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Darts and Laurels
^ DART to the Milwaukee Sentinel, for news judgment coming straight out of left field. On February 26, when news outlets all around the country were leading with the massacre in Hebron and following with Nancy Kerrigan's silver-medal triumph in Norway, the Sentinel centered its entire front page on the latest design proposals for the home team's new ballpark. Under the 72-point banner story headed BREWERS WANT STADIUM WITH CONVERTIBLE ROOF were two four-color photos of the arch-roof model, a bold-faced box of statistics and specs, and three hard pitches to pieces inside; there, readers were hit with four more sketches and drawings, six more columns and stories (sample headline: SUPPORTING THIS PLAN IS NO BRAINER), and an editorial that called the proposal "magnificent." Such loss of control may be tied to the fact that, as the Sentinel's P.M. sister, the Milwaukee Journal, reported the following day, the papers' parent company, Journal Communications, has pledged $ 500,000 in tickets and marketing support tkeep the team in Milwaukee; that the company has taken a ten-year, $ 1 million lease on a luxury box; and that the newly appointed head of a commission charged with exploring ways of financing m including public financing -- the Brewers' field of dreams is Robert Kahlor, chairman and chief executive officer of Journal Communications.
^ DART to the Daily Pilot of Orange County, California, birthplace and burial place of Richard Nixon, for silencing a journalist who dared to point out that the emperor's new funeral clothes didn't fit. Following the April 26 publication of an irreverent piece by columnist Matt Coker, in which he reminded his readers of some of the former president's more ignominious contributions to his country and criticized his colleagues in the news media for their "teary-eyed eulogies to this wretched man," the Pilot informed Coker that his column would not be running at this -- or any other -- point in time. Coker's unsentimental words had aroused a storm of cancelled subscriptions, anonymous death threats, and an ad from a local restaurant that, in addition to a pitch for Mother's Day brunch, made one thing perfectly clear: "We feel Mr. Coker's editorial was distasteful and are appalled that the Daily Pilot decided to print it. Our advertising in this paper is in no way supportive of Mr. Coker's opinion."
* LAUREL to KDFW-TV, Dallas, and investigative reporter Brett Shipp, for "Your Tax Dollars At Rest," a periodic look at some of the less than noble purposes to which public monies are put. In one instructive series (February 28-March 2), Shipp followed board members and administrators of the financially strapped Dallas Independent School District to a three-day educational convention in San Francisco, where, contrary to what their falsified travel records claimed, most of the group spent most of the time shopping on Fisherman's Wharf, dining at five-star restaurants, and sightseeing in luxury rental sedans miles across the bay. (Total cost to taxpayers: ten grand.) KDFW's lesson to the DISD board (which hastily put new travel guidelines into effect) was evidently lost on nearby Grand Prairie: representatives of that school district who ran up $ 8,000 in bills at an April convention of the National School Boards Association in New Orleans found themselves captured on Shipp's hidden camera in similarly comproming positions, partying in the French Quarter and trying their luck at a riverboat casino. At last report, the Dallas County district attorney was reviewing a state audit of the district as well as the KDFW series, and studying them hard.
^ DART to Editor & Publisher magazine, and to the University of California at Los Angeles, for shaking hands with journalistic devils. Included in E & P's special forty-page pullout section on "Telecommunications and Interactive Newspapers" -- published by its advertising department but presented under the E & P logo -- was an article, surrounded by related ads, on the financial joys that newspapers might reap by producing TV infomercials. UCLA, for its part, put out a spring catalog of extension offerings in which its course in the production of documentary segments for TV newsmagazines was listed under the category of "Entertainment Studies and Performing Arts."
^ DART to the Burlington, Vermont, Free Press, for an act of professional treason. Subverting the press's historical resistance to encroachments on its freedoms in any form, the Gannett-owned Free Press went to court on February 18 to ask that a gag order be imposed in connection with a lawsuit against itself. (The suit had been brought by city hall reporter Paul Teetor, who claimed that he was wrongfully dismissed in 1993 for his impolitic coverage of a mayor's forum on race relations; Teetor's report -- which noted that a white woman in the audience, rising to remark on the negative focus of the forum, was silenced by a black mayoral aide and "escorted" swiftly out B had drawn fire from the black community.) This winter, as the legal process of discovery got under way, Peter Freyne, a columnist for the competing Vermont Times, lost no time in reporting hitherto private facts about Free Press policies, profits, and personnel. The Free Press, in turn, lost no time in seeking protection from the court. The cot, for its part, gave Gannett an instructive lecture on the First Amendment. "When defendants' only support for their requested gag is the existence of a newspaper article," wrote Judge Matthew Katz, "the question becomes immediately apparent whether, in the context of civil litigation, this court is being, in effect, requested to prevent newspaper coverage." The request was denied.
* LAUREL to Terry Francke, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, for letting the sun shine in. As a lawyer available free of charge twenty-four hours a day (You say you're covering a pre-dawn plane crash and the cops won't let you on the runway? Just call Francke); as the publisher of a newsletter beaming in on right-to-know issues around the state (current project push: reform of the California Public Records Act); and, above all, as the primary force behind the sweeping changes in the thirty-year-old open meetings law that took effect on April 1 (by which secret votes and out-of-town gatherings of public bodies are finally banned), Francke is, by all accounts, one of the best friends California journalists have ever had.
^ DART to the Nashville Tennessean and sportswriter Larry Woody, for failing to hold that line. Having kicked off a TV tour to promote his new book on the life and death of a college football player, Woody further advanced to his goal with an April 14 column on the difficulty of writing and promoting such a "heartwarming and heart-rending" story. Even the column's headline made an extra self-serving point: THIS STORY JUST NEEDED TO BE TOLD.
^ DART to The Cincinnati Enquirer and to the Suburban Journals company of St. Louis, Missouri, for redefining the coverage of bread-and-butter issues. In a page-one, above-the-fold story on January 15, the Enquirer gave top priority to the announcement by the Kroger grocery chain, a major advertiser, of a new promotion that would enable shoppers to earn discounts on air fares for certain Delta flights originating in the area; specific details were highlighted in an accompanying (also above-the-fold) box. Similarly, Suburban Journals deemed it worthy of page-one (but below-the-fold) play when the Shop 'n Save supermarkets upped their ad pages in the papers' food sections. "Shop 'n Save offers consumers the lowest everyday prices on over 30,000 brand name and private label products," the piece went on to quote S 'n S's c.e.o. as saying, "plus garden-fresh produce, a complete line of meat including USDA choice beef, and fresh seafood. Other departments include a full-service deli shop, oven-fresh bakery, and family video center."
* LAUREL to the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Herald, for "Of Money and Medicine," a nonroutine examination of the financial fitness of New Hampshire hospitals B and of the aggressive techniques practiced by some of them to keep their bottom lines in shape. Undertaken ten years after the controversial sale of the nonprofit Portsmouth Hospital to the Hospital Corporation of America, the Herald's series (beginning February 13) revealed a number of startling facts -- most notably, that the highly profitable Portsmouth facility spends a lower percentage of its revenues on free care for poor patients than do its smaller, nonprofit counterparts, and that it is quicker than any of them in seeking liens against the homes of patients who lack the means to pay their bills. The series also revealed that the Foundation for Seacoast Health, a watchdog group created at the time of the HCA purchase and charged with protecting the interests of the community, appeared to have fallen into a state of almost total paralysis. Th paper's probe produced a rash of cancelled contracts for medical ads and cancelled subscriptions, many from hospital employees whose pay envelopes were stuffed with subscription forms for a competing paper. Whether the probe will help to cure the hospital's hard-heartedness remains to be seen.
^ DART to Leslie Brenner, free-lance travel writer for Avenue magazine. Apparently intoxicated by the color, flavor, and texture of a Chris Davis feature on a Cognac, France, film festival that ran in the Orlando Sun-Sentinel last November 14, Brenner seems to have siphoned off substantial portions for her own piece on the very same subject in Avenue's February issue. Some of the similarities of word and phrase can perhaps be explained by extreme coincidence -- but is it not a strain to believe that both writers found themselves seated at the cinema next to Catherine Deneuve?
