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Darts & Laurels
* DART to The Wall Street Journal and staff writer Daniel Costello, latest nominees for membership in the Curious Coincidences Club. Costello's May 29 compilation of food festivals around the country included several substantial ingredients -- among others, lively descriptions of the Georgia Peach, the Gilroy Garlic, and the Kutztown, Pennsylvania, German festivals -- that were strikingly similar to the mouth-watering listings in Food Festivals: Eating Your Way from Coast to Coast, a book by Barbara Carlson published by Visible Ink Press in 1997. With the unfair absence of any acknowledgment of Carlson -- whom Costello had sought out and interviewed -- or her book -- which she had express-mailed to Costello -- sticking in its craw, Visible Ink wrote to Joanne Lipman, editor of the Weekend Journal, asking for some sort of notice informing readers about the book. The reply came from Stuart D. Karle, associate general counsel for Dow Jones. "Mr. Costello never ‘lift(ed)' text from Ms. Carlson's book," the lawyer wrote, ignoring the numerous peas-in-a-pod likenesses. "Mr. Costello had intended to refer readers to Ms. Carlson's book. Unfortunately, he learned that the book would be of little value to Journal readers in the summer of 1998 as it was published in the Spring of 1997. Given these facts, no correction will be published."
* LAUREL to The Kansas City Star and special projects reporter Joe Stephens, for proving that justice is indeed blind -- to its own ethical conflicts. In his two-part series "On Their Honor: Judges and Their Assets," Stephens presented incontrovertible evidence that, in violation of U.S. law and the Judicial Code of Conduct, federal district judges have been presiding over scores of lawsuits against companies in which they have a financial interest. Based on an exhaustive review of the hard-to-get stock portfolios of lifetime-appointed federal judges in four sample states, matched against cases that had passed through their courtrooms, Stephens's unprecedented series (April 5,6) also explained why such abuses went unrevealed. The rare litigant who made it through the red-tape maze of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts in Washington, D.C., to obtain a judge's financial disclosure reports risked infuriating the very person who would determine the outcome of the case. Even as Stephens was wrapping up his story, reform began. Judges sold stocks, revised their disclosure reports, offered to conduct new trials. One withdrew from a $9 million lawsuit over which he had presided for the last eight years. And more than two dozen judges agreed to open their assets lists to anyone who wished to see them, no questions asked.
* DART to WMAQ-TV, NBC's owned and operated station in Chicago, for yet another slide down the slippery slope. The station recently entered into a cloudy arrangement with the Midwest telephone company, Ameritech, proud owner of a recently installed Doppler Radar system leased by WMAQ -- and, not incidentally, WMAQ's largest advertiser. A July 10 memo from the station's advertising department instructed all meteorologists and weather reporters to "mention Ameritech in the on-air weather presentation at such times as NBC 5 shall deem appropriate." The memo helped with an example: "Now let's go to the NBC 5 live Doppler Radar on the Ameritech Tower in Naperville." The directive further required the station's weathercasters to mention each mention to the sales department, which in turn would keep Ameritech informed. Station manager Larry Wert now says that while weathercasters are no longer obligated to mention Ameritech, "from time to time, they do." (As was noted by Sun-Times media critic Robert Feder, who disclosed the hidden-commercial deal in his July 17 column, WMAQ had suspended news anchor Carol Marin in 1995 for refusing to read plugs for sponsors.)
* DART to Bruce DeSilva, enterprise editor of The Associated Press, for an incredible lapse in judgment. Hired by the Allentown, Pennsylvania, Morning Call to coach its reporters and editors in improving their skills, DeSilva showed up with a mystery guest in tow. While staying mostly in the background, she did at times participate. In one session, for example, DeSilva asked her to read from her work, which he held up as a model. In another session, when discussion turned to the question of cleaning up quotes, DeSilva solicited her opinion. At that, at least one reporter left in protest -- for by then, people were beginning to figure out that the uninvited guest was Patricia Smith, the overimaginative columnist who had recently left The Boston Globe in disgrace. "I understand now that I should not have let Patricia accompany me, and certainly should not have asked her a question," DeSilva wrote in a July 24 letter of apology to the paper's managing editor. At the same time, he went on, he was dismayed by the staff's reactions to her presence. "Patricia did a terribly stupid and unethical thing, for which she not only was fired but has received the professional equivalent of the death penalty. That, it seems to me, is not only just but sufficient."
* DART to The San Diego Union-Tribune, for playing politics with the news. The paper's May 14 city edition carried a page-one box slugged "Election ‘98." Below its headline, where do they stand?, the following notice appeared: "Candidates hoping to represent San Diego County in Congress and the state Legislature tell their positions, speaking out on the environment, crime, the economy, and other issues in a Voter's Guide for the June 2 primary elections. -- Pages B-8 and 9." But readers who turned to the paper's inside spread were guided only to the views of Republicans and Libertarians; not a single position of a single Democrat was anywhere to be found.
* DART to Yvonne Samuel, a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who is also a certified diversity facilitator as well as an ordained minister; and Myra Dillingham, a representative of LDC&Associates of Kansas City, Missouri, which runs diversity programs nationwide, for doing more harm than good. In an appalling perversion of such programs' goals, Samuel and Dillingham chose to end a mandatory diversity-awareness workshop at the paper in July not only with a joined-hands prayer -- but with a prayer to Jesus Christ. Earlier in the session, when participants had been asked to share a personal experience of feeling "different," one Jewish reporter had recalled a moment of Christian prayer in public school some forty years before. After the session, that reporter wrote a memo to management describing the "sour taste" of the message of the workshop prayer: "the Christians are in charge and anyone else is different." Editors later apologized to offended members of the staff, and have since contracted for future workshops with another diversity consultant. Oddly, however, as reported in the St. Louis Journalism Review and The New York Times, management says it made the switch for reasons of cost, rather than for a transgression that went so far beyond the pale.
* DART to USA Today, for incorrigible waywardness. Once again, "The Nation's Newspaper" sold its front page -- logo, layout, typeface, features, graphics, and all -- to an advertiser. In what is only the most recent such trick by USA Today (see Darts & Laurels, July/August 1997), this special promotional edition wrapped the happy news about a pharmaceutical company, Glaxo Wellcome, around its June 30 European edition, then dropped the whole adulterated package at the bedroom doors of the thousands of attendees at the 12th World AIDS Conference in Geneva.
* LAUREL to FamilyCircle, for a service piece of a different kind. Amid the predictable fare of one-pot dinners, wallpaper wonders, and beauty tips, the October 6 issue presented a powerful, nine-page report on the miracle of bone marrow transplants. The report drew on the experiences of two young families who had survived, through the goodness of far-away strangers, the nightmare of having a loved one -- a thirty-seven-year-old mother, a five-year-old son -- suffer from an otherwise fatal blood disease. The report drew on the experiences of those good strangers as well. Sidebars, graphics, and a Q&A explained the discomforting procedure and how and why it works, while a helpful bind-in card to Congress made it easy to request more funding for research and a registry of donors. Finally, in a strong "Call to Action," FamilyCircle offered to provide free blood screening -- the first step to donating bone marrow -- for the first 5,000 volunteer donors to call its special hotline. Urged the magazine: ‘Just Do It.' By mid-October, some 3,000 readers did.
* DART to the Bloomington, Illinois, Pantagraph, for panting after fame and fortune for its advertisers and its staff. In full-page color ads on Saturday, June 13 and Sunday, June 14, the paper lured readers to a "Guess-the-Number-of-Papers-in-the-Pantagraph-Truck" contest at the Eastland Mall. The big draw (besides the promotional prize of "a $250 Eastland Mall Shopping Spree"): the chance to "meet Pantagraph celebrities and staff." Smiling from the ads were those ten "celebs," accompanied by details of the scheduled weekend hours of their appearances at the mall. Identified by name but not by job description, they turned out to be The Pantagraph's publisher, news editor, business writer, operations manager, reporters, photographer, and p.r. guy.
