Sometimes journalism happens; Sometimes it's not journalism

Any newsjunkie worth his or her salt will blow a fuse occasionally with a newspaper’s reporting. However, like avid baseball fans, we don’t really mean it when we shout, “kill the umpire.” Sometimes it’s just a bad call; baseball happens, so to speak. Sometimes, so to speak, journalism happens. Sometimes, it's not journalism but something else, as the contrast at the bottom displays.

Yesterday, I wrote the following letter to a senior editor at my hometown newspaper, the San Diego Union-Tribune.

“When Mr. Silverman, AP's managing editor, announced [to improve reporting on Iraq]that Robert Reid would be writing "an overview every 10 days," (NYT's 8/15) I expected more depth than this piece [regarding the difficulties in drafting the Iraqi constitution and the delay, that appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune August 17]. -- (I also expected more accuracy, as there are several errors of fact or omission that result in a failure to provide a full overview of the issues. But, that is not the reason I'm writing.)

“Curious, I checked the AP wire, and found that -- as often the case for understandable space limitations, or editing -- the full AP analysis was not in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

“However, the truncation of the final sentence in the U-T presentation, and the omission of the AP wire's last sentence, result in a very different net balance in the analysis:
“1. The U-T ended "But here, missing deadlines is nothing new." The AP wire read, "But here, missing deadlines is nothing new, and chances are the Iraqis will meet the new deadline and produce a draft by next Monday."

“2. The AP wire ended: "Think of Iraq right now as at the point of the original U.S. Constitution -- drafted in 1787 -- and whether that document, in that form, settled once and for all the question of American slavery."

“Questions: A) Is the above due to using the short version of the AP wire? B) Could the U-T have edited the long version of the AP wire to be more representative of the "analysis" and more balanced informing the reader?

“Thank you,

“Bruce Kesler

Last night I received the following reply, thorough, candid and satisfying all I asked:

“Dear Bruce Kesler:

“Thanks for your interest. As you appear to be aware, we and in general all newspapers rarely are able to run entire AP articles or articles from other wire services. On A2, when we have room for a third story, it normally squares off with the ad, and then the remaining space must be divided between two stories. The analysis was far too long for the space we had. And, unfortunately, when the story I had edited for the space allotted for it was placed on the page in the composing room, it turned out to be a little long. As a result, the clause "and chances are the Iraqis will meet the new deadline and produce a draft by next Monday" apparently got lopped off, to my and your chagrin, by an editor in the composing room after I had gone home for the day (or night, as the case may be). I personally would have cut "Bombs and bullets kill dozens across the country every day" from an earlier paragraph instead. In fact, the story as sent over had the next sentence in the last paragraph we ran, but that was trimmed, too. In defense of editors in the composing room, they often are dealing with various mini-crises on deadline such as where is the picture for this page, fixing a misspelled headline, trimming other stories, making sure the index is right, etc., and don't have the luxury of reading the story from beginning to end to find the perfect trim. I sure hope that one day we will be able to edit the entire paper on the computer so we don't have to trim stories on deadline in the composing room.

“I think the ending that got trimmed off would have been a good ending and a better one than we had, and better reflected the story. However, the story does point out, most notably in the third paragraph, that Iraq has missed deadlines before and then compromised, and the ending does not contradict that.

“When I was a journalist in Virginia, someone who worked for the Richmond Times-Dispatch who had participated in D-Day was quoted as saying something along the lines of "Putting together a newspaper is a lot like it was on D-Day -- organized confusion." This is not to say that we are confused people or that Eisenhower and Co. were confused in putting together the invasion -- you have a plan, but everything does not always come together as planned. Fortunately, we are not being killed or killing people but only writing about such events. But we do try hard each day to put together the best snapshot we can of what is happening. Yes, sometimes a paragraph gets trimmed out late at night because an ad was a little shorter, or a little bigger, or because a copy editor decided to add in some "thats" that made a story longer. (I once had a very tightly crafted column become three lines too long because a copy editor added in three unnecessary "thats".)

Sincerely,

David Gaddis Smith
Foreign Editor

I replied to Mr. Smith:

“Mr. Smith:
“THANK YOU for a very thorough, thoughtful and, most importantly, informative and satisfying reply.” Then I asked his permission to reprint his letter. Today he agreed.

By contrast to the above, to me, model of constructive discussion and learning about the practicalities of journalism, here’s an instance in which the new New York Times’ ombudsman, a respected veteran journalist, admits its readers “were poorly served by the paper’s slowness to cover official investigations into questionable financial transactions involving Air America, the liberal radio network….While it’s no excuse for such a belated response to the brewing scandal, it’s true that pieces of the unfolding story fell into the domains of three different parts of the newsroom…There was, my inquiries suggest, a lack of coordination and awareness of what the paper’s competitors across town [the New York Sun’s reporting]were writing.”

“Captain” Ed challenges some of the ombudsman’s statements, most tellingly the New York Times’ 62 stories “almost all of them positive public-relations stories about the start-up and the personalities involved in Air America and its programming. Obviously, the news desk had no issues pulling together across the beats to produce those stories, and yet when it came to looking at a scandal involving a corporation dedicated to broadcasting a liberal message, the Times suddenly became The Gang That Couldn’t E-Mail Straight? That explanation beggars belief.”

That’s why I prefer my imperfect but pretty honest newspaper, as most are, which tries to get it right, versus those newspapers that have consistent bias and, then, spit in my face and try to tell me it’s raining.