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Darts and Laurels
^ DART to The Harris County Herald, Pine Mountain, Georgia, for giving new meaning to the concept of campaign finance. In a September 16 memo, the paper's editor, Andy Kober, informed the Jim Chafin for Congress Committee that inasmuch as the committee "chose not to advertise the campaign in this newspaper, and has provided no indication of advertising the campaign in this newspaper, neither the committee nor the candidate should expect or anticipate any free publicity." For an example to be both envied and emulated, the editor helpfully suggested the committee might look to the treatment accorded Chafin's rival: "Incumbent Republican Mac Collins has advertised in this newspaper and on a number of different occasions. When Congressman Collins sends a fax into this office, this fax gets read and frequently published."
^ DART to The Boston Globe's David Warsh, for going far afield in his business column to play political war games. Following his October 15 endorsement of Massachusetts Governor William Weld in the fierce race between Weld and Senator John F. Kerry for a seat in the U.S. Senate, Warsh's October 27 column seemed clearly aimed at demolishing Kerry's reputation as a hero in Vietnam some twenty-eight years before. For his attack, Warsh seized on an insignificant detail offhandedly offered in conversation by a sailor under Kerry's command: the sailor had taken a shot at the enemy soldier whom Kerry then chased and killed in what Kerry described as self-defense. Camouflaged as an investigation ("A new account has raised questions about what happened on a riverbank on the Ca Mau peninsula on February 28, 1969. . . . The events of that day, and their lengthy aftermath, are what this column is about. . . .") but conceding, more than midway through the sniping, that "Without corroborative accounts, all talk about what happened on February 28 nessarily remains conjecture," Warsh's column went on to seriously propose, as a plausible alternative to the "best interpretation" of events as described in the Navy's citation for Kerry's Silver Star, the columnist's own "ugliest possibility" fantasy: "That behind the hootch Kerry administered a coup de gr‰ce to the Vietnamese soldier -- a practice not uncommon in those days, but a war crime nevertheless. . . ." The immediate explosion of public outrage was faced courageously by the Globe, with a comprehensive report that included testimony by the senator's former Navy superiors, by retired Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., and by two eyewitnesses -- among them, the sailor Warsh had cited -- who credit Kerry with saving their lives. Letters to the editor were stronger still, blasting Warsh for his "despicable, empty-handed ambush," and for his "abuse of journalistic power to generate a dust storm around nothing at all." The Globe's ombudsman, Mark Jurkowitz, also dug into the matter, and concluded, "The issue is whether the column belonged in the Globe. The answer is no." Fellow columnist James Carroll summed it up well: "Kerry's honor is crystal clear. The question remains, What of the honor of journalism?"
^ DART to WMUR-TV, in Manchester, New Hampshire, for cutting off its nose (for news) to spite its face. Viewers who relied solely on the ABC affiliate to stay on top of the '96 campaign would not have learned much about what went on at various congressional and gubernatorial debates taking place in their area in the fall; indeed, such loyal viewers would not even have known that any of those seven informative events had taken place at all. Three rival news organizations -- New England Cable News, the Manchester Union Leader, and New Hampshire Public Television -- sponsored the debates. Interestingly, a WMUR-sponsored debate in October got ample attention from its rivals, including a page-one story in the Union Leader.
* LAUREL to the Rumford Falls Times, and editor Greg Davis, for cracking enough eggs for an investigative omelet. In its December 27, 1995 issue, the 4,700-circulation Maine weekly laid out the rotten conditions imposed on migrant workers at DeCoster Egg Farms, a 14,000-acre operation in nearby Turner where 4.6 million hens produce some 23 million eggs a week. Based on months of surreptitious night-time visits to the company trailer park where the fearful workers live -- most of whom are Hispanic and spoke, reluctantly, through the interpreter he brought along -- and verified by the bipartisan group of legislators he took on a pre-publication tour, Davis's report covered some six of the broadsheet's sixteen pages. His graphic account -- the subhumanly crowded, filthy, and dangerous housing for the workers and their children, the terrorizing supervisors who waved pistols and knives, the practically nonexistent health care and compensation for injuries and accidents sustained on the job, the absence of time cards and suspected withholding of pay --acked swift results. Four supermarket chains have boycotted DeCoster's eggs. State legislators have prompted investigations by the attorney general's office, the fire marshal's office, and OSHA. DeCoster's operations in other states are being looked at. The U.S. Labor Department has imposed a $3.6 million fine. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been asked to review subsidies earmarked for DeCoster. And on September 17, in an in-depth interview with Davis (who is now the managing editor of The Franklin Journal, a twice-weekly in Farmington, Maine) Austin J. "Jack" DeCoster outlined the changes he plans to make and promised to "do what's right."
^ DART to Michael Moore, investigative reporter at the Hackensack, New Jersey, Record, for repurposing the business of enterprise journalism. As revealed in a Garden State News Service story by statehouse reporter Michelle Pellemans on October 25, Moore had been moonlighting as the sole proprietor of Dig Dirt Investigations, a private agency selling the same kind of nasty information routinely unearthed in the course of his work for TheRecord. Need the names of bad lawyers ($30), fake universities ($35), or malpracticing doctors ($75)? Evicted tenants ($30), court-martialed soldiers ($50), or sued reporters ($47)? Dig Dirt, according to its website page, would provide. It would also provide comprehensive information gleaned from the records of the Department of Motor Vehicles, which extends free and easy access to reporters as a courtesy -- a courtesy that, in light of Moore's behavior, is now being reconsidered, possibly through legislation. (Moore has since departed The Record.)
^ DART to Philadelphia Weekly, editor Tim Whitaker, and free-lance writer Tom McGrath, for a novel approach to journalism. With the attention of its readers riveted last July on the All-Star Game being played in the city of brotherly love, the Weekly stepped up to the press plate and delivered a 4,000-word cover story ("The Beauty and the Beast") on the "recently discovered love letters between Jimmie Foxx, one of Philadelphia's all-time great ballplayers, and starlet Judy Holliday." Running over five pages in the tabloid, and illustrated with reproductions of letters handwritten on various hotel stationery, McGrath's highly detailed epistolary exposŽ traced the affair from its beginning in early April 1945, when Foxx mailed Holliday the photos she had asked for, through late September, when she dumped him. The author's bio box took note of his plans to publish "the complete collection of the Foxx-Holliday letters in book form." Elsewhere in the issue, Whitaker devoted his entire editor's page to celebrating the discovery involving his hero, who "had always been sold short, even here in his honorary hometown. . . . If publishing these letters . . . will rekindle the memory of a sweet farm boy who loved our city and played his favorite game in our midst th devotion and magnanimity," he concluded, "then it will be worth it." Not everyone, however, would agree, particularly after the Weekly admitted the piece was a hoax. As columnist Stu Bykofsky commented in the Philadelphia Daily News, "The most shocking part of this mess is that Whitaker offers no apologies. Since he says he's done nothing wrong, he's free to fake another story." Actually, Whitaker promised not to, in his column. "Once in a lifetime," he wrote, "is enough."
^ DART to The Monitor, a Freedom newspaper serving the McAllen, Texas-Reynosa, Mexico area, for borderline journalism. Among the items in The Monitor's May 13 edition: 1) a page-one "editor's note" apologizing for a February 24 article detailing the unfortunate effects of questionable layoffs on some 1,500 workers at the Zenith production facilities in Reynosa, heart of the country's maquiladora industry -- an article to which Zenith had vehemently objected in a letter to the editor published on February 28, and which, the editor now said, had left "inaccurate impressions of Zenith and the maquila industry as a whole"; 2) a twenty-four-page, four-color advertising supplement, "Maquiladoras & Manufacturing Plants: 30 Years of Progress," that included a full-page ad from Zenith; and 3) a "Special to The Monitor" report, headed advantages of maquila system boost 'hecho en mŽxico' label, on the paper's front page. The article carried the alien byline of one Jackie Larson, who appears to have crossed over from her role as editor of the advertising supplement.
^ DART to the San Antonio Express-News, for getting the fourth estate mixed up with real estate. Occupying some 300 column-inches of valuable news space in the paper's Sunday, June 9 A-section -- 28 inches of which were located in a prime, page-one, above-the-fold spot -- was a piece by staff writer David Uhler about the soft market for high-end dream houses in the San Antonio area. And nestled among the four photogenic homes featured was the "classic" $900,000 mansion that was "recently put on the market" by Larry Walker, publisher of the Express-News. Proceeding "at the risk of sounding like an advertisement," as Uhler realistically assessed it, the piece informed readers that, among other things, the Walkers had modernized the bathrooms, enclosed a sunporch, opened up the kitchen, and given "all the walls a fresh coat of paint."
