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DARTS AND LAURELS
* DART to The Indianapolis Star, for coming to the aid of the party. The paper -- whose publisher, Eugene Pulliam, is Dan Quayle's uncle and on whose board the former veep now sits -- picked up a syndicated page-one story form the May 25 Washington Post about the angry reaction in Beech Grove, Indiana, where Amtrak's sprawling heavy-repair shop is based, to the Republican-led filibuster that had killed Clinton's economic stimulus package -- and, with it, $ 188 million earmarked for the rehiring of 190 laid-off Amtrack workers. But, as the alternative Nuvo Newsweekly later observed, the version that ran in the Star had lost much of its edge: all explicit references, some of them quite bitter, to Indiana's two Republican senators, Richard G. Lugar and Dan Coats -- both of whom had supported the filibuster -- were carefully edited out.
* LAUREL to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, for an original study in black and white. Within a city landscape marred by racial tensions too visible to ignore, the paper this spring designed a year-long project to open the lines of communication and dispel the misperceptions of color. Its continuing special report, "Together/Apart: The Myth of Race," explores the shared dreams but separate lives of citizens black and white, the sorry circumstances of history that produced the division, and the successes and failures of society in erasing prejudice and discrimination, all highlighted against a background of candid views of people from all corners of the community. The series has also cast a clear eye on the contributions to intolerance and hostility made by local schools, churches, and other institutions -- not the least of which, the paper acknowledged in glaring detail, had been the Times-Picayune itself.
* DART to KING-TV, Seattle for off-track journalism. Taking as its point of departure the "clogged roadways that threaten [the Puget Sound ares's] economic vitality and jeopardize our quality of life," the station on April 21 ran a "news special presentation" aimed at exploring alternative routes to solving the problem -- in particular, a plan known as the Regional Transit Project. The two-hour, prime-time program, "Trouble Down the Line?" was conducted by KING veteran reporter Jim Compton. Traveling in film clips from Taipei and Singapore to San Diego and Houston, from Toronto and Washington to Chicago and Portland, Compton delivered snapshot reports on the strategies for coping in those traffic-congested cities, returning now and then to put questions to the studio audience of interested citizens; to a panel of civic leaders, legislators, and transportation consultants; and to listeners, through the magic of an electronic instant poll. Although Compton noted at the outset that the program had "received subsidy from RTP and Elway Research," he did not explain that the acronym stood for the Regional Transit Project and that one of the clients of Elway Research (which engineered the poll) happens to be the Elgin Syferd Company, p.r. representatives for RTP. As ensuing press accounts made clear, "Trouble Down the Line?" lost considerable power by carrying such questionable funding baggage.
* MINI-DART to the New London, Connecticut, Day, for proving the truth of that adage about too many cooks. The paper's July 7 edition presented a juicy story about an inadequately tested, error-filled cookbook that blended the bilious reactions of the nation's food critics ("a hodge-podge of contrived recipes" . . . [that] . . . "tasted lousy") with the frothy defensiveness of the author and her publisher ("'Yes, there were some questions,' Julee Rosso said, 'because I forgot to tell them to rub the damn ginger into the chicken,' a reference to a recipe that lists ginger in the ingredients but doesn't tell what to do with it"). The page A2 "In-the-News" report, slugged "Culinary Disaster," was garnished at the end with a reference for readers to "Interview with Julee Rosso" on page D1 of the same edition. There they were treated to a gooey puff piece about the "top cookbook author" and her recipes that are "well thought through, have considerable pizazz, should present no difficulties . . . and are brightnd fresh, perfect for a light spring supper." Had the accompanying recipe for vegetable stew really managed to cut the mustard with the food editors of The Day? Confused readers were given not a soupcon of a hint.
* LAUREL to the Boston, Massachusetts, weekly Tab, and state house reporter Craig Sandler, for taking the bull (and the bear) by the horns. In the latest addition to the Tab's active portfolio on bad doctors, bad lawyers, bad charities, etc., Sandler's "Bad Brokers" (June 8, June 15) documented the long-suspected, little-publicized, very real risk to investors posed by less than honest brokers who, after being fired or fined or censured at one firm, move on to other firms. Based on a three-month investigation -- an investigation ill-assisted by security-industry computers, which, Sandler discovered, are not programmed to readily identify such bad apples -- the two-part series revealed, among other things, that, of the fifty-five Massachusetts brokers disciplined for misconduct during the past two years, twenty-one had settled earlier complaints for a total of some $ 3.8 million and yet had been certified to go on selling to the public by both the National Association of Securities Dealers and by state regutory agencies. (Unfortunately, not all of the sister papers carrying Sandler's expose took note of what the local competition charged was a blatant conflict of interest -- namely, that the Tab, a part of the Community Newspapers Company, is owned by Fidelity Investments, a discount brokerage house that stood to profit from charges raised against full-service companies. That oversight was corrected in subsequent editions, which also carried an item about the sentencing of a Fidelity trader convicted a fraud.)
* LAUREL to New York Newsday, and to staff writer Glenn Kessler, for a record-breaking solo flight. With most of the nation's news media zooming in on the president's $ 200 haircut on the Los Angeles Airport runway and roaring about the disruptions his hirsutic hubris caused, Kessler took off in a different direction -- and landed on some hard, concrete facts. His analysis of Federal Aviation Administration records, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, revealed that, contrary to stories of circling planes, jammed-up runways, and inconvenienced passengers (and contrary, too, to the apology the White House felt pressured to make), only one (unscheduled) air taxi reported an actual (two-minute) delay. Unfortunately, most of the nation's news media, in usual near-perfect formation, found neither time nor space to correct a story that had been wildly off course.
* DART to WJW-TV, Cleveland, for throwing a curve ball to viewers, low and inside. On April 10 and again on April 18, the station aired "Fields of Dreams," an hour-long "special presentation" that appeared to be a straight-forward documentary about a land-bank plan to rebuild the inner city by taking title to thousands of abandoned, tax-delinquent lots, but which in effect was a publicly funded commercial for city and country officials, including Mayor Michael White, now up at bat for reelection. The program, which was produced with the help of the WJW production crew by a former local newsman under a contract with the county treasurer's office, was authoritatively narrated by "chief reporter" Virgil Dominic, who brought to the script all the credibility of his job as former news director and current president and general manager of WJW. Trotting out the "feisty" mayor's team -- creative bankers; dedicated developers (at least one of whom, the program neglected to mention -- the mayor's campaign finance cirman -- had received tens of millions in subsidies and tax abatements for a previous project); a "can-do" state legislator who had "never seen so much common sense applied to government in his life"; the aforementioned county treasurer (shown on screen ten times); and the mayor himself (fourteen times) -- Dominic helped drive home the program's unmistakable point: in the words of one not disinterested fan (i.e., that ubiquitous county treasurer); "Mike White is delivering."
* LAUREL to The Nation, for helping to restore our balance of trade coverage. In "The Big Buy" -- a thirteen-page cover story (June 14) on how Mexico, aided and abetted by U.S. business interests, is waging the most extensive, and expensive, foreign lobbying campaign in history for the North America Free Trade Agreement -- writers Charles Lewis and Margaret Ebrahim, both of the Center for Public Integrity, supplied a carefully itemized bill of sale, naming the names and tracing the tactics in the lobbying free-for-all. Delivered during the period between the first and second installments of a three-part New York Times advertorial project designed, as its pitch to potential advertisers put it, "to educate the public and influence Washington decision makers [by] presenting the positive economic and social benefits of NAFTA," The Nation report provided a compelling argument for the need to change the way Washington does business. "For as long as the present system remains in place," the authors conclude, "the blic will rightly wonder whether all they are getting is the best legislation special-interest money can buy."
* DART to the Contra Costa, California, Times, for overpaying its last respects. When, on May 13, at the age of ninety, its publisher, Dean Lesher, breathed his last, the paper tolled the bell in a 90-point banner headline, 3 page-one stories, 4 inside features, 2 graphic sidebars, 2 editorials, and 22 photos of Lesher, man and boy, at work and at play. Coverage of the publisher's funeral on May 19 was somewhat more restrained: a 72-point headline (LESHER'S LEGACY EXTOLLED) over a two-picture, page-one lead story, and only 2 features, 2 columns, and 5 more color photos (including one of the printed funeral program) inside.
