DARTS
The Darts & Laurels column is written by Gloria
Cooper, CJRŐs managing editor, to whom nominations should
be addressed.
MISSING . . .
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on October 25 carried a signed
column by Susan Laccetti Meyers about a proposed commuter rail
between Athens and Atlanta, in which she bolstered her case against
the rail with the concerns of residents in the area who worry
about the project's effect on property values. But neither that
particular column, nor the several unsigned editorials she wrote
earlier on the subject, mentioned that Meyers herself is a resident
of the area. (Compounding the compromise of Meyers's credibility
was her insistence that she no longer lived there, notwithstanding
evidence to the contrary unearthed by the alternative weekly Creative
Loafing. That evidence included current phone listings, city
tax records, and Mr. Meyers's statement that his wife would "be
back" when a reporter went to the house and rang the bell.)
The Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Courier Times devoted some
forty-eight column-inches on the front page of its July 25 Money
section to a report on the complaints of local auto-repair shop
owners about what they regard as excessive charges for the phone
calls required to verify the data in emission control inspections.
Written under the byline of reporter George Mattar, the story
was illustrated by a seven-by-eight-inch photo of one Bob Frick,
owner of Wrightstown Auto Repair, whom Mattar quoted as saying
that the phone charges were a "rip-off" and that the emissions
tests themselves didn't "make any sense." One fact the story didn't
emit: that reporter Mattar has a part-time job at Frick's auto
repair shop.
The Providence Journal on October 16 featured as the lead
story in its second section a sunny "Special to the Journal" report
on a recent statewide Boy Scouts Camporee written under the byline
of Stephen Kostrzewa, who was identified as "a former assistant
senior patrol leader for Troop 6, Cranston." The I.D. neglected
to mention that Stephen is the seventeen-year-old son of John
Kostrzewa, the Journal's chief business editor. (The Pro-Jo
newsroom wasn't filled with happy campers. "It makes me think
about moving on," grumbled one veteran reporter to the Providence
Guild Leader, "because I want to write for a quality newspaper
and I don't want my byline appearing next to stories of that caliber.")
The Lowell, Massachusetts, Sun strongly supported in its
columns and editorials, as well as in public hearings, a special
bill, signed in August by the governor, that allowed the state
to demolish a local public housing project and, rather than replacing
it with new public housing as required by law, put in a privately
built development for mixed-income families. But what the Sun
failed to tell both readers and legislators was that editorial-page
editor Alexander S. Costello, together with his brother Andrew,
owned nearly three acres of land adjacent to the project site
and stood to gain a significant profit if the deal went through.
EYES ON THE PRIZE
"Follow the money," experience shows, and you may find yourself
in the running for a Pulitzer Prize. At The Philadelphia Inquirer,
however, that famous journalistic imperative has taken on entirely
new meaning. There, if you choose your sources carefully enough,
if you squeeze your contacts hard enough, if you put in time and
effort enough, you might sell enough subscriptions to find yourself
in the running for a paid-up trip to Paris (or possibly a gift
certificate to Morton's of Chicago). Of course, as publisher Bob
Hall wrote in a January
19 memo ("Importance: High"), "the more successful you are in
obtaining new subscribers, the more chances you have to win prizes
or earn cash." What's more, the first order of business is to
make "new subscribers" of the staffers themselves ("The percentage
of our employees who are active home-delivery subscribers is much
lower than what it should be . . . . I believe each of us should
have a subscription . . . . A subscription from each employee
is important . . ."). Hall also suggested that Inky staffers
"consider organizing a subscription sale for the benefit" of schools
and community groups. He did not say whether they should pursue
those important new subscriptions before or after they pursue
the news.
UNDER THE INFLUENCE
"Mortified" -- that's the way one reporter at The San Juan
Star described to CJR the reaction of the news staff
when they got a gander at a finished copy of the December 1 edition.
"Absolut-ly mortified" would have been more apt still. It seems
that while the newsroom had gone about its business of putting
out the paper in the habitual way (including sober page-one stories
about national and local politics, business, and sports), a four-page,
four-color supplement, featuring another front page, had been
printed at a different shop and wrapped around the Star.
Duplicating the tabloid's familiar logo, typeface, and layout,
the new front page -- headlined absolut sighting off the coast
of puerto rico -- breathlessly revealed that, among other things,
a "series of sightings," purportedly captured in the eight-by-ten
photo of an orange afloat in an azure sky, had left the "market
intrigued," caused crowds to "gather in expectation to observe
the phenomenon," and "prompted the Governor to activate the National
Guard." If the Star had been in any way tempted to reveal
to readers, in even the smallest agate type, that its front page
was an ad for Absolut's orange-flavored vodka, it managed to abstain.
