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Darts and Laurels
^ DART to the Chicago Tribune, for a brand-new way of serving coffee. In early fall, the paper and the Starbucks company entered into an exclusive marketing arrangement whereby the Trib became the only city daily sold in every one of the eighty Starbucks coffee shops throughout the Chicago market area -- thus enjoying a freshly enriching advantage over its arch-rival, the Chicago Sun-Times. In a not-so-curious coincidence on October 7, the Tribune's Tempo section brewed up an oversized, overheated, and oversweetened profile (accompanied by two large photos) of Howard Schultz, Starbucks c.e.o. Headline on the feature: the starbucking of america.
^ DART to the Omaha World-Herald, for questionable journalism. With the mayoral election only days away and incumbent Hal Daub unconvincingly denying allegations by seven deputy police chiefs that he had knowingly released erroneous crime statistics to the press and had instructed the police department to withhold financial information from the city council, the World-Herald put an eccentric twist on investigative duty. The paper arranged for the mayor to take a lie-detector test at the World-Herald offices, hired the polygrapher, prepared the questions, and, on May 8, called a press conference at which publisher John Gottschalk announced the results: His Honor had passed the test and the paper's mission Ñ the "search for truth" Ñhad been fulfilled. So satisfactorily, in fact, that the World-Herald's editorial later that day contended that further investigation would not be needed.
^ DART to Donella Meadows, professor of environmental journalism at Dartmouth College, MacArthur "genius" fellow, and syndicated columnist for, among other newspapers, the West Lebanon, New Hampshire, Valley News, for abuse of power. Meadows's "The Global Citizen" column on October 4 was filled with righteous indignation about an unnamed "pushy" reporter at an unnamed paper who, ignoring Meadows's suggestion to delay the story, had "fueled rumors" by "exploiting his advantage" over unworldly townsfolk by getting them to answer "intrusive questions" and then reporting on what she regarded as a "private" matter: a land-development plan in which she is the leading principal. Dismissing the August 13 report on her negotiations as "small-town . . . gossip" equivalent to those endless "blood and glamour" stories about O.J. and Versace Ñ stories that "good journalists would cringe at" Ñ Meadows omitted several salient facts. For one thing, as Jim Fox, editor of the New Hampshire Valley News Ñ the paper that was "the perpetrator of this enormity" Ñ dryly observed in an article accompanying her October 4 column, a plan to develop 270 acres for cooperative housing and farming is news in anybody's neighborhood. For another, as Fox went on to reveal, contrary to Meadows's suggestion that innocent people had been manipulated by a predatory reporter, Meadows had done some heavy manipulating herself: she had threatened to write about the reporter in her column, and to point to him in her Dartmouth classes as an example of invasion of privacy by journalists, if he didn't kill the story. "Let us stipulate that Meadows is a writer of great insight," editor Fox graciously wrote. "But even broad vision can sometimes wear blinders."
* LAUREL to The Jewish Week, in New York City, and staff writer Lawrence Cohler-Esses, for following the money to the land of milk and honey. When Dr. Irving Moskowitz, the controversial right-wing American Jewish philanthropist, caused yet another international uproar Ñ this time, in mid-September, Moskowitz had handed over a house he owned in an East Jerusalem Arab neighborhood to Jewish settlers just when the U.S was appealing to Israel to refrain from provocative actions Ñ New York's Jewish Week didn't hang back. Focusing on the fact that the source of Moskowitz's millions is a bingo club he runs on the West Coast, the paper dispatched Cohler-Esses to find out more. His September 26 report, datelined Hawaiian Gardens, California, showed how Moskowitz's grand design for the Middle East affects Ñ indeed, controls Ñ the economic, political, and social life of the tiny, poor Latino enclave just outside Los Angeles that is home to "The Fastest Game In Town."
^ DART to the Allentown, Pennsylvania, Morning Call, and sportswriter Terry Larimer, for a case of journalistic mal de mer. His thirteen-part series, "Ports of Call," was obviously off course even before it left the dock. The idea, as Larimer explained to readers, was for him, along with his wife and dog, to embark in his thirty-year-old, twenty-eight-foot sailboat on a thousand-mile voyage between New York City and Bar Harbour, Maine, in a fund-raising project for Habitat for Humanity. A major goal was to raise $10,000 toward the cost of rehabilitating a house for "Marilyn," a divorced young mother who could not afford a home of her own. "My wife and I have long dreamed of retiring . . . and going out to discover America," confided Larimer in his opening piece, "but why wait to retire if I can blend my job with what has become my passion?" The only hitch, Larimer went on, was that the boat was not exactly shipshape. In fact, because of an unfortunate "mishap" some sixteen months before, it was sleeping at the bottom of the sea. The journalist was naked in h appeal: "I could use some help . . . ."
He got it. According to the weekly front-page dispatches he filed between April 27, when the series was launched, and July 13, when the sailors returned, volunteers pulled the vessel out from its resting place in Maryland's depths, hauled it to Larimer's driveway in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and provided carpentry, wiring, painting, equipment, maps, and charts, as well as hospitality along the way. "Someone will be recruited to run down to Maryland to pick up our old mainsail, which we'll use until the new one catches up to us," Larimer shamelessly wrote in his May 11 report. "Maybe we'll get lucky and find someone to run errands to buy new foam for our cushions, a new propane tank, and new line for the halyards . . . ." He also got "overwhelming cooperation from businesses." In short, Larimer ended up with a completely rehabilitated boat. As for that rehabilitated habitat for Marilyn, mentions in the series became less and less frequent, and finally drifted away. Not until July 27 did the Call's Phil Boyle report that Habitat for Humanity had presented the young working mother with the keys to her finished $42,000 home. Only then did readers learn, in paragraph nine of the ten-paragraph story, that Larimer's self-serving trip had raised a measly $500 for Habitat. "Maybe," the organization's less than buoyant executive director told the Call, "we didn't promote it enough."
* LAUREL to the Northwest Arkansas Times, a l4,500-circulation community daily in Fayetteville, for holding the feet of public servants to its investigative fire. On March 15, the paper began an inquiry into the handling of evidence that had been confiscated by the Springdale Police Department in a bad-check case but never sold at auction to gain at least partial retribution for victims of the fraud, as had been ordered by the court. Television sets turned up in offices of the police chief, his lieutenant, and city hall; a computer and printer were in use in the station's evidence room; a deep-freezer was found at the home of the daughter of the police chief's secretary. In addition, thousands of dollars in cash had gone missing. By May 28, the Times could report that a number of employees had been suspended, several others had been transferred, the lieutenant Ñ after agreeing to return $8,200 to the city coffers Ñ had been fired, and the chief had resigned.
Three months later, the paper was pursuing yet another investigation in the public interest. This time, its focus was on allegations of financial improprieties and questionable management practices at Area Connection, a nonprofit social services agency for the the aging with a $7 million annual tax-supported budget. Among other things, the Times revealed that Area Connection's director had used the agency's credit card to charge expenses to his private consulting business. By August 22 Ñ the day after the Times's filing of a Freedom of Information Act suit against the agency's board of directorsÑ the Times could report that the board had voted publicly to terminate the agency's executive director.
^ DART to The Albany Times-Union and columnist Fred LeBrun, for injudicious journalism. On August 11 LeBrun wrote an update on the fate of Ralph Tortorici, a twenty-six-year-old university student serving a twenty-year prison sentence for taking hostage at gunpoint an entire classics class of some thirty-five students and grievously wounding one who had ended the standoff by grabbing away his semiautomatic rifle. LeBrun argued that Tortorici should not be punished, but, rather, treated for mental illness. The column was headlined this time, make the system work. It put references to the "crime" and the "criminal" in dismissive quotes. It suggested that "with the hysteria of the hostage-taking only a dim memory, the sentence in retrospect seems way out of line." And it revealed, with approval, that, come September, "Albany attorney Kathryn Kase will argue compellingly before the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court that Ralph Tortorici's rights were violated during his trial." It did not reveal that lawyer Kase is married to Jeff Cohe who, as editor of The Albany Times-Union, is the columnist's boss.
^ DART to the Grant County Herald, Elbow Lake, Minnesota, for malignant marketing. While other local businesses were doing their part for the annual summer festival by sponsoring how-many-pennies-in the-bottle games and other genteel pleasures, the Herald was shoving an insidious brand of "fun" down the townfolks' throats. In a double-page promotion on July 23, the paper provided forty cryptic clues Ñ each attributed to a different restaurant, company, or shop and accompanied by a photograph of a smiling Elbow Lake denizen holding up a small round box Ñ that contestants needed to follow in order to win the $l00 prize in the Herald-sponsored "Snoose Box Hunt." Those puzzled by such clues as "Reach in your pocket for a big juicy chew," and "Split in two what once was one," or, for that matter, those too unsophisticated to know just what, exactly, a "snoose box" is, got another handy clue from a rough sketch in the upper right-hand corner of the Herald's spread: a small round box of Copenhagen smokeless tobacco. Naturally, the father-son team that sniffed out the box hidden in the roots of a tree and won the paper's prize was featured in a County Herald photo. And naturally, the photo showed the son holding that small round box. He was six months old.
