poynter.org, an internal memo warns employees to stop taking more than one copy of an edition after putting money into a newspaper box.

The responses are the usual lame excuses: “We HAVE to get more than one copy to check the layout/see what stories were used/blahblahblah.” Um, why? One copy won’t do?

The newspaper is not blameless in this, though. Copies of previous editions should be made available to employees, and not doing so marks yet another example of executives making the job harder. Far too often, the “leaders” create obstacles where there don’t have to be any.

Identity crises

We all know that newspapers cannot get the facts right about external events. The botched miner story was simply the latest, worst example of print media ineptitude.

But now, www.regrettheerror.com/2006/03/newspaper_on_ne_3.html spotlights the industry’s inability to report on itself correctly. I expect this list to grow quickly. And if this site had the backbone it should, it would add AP’s joke of a response after its colossal error with the miner articles. As usual, AP blamed everyone but itself. By not assuming responsibility, the underperforming wire service sent out even more erroneous information, and it should be called on the carpet for that.

Also deserving of criticism is the laissez faire attitude that pervades newsrooms and allows these types of errors to multiply. I still remember being in the newsroom of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review as a discussion took place about the newspaper’s rise in circulation. One veteran cautioned the other editors not to blow the increase out of proportion or to rush into printing a story.

“I just don’t want us to get pie on our face from our own story,” the veteran said.

The story ran the next day. A correction ran a few days later. Were I a little more daring, I would have offered a piece of pie from the vending machine to a couple of the editors. Truly an opportunity lost …

Stealing Picassos For A Day

Reluctantly, I refer you to www.newsdesigner.com.

There you should find an example of blatant creative theft. Don’t get me wrong; I rate this as important as news about D-list celebrities. Readers don’t care about page design, no matter how much designers insist they do.

But I’m interested in this issue for one reason: To see if the industry continues to bend over backward to protect the design camp. If the design was copied intentionally, then it’s the same as plagiarism. I’m sure the design fools will claim the page in question still had to be constructed, but that’s like saying a plagiarist still had to type the words. It’s the idea that matters, and in this case the idea was copied.

Of obit heads and faulty columns

Triple negative alert: Just because it’s not Sunday doesn’t mean I can’t do the scan of the mediocre columnists:

The Pantagraph’s Terry Greenberg had a tailor-made topic this week with the recent opening of the new arena in Bloomington. (It’s named after a corporate sponsor, but Wenalway style calls for omission of corporate names for games and stadiums unless clarity and/or ridicule are needed.) Greenberg, of course, is all for the new arena, as it gives him a non-journalism topic to write about. So for one of the few times, we don’t have to read about how cool newspapers are or how The Pantagraph is giving its readers exactly what they want (as the newshole shrinks, regional stories diminish, errors increase, etc.) Greenberg does guarantee the arena will be a success. I realize this is a column, and columns should have strong opinions, but what if he’s wrong? Will The Pantagraph cover the negative issues related to the arena? We shall see.
I thought I heard the champagne corks popping in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. That’s because there was no new Dan McCaleb column this week! (I have yet to find it online, anyway.) While doing a brief, reluctant scan for it, I did come across another columnist’s take on the whole Gay Games rowing scandal. The writer praised the mayor of Crystal Lake, Illinois, for not allowing yet another local meeting to deteriorate into ridiculous sniping about the rowing event. At one point, a reference was made to the city getting an undeserved bad rep from the coverage. Part of the thanks for that rep can go to McCaleb’s habit of picking out one negative comment and extrapolating it into a straw man argument. Funny, though –- the columnist doesn’t mention that.
In non-columnist news, the Chicago Tribune had a tragicomic error in at least some of its editions recently. An obit headline read: “Blah B. Blah – xxxx-xxxx.” This is, of course, a dummy headline that some page designer slapped above a real obit, then forgot to change. As of now, I have yet to see a correction, and I have not seen a reprint of the obit.
I also should mention the News-Gazette did cover Paul Krugman’s lecture about health care (discussed below). The article seemed to cover all the bases. Now I’m just waiting for the inevitable letter to the editor, either from a member of Big Medicine or some political sabre-rattler, that claims any shift from the current system cannot possibly work and would constitute some sort of government intrusion/constitutional violation/socialism. To whoever writes that, I say in advance: There is only one viable long-term solution -– a national system administered by regional bureaus. Nothing else will work, and claiming otherwise is simply ignorance.

HSAs: Not A-OK

We need a national health care system.

I’ve said this before, but the person saying it today was economist Paul Krugman. In an informative lecture, Krugman laid out a case for a complete overhaul of the current failing system.

One of Krugman’s main arguments explained why health savings accounts will not be the solution. The people who can afford this option are likely able to afford to pay into the current system. Those who think the current system can be tinkered with, through HSAs or other minor measures, fail to realize there really is only one solution: Getting more people to pay into the system. Sucking money out of it is obviously not going to fix the problem.

Krugman also mentioned his expectation that President Bush would discuss the health care issue far more than he did in the State of the Union address. The media expected this, too, but they didn’t say much about the issue when Bush failed to meet the expectation.

The lecture included two chilling points:

The current system will have to get significantly worse before an overhaul will take place. Krugman speculated that fewer than half the people ineligible for Medicare will be covered by an employer-provided health plan before significant changes will be discussed inside the Beltway. With employers like General Motors already suffering from their lack of foresight, though, it may not be long before the bottom falls out.
Under the current system, medical advances lead to more exclusion of coverage, which causes more deaths. This should surprise none of us, but Big Medicine has done a great job of spinning the issue, with help from the lazy media. (This last sentence is my own assessment, not Krugman’s.) Congratulations, Big Medicine and media.

So how long will it be before I’m proved right? (A dangerous question, I know.) Krugman believes it will be 15 years before a national system will be needed. Of course, the nation will need to stop playing political hot potato and start pushing for solutions long before that point. That means not falling for the same propaganda offered by the insurance companies and Big Medicine, the two groups that profit from the current flawed system at the expense of the general public.

In conclusion, I say once again: We need a national, single-payer system administered by regional bureaus.

P.S.: I did a brief scan for local media at the event. Other than one radio station, I saw no evidence of coverage. I’ll check newspapers and Web sites to see if the issue got the coverage it deserves.

Recycler Al stuns us again

In case anyone on the face of the planet failed to realize poor people play the lottery, Recycler Al Tompkins is looking out for you. His Morning Regurgitation Meeting churns out this “story idea.”

Good to see Poynter is finding new ideas for newspapers.

(On a side note, I think I like the Recycler nickname better for Al. His name is even a symbol for aluminum, a recyclable element.)

Digging through Poynter archives

I hate to take after Recycler Al Tompkins, but I found another post at Poynter that I wanted to save. It’s a multiple choice test patterned after a rare, useful article at the site:

You're a managing editor with substandard editing skills, and your only real strength is relying on the clout of your position. Come summer, do you:

A) Bear down and start focusing on your error-filled publication.
B) Hit the links! There's always tomorrow!
C) Hit the links! There's always next week!
D) Hit the links! No one reads the newspaper until football season starts.

Let's "assume" the managing "editor" picks C. So we move on to question 2:

You're back (reluctantly) from your week of golf, and, horror of horrors, there were some mistakes in stories last week. Do you:

A) Think about buying new golf grips.
B) Send out a vague memo to everyone saying: "We need to do a better job." Then think about buying those golf grips.
C) Blame "the desk." Buy the golf grips.
D) Bear down, find out what's wrong with the process, ask the people who are involved what needs to be done to fix it, make sure this happens ... Gee, this is hard. Where are my golf clubs?

Yes, this is based on a real experience. Other than the part about the golf grips; I’m not sure that editor was clever enough to know when to replace them.

Teeing off before the Final Four

With the arrival of the Final Four weekend, it’s time to bring you the second annual Clueless Newspaper Montage.

The Montage was born last year after Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press wrote a column saying two former Michigan State players had attended the Final Four in St. Louis. But they hadn’t, and every newspaper that used the column should have known it because the column was sent BEFORE the game was played.

Even more laughable was a claim out of Duluth, Minnesota, that a copy editor had fixed the column by changing its tense to the future, as in the players “will attend” the game. That’s sort of like removing a burned-out light bulb, then leaving the socket empty and claiming the problem is fixed. It’s still there, just not repaired properly. But then, that’s today’s newspaper world, where editors don’t edit.

The Montage highlights the humorous, ridiculous and flat-out asinine approaches of the major chains and the sleeping watchdogs like the underachieving Poynter Institute. But I’ll let it speak for itself:

Al "Tumble For Ya" Tompkins, Poynter recycler of old news and feces stories: The NCAA tournament has started. Perhaps your readers are doing something special in connection with it.

Gannett: Can we cut some of the game action, squeeze in some more ads, and still get the same ratings?

Joe Grimm, Detroit Free Press recruiter: These teams should use their scholarships to find members who have never played basketball before. Those players would have a tremendous upside, you know.

Knight Ridder: Cha-ching! Not our problem any more!

Anne Van Wagener, Poynter design chant leader: Those uniforms have such a good color scheme!

Chicago Tribune: What time does the game start?

Mitch Albom, 2005 Final Four fiction writer: At least Michigan State is not in the tournament this year.

Associated Press Detroit bureau: Michigan State is just an NCAA bid and four wins away from the 2007 Final Four!

Bakersfield Californian: We need the game to end on time so we can decide our color tile scheme for the front page.

Oakland Press, Pontiac, Mich.: And North Carolina wins the national title! (Wait, what?)

Roy Peter Clark, Poynter writer/design waffler and occasional tabloid "expert": Am I in the writing or the visual camp today?

Orlando Sentinel, Tribune Co. eunuch: Do all of the coaches have beards? We need to write something that doesn't require a lot of thought.

Paul Tagliabue, NFL commissioner: Can we get the games moved to New York somehow?

Dayton Daily News: We should put a huge basketball on the front page and just tile our stories on top of it.

Kokomo Tribune: Huh?

Dennis Ryerson, Indianapolis (Falling) Star editor: Thanks for the idea for the bird feces story, Al. And thanks for reading the Indianapolis (Falling) Star.

Dallas Morning News: If we just add some points to Texas' score, the Longhorns would be in the Final Four.

San Jose Mercury News: We can utilize our Greenfield, Indiana, bureau to cover the games.

Billy Packer, CBS announcer: I still think an ACC or Big East team can win this tournament.

ESPN: Tonight we bring you the 2006 cheerleading championship ...

Dick Vitale, ESPN analyst: Duke's gonna be awesome next year, baby!

NBC programming department: What if we let Dick Vitale host a game show?

Al Tompkins: I bet there will be a lot of garbage inside the arena when the games are over. What would your local garbage crew do if it were assigned to the Final Four?

CNHI, newspaper bargain basement bin: Reusing the hot dog wrappers would save money, you know.

McClatchy Newspapers: We’d be happy to pick up some of the trash.

Now for a special treat: I went back and found last year’s Clueless Newspaper Montage, which I had dared to post at the Poynter site. I think the 2005 version is better, but it has more “inside humor” that requires explanation. Doing so usually ruins jokes, but I’ll try to do it briefly with footnotes. If this succeeds, I may do the same for the 2006 version.

And now, last year’s montage:

What are the typical newsroom staffers saying about Mitch Albom's gaffe? Let's find out:

· Punny Headline Writer: "Arch nemesis: Albom won't meet Mateen in St. Louis" [1]

· Bad Headline Writer: "It's time to (fill in the blank with the first thing that comes to mind)" [2]

· Page Designer: "Huh?"

· Dollar Focused, publisher: "Did we lose any ad revenue?"

· Ad Rep: "Doesn't the Sunday paper always get done on Friday?" [3]

· CNHI Bigwig: "A narrative lead would have rescued that column." [4]

· Al Tompkins' Friday Morning Meeting: "The NCAA basketball tournament has kicked into action. What are your local readers doing in connection with it?" [5]

· Chicago Tribune: "Mateen and Jason may not have been in St. Louis, but Kam's is indeed on East Daniel in Champaign. We finally got it right after one article and two corrections." [6]

· Sports Journalist: "Tell me more about (ramble semi-coherently about whatever comes to mind) ..."

· Gannett: "Did he mention any real people? Real People, Real Stories!" [7]

· Newspaper hiring exec: "We might lose out on some recent college graduates because of that mistake!"

· ACES: "All copy editors should complain about not having a say on things like this. YOU go and complain; then send US our dues." [8]

· Indianapolis Star: "Can we cut any more business positions?" [9]

· Thomas Huang, Poynter "diversity expert": "Mitch Albom should have used more diverse sources. EVERY white male columnist is guilty of this. (15 inches of illogic follows.)"

· Jayson Blair: "I used to anticipate things, too!" [10]

At last, a correction

From the March 28 Chicago Tribune:

· The Illinois men's basketball team advanced past the opening weekend of the NCAA tournament in 1989 and went on to the Final Four. A story on the back page of Wednesday's Sports section incorrectly stated that the Illini were eliminated early that year.

I wonder who alerted them to that mistake …

Skip to the goof, my Tribune

The back page of the Chicago Tribune Sports section is often poorly proofed, and the March 22 edition provides another example.

First, some context: We are treated to the unoriginal A to Z format in which the writer gives us handy tips, all beginning with a different letter of the alphabet. Writer Skip Myslenski builds on this exercise straight from the second grade to give us O is for Over, which he links to Florida advancing to the Sweet Sixteen for the first time in several years.

At this point, Myslenski knocks over the block tower. He says Illinois lost to a lower-seeded team on the opening weekend each year between 1986 and 1990. Hmm –- I seem to remember the team making the Final Four in 1989. So they must not have lost on the opening weekend that year.

Nice try, Skip. Next time, let a teacher check your homework before you turn it in. Then it won’t be obvious to everyone that you simply concoct inaccuracies to support your ill-fated attempts at humor. Oh, and for those who want to e-mail Skip, his e-mail address is smyslenski@tribune.com. Be sure to ask him where he gets his “facts.”

N-G capsules capture the obvious

OK, I have bent over backward to keep the comments about the News-Gazette’s coverage of the NCAA tournament confined to the new forums, but the pattern of wasting space with the excruciatingly obvious has to be mentioned here.

I don’t understand why the newspaper writes capsules that tell readers what they already know. Why tell us a player who will be a senior next year must provide senior leadership? Why say a returning frontcourt player will need to shoulder more of the load because the current center is graduating? We all know this already.

The topper came at the start of the week when the N-G decided to tell us there will be NCAA games on the local CBS station. No more specifics than that were offered. Why bother telling us this? The writer says regional coverage was still being decided, and undoubtedly this is true. But is it really much of a guess to assume Bradley’s game will be shown in central Illinois? After all, the university is in Peoria.

I tend to think people drop down their 50 cents to get something more substantial than this sort of shallow reporting.

Exposing designers as frauds

The underachieving Poynter Institute links to a report about the obvious: Most newspaper redesigns are shockingly unoriginal.

Yet newspapers continually pound large amounts of time and money down the rathole in pursuit of these efforts.

When are newspaper editors going to wake up and realize how badly they have dropped the ball? Did these people really get into the business to be obsessed with hairline rules and cutouts?

Sadly, until managing editors stop cowering in their offices with critiques and quit catering to the design-based camp, the problems will continue. And readers realize that; check out plummeting circulation figures for the evidence.

Where’re those places again?

Check out this link: www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=98294.

Now look at the state of Missouri. Do the Poynter design elitists really think Kansas City is that far north?

Then look at North Carolina. There is no way Charlotte is that far west. It’s in the south central part of the state, not the southwest corner.

Now look over to the links on the right side of the page. You may see one titled “Innovate Via Design.” Now why should we pay attention to that tripe when the graphic artistes can’t even place cities on a map?

This is yet another example of why designers cannot be trusted to convey accurate information. They simply cannot get the facts right.

Writer picks himself off again

Just a couple of weeks ago, Chicago Tribune baseball writer Paul Sullivan was critical of anyone with a blog being able to report information. Specifically, he was annoyed about a report that Cubs pitcher Mark Prior was favoring his shoulder.

Now it appears the Tribune got served. Prior is having his shoulder examined, and columnist Phil Rogers is due for an ego check-up. Instead of simply reporting the story, Rogers comes out fighting and blaming. Put the needle on the record; it’s time for the tired tune of how the Cubs are ruining their pitchers by leaving them in the game too long.

The argument is not totally baseless. At times, the team’s managers have inexplicably allowed the starters to throw. And throw. And throw some more.

But the graphic accompanying the article about Prior betrays Rogers’ point. One of Prior’s injuries occurred while running the bases, while another took place when Prior was hit with a line drive. Neither of these examples has anything to do with high pitch counts.

And even if they did, none of this is new or stunning information. After Rogers’ bombshell last week that the commissioner might issue a ruling about Barry Bonds, and that ruling might be a suspension, I’m starting to wonder about Rogers’ methods for choosing his topics and sources for information. Maybe it’s time to replace the cards in the Rolodex and the squares under the spinning needle with some fresh choices. Starting with something fresher than 1998, when Bonds is accused of starting his steroid use and when pitcher Kerry Wood first injured his arm, might be a step in the right direction.

Putting the facts back in the way

Now that Acton Gorton has officially been fired as editor in chief of The Daily Illini, people are rushing forward to spout off about speech codes, university interference, etc. Too bad they did not stop to pick up some facts along the way.

First of all, the Illini Media Company and the University of Illinois are separate entities. The only indirect connection comes from faculty members who have seats on the IMC board. So claiming the university is trying to control free speech is a flimsy assumption based on speculation rather than fact.

This information probably comes as a serious disappointment to the people who want to shape the discussion into some sort of left wing vs. right wing nonsense. Believe it or not, not every issue in the world falls into these parameters.

Unfortunately, underperforming newsrooms take advantage of these sorts of nonsensical conflicts to cloak their numerous shortcomings. The clamor about liberal bias and right-wing conspiracies conceals the true weaknesses of today’s newspapers:

They are too often poorly edited and filled with obvious mistakes.
Even huge mistakes lead to few changes. Nearly every newspaper in the country botched the miner story in January. Has anything substantial been done to change the faulty news-gathering process? No.
Too often, absolute morons are hired, usually as page designers. These people are then promoted, and they pollute the newsroom for years with their faulty judgment and outright lies. Along the way, they hire people even more intellectually deficient than themselves.
Major issues such as the failing health care system are perpetually ignored, either because they are too hard for outwitted journalists to understand or because many pseudoeditors simply don’t care.

But back to the DI issue: Unless Gorton had a signed agreement or contract with the Illini Media Company, I predict a swift dismissal of the wrongful termination lawsuit he has filed.

Decision at the DI

Acton Gorton reports at his Web site that he has been fired as the editor in chief of the student newspaper at the University of Illinois.

This action follows questions about the process used in deciding to publish controversial cartoons featuring the prophet Muhammad.

Gorton’s site says Chuck Prochaska, opinions editor, was invited to return as opinions editor, but he declined. Gorton and Prochaska had been on suspension since Feb. 14.

Stocks, speeches and sports

Time for some quick updates:

The Sunday mediocre columnist check reveals the pending demise of the weekly stock report in the Pantagraph of Bloomington, Illinois. Terry Greenberg spouts on about the usual: Readers can check the Internet or call an 800 number, blahblahblahfillspaceGreenbergstyle. To be fair, weekly stock reports are too long, too unwieldy and too often a problem for newsrooms without proper tech support. Which is most of them; newspapers still have not figured out that being proactive can eliminate overtime and problems. But simply eliminating stock reports is a shortcut that readers don’t deserve. Here’s hoping Greenberg gets the razzing he does deserve as he continues to run this newspaper into the ground.

And it’s on to our other stumbling writer, Dan McCaleb of the Northwest Herald of Crystal Lake, Illinois. He has decided to praise teens for their positive efforts. I can’t fault that. But then he refers to a teen making a speech at the park board meeting about the Gay Games (see below). I’d love to tell you what the speech was about, but McCaleb decided not to share that with us. Way to drive home those details!

Finally, I have to applaud the arrival of the NCAA tournament. I give the selection committee praise for the teams it selected, but I question some of the seedings. Unfortunately, since the NCAA decided to put teams close to home in early-round “pods,” the seeds sometimes have not matched with regular season performance.

Report on Bonds is off-base

By now, numerous media sources have cited an article in today’s Chicago Tribune that says Bud Selig, commissioner of Major League Baseball, might suspend San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds after a book excerpt accused Bonds of using steroids.

Too bad the Tribune article should not have been run in its published state.

First, some context: Alleged sports journalists’ reporting on the steroid issue has been beyond awful. For years, they ignored the issue. Now that they are well behind the curve, they come out with stories like the Tribune article, which is poorly sourced and poorly written.

Throughout the article, Phil Rogers relies on “highly placed MLB sources” who are never identified. The use of anonymous sources is a troubling offshoot of the lack of good editing and fact-checking in today’s design-obsessed newsrooms, but balancing a story of this magnitude on nameless figures is particularly problematic.

For example, the information Rogers passes along from the source(s) is extremely vague. At one point, the article reads: “(T)he source said it is possible a ruling of some kind could be made before the Giants’ opener April 3.” Any time you can legitimately add “or perhaps not” at the end of a sentence, as you can with this one, it’s weak information.

Another flaw emerges earlier in the article when Rogers writes: “Bonds has apparently been clean in the three years MLB has tested players for steroids. …” Well, has he been or hasn’t he been? It’s either one way or the other, and if for some reason there is some gray area, that should be explained. But it’s not in this article.

Finally, Rogers tells us: “At the very least, it seems Selig could be forced to … attach some sort of qualifier in the record books next to Bonds’ name.” According to whom? There isn’t even an anonymous source attached to this wild guess.

Selig does offer one quote that Rogers should pay particular attention to: “(Y)ou’re playing with people’s lives and their reputations. All of us ought to be very careful.”

Too bad Rogers and his editors were reckless in printing this article.

Al springs into action

OK, even Al “Tumble For Ya” Tompkins can offer an interesting idea from time to time.

Thursday’s Morning Regurgitation Meeting, a regular feature at www.poynter.org, features a poll from the American Medical Association regarding females’ behavior during spring break. (For some reason, males are not questioned, which Al and I both find unusual.)

Most of the poll should come as no surprise. Many respondents report excessive drinking, promiscuous behavior and unprotected sex. But one statistic is particularly interesting:

· One in five respondents regretted the sexual activity they engaged in during spring break, and 12 percent felt forced or pressured into sex.

This means 20 percent of the females who were involved in intercourse wished they hadn’t, and those are just the people who are responding honestly. I tend to think the real number would be even higher.

As much as I like to bust on Al, I think this story should be reported. But it won’t be. Most of the media feel they have gained some sort of freedom with reckless coverage of human sexuality, and they have no intention of changing now.

Al does sneak in one pot-meets-the-kettle moment in this capsule. When he refers to a promoter’s Web site claiming students can do a year’s worth of drinking in a week, he says the quote is years old. And Al is an expert on old news; he’s lucky if he comes up with a week’s worth of useful information in a year. But I think he’s right on this issue.

Al takes on taxes

Did you know the IRS Web site will have information about tax laws? Yes, this is the most obvious question in the world, except to Al “Tumble For Ya” Tompkins of the underachieving Poynter Institute.

Just in time for the tail end of tax season, Al is back with his “tips” for reporting on the tax codes. He tells us the IRS has “special Katrina pages” with information for taxpayers. Of course, any writer who cannot figure out how to use the IRS Web site might need some broader tips on reporting.

And even if Al had anything helpful to offer, it likely would be too late for many taxpayers who already have filed their returns. Thanks again, Al. Maybe one of these years you’ll figure out how taxes work.

The power of one, yet again

The latest Sunday columnist check unveils another less-than-stellar effort from Dan McCaleb of the Northwest Herald.

The topic this week is the local park board’s denial of a rowing competition in connection with this summer’s Gay Games. So cue the music and focus the lights on center stage: McCaleb received a call from a resident! The thesis of the column has been set!

Local Resident is concerned about public fornication if the event comes to town. Somehow this is a new concern even though I’m sure Crystal Lake, Illinois, has any number of consenting heterosexuals who may have been affected by sexual themes and imagery in most network TV shows, movies and proliferating “men’s magazines.”

These shreds of reality don’t faze McCaleb, though, who leads the column with a playful reference to Local Resident’s fears. McCaleb does allude to a similar concern being expressed during the park board meeting. Again, though, I tend to believe this is similar to the “goose feces” issue. One person likely came forward with a concern, and like many small-circulation editors, McCaleb chose to focus on it.

He ends the column by saying a second vote planned for this week “should go a long way toward mending Crystal Lake's tarnished image.”

Only if the board votes to submerge all copies of McCaleb’s column in the lake.

How designers ‘plan’ a page

In Bakersfield, California, we have yet another newspaper that thinks a redesign will save it. Unfortunately, these people must not read the paper very often because they choose to put many of their stories into shaded boxes, making them much harder to read. Good to see newspapers using their resources so well.

I also found the following comment from a Bakersfield designer:

It is so dependent on what images are available that we can’t really plan what is going in what position ahead of time. We basically throw all of the elements on the page and start moving them around and scaling them up and down until we find the combination that works best.

So they just throw things onto a page and shuffle them until they find something that works? Brilliant! And page designers keep the unintentional hilarity coming! Somebody should put these people onto a stage somewhere.

Cancer? But I have concert tickets!

In monitoring the N-G this weekend, I almost forgot to check in on those witty Sunday columnists: Dan McCaleb and Terry Greenberg.

McCaleb is trying to master the “Psst. Hey you” style of leading his column. Other than that, there’s been nothing amusing. I’m slightly disappointed.

Greenberg, however, is bemoaning singer Sheryl Crow’s disclosure that she has breast cancer. After all, Crow was scheduled to perform in Bloomington, Illinois, and Greenberg’s daughter was going to fly to Illinois for the concert! This is very inconvenient.

When members of the media wonder why they are branded as elitist and inconsiderate, they need look no farther than columns like this. Pathetic.

A gaffe by the numbers

As a parting shot to the News-Gazette jersey illustration fiasco, I’d like to analyze the situation as a page designer would -– by the numbers:

0 – Number of times the N-G indicated it was using a photo illustration.

2 – Number of times the N-G has botched late-season coverage of the Illini. Last season, we were treated to the infamous “30-0” headline just before Illinois lost Game No. 30.

87 and counting – Number of wins Bruce Weber has accumulated as coach without needing the N-G’s clever tips like “Play defense.”

And the headline’s bad, too

Apparently there was some internal strife at the News-Gazette after the Dee Brown illustration debacle (see below). I know I’m shedding a tear to hear the page designers have to run ideas like this mess by other editors before they run with them.

In looking at the illustration, I failed to notice another problem: The headline, “HANGIN’ 11”, also was a poor choice. In fairness, the obvious intention was to describe a retired jersey hanging from the rafters.

But when the headline is placed with a botched illustration that artificially darkens a player’s image, even more questions should be raised. Did anyone consider the possible misinterpretations of this combination? The “visual journalists” seem to have been stuck in their usual myopia.

I don’t think I’m being PC when I say the headline should have been scrapped and rewritten. Not only does it carry a negative double meaning in this case, but it also is yet another variation of a tired cliché. Just off the top of my head, something like “Will 11 be the 1st?” would have worked far better.

Cutout catastrophe

Let’s give a big hand to the News-Gazette of Champaign, Illinois, for showing us once again how flawed the design-based approach is.

Saturday is the last home game for the seniors on the Illini basketball team. One of these players, Dee Brown, was featured on the front page of the Sports section.

Unfortunately, the N-G decided to make a cutout of a photo that showed Brown clutching the front of his jersey to display his number. The picture already had excellent composition. Yet the cutout was made.

But somehow the color scale and contrast of the original photo were lost in the translation. As a result, instead of seeing Brown, we see a shadowy illustration of someone with a similar shape clutching an orange jersey and wearing an orange headband.

So rather than a tribute to a productive four-year player, we have a mess, courtesy of the design camp. Chalk it up as yet another big mistake among the many page designers have made so far in 2006.

Three-headed beast

Catch a one-day tribute to the Three Stooges at www.poynter.org, where Roy Peter Clark, Al “Tumble For Ya” Tompkins and Anne Van Wagener are playing patty-cake with the design camp.

Clark has returned to trying to have his cake and eat it, too. When it suits him, he claims to be a writing expert, but he also likes to dip his pen into the pro-design nonsense. Now he is trumpeting the power of tabloid-sized newspapers. Coincidentally (or perhaps not), the St. Petersburg Times, aka the hellspawn of the underachieving Poynter Institute, has announced its weekly tabloid will become daily. Great timing, Roy. Not so good for your credibility, though.

Big Al makes a reference to more design gimmicks. We should be genuflecting toward Washington, D.C., where the Post peppered its pages with holes to ridicule Vice President Dick Cheney’s hunting accident. And The Virginian-Pilot also has Al tumbling in testament to a graphic that (drum roll, please) compares a shotgun pellet to a penny! Consider newspapers saved, my brethren!

At the conclusion of his mediocre Alblog, Tompkins refers us to yet another weak installment from Van Wagener. Like most “visual journalists,” Van Wagener is not a good writer and does not have any proof of design improving newspapers, but that does not stop her from making all sorts of far-fetched claims. Strap on your hip boots now, for Anne tells us that blogs prove designers are “powerful content providers.”

This is one of the many outright lies the design camp tries to spread. In reality, designers provide no content. They simply wait for writers and editors to give them content, and then they spend entire shifts tinkering with it. Generally, giving designers any leeway proves to be a tremendous mistake, as many glaring errors are the result. Designers have proved they cannot edit well, nor do they even know what to look for when attempting to edit or to write display type. They are totally reliant on writers -– the real providers of content.

To say otherwise is to lie. And that’s what Van Wagener and other designers are best at.

Unbalancing act

With two editors now under suspension at The Daily Illini, Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune has decided he knows the facts about what really happened.

Zorn says the decision is a disgrace. He bases this opinion on an erroneous assumption –- that the editors were suspended for printing the controversial illustrations. Not so. The suspension occurred because proper procedures apparently were not followed in printing the drawings.

I say this with great certainty because unlike Zorn, I have done my research. Funny how that works, actually getting the facts before running with an opinion.

Of course, with the Tribune, any bad news coming from the University of Illinois is good news. The Tribune has displayed a longtime pattern of bashing the university whenever possible. Sometimes the criticism is justified, such as when university administrators insist the school’s Chief Illiniwek mascot is a “symbol,” but often it’s simply the newspaper furthering its agenda.

The prime example I can offer took place in the early 1990s when the Tribune decided to delve into a tough issue: High student-to-faculty ratios. I say this with tongue in cheek since few people would be surprised that a university with 30,000 students would have some full classes.

One of the main sources for this series was the administration reporter for The Daily Illini. Now that takes some digging –- going to the student newspaper and interviewing someone! This is the “World’s Greatest Newspaper?”

Yet now the Tribune cannot even manage this basic amount of work. Here’s a hint, guys. Talk to some people at the paper about what happened with the publication of the cartoons. You might uncover some facts or something.

Mountain of controversy

The printing of several cartoons depicting Muhammad has engulfed many areas in turmoil.

In the Midwest, the University of Illinois student newspaper has come under criticism for running the illustrations. Some members of The Daily Illini’s editorial board say they supported the decision, but they were not aware of the choice to advance from discussion to putting the drawings into print.

I think the decision to publish these illustrations was wrong, but not because of any PC code or potential political fallout. The benefit from running the drawings does not outweigh the drawbacks. Readers gain little knowledge from seeing these illustrations that they would not have acquired from intelligently written content.

I’m sure you know where I am headed with this. Once again, a newspaper chooses poorly in supporting visuals over content. This happens again and again and again, and still no one changes the philosophy.

Now, at the risk of doing a 180, I also question why the numerous daily newspapers that pant incessantly about visuals have not published these illustrations. After all, in their empty-minded newsrooms, it’s all about visuals. So shouldn’t these drawings be a necessity if readers NEED to have every detail portrayed visually?

The answer, of course, is that most newspapers are so afraid of violating a PC code that they won’t run the illustrations. As usual, they use the arguments of convenience rather than conviction. That, coupled with their continued gutless approach that allows unqualified page designers to run amok, shows why too many newspapers can no longer cover hard issues appropriately.

Designing even less credibility

The faux artistes who don’t belong in newsrooms have been on a roll lately.

The most tragic example of visual “journalists” hurting newspapers can be seen in the San Francisco Chronicle. The subject of a photo was misidentified, which threw the value of an entire series into question.

Compounding the problem was the ultrapoor decision by the designer to put the incorrect name in all caps over the photo. Placing text over art is almost always a bad choice, and this blunder illustrates why.

In Chicago, the Sun-Times illustrators were busy whipping up an amateurish drawing of the late announcer Harry Caray breathing fire. This waste of time was placed above an excerpt from announcer Milo Hamilton’s book. However, the page handlers must have spent too much time playing with fire and too little time paying attention to the text because they got the name of the book wrong. Brilliant!

And in Orlando, the eunuch of the Tribune empire has been busy with the visual pseudoeditors’ panacea: the redesign. As certain as we shall see the sun rising in the east, we can count on the faux artistes to hurt the quality of the newspaper when they change it. Already the eunuch has reversed course on some of its poorly received decisions.

When will newspapers address these issues? Clearly too many of the visual pseudoeditors cannot handle basic editing, headline writing and reading comprehension. And newspapers continue to lose credibility and insult their readers’ intelligence while they play patty-cake with people who shouldn’t be in a newsroom.

Masters of the obvious

As I expected, many of the Super Bowl headlines were terrible, unoriginal clichés.

The two absolute worst examples I saw were “Steelers win Super Bowl” and “STEELERS!” These require no thought, and they should have been rewritten by an editor. One of them appeared in a Detroit newspaper, further illustrating the failings of this metro market’s media.

Less than Super headlines ahead

I can say with little doubt that (too) many headlines about Pittsburgh’s Super Bowl victory will read “One for the Thumb” or “Thumb’s Up” or something to that effect. That’s how unoriginal headline writing has become.

It’s a byproduct of design-obsessed newsrooms failing to hire people who can work with words and text and come up with original ideas.

And there’s no surprise here …

Let’s see … which issue got little coverage after the State of the Union address?

That’s right. Health care. Thus, we see once again that newspapers cannot cover a difficult issue.

But we knew that already.

Or here …

The Pantagraph’s Terry Greenberg is asking for feedback about the newsroom’s customer service. He tells readers of his awful column to send their responses to the e-mail address listed at the bottom of the column.

But on the newspaper’s Web site, the address at the bottom is garbled and unusable. As of this writing, the column has been posted for almost a week.

Out of bounds on accuracy

Why does the Chicago Tribune bother to run a Top 25 schedule or a TV schedule for games? Wednesday’s capsule still has Iowa playing Creighton the previous night. And I guess Texas is playing a doubleheader today – vs. Texas Tech at 5 p.m. and vs. Missouri at 8 p.m. Central.

Obviously no one is proofreading this information; it’s just being run as it’s submitted. And that’s wrong.

Don’t. Do. It. Again.

Periodically the Chicago Tribune puts out a particularly error-filled, dreadful edition. The Jan. 31 publication serves as the latest example.

First and worst, someone who has watched far too much of “The Simpsons” is allowed to write the lead headline, which reads “Largest. Profit. Ever.” Not funny, not original, and not fitting for a story about Exxon Mobil showing record profits.

Next we turn to the inside pages, where we learn President Bush will push for health reforms. Hallelujah! Except the president is pushing for health savings accounts with ultrahigh deductibles. Supposedly this will create a domino effect, with consumers shopping around for the best deals and forcing physicians to lower their costs.

Yes, you read that right – forcing physicians to lower their costs. Somehow I think we’ll be on Mars before this actually happens. Big Medicine will continue to exploit the current failing system as long as it’s in place. The only true solution is a national, single-payer health care system administered by regional bureaus. To argue otherwise is to embrace the current system that benefits only Big Medicine and its team of lobbyists.

So let’s turn to Sports for a welcome diversion. Here we learn, courtesy of the Orlando Sentinel (a eunuch in the Tribune empire), of a monumental fact: Both coaches in the Super Bowl have mustaches! First time ever!

We also see an article about a coach setting a state record for victories. Of course, the coach’s name is spelled two different ways in the article.

The Tribune keeps playing the name game in the Transactions when it refers to the Cubs reaching a deal with “Harry Hairston Jr.” His name is Jerry, and (all together now) the Tribune owns the team! It can’t even get the names of its own players right!

On a day like this when fact-checking seems to be out the window, I can count on a game listing being incorrect, and the Tribune does not disappoint. Its poorly edited college basketball poll has Iowa playing at Creighton. In fact, it’s Northern Iowa playing at Creighton. They are in the same conference, and we are in the conference season now.

At this point, I stopped reading. For those who will say: “Well, you spent the whole day with the newspaper to find these things,” I reply: “Less than 20 minutes.” Somehow I think someone in the Tribune tower should have 20 minutes to make the newspaper look as if it’s been read before it’s printed.

Anatomy of a poor column

I had stopped paying attention to the Northwest Herald of Crystal Lake, Illinois, for a while, but I got a treat when I returned to the newspaper’s Web site. No, it wasn’t Chris Krug’s apology for extreme hypocrisy in his dueling columns about George W. Bush’s military service.

Instead, I got to see the debut of a new columnist: Dan McCaleb. When last I saw McCaleb’s attempt at writing, he was blathering for more than half a page about being insulted by the weekly newspaper in Kokomo, Indiana. In that “column,” he claimed he was not going to be one of the many short-term editors in the CNHI chain. Now McCaleb is in Illinois; I’ll let the reader decide what his credibility meter measures.

But McCaleb has a new pulpit, and he’s back to wrestling with the heavy issues. The most recent effort deals with students walking to school. If I scan down a ways, McCaleb gets around to mentioning these are elementary and middle school students.

His lead is classic poor writing: “I’ve got a simple solution …” No, Dan. It’s “I have … .” And it’s just “a solution.”

Next paragraph: “If you're worried about your kids' safety if they have to walk, take them to school yourself. Walk with them or drive them. Whichever.” Whew. I’m glad McCaleb settled that dilemma. Of course, hundreds of parents attended a hearing to express their concerns about this choice. It’s good to know they are all wrong about the situation.

McCaleb pokes fun at the parents’ concerns, apparently because someone referred to the dangers of goose feces along the path to school. I’m guessing that one resident expressed this concern, and McCaleb decided to ride this horse until it dropped. I could be wrong, but I have some experience with McCaleb, as well as other small-circulation editors who have this mindset. Rather than ignore the one crazy complaint, they use it as a club to strike down an idea. It’s a weak way of covering an issue.

After again presenting The Obvious Choice of “drive your kid or walk with your kid if you don’t like it,” McCaleb astonishes us with the fact that kids have walked to school for decades. Then he gives us The Obvious Choice yet again. OK, Dan, we get it. The readers get it. Kids who are just learning to read get it. Intelligent pets probably get it. You’ve made your point. Move on!

McCaleb concludes with another joke about the goose feces, and he says he is stumped for a solution to the problem. So I’ll offer one: Give each resident along the path a copy of your column. Then it can be used in its most effective fashion: as a pooper-scooper.

A million pieces of hypocrisy

Check out the indignation about James Frey’s book. Lots of journalists are running forward to slam the author, as well as Oprah Winfrey and the book’s publisher.

Most of these critics need to look in the mirror. Every day, newspapers base their product on poor to non-existent fact-checking. Is this as bad as concocting a “memoir” that is apparently filled with fictional events? Probably not. But newspapers show no sign of doing what they need to do: Putting design in the background and focusing on fact-checking.

The Chicago Tribune’s Steve Johnson presents a column saying Winfrey’s sharp criticism of Frey was all about the truth. Of course, this is the same Johnson who once accused CBS of trying to capitalize on its ESPN connection with a show loosely based on “Pardon The Interruption.” Too bad for Johnson and the Tribune copy desk that ESPN is linked to ABC, and this is widely known, except apparently by Johnson. Guess the fact-checking in this case needed a tune-up.

Johnson also wrote an unfunny prediction about the “Friends” finale in which he said the main characters should plan a reunion at Windows on the World in a few years. Yes, that is so hilarious -– saying fictional characters should meet at a place destroyed in a terrorist attack. Where was the editor in this case?

In short, there is one response to the newspapers clamoring for the Frey book to be pulled from the shelves: Hypocrites, heal thyselves.

Worst of the worst

If anyone wants to find a group of poorly qualified editors, a good place to look this week (outside of the Poynter ivory tower) would be Birmingham, Alabama, where CNHI’s finest are meeting to pick the penny-pinching chain’s editorial prize-winners.

Self-proclaimed scribe David Arkin offers some prime examples of the awful writing skills possessed by many in this bargain bin. Rather than link to the 98-cent shelf, I’ll pick out the worst of Arkin’s prose:

· “As I made way through the daily news writing submissions this morning, I was struck by the grabbing writing, catchy leads and depth.” Response: I’m struck by the missing word and the use of “grabbing” as an adjective. (Which reminds me: Do you think CNHI editors know what parts of speech are?)
· “It was good to see stories that said something …” Response: Thanks, David, for that stunning bit of analysis. To be fair, though, any CNHI story that says something is a triumph over the dumbing-down philosophy that pervades many of these poorly run newspapers.
· “Of course, not all submissions accomplished that goal. Some simply were too ordinary of a story to be named the best of the best. A story on the City Council voting on garbage fees, just simply didn't do it for me. If the story looked at garbage increases over the past decade or showed where that money would go to or compared those fees to another area, then you would have had me.” Response: This paragraph is a fine summary of writing a lot while saying absolutely nothing. But if I squint and turn sideways, I think I can pick out David’s point. No newspaper should be submitting a garbage fee article in a contest. But then David throws in a classic comma splice and hints at what CNHI really wants: Stories and graphics that spoon-feed boiled-down bits of information to readers viewed as morons.
· “Folks would be delighted to see that our papers -- even our really small ones -- are thinking big and attempting to give readers content that's enlightening, insightful and entertaining.” Response: I would not be one of those folks. Newspapers shouldn’t be attempting to give readers good content; they should be doing it every day, without fail. As Yoda would say: “Try not. Do.”

The rest of the blog has many more amusing typos, punctuation errors and examples of illogic. It’s still being updated, too, so I’ll keep an eye on it, as it should only get worse.

They just don’t learn

Some quick updates on previous topics:

· The Pantagraph’s Terry Greenberg wins the bad timing award for writing a column about how fabulous newspapers are. Hmm – I seem to remember a rather large mistake recently about some miners being found alive. Maybe the “we’re so great” columns should go on hold for a few weeks. Plus, Greenberg hauls in the pot-meets-kettle title for referring to Ted Turner’s prediction of newspapers’ demise as “self-serving garbage.” Readers of The Pantagraph get to see what’s in the dumpster every week – right next to Greenberg’s mug shot.
· The Chicago Tribune continues to struggle with printing correct game times. The latest and greatest foul-up occurred during the NFL playoffs, when the paper could not figure out when a college basketball game would be played. Someone at the paper really needs to take a look at this. When the same channel is listed as showing an NFL game and a college game at the same time, it’s time to use the red pen.
· For as long as I can remember, The Associated Press has sent out faulty, error-filled captions with its photos. One of the better recent mistakes referred to “Boston Legal” as an NBC show. Right above that, the photo credit included ABC. Oops. But AP will keep sending out these credibility bombs, and design-focused newsrooms will continue to run them as is.
· On the health care front, I hear President Bush plans to focus on this nation’s malfunctioning system in his State of the Union address. This should be amusing. I predict many newspapers will swallow the phony rhetoric hook, line and sinker, then wash it down by presenting the problem as if it is new. For the sake of the future, I hope I’m wrong.
· I’d like to welcome this site’s newest visitors, many of whom have been following a thread about the decline of the Indianapolis Falling Star. I don’t see the Star much these days, but the last time I did, it featured the obligatory poorly edited crime story that referred to a 17-year-old as a teen, girl and woman. Please – pick one and stick with it. “Teen” would be the choice of most qualified copy editors. I’m not sure what the Star’s style would be.
· Speaking of which, The Pantagraph botched a story about an unfortunate incident in which a man stepped off a bus to meet his fiancée, then was hit by a vehicle and killed. A pseudoclever attempt at a headline was a miserable failure that I won’t repeat here. At one point, the names in the story were switched, and fiancée was spelled at least two different ways for the same gender. Again, these are basic things any qualified copy editor should know. I’m not sure what The Pantagraph requires its copy editors to know, though.

Newsrooms have few regrets

The underachieving Poynter Institute offers a link to an article about a site called www.regrettheerror.com.

I’ll admit this from the start: I visit the site far less often than I should. That’s because it doesn’t dig into why the errors occurred. In a nutshell, newspapers have been hijacked by the Picasso For A Day mentality and fail to check the information they present.

I guarantee that copy editors who are allowed to work according to their job title would catch and fix many of the errors that pervade today’s newspapers. But newsrooms choose to make these people build pages. Then they obsess about the way the pages are built. This is completely asinine and should be changed as soon as possible.

Regrettheerror also looks back at the truly comical errors of 2005. The compilation shows how badly newsrooms have lost their way, unless their way is to focus on design and make ridiculous mistakes in the process. But the site ranks a typo as the main error of 2005! A typo! Somehow I think there were far worse errors. The Chicago Tribune misidentifying someone as a suspected mobster comes to mind immediately.

If we’re going to rate typos as major mistakes, though, I should be happy I managed to dodge a serious bullet not too long ago. Just before Easter, an unedited article mentioned a sermon called “The Lie of Christ.” Obviously it should have read “Life.” I caught this using the tried and true method known as Pure Luck.

Of course, if I had missed it, the section “editors” who sent the raw copy would have been the first to tell me how terrible I was. But then, that’s what happens in today’s newsrooms, where “editors” don’t edit and managing editors focus on hairline rules and cower in their offices, emerging only to post after-the-fact design critiques. These problems won’t change until sites like Regrettheerror and Poynter have the guts and the spine to look into the causes.

The rush to ‘fix’ the problem

One day later, newsrooms are scrambling to address their colossal blunder with the miner story. The editors who allowed this to happen are falling back on their tried and true responses:

· Blame television!
· “We COULDN’T have known!”
· “Circulation is dropping! We HAVE to be bold and take chances!”
· “But we fixed it the next day!”

Sound familiar? That’s because you heard it after most newspapers screwed up the facts after Hurricane Katrina. And you heard it after most newspapers botched the coverage of the 2000 election.

In five years, nothing has changed. Newsrooms still fail to realize they are populated with unqualified pseudoeditors and faux artistes who have little ability to handle complicated stories.

However, there is one voice of reason crying out in the darkness. And that voice would be:

Al “Tumble For Ya” Tompkins of the Poynter Institute.

It hurts even to type that. But Al, the authority on urine, feces and roadkill, actually has some decent suggestions:

· Don’t write over-the-top headlines like “Miracle in the Mine.”
· Don’t run unverified information with attributing it.
· Don’t emulate newspapers that do these things.

Of course, the St. Petersburg Times is just as guilty, since it did all of these things. And since the Times is affiliated with the underachieving Poynter Institute, then once again, we are hearing: “Do as we say, not as we do.”

That song is a tired one. When will the windbags in the Poynter ivory tower realize they are as much to blame for the decline in journalism as any TV report? All of Al’s suggestions are basic to journalism, yet he is spouting them as if they are discoveries. And the media lapdogs lick them up and regurgitate them into their own weak defenses of their lack of fact-checking.

Anyway, I see where Al is tackling the issue of Medicare in his mediocre Alblog. And the material just keeps on coming …

Most papers’ facts found lacking

“This indicates an institutional, industry-wide problem with news gathering.”

I agree completely with the radio talk show host who spoke those words. By botching the miner story, newspapers have left themselves bare to reality: They no longer can get the facts and report them correctly on a consistent basis.

How have we gotten to this point? Let me count the ways:

· Newspapers focus FAR too much on presentation and spend too little time looking at just what they are presenting.
· Newspapers have hired poorly for so long that the employee pool, especially at night, is simply not qualified to handle a story of this magnitude.
· The alleged watchdogs of the industry have failed to police it. Poynter, this means you.
· Newsroom editors simply cannot think proactively. For all who have forgotten, this just happened a few years ago when the print media allowed themselves to be fooled by TV reports in the 2000 election. It is simply inexcusable for this to happen again.

There should be major ramifications from this screw-up. I had already intended to address the lack of proper planning and supervision within newsrooms, but this incident puts it into context. Too many newsrooms are “led” by poor managing editors whose only supervision comes from a dollar-focused publisher.

I find it telling that, according to Poynter, three of the newspapers that ran correct headlines are in West Virginia. This leads me to believe some newsrooms cared about getting the facts right.

Many did not. Changes should be made in those newsrooms, and they should be made soon.

Sham-a-lame-o-King-Kong

A gorilla descended upon the people of Dayton, Ohio, recently.

The front page of the Daily News featured an image of King Kong from top to bottom. The stories of the day were then placed in a white box on top of the ape.

This was a terrible decision. The page is yet another example of how designers strive to create Picassos For A Day with little or no thought about the content. When someone is choosing to link the identity of an edition to a remake of a movie, something is very wrong with the news judgment at that newspaper.

Even some of the design crowd have spoken out against this page. To these people, I say:

See the open barn door. See the horses in the distance. See yourselves walking over very slowly to start to close the door. See your credibility fading away.

At last, the nitty-gritty

For those who want to get an idea of my motivation for this site, check out this thread.

It’s still developing, so I hope some blame gets placed on the asinine stressing of design over content, which keeps real copy editors from doing their jobs properly. The example presented at the start of the thread is a little weak, but the subsequent discussion presents a lot of good substance.

My frustration with AP stems from the organization’s inability to admit one mistake. Ever. Maybe the staffers are coached to respond this way, but it’s exceptionally irritating to those of us who want to get the facts right.

And in the case of the ME who believes wire copy should be placed on the page without being read, I’d bet his dossier would have the following:

· Blames “the desk” if said wire story is incorrect or has a bad headline.
· Believes design is more important than content.
· Spends more time on after-the-fact critiques than in planning future editions.

P.S.: The person who spent time combining wire reports, then missed deadline by an hour, is either gutsy or foolish in admitting this. Perhaps the testy copy editors do a better job of preserving anonymity than the sports journalists do.

A second-guesser’s paradise

One of my favorite recent commercials featured Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre giving after-the-fact advice to accident-prone people.

For those who enjoy this sort of 20-20 hindsight, www.sportsjournalists.com offers a variety of topics. Most of these tips, though, feature without-the-facts advice. The unstated motto is it’s all in fun, but the sniping can get fairly mean-spirited, especially toward athletes and coaches who respond bluntly to some of the perceived idiocy that passes for professional writing and interviewing.

Most of the posters at the site choose to be anonymous, which is permitted. The site’s moderators claim to preserve anonymity, even though they don’t always do so when the responses are controversial.

But how much of this venom oozes into the pages and Web sites of these journalists’ newspapers? Because of the anonymity, there’s really no way to tell. And presenting harsh analysis, sometimes after the fact, is definitely part of a sportswriter’s job. However, too often the analysis is shaky and erroneous, and it’s getting worse as newsrooms continue to focus on design rather than content.

What’s inexcusable, though, is the continual winking at the problem. I’ve seen critiques where the mistakes were pointed out. Nothing changes. I’ve seen a memo to a writer that started out: “You idiot …” Nothing changes. I even heard the managing editor of one suburban Detroit newspaper start a news meeting by saying, “Those idiots …” in reference to yet another glaring mistake in the Sports section. Nothing changes.

With all of this name-calling, I guess it’s no surprise these people need a place where no one knows their real name. Something does need to change, though. And I think the place to start is the product the customers receive. A review of the accuracy of newspapers’ Sports sections would represent a step in the right direction. But then, any idiot should be able to figure that out.

They make Picassos For A Day

The illogic of newspaper page designers knows no limits.

For those who don’t follow the witty repartee of these misguided folks: At some point, many newsrooms allowed themselves to be hijacked by the idea that a newspaper’s design is far more important than its content. As coincidence would have it, circulation and credibility at many newspapers have declined during this same period.

But this hasn’t stopped the cutout crew. Even though many of them have never covered a beat nor written a story for a post-collegiate newspaper, they claim to be experts in how editors with years of experience should be doing their jobs. Newsrooms should be discouraging this unproductive atmosphere, but too many editors are afraid to deal with it.

As the designers realize they can claim virtually anything without being questioned, their statements grow even more incredible. But their stated goals seem to be contradictory. Calls for breaking away from an assembly line with one product a day are mixed with nitpicking about various tiny design details no readers care about. These people want to create a Picasso For A Day, but they do not grasp the obvious: A newspaper page is not a work of art.

Obsessing about design does not get the product out the door or onto the Web any faster. If anything, there should be less focus on looks and more on giving readers what they cannot get from other media: In-depth stories. Trying to out-visual the visual media is a losing battle from the start.

To paraphrase a line from the 2004 election, too many newspapers are fighting the wrong war at the wrong time. Let the visual vermin quibble about which hairline rule is the best; just get them out of the newsrooms and let the rest of us focus on what the readers want.

A time to gather stones together

OK, so the site has been up for about six weeks now. Some of it has exceeded my expectations. Some of it has not.

One thing I’d like to do periodically is update a few of the items. (This is another area where I feel newspapers fall short; they do far too little to update previous reports.) Although I could simply change the original items, I’d like to leave them as they were first written.

So, down with the old and here with the new:

H “The PC police are inside of our pages.” Gary Barnett is no longer the football coach at Colorado after the team lost two straight games by wide margins. His misguided response to a question about how his players felt about a female kicker is still being reported out of context. Meanwhile, Penn State’s Joe Paterno has been criticized for unfortunate comments about a Florida State player being accused of sexual assault. NOW is calling for his resignation, but so far, Paterno remains the coach.

H “Does the Tribune really know what time it is?” Different season, same problem. I have a solution, though. I simply pay little attention to the newspaper’s listed times for basketball games. I don’t think I’m the only one.

H “Hypocrisy at its finest.” Chris Krug still has not apologized in print to his staff or his readers. No surprise there.

H “Humming the wrong words.” The small newspaper outside Louisville is looking for a sports editor. “Visual presentation skills are a must,” according to the ad. Some people never change.

H “The weekly workout.” Sadly, it’s fallen by the wayside with the arrival of winter. Terry Greenberg keeps hitting the bottom of the barrel, though. Three recent columns featured a discussion of his newsroom’s outdated computer system, an interview with a member of the Pantagraph’s marketing staff and a recap of his drive from Chicago to Bloomington during a snowstorm. Painful stuff.

H “Rim shots.” Bruce Weber’s Illini are on a roll again. I’m sure the News-Gazette is taking the credit. The newspaper predicted the team would lose to Oregon, though. The Illini then won by 30. Oops. Meanwhile, Michigan State is not in first place in the Big Ten, so the Detroit AP office will need to reach for another easy angle for its articles. Too bad.

H “Motorin’ toward bankruptcy.” The nation continues to go without national health care. Big Medicine continues to prosper. Newspapers continue to ignore the problem.

H “They’re bad, boys and girls.” Thankfully, I don’t have to endure the Detroit media scene these days. But somehow I doubt much has changed. (I do hear rumors, but I won’t report them here.)

Hitting below the belt

Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press is putting together a year to remember.

Back in April, Albom wrote a column predicting two former Michigan State basketball players would attend the Final Four in St. Louis. He included various other details such as what they would wear. But he didn’t write it as a prediction; he wrote it as fact. Then the players didn’t attend.

An investigation of Albom’s work followed. As with most major newspaper screw-ups, there was a lot of hand-wringing. But after a short period of time, the unpleasantness of the incident was allowed to fade. After all, newspaper work is a noble pursuit, you know, and a trivial matter such as a syndicated column based on an inaccurate presumption should not prompt any substantial changes.

Now I’ll drop the sarcasm. Albom’s latest column features two tasteless barbs about the health of former Pistons coach Larry Brown. The Detroit fans are portrayed in the column as believing Brown didn’t really need treatment for a bladder condition at the Mayo Clinic right after the NBA Finals.

I have no idea what Albom is basing this conclusion on. Nor do I really care. Unless there is concrete proof that Brown lied, these comments have no place in a newspaper. But then, Albom’s Final Four column had no place in a newspaper, yet no one stopped it from appearing.

Keep in mind: This is a writer who has a best-selling novel about spending time with someone who was terminally ill. Making jokes about someone’s potentially serious health condition doesn’t seem consistent with the previous work.

Once again, I find myself wondering what is going on at the Free Press. What, if anything, raises a red flag with an editor? Is the newspaper required to publish and syndicate Albom’s column without changes? If so, why?

Also, while checking some background information, I found a reference to this same type of insult toward Brown. At www.truehoop.com, the New York Post’s Peter Vecsey is criticized for a play on words based on Brown’s Mayo Clinic visit. The True Hoop writer says: “Only a New York City paper would let a writer make a fun gag out of a guy's debilitating health condition.”

I guess this writer has not seen the mess that is the Detroit media.

Al tumbles for ya

As the year draws to a close, the tax man cometh.

And Al Tompkins of the underachieving Poynter Institute stands ready to question the practice of accelerated tax refunds, as he did last year in his mediocre Alblog. Al got his facts a little twisted, though. Seems that Al misunderstands how the accelerated refund process works.

If someone is approved for a fast refund, it comes in the form of a bank loan. In most cases, the IRS refund pays off the loan. The fees for the preparation of the return and the processing of the loan are deducted from the refund the taxpayer receives.

Last year, Al got caught up in annual percentage rates and fears that customers are being gouged with high-interest loans. He then passed these misconceptions along through his Alblog. I questioned his conclusions, but he never corrected them.

Poynter tends to do things like this. Its writers make mistakes, and then those errors are not corrected.

Don’t worry; I have additional examples to offer.

More fine, source-based health reporting

Journalists like to think they know a little about a lot. A prime example is the oft-cited sliver of psychological theory known as the introversion/extroversion concept.

Janie Magruder of Gannett News Service joins the crowd who reduce this theory to its simplest: Everyone is either an introvert or an extrovert. The theory was never meant to be interpreted this narrowly, but journalists don’t let that stop them.

Magruder’s article starts off innocently enough. Her lead says fast talk and snap decisions are favored over careful thought. (She must have spent a lot of time in newsrooms, where careful thought is practically non-existent.)

She follows with a somewhat flat quote from the obligatory professor, albeit a curriculum instructor rather than a psychology professor. Obligatory Professor’s quote ends: “ … in order to be social you have to behave a certain way.”

From here, the story goes off a cliff. Magruder’s next line is: “But that is impossible for introverted kids.” What? According to whom? How is she drawing this conclusion? And how did this get by an editor?

Magruder writes the rest of the article in an annoyingly repetitive way. The next two paragraphs begin: “Introverted children enjoy the internal world …” and “Extroverts enjoy the external world. …” Now that’s some deep writing. Maybe Magruder should favor some careful thought as she’s writing her sentences.

But the belief that introverts are somehow hurt by interaction is simply an unproved fallacy that needs to be questioned. I’m not going to launch into a Psychology 101 lecture here, but I’ll cite a couple of examples to prove my point. Performers such as Gloria Estefan and Bruce Willis were not fluidly outgoing when they were younger. Then they discovered the performing arts, where they found an outlet for their talents.

Willis even overcame a tendency to stutter, which brings me to my next example. Often, people who once stuttered have eliminated the problem by learning to express their thoughts without self-editing. In other words, they are blunt. This can be irritating, as in the case of NBA announcer Bill Walton or Willis’ “Die Hard 2: Die Harder”, but the approach seems to work. If the theory of introversion/extroversion worked the way alleged journalists think it does, Willis, Walton and others would have continued to communicate in the same fashion they always had.

Maybe journalists should retake that Psych 101 class and pay attention to all the theories, rather than the ones that fit their narrow beliefs.

The invisible night shift

Poynter’s Jill Geisler, who purports to aid newsroom managers with her advice, offers up a doozy at the underachieving Institute’s Web site.

Jill reminisces about the good old days when the ultraproductive people of the newsroom could take time off for a leisurely lunch. She spells it out for us as “a midday break.” Thanks, Jill.

Jill seems to be ignorant of the fact that many people in newsrooms work at night. I lost my lunch a long time ago, Jill. Well, I never really lost it; I just ate it before work.

Jill must be one of the many newsroom people who think the newspaper somehow just creates itself when she and her fellow managers leave the building at 5 p.m. It’s a tired, ignorant attitude that belittles the accomplishments of the night workers (with the exception of the page designers, who get far more credit than they deserve, despite their claims otherwise).

Get a clue, Jill. Realize no newsroom is going to take you seriously, and even if one did, the publisher and managing editor are not going to smack their foreheads and say: “Jill Geisler says our employees need a leisurely lunch! Let’s restaff our open positions and make that happen!”

Poynter’s writers fail to realize changes for the positive will not be made in the current job-slashing atmosphere. The underachieving Institute cannot and should not be taken seriously by any newsroom manager who does not rely on Poynter as a dumping ground for what passes for training.

OK, so how was the movie?

Movie reviews should be about the movie.

Yes, that is as much of a “Well, duh” statement as the lame, cliché headlines page designers concoct. But it needs to be said. I don’t want to hear anything about a reviewer’s wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend. Ever. I don’t care if he or she laughed when you didn’t.

(Unless the movie is “Practical Magic,” which was filled with “humor” that went over my head but seemed to tickle the funny bones of many females at the theater.)

I don’t want to hear that “Syriana” is not a good date movie. I think I can figure that out myself. I don’t want to hear that anything is a “dinner and a must-see” or some equally awful cliché.

Just evaluate the movie, please.

Poynting in the wrong direction

The Poynter Institute continues to underachieve.

This group tries to persuade journalists they need more training at the company’s camp in St. Petersburg, Florida. Just imagine: In-depth instruction that gives reporters the tools to pursue worthy stories like health care reform. Think about what these writers will accomplish when they return to their newsrooms!

Now stop imagining, because Poynter too often uses its pulpit to focus on promoting PC and design-based nonsense.

Some days, the worst of Poynter’s feeble tips can be found in a mediocre blog written by Al Tompkins. Al claims to offer useful story ideas for the nation’s newsrooms. In his mind, any day is a good day to pull reporters from their beats and have them write about roadkill on the highways. Al claims he could churn out the story ideas for any newspaper after doing so for Poynter. I hope some newspaper takes Al up on this one day and then publishes the results, for I have a feeling that stories about squirrels pancaked on the pavement wouldn’t go very far outside Al’s ivory tower in Florida.

The Nov. 23 Alblog is particularly unoriginal, as Al has a real non-scoop for the holiday season: Unsafe toys. Stop the presses! Assigning editors also can waste their reporters’ time by having them pursue a story about reserving parking meters ahead of time. Al thanks an Alblog reader for this tip, as he does for another of his revolutionary tips: the danger of carbon monoxide during winter. He doesn’t even think of these ideas himself!

Since Poynter loves to do Eye-Trac studies that analyze whether someone can read a newspaper while watching TV with one eye and staring at a computer screen with the other eye, why not bring this same concept to the Alblog? Can someone reserve a parking meter while warming their home with an unsafe heater and giving unsafe toys to their kids?

Unlike most of Al’s story ideas, that one would at least have the possibility of a photo to go with it. Assigning editors outside the Poynter ivory tower have to think about these things.

The tired charade

As Thanksgiving concludes, I’d like to thank The Pantagraph of Bloomington, Illinois, for serving up a textbook example of what’s wrong with hiring in journalism.

The paper is seeking a presentation editor whose visual voodoo will make readers “drop their cereal bowls.” Yawn. This is the same tired approach that newspapers try when everything else has failed.

In the last 18-24 months, The Pantagraph has botched nearly every attempt to improve itself. First the newspaper tried to add more sections. Its Local section during this time was an error-filled mess. I suspect the newsroom did what most do: It simply threw more work at the same number of people and expected them to make it work.

Then the newspaper decided to scale back its editorial pages from two to one. To accomplish this, it had to drop several syndicated columnists. The uproar from readers was so great that many of these columns have been restored.

I’m not sure how a presentation editor can right this ship. But by focusing on visuals, the newspaper gives itself a convenient excuse when the content is faulty. When the paper annoyed many readers by printing a photo of the local Mitsubishi plant after a recall of a model that wasn’t even built in Bloomington, editor Terry Greenberg fell back on the rationale that the design-based approach calls for photos to go with stories. A reader punctured this illogic quickly by asking in a letter to the editor if that philosophy means printing “any ol’ photo.”

This is the moral of the story at newspapers that think they can fool the readers with visual voodoo. The readers see through it. The pseudoeditors keep falling for it.

The PC police are inside of our pages

One of my biggest frustrations with what passes for journalism these days is the advent of self-appointed PC police who masquerade as reporters. I guess there’s nothing like using the right of free speech to try to deny that same right to others.

Unfortunately, the sports pages carry far too much of this drivel. When some pseudojournalist is not driving home the point that a coach or athlete dared to stray from the PC code, then we hear the never-ending panting for apologies.

Refreshingly, Teddy Greenstein’s recent column in the Chicago Tribune discusses the other side of one recent scandal. A book by Bruce Plasket looks at how the media failed to report or even pursue a balanced story in the case of Colorado University football coach Gary Barnett, according to Greenstein’s column. Barnett made the mistake of answering a question about why his players didn’t want a female kicker on their team. In speculating, Barnett violated the PC code, and that started the sharks a-swimming.

I’d like to see Greenstein expand on this topic. Just why do sportswriters think it is their job to be the self-appointed PC police? I, for one, want to read about sports in my sports section.

Does the Tribune really know what time it is?

And does it really care? Most of this college football season, the Tribune’s Top 25 schedule for the upcoming week has been packed with errors. One week’s schedule had one team playing itself and another team playing two different schools in the same week.

Also, nearly every week the Tribune has the Saturday night game starting at 7:45 Central time when it should be 6:45.

Get with it, Tribune. Start checking these things. The Cubs schedule was wrong far too often this season as well, and the Tribune owns the team.

Hypocrisy at its finest

Chris Krug of the Northwest Herald in Crystal Lake, Illinois, cannot be serious.

Last fall, Krug ran a column taking his night staff to task. Krug felt a recent edition of the newspaper wrongly excluded a wire story about documents that reportedly showed inconsistencies in President George W. Bush’s National Guard service. The newspaper ran with the story next day, but the credibility of the report was called into question soon afterward.

Two weeks later, Krug was back with another column about the subject. He conveniently ignored his support for running with the story in the earlier column. Then he went on to criticize Dan Rather, CBS News and pretty much all of televised news for running with the story.

Neither of these column topics is original. Editors often blame their copy desks when they feel pressured; it’s an easy way out of being proactive and taking responsibility. Editors also love to blame TV for the decline in journalism; again, it keeps them from having to take responsibility for poor hiring and poor decision-making.

But did Krug really think people would forget his previous column in two weeks? How can an editor flip-flop this significantly? In my opinion, Krug owes his staff and his readers an apology for insulting their intelligence.

Humming the wrong words

I came across an item recently about a small newspaper near Louisville, Kentucky, hiring someone named Steve Kozarovich. He’s one of those people in newsrooms with the mistaken notion that page design is vital to a newspaper’s credibility.

The story claimed, among other things, that Kozarovich had played a major role in finding the source of the mysterious humming noise residents reported hearing in Kokomo, Indiana. I’m sure Kokomo officials would like to know they could have saved $100,000 if Kozarovich would have disclosed this information to them.

In reality, the claim falls at least two degrees of separation from what happened. The city hired a firm to find the source of the hum. Then the Kokomo Tribune reported on the results.

Kozarovich was in the newsroom, though. I guess that counts for something.

The weekly workout

Whenever I need an incentive on Sundays to exercise rather than watch football, I get it from reading a weekly column by Terry Greenberg of The Pantagraph of Bloomington, Illinois. His writing is usually so excruciatingly bad that I have to work off the negative energy I accumulate from it.

Too frequently, Greenberg’s column consists of copying lengthy passages verbatim from Web sites. He also does a poor job of citing what he’s using, and often it’s hard for the average reader to tell the difference between what passes for Greenberg’s original writing and what he’s cutting and pasting from the Web.

His topics are rarely of interest to anyone who has not worked at a newspaper. (They are rarely of interest to anyone who has worked at a newspaper, either, but I need my exercise.) Recently Greenberg decided to discuss his newspaper’s copy desk. When I noticed this, I started lacing up my running shoes.

Apparently the desk at Greenberg’s paper feels it does not get enough respect. After mentioning this less than astonishing tidbit, Greenberg refers to the desk as the people who assemble the pages. Nice. This is much like saying teachers don’t get the credit they deserve, then referring to them as the people who write on blackboards all day.

Then Greenberg mentions a site called www.testycopyeditors.org. Alas, he doesn’t say much about the purpose of this site, which serves as a place for deskers to go and complain about their jobs. But this lack of explanation doesn’t stop Greenberg from grabbing some passages from the site’s main page. This is convenient for everyone – it allows Greenberg to fill the last few paragraphs of his column, and I can start stretching for that exercise session.

It takes effort, though, to visit the site Greenberg mentions and yet not realize that many copy editors don’t like being pigeonholed into a category like page assembler.

Anyway, Terry, the dog and I thank you for the incentive to run a few blocks. Keep us entertained.

Rim shots

The News-Gazette of Champaign, Illinois, gave us an early Thanksgiving turkey recently: Its college basketball preview section. Last year’s section was fairly well done and even featured a fairly accurate prediction of how the Illinois team would do. The N-G had Illinois losing in the championship game, which they did. The newspaper predicted the team would fall to Wake Forest and its Swiss cheese-like defense rather than North Carolina, though.

Now a new season has started, which means lots of points for Wake Forest’s opponents, lots of Duke on ESPN and lots of Dick Vitale blathering about any school on the East Coast.

There’s also lots of cringing in central Illinois, as this year’s N-G preview relies on a sci-fi theme and has cheesy sketches of coaches as Star Wars characters.

This inconsistency does not come as a surprise, though. For some time, the N-G sports section has been much like the Friday night lineup on ABC: lots of attempts at humor, but very few successful ones. This approach is somewhat necessary during football season when the team wins few games, but for a basketball team that has been wildly successful under coach Bruce Weber, it’s simply an annoyance readers could do without.

Speaking of Weber, apparently he agreed to pose as an instructor from the Harry Potter books for a full-page cutout in the section. These are the sorts of visual gimmicks I think newspapers should save for the walls of their cubicles. They add little or nothing to the content, despite what myopic page designers claim, and they use up valuable space.

Dropped in around the Weber cutout are various handy tips from the N-G for a successful season. These are otherwise known as “Yet Another Reason Why This Cutout Fails.” If I were a successful coach with a two-year record of 63-9, I certainly would not want pathetic little tips from the local sportsters about how to win games peppered around my picture. But maybe that’s just me.

I did skim through the tips, though, simply because they are amusing in their lack of worth. Often they are long-winded ways of saying: “Play defense.” Wake Forest may need this sort of thing, but Weber’s team doesn’t.

Much like Steven Q. Urkle, though, the N-G tries really hard to feel included. For example, one of last season’s pages featured a huge 30-0 headline. One problem: The team lost Game No. 30.

Motorin’ toward bankruptcy

General Motors has announced it’s cutting 30,000 jobs. The company has been ailing for months, so this move does not come as a surprise.

I grow weary, though, of the lazy reporting that refers to “rising health care costs” as if they appeared out of nowhere. This problem has been looming for some time.

Generally, reporting about the health care problem has been atrocious. Alleged journalists buy into the pro-doctor, pro-Big Medicine, pro-status quo argument without question. This country needs a universal health care system administered through regional bureaus. To argue otherwise is to continue to embrace a failing system.

I also tend to wonder about the quality of GM’s cost analysis. If the company’s accountants and auditors didn’t see this coming years ago, then something is way wrong. Most of the country knew the population was aging. Instead of being proactive, though, GM is going to penalize its current workers in order to subsidize the pensions of its retiring workers. That’s not a very sound business policy.

Another sector that should be under scrutiny is the Detroit media. I’ve steered clear of this topic so far on this site, but now I have to mention how awful news coverage is in the Motor City. Whether it’s the city’s two rapidly declining newspapers, the underachieving suburban newspapers or the erratic Associated Press bureau, print journalism in Southeast Michigan leaves a lot to be desired. Don’t worry; I plan to cite plenty of examples.

In conclusion, there’s plenty of blame to go around. I just hope the people who have gotten rich while ignoring these problems, both in the GM corporate offices and in the underperforming newsrooms in the company’s shadows, will have some repercussions to face. Thousands of workers already do.

They’re bad, boys and girls

I’m costing myself some sleep now, but I have to go into more detail about the miserable media scene around Detroit.

The metro area provides nearly every example of journalism’s recent failings. Plummeting circulation? Free Press. Fiction written as fact? Free Press. Lengthy stories about topics that affect few to no people? Oakland Press. Repeated coverage of the same topics? Associated Press. It’s enough to make the declining number of readers seriously de-Pressed.

The AP’s bumbling is particularly inexcusable. On some mornings, most stories are resent just after 8 a.m. to fix the plethora of typos in them. The bureau also has an annoying policy of not saying where events happened. You get a dateline, but no specific location for where something happened. I guess “Detroit” is supposed to suffice for the “where” that was once a basic part of writing a news story.

Two of the more tragicomic examples of the Detroit AP bureau’s ineptitude occurred in 2004. With at least six games to play in the Big Ten season, someone at AP decided to start reporting that if the Michigan State basketball team won the rest of its games, it would win the conference.

There were three problems with this:

· It wasn’t true.
· Even if it were true, it wasn’t news – not with six games to play.
· It was written in a confusing fashion, followed by several paragraphs of Tom Izzo’s coachspeak.

Thus, the sports editor at one newspaper got the idea that MSU was about to clinch the conference. How this could take place with a one-game lead and six games to play is beyond me. But the headline saying MSU could win the conference the next night was written.

(Illinois ended up winning the conference title, by the way.)

That spring, AP served up another treat. Both quarterbacks of the state’s major universities were set to be picked in the second day of the NFL draft. Most AP bureaus anticipate things like this and move useful items such as photos of the players in advance. Detroit’s AP bureau, though, decided to wait for the players to be picked. Then shock was expressed, followed by the inevitable string of excuses.

Expressing these concerns to the bureau is an exercise in futility. Even after I pointed out the blend of factual error and lack of value of the “Michigan State will win the Big Ten!” scoop, AP simply ran a newer version of the same information a week later. Good to know the members’ views are heard.

I’d speculate as to why these things happen, but I’ll leave that for another time.

 

[1] The two former Michigan State players were Mateen Cleaves and Jason Richardson.
[2] The “It’s time to …” headline construction is a weak, overused technique. Newspapers feature it frequently.
[3] Many ad reps have no idea the newspaper gets done at night and on the weekends.
[4] CNHI is big on telling its writers to use the narrative voice. Briefly, it’s a technique that’s supposed to hold readers’ attention by blending the creative and news styles. Often it fails, especially at CNHI papers that do a poor job of training editors and writers about using the narrative voice.
[5] Yes, I recycled this for 2006. But that’s a fitting tribute to Recycler Al.
[6] A true classic in Tribune lore that I had forgotten. First the newspaper said Kam’s bar was in St. Louis. Then somehow the correction was wrong, too. I may have to go back and dig up this one.
[7] Gannett’s magic bullet for luring readers is finding “Real People.” As Jack Nicholson would say: “Is there another kind?”
[8] ACES is a group where copy editors go to discuss excruciatingly minor details. Like Poynter, it claims to be a watchdog, but it does little to pursue change other than to collect dues from members.
[9] Another newspaper legend I had forgotten. I believe the Falling Star was in the process of hacking as many people from one department as possible.
[10] For those who have forgotten, Blair is a newspaper legend. With sketchy qualifications at best, he was hired at the New York Times. His work on the national desk was questioned by at least one editor, but nothing was done (surprise, surprise) until the San Antonio Express-News discovered similarities between Blair’s work and another story. An inquiry revealed numerous concoctions of details in Blair’s work.