Letters

ON BEING CIVIC-MINDED

Relying on anonymous sources (and even an anonymous newspaper!) for scare stories about public journalism is weak, in my view. But on the whole, I thought cjr's piece ("Are You Now, Or Have You Ever Been, a Civic Journalist?" September/
 October) was very fair to me personally, balanced in a reasonably thoughtful way about the movement as a whole, and much needed as this "debate" moves into a second and, one hopes, more productive stage. I put the word "debate" in quotes because the first stage was dominated by an attack on something we proponents weren't saying -- namely, that "advocacy journalism" was due for a comeback and that journalists should "get involved" in solving problems themselves or pushing their agenda. I believe this false paraphrase was mostly the result of professional reflex ("if it's not what I recognize as good journalism, it must be what I recognize as the opposite"), laziness, and, in a few cases, perhaps, deliberate straw-man tactics. But I've learned a lot over these past three years, and I'm fairly satisfied with just getting on the radar screen. Much more needs to be done if the dangers the article warned about are to be avoided and the promise of public journalism redeemed. The whole thing could peter out, blow u or dissolve into mediocrity. I do hope, however, that the journalism reviews will do more than "on the one hand, on the other hand" reporting as we move along. It was that kind of reporting -- refusing to correct a false paraphrase -- that helped the debate get off track in the first place.

Jay Rosen
New York, N.Y.

WHY HE DIDN'T STICK

I was surprised and disappointed to read Steve Franklin's assertion that "Doron Levin, a FreePress business columnist, who went back to work after three weeks, announced upon his return that he no longer needed a union" ("Detroit: Which Side Are You On?" cjr, November/December).

First of all, the assertion is untrue. I never said that, and it wasn't my reason for returning to work. Second, I explained my reasons for returning to work, at length and in detail, to Steve Franklin and later to someone who identified herself as a fact-checker from cjr. (The assertion is almost identical to a phrase used in a Boston Globe story about the strike, which was similarly inaccurate. Could it have been accidentally lifted?)

For the record, I publicly stated my opposition to a strike before the walkout. I resigned the union and returned to work because, as a journalist who has spent his professional life reporting and writing, I will not be a party to the attempted destruction of a newspaper. I announced my position to my colleagues at a meeting of The Newspaper Guild in August.

Doron Levin
Detroit, Mich.

Steve Franklin replies: I too am surprised -- by Levin's letter.

We talked just after his return to work and spoke again later. Let me quote from my notes of a telephone conversation with him:

"When I came here it was the third time I had joined a union in a fashion that suggested that joining a union was a price for getting a job. I am not going to do that again. I hope that when everything is over here, it will be an open shop and I will have a chance to negotiate for myself. Maybe unions are for people who don't negotiate for themselves. I don't want to feel I have to join a union as a price for getting a job. The question for me is, if you are a journalist, do you need to belong to a union, and the answer is no."

ARTFUL CRITICISM

The Dart to The Boston Globe (for "less-than-museum-quality journalism," cjr, November/December) contained several factual errors. Christine Temin did not go to New York as a favor for the Museum of Fine Art, she was on assignment to do a story about the MFA from an unusual vantage point. She did not represent herself at the Sotheby's auction she attended as anyone other than Christine Temin. Finally, the winners of the auction were not in the room, they made their bids by telephone.

Whether we should have pursued this type of story in the particular manner we did is certainly worthy of discussion by a journalism review. But the tale you wove just isn't true.

Mary Jane Wilkinson
Assistant managing editor/features
The Boston Globe
Boston, Mass.

The editors reply: The Dart was based entirely on Temin's own account as published in the July 2 Globe. According to that account, the museum, hoping to keep its interest in the auction secret and thus keep down the price, was looking for someone unknown to the other parties to act in its behalf, and Temin obligingly took the role of what she called a "plant," following the museum's instructions on every move from the use of the paddle and a "secret finger wiggle" to the $62,000 limit on her bids. The Dart did not say that she used an assumed name (although, in fact, Temin did say that at one point she used her maiden name), nor did it mention the whereabouts of the representatives of the two other museums whose bids won out. Although in a followup piece in the November 17 Boston Phoenix Temin was reported as being "perplexed" by the Dart, the Globe's top editor, Matthew Storin, was not. Temin violated Globe policy by "participating in the story," Storin told the Phoenix. "In effect she was doing a favor -- not a huge favor, but a favor -- for an institution she covers."

VACUUM-PACKED HERO?

CJR's handling of the Harry Wu story ("Back to the Gulag," cjr, September/October) struck this reader as a rehash of widely available information, a rehash cast as a special CJR tribute.

CJR's hyping of the Wu piece did it a disservice; using two full-page photos of the same person -- one on the cover, the other on the opening spread -- didn't help either. The redundancy seemed all the stranger because of the ironic overtones resonating off a cover line that read "Pictures That Harry Wu Risked His Life to Get." The implication was that he had risked his life to bring back a self-portrait, among other pictures.

Meanwhile, though the cover line played up the importance of the pictures, the layout shrank all but one of the documentary pictures -- most of which were lifted from a 60 Minutes segment -- to postage-stamp size. (When was the segment aired? The article does not say.)

Harry Wu's bravery and commitment are beyond question. His qualifications as a journalist -- his willingness and/or ability to provide context and perspective, to make distinctions between what happens in Chinese institutions and what is done with the central government's knowledge and approval, for example -- should surely remain open to question. And a watchdog magazine like CJR should surely ask whether there are risks involved in a news organization's relying on the reporting of an openly partisan journalist or "surrogate journalist," as the authors inventively call Wu.

At the very least, having made the decision to run the article, the editors should have urged the authors to seek comment about Wu from more than a single source. As it is, we hear only from Ed Bradley, the 60 Minutes correspondent who accompanied Wu on Wu's second (undated) trip to China to obtain the footage aired on the award-winning segment.

What CJR gave us was a hero in a vacuum.

Jon Swan
Lalitpur, Nepal

Swan is cjr's former senior editor.

AN EARLY VALENTINE

This is just a note to compliment you on your November/December issue. I believe cjr covers the profession of journalism the way the rest of journalism should cover society. That is, without fear or favor, without sucking up to a particular interest group, be it an advertiser or a corporation, and at the same time, without being negative simply for negativity's sake.

Alex Marshall
Norfolk, Va.

CLARIFICATION

A Dart in the November/December issue to The Seattle Times -- for offering to back off an open-records lawsuit against the University of Washington if the university would release to the paper its list of presidential finalists twenty-four hours before making it public -- should not be construed as suggesting that the offer was made after the paper had actually gone to court. According to editor Michael Fancher, the offer was made during preliminary discussions in which the university was telling the Times that while it could not meet its request for records pertaining to the presidential search, it was hoping to avoid a lawsuit. Nor should the Dart be construed as criticizing the paper's larger -- and laudable -- effort to keep public bodies from deliberating behind closed doors.