Reflections of an Occassional Semi-Journalist

It has only been a couple of weeks since unsuccessful Kentucky education commissioner candidate Dennis Cheek was fussing at me for my journalistic short comings.

KSN&C had posted news of his creationist writings from the early 1980s. We also picked up a news story from a professional news outlet that contained an error - which we quickly corrected. Cheek and I exchanged a few testy emails.

Cheek argued that it would have been better if I had "checked with [him] first BEFORE posting" rather than "always post[ing] first and "then forc[ing him] to respond to [the story] ex post facto." This was particularly germane in Cheek's case since he now rejects his former creationist position. It would have been better for Cheek if I had. But it was his choice not to mention his paper to the Kentucky board of education that had selected him as a finalist. When the issue surfaced he was immediately put on the defensive.

It is my understanding that when he got "the question" from reporters covering his interview in Kentucky, "he looked stunned for about 20 seconds," and then "very forthrightly" rejected his old paper and expanded his thoughts on religion and science with appropriate detail and recognition of the court's ruling in the Dover case.

But is KSN&C really practicing journalism by simply aggregating such news stories? I think not.

Fellow blogger Tom Eblen, who writes for the Herald-Leader and teaches journalistic ethics at UK tells me that one is a journalist when one practices journalism. I take that to mean, actually putting in the time and doing the work it takes to research the issues, check sources, capture quotes and accurately reflect the differing points of view that attend every news story and to do it from primary (first-person) sources. This pursuit is a noble and critical component of our democracy and like many Americans I am concerned for its future.

In most cases, KSN&C dabbles in semi-journalism. A lot of time and effort goes into assuring that our reporting is authoritative, but we are clearly at the mercy of what others write. Mistakes are to be avoided, but if someone errs it is up to the author to be responsible for their own content.
As I argued to Cheek, "You are responsible for handling what you write. I am responsible for handling what I write. "They" are responsible for handling what they write."

Cheek and I were ultimately unable to agree but my final message to him was,

Finally, and sincerely, I have no personal animosity toward you. It's not about that for me. I have my own opinions, but I am largely disinterested in which individual becomes our next commissioner. That's the board's job to determine, and I don't have a vote. When that selection is made, I'm going to reprint the news - good or bad - no matter who the commissioner is. I will express opinions along the way.

I can understand how you might be frustrated, or even angry, that I found your old creationist paper and printed the fact of its existence. I anticipated and opined that it would be seen as "a problem" by many. I think that has proven to be true. I have wondered aloud why you didn't alert the board to its existence. If the Herald-Leader can be believed - and, right or wrong, I rely on their reporting every day - ...they wrote that it did not come up as an issue for you in Missouri [where Cheek was also a finalist]. But really Dennis, none of that makes me the responsible party when it comes to handling the fallout. It was your [paper], and your responsibility to handle it - which you ultimately did very forthrightly. I believe if you had done that up front, we'd be having a very different conversation right now.

Is it fair to Cheek for me to reflect on this experience? It happened. He is a public figure who was vying for the top job in our state's educational system, and that's "my beat."

More recently, KSN&C has been doing something very different - practicing real-live-honest-to-goodness journalism by "covering" the Petrilli v Silberman trial. This was the kind of detached, yet face-to-face journalism real reporters do every day. For eight full days I sat with H-L's Jim Warren on a hard bench, tapping away on my keyboard, trying to capture as much data as I could. [...not my preferred method, but Judge Ishmael "took away" my digital recorder.]


On the last day, waiting for the jury to return with their verdict, John McNeill mentioned to the judge something about how my blogging and Twittering changed the ambiance of the courtroom - which in his mind became reminiscent of an old WWII movie with the lilt of the telegraph dotting the away in the background; dot da dit dot dot dit - only now it was; tap tap, tap tap tap.

The experience of reporting a trial was more demanding than I anticipated. In court by 8 AM to catch any discussions before the jury arrived; the reporter is pretty well stuck there. To leave for a moment is to risk missing the story. To misunderstand a ruling is to misreport. Then, somewhere around 5PM when the brain is a bit mushy, some kind of story must be written. Several days I found myself "too tired" and not having a deadline or an editor - but having a wife - chose family time instead. I would get up at 5 AM the next day (as is my custom) to post my story. Some days I could bounce off whatever Warren had done the night before.

But that wasn't the worst of it. The very situation put me squarely in conflict with people I know, trust and respect on both sides of the issue. I was neutral in a land where everyone was expected to be loyal and take sides.

As a former principal in Fayette County, I was a colleague of Peggy Petrilli's when she was still at Northern. I was publicly supportive of her work in a Herald-Leader Op Ed and viewed her selection for Booker T Washington Academy as an important history-changing effort in our community. I said I'd be watching what happened.

I had also written in H-L about Fayette County's need for strong consistent leadership at the top following a string of short-lived superintendents. The degree of turnover had left a district somewhat adrift. There was a lot of undirected talent in Fayette County and Silberman seemed to be just what the doctor ordered.

But the case also brought forward a string witnesses and visitors to the courtroom that I knew or had worked with, including a couple I worked with pretty closely. Bob McLaughlin had been my director for a number of years, and if he had remained so, I'm pretty sure I would have worked in Fayette County a little longer. And if either one of us ever needed a little "therapy" Jock Gum and I could simply walk next door and get it; me for him, and he for me. Bob and Jock testified on the same day and there aren't a whole lot of people I like better than these guys.

Add to that Barbara Connor, Mike Burke, Becky Sagan, Mary Browning, Mike McKenzie, Vince Mattox, Jack Hayes, Lisa Stone, Amanda Main Ferguson, and I know I'm forgetting some - like I say, it was not easy to be neutral. I sensed periods of discomfiture with the principal combatants. Some days they could manage, if not a smile, a pleasant nod. Other days they avoided eye contact. In my head it was related to whatever I had written the day before, but maybe that's just ego on my part. They may not have read KSN&C at all, but were only reacting to the pressures of the trial itself.

But the stories got read. A modest little niche blog, KSN&C readership - typically eduwonks and news types - doubled and doubled again as Fayette County and North Carolina teachers, and a surprising number of young lawyers, appear to have discovered it.

But that's no match for Jim Warren's readership at the Herald-Leader. Despite their economic woes, H-L readership has never been higher and Warren's stories are read by thousands.

But the news business is in trouble.

On the eve of President Obama's health care press conference, the Herald-Leader came and got Warren out of the courtroom. Concerned by the length of the trial and needing an experienced hand to interview some local folks on health care issues, they sent a young reporter to fetch him to help with the story. Apparently, there was no one else to do it. When he returned the next day, he asked me, "They didn't settle, did they?"

But there is no substitute for the work Warren does. If the case had not fallen in July, as it did, I could have followed the case for KSN&C readers, but I could not have covered it. And I would not have caught issues related to how the law was argued (twisted) before the jury, issues of privilege or the incredible claims by one director that she had never marked a principal down in any category of evaluation in her entire career. We're going to have to talk about that issue some more later.

Warren joked with me that bloggers are the new journalists who would transform news gathering - but we both know that's not true. Newspapers may change but I think there are a few critical constants that remain.

• There is no suitable substitute for the professional practice of journalism.
• Professional journalism is crucial to democracy.
• Local papers may well pool journalists for future coverage of state and national news but local papers must "own" local news.
• Most bloggers fail to rise to the level of "journalism" most of the time and all too frequently fail the test of neutral reporting. Neutrality is just not "their thing." Political voice is.
• Lots of folks are going to continue to want a print edition of "the paper."

America needs a new model for supporting news gathering and it can't be governmental. Perhaps new media foundations will emerge.

The media will continue to publish stories that shine an unfavorable light on certain powerful individuals and those individuals will continue to attack the media as a result. There may even be some psychological satisfaction for the general public doing so as well.

But by some means, the work of professional journalists must be preserved. It is far too important to be left to the amateurs.

Pixels or paper, truth doesn’t care

I'm going to chat through this insightful and honest bit from sportswriter/editor Dwight Jaynes at the Portland Tribune:

There’s something of a war going on right now between the mainstream media – particularly sports writers and columnists – and bloggers.

I have experienced this. Jake Payne over at Page One screams about it from time to time.

I guess bloggers are a threat. In one sense, we rip off legitimate news sources by reprinting their stuff under "fair use" provisions of the copyright act. In another sense, we generate buzz that usually gets picked up in the mainstream media somewhere - and sometimes break big stories the mainstream media misses.

Kentucky School News & Commentary conducted an extensive background search, then working directly with Dick Innes of the Bluegrass Institute, broke the Barbara Erwin story after Mark Hebert mentioned on his blog that the Commissioner's search was being conducted in secret and an anonymous commenter to the Courier-Journal suggested somebody ought to look into resume irregularities.

More recently, Jake broke the Robert Felner investigation story at U of L.

The way the world is going, people toiling for newspapers are feeling pretty threatened. The price of newsprint keeps going up, and the number of readers who appreciate the fine feel of a good paper in their hands is going down.

And newspaper employees are being offered buy-outs in budget reduction moves.

People can find their news on the Internet, television, radio or in free newspapers (shameless plug), and so they wonder why they ought to put a couple of quarters into a slot and pay for something that’s most likely yesterday’s news, anyway.

At the same time, those who write for newspapers have grown resentful that bloggers sitting at home in front of their computers – the well-worn cliché is that they’re in their mother’s basement in their underwear – may have increasing clout with readers.

I resent that. It's MY basement and I'm wearing pajamas.

After all, how can those bloggers – with no inside sources, no background and no journalism training, in many cases – have as much credibility as trained and experienced journalists? Who would even bother listening to those yahoos?

Excellent questions. As far as KSN&C is concerned...I've got more than a few sources, 36 years of background in the classroom, in the district office, in the school office, and at the university - public and private and religious. How many working journalists have that?

I also audited two journalism courses (News Editing and Opinion writing) at UK because I knew I wanted to write and I knew what I didn't know. I'd still like to take a Journalism Ethics course at some point.

Well, I’ll tell you what I think. And I’ll also explain how it’s led me to alter my approach to the way I do my job as a columnist, pushing me away from a
philosophy I held dear for decades in this business. I changed, though, because
the bloggers have taught me a lesson.

Really? Acknowledgement from the mainstream media is rare. I'd better enjoy this.

My guideline for years was that, as a beat reporter or a columnist, I would get to know my sources as best I could. I would be there constantly, in their face. I always felt I was impartial enough to write the truth no matter what. And my core values included being there the day after I wrote something negative about someone I covered – so they’d have their shot at me, their fair chance to confront me.

But along the way, at some point, the whole thing kind of went south. The problem with all that, I’ve come to realize, is that I got too close to the people I covered.

In the case of a beat reporter, you almost have to have a degree of that in order to come up with the constant flood of stories you need if you’re covering a beat like the [Portland] Trail Blazers.

Over time, you realize that in spite of all your attempts to know athletes and public figures, what you usually end up writing about them is the cover story – the half-true piece of semifiction that those people want the public to see. You begin to realize you’re usually getting played. And you sold your soul to get it.

Oh, when you get close to sources, you get access. You get inside information. At least you think you do. You get close enough to players and coaches that it’s a fan’s dream. Sources become something very close to friends, and, I confess, I’ve been down that road.

I'm glad to hear somebody else say this. When I began blogging it never occurred to me that I might be writing critically about people I knew and cared about. Pretty naive on my part - not to think about that - but nonetheless that's part of the deal if one chooses to write on public issues.

But by writing commentary and posting news stories on KSN&C I have "run into" Peggy Petrilli, Stu Silberman, Steve Beshear, Brad Cowgill, Fabio Zuluaga, Jon Draud, Elaine Farris, Ernie Fletcher (for whom one of my daughters worked) and many more unnamed persons. I have done stories on UK and EKU where I work - and given the nature of my employment after retirement, I've got to be the easiest guy to "let go" in either place.

I would be less than honest if I did not confess feeling a tug at the heart from time-to-time. For example, I initially came out soft on Draud's car looking for different explanations - only to be taught a lesson by a bunch of emails.

But I also know that when that happens, you’re probably not going to do your job as well as you should. Yes, I’m old school, and I think it’s the job of a columnist or a beat reporter to always tell the truth and be critical when merited, even about the revered home team.

But if you’re critical, you risk your access. Forget about the friendships – you often lose your sources if you offend them.

In the past few years, my job as editor of this paper has kept me from having the time to get the sort of access I used to have with a lot of athletes and coaches. Lately, I don’t have time to schmooz them at shootarounds and after practice. I can’t get on the phone and shoot the breeze with them.

Once in a while, it costs me a story. But you know what? As a columnist, I don’t feel I need their information or their admiration. And I certainly don’t need to worry about making them happy. I think I’m very fair to them. Some sources respect that fairness, and others would rather just own a piece of you.

Yes. We have this "thing" in our society about rank. The higher one's rank, the more those of us holding lower rank are expected to defer. That is counterbalanced by free speech in our democracy; but it doesn't make it any easier. Free speech is not free of cost.

I’m still accountable. The coaches and players know where to find me –as one did last season when he had a problem with something I wrote. I met with him for more than an hour and presented my side and listened to his.

He convinced me of a few things, and I didn’t buy into some other things. I stand
ready to be critical again if I think it’s merited.

The point to all this is simple. What I’ve done, I think, is become a blogger in columnist’s clothing. The secret to the blogosphere is that bloggers usually don’t have that proximity to coaches and athletes. They aren’t hindered by a need to get along
or kiss up to the people they write about. That affords them a certain freedom they can use or abuse.

Interesting observation. And, here I am trying to become a better journalist.

Don’t get me wrong – those trained, experienced journalists are still the backbone of this business and they shouldn’t be insecure about their role. The mavericks out there blogging provide a welcome supplement to their work.

Like the mainstream media, bloggers usually search for some version of the truth. Some are good at it. Some are not. On the whole, the best of them serve up fresh, creative, unvarnished, unrestricted and entertaining thoughts about the issues of the day.

I think that’s what columnists are supposed to do, too. If we do it the right way, we’re really not all that different.

A tip of the hat to Alexander Russo.