Torn over an award

Richard Alan Hannon, a photographer for The Advocate of Baton Rouge, La., was honored today with the AP Photo of the Year award.

"I'm torn over getting a check for one of the saddest photos I've ever taken," he said at the podium.

Later, I spotted him standing alone and decided to go talk to him.

I was struck at how much he reminded me of Glenn Moore, our Tracy Press photo editor. He said he had been on assignment shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit. He had waded in deep water to get to the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, where he watched evacuees who were not allowed inside. He shot the photo of the dying woman on the other side of a glass atrium.

He never got her name. He's pretty sure he saw her die.

I told him that the policy at our newspaper is that we won't run photos of people in accidents if we find out they've died before we go to press.

He said his paper has the same policy. But when the editors saw the photo, they thought it was too powerful not to run.

I'm glad they broke the rules.

Behind the scenes of the police log

“If you don’t want it printed, don’t let it happen.”

That’s the motto of a newspaper in Colorado and, as Michael Gartner writes in his new book, “Outrage, Passion & Uncommon Sense,” the motto that good editors of good newspapers have lived by for generations.

I’ve said it myself to people who call demanding that their names be left out of the police log that we publish every day.

Of course, just because something appears in the police log doesn’t mean it happened, just that someone reported to the police that something happened. And the arrests that we list are just that — arrests for suspected felonies, not convictions.
At any rate, some people simply don’t like seeing their dirty laundry in print.
Others, on the other hand, relish reading about the woes of others, if only for their entertainment. They skim over the items until they find something they can take to their friends every day at coffee.
Like the one about the man who walked into the police station waving a videotape that he claimed contained evidence that someone had stolen from him. Turns out the videotape showed people stealing, all right. They took the man’s marijuana plants from his backyard.
Another was from a man who called to say he’d found another man’s underwear under his bed. Huh?
Sometimes I’ll get a call from someone who says, “Why do you print that stuff, anyway? Why don’t you just print the serious crimes?”
My stock answer is this: “Because the stupid stuff appears to represent most of what the police deal with every day — and what our taxes are paying for.”
Besides that, I don’t think it hurts to know a little of what goes on in the lives of the people who share our town.
I posted an item recently asking readers what they thought about the police log.
The first person to comment was a commuter on the Altamont Commuter Express train, who said “it’s part of what makes Tracy still feel like the small town it used to be — it adds character.”
Kind of like our Poker City history.
Another comment was a confession from a man wh searches through the log in the hopes that no relatives will be mentioned.
That reminds me of the reader who told me she regularly scans the log for her ex-husband’s antics.
The block captain for a Neighborhood Watch group in town wrote that he’s keenly interested in what’s going on in the log. He has some questions, too.
“The reports always begin, ‘Tracy Police Department officers responded to 210 calls for service Monday.’ How does the report get edited down to the five or 10 items readers see?
“Does someone who works for the Tracy Press go through all 210 calls and decide what to print? Does the public have access to all of this information? Does the PD withhold certain information from these reports?”
Here’s how it works: Every day, the reporter who covers the police beat (Denise Rizzo, unless it’s her day off) goes to the lobby of the Tracy Police Department and flips page-by-page through the dispatcher’s daily log, taking notes on her reporter’s pad.
“I pick out items that typically identify crime trends, such as thefts from cars … or humorous and out-of-the-ordinary items,” she said.
She reads every item but chooses just a sampling, usually about 20 items. Then copy editors cut her column to fit the space on the news page.
If something is especially interesting or shows a crime spree, reporters can get more information from officers and turn it into a story.
If someone younger than 18 is arrested, the name will be blacked-out in the report. Other than that, everything is public information unless there’s an active investigation.
That means anyone can go down to the PD and read the log in its entirety — but only reporters get paid for it.

Posted by cmatthews at October 28, 2005 09:27 PM

What you say is true to a point. Yes, the information is available to the public but they would have to go down to PD to read it.

And if you cover a story that alleges that an incident occurred shouldn't good reporting follow up on the case to see what the outcome was?

My particular incident, covered by the Press in a lengthy Police Blotter article, had me arrested for brandishing a firearm.

What it didn't tell is why and what the outcome of that incident was.

In point of fact I was assaulted in my own home and defended myself with my handgun.

But the press never followed up on the story and to many people I had committed a criminal act.

No one from the press bothered to contact the court system or myself to learn that all the charges levied against me were totally dropped.

So, as you can see, simply printing the "facts" can cause harm.

Rarely today am I questioned by anyone on this as it was quite some time ago. But when it happened it caused me no end of trouble with people who had a mistaken impression they were dealing with someone who, in their eyes, was a criminal.

Dave Hardesty

Posted by: Dave Hardesty at October 31, 2005 09:36 AM

Thanks for answering my questions, Cheri. I would like to see all of those calls in the Police Log go online somewhere. Maybe then the log could be blogged.

Posted by: Jim Freeman at November 4, 2005 10:52 AM

'Outrage, Passion & Uncommon Sense'

Michael Gartner won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1997 when he was editor and co-owner of The Daily Tribune in Ames, Iowa, a paper about the size of the Tracy Press. I met him shortly afterward when I took an editorial writing course at the Poynter Institute in Florida.

Today when I took my copy of his just-published book, "Outrage, Passion & Uncommon Sense," to get his autograph, I was stunned. He looked at my nametag and said he'd met me eight years ago.

I was only the student in his class who was an editor and also part-owner of a daily newspaper. He had taken me aside and lectured me about how I should be bold in my writing and never be afraid to show my passion.

The message he gave today at the Associated Press editors conference in San Jose was similar.

"Editorials are bland and boring today," he said. "That's too bad."

He went on to blame the large chain newspapers and decline of competition. Editorial writers are just too afraid to offend readers today, he said. They have no balls.

That's not how it was with Horace Greeley, Henry Watterson, William Allen White and Vermont Royster, the four greatest editorial writers in the history of this nation, he wrote in his book.

"They all reported thoroughly, wrote gracefully and argued passionately. They knew intimately their town — or their nation, or their world — and they were neither blind boosters nor common scolds."

You always knew where they stood, he said.

So tonight, thoroughly inspired, I'm staying up all night to read Gartner's book.

Outside the public's eye

We ran two stories on Saturday, one on a new diversity committee and another on a school bond discussion, that mentioned school district committees that are closed to the public.

At first glance, you might think that this is a violation of the Ralph M. Brown Act, California's open meeting law enacted in 1953 to safeguard the public's right to attend and participate in government meetings within the state.

We thought so. A Tracy Press reporter was assigned to cover a meeting in which the specifics of a survey and an upcoming school bond to fix Tracy High School were discussed. He was told the meeting was closed to the press.

Tracy Unified School District Superintendent Jim Franco said the meetings are not covered by the Brown Act, because his staff has appointed the members, not the school board. He's instructed the committee members to stay mum if reporters call them outside the meetings.

We called California Newspaper Publishers Association Attorney Jim Ewert, who vertified that the meetings can be closed, as long as the committee's membership doesn't include a quorum of school board trustees. The committee's roster lists about a dozen residents of Tracy, along with trustees Gregg Crandall, Joan Feller and Gerry Machado, with Bill Swenson as an alternate, which means it's just short of the four elected officials that make a quorum.

Do you think the district has found a way to sidestep the Brown Act and meet privately? Or is this a legitimate way to discuss important issues before presenting them to the public?

Just thought I'd put the question out there.

Trashing of Judith Miller

If you've been following the case of Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who spent 85 days in federal jail for protecting a confidential source, you might want to read this report written by Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition.

Also, just read that Maureen Dowd has finally commented on Miller in her column, titled Woman of Mass Destruction.
"She never knew when to quit. That was her talent and her flaw. Sorely in need of a tight editorial leash, she was kept on no leash at all, and that has hurt this paper and its trust with readers. She more than earned her sobriquet 'Miss Run Amok.'"

If you Google "Dowd and Miller," you can find the column. Otherwise, you can go to New York Times and sign up for a 14-day free trial (just remember to cancel it later if you don't want to be charged for a subscription after 14 days).

I wrote about Judith Miller's case last summer in a column.

With all we know now, do you have any thoughts to share?

Who reads the police log?

A reader told me yesterday that the first thing she looks for in the paper is the Police Log, which runs daily on the Vitals page. I'm pretty sure it's not because she's looking for her name in the list of arrests.

Do you have questions about the log? I may write my next column about it.

Comments from a reader

This is from Amadeo, who responded to my printed column before I had a chance to post it. (I have inserted my comments in italics.)

"Welcome to the blogosphere. It is always a welcome sight to have real journalists acknowledge and accept the existence of the new medium. Because then with the guidance and good examples real journalists bring to the table, the better the medium becomes.

"I have a few points to bring out, though.

"First, in your latest Editor’s Notes, you invited us all to read your blog, but you did not provide us with your URL, so we may have a difficult time looking for it. Was it given at some earlier issue?"

From Cheri: Aha! I've discovered two advantages that the Web has over the printed newspaper: We don't run out of room here, as we did with that column (the last line, which included that very-important URL, was cut off on the page), and when we make mistakes, we can easily correct them on the Web, whereas, I can't go back and add that line to my column in the newspaper.

"Secondly, the blog now provides archives starting from April 2005, so I am supposing that your previous Editor’s Notes, have also been posted as blog entries. Thus, you really have been blogging for a while, since April at least."

From Cheri: Well, no. I really did start this blog on Oct. 3, 2005. I posted some of my previous columns as blog entries and used the dates they were published, going back to April. I probably broke some blogging law doing that.

"Thirdly, your concerns or fears, if you may, in the move by Yahoo! to lump blog entries with mainstream news, are all well taken. And everybody, both news consumers and those who report news, should proceed with great caution. The blogosphere, with its very loose definition and restrictions, is now one big black hole that is growing exponentially as we speak.

"However, the very determinable reason why the blogs gained prominence and general acceptance was precisely because mainstream media was viewed as wanting in certain areas, and they are said to have filled the void. Any thoughts on this?

"Again, welcome, and here’s wishing you success in your newest endeavor. As new Tracy residents, we’re looking forward to entries in your blog."

From Cheri: Does anyone out there have any thoughts on Amadeo's point about blogs filling the void of mainstream media?
I'd love to hear from you.

AP Photo of the Year

The Associated Press had thousands of photos from which to choose for its Photo of the Year, and it's not surprising that a photo showing the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was selected for 2005.
This emotional image of a woman being tended to by another evacuee at the Louisiana Superdome was captured by Richard Alan Hannon, a photographer with The Advocate of Baton Rouge, La.
We ran the photo in the Sept. 2 Tracy Press.
View image

Moments after Hannon took the photo on Sept. 1, police carried the woman away and said she died.

If you can't beat them, join them

I’ve been blogging for almost two weeks now. Only a few people, mostly those I know and have bribed with coffee, have commented. But I’m out here. Web-logging to my heart’s content about all kinds of topics — obituaries for pets, objectivity, mistakes in stories, multi-tasking media maniacs, mucking horse stalls.

Mucking stalls?

You’ll have to read the blog’s archives.

Later this month when I go to a national editors conference, that will undoubtedly be a topic of heated discussion. No, not my stalls or even my blog. The blogs of others.

Like Yahoo.

Yahoo Inc. announced this week that it will feature the work of self-published Internet bloggers side by side with the mainstream news. The heated part of this discussion? Yahoo’s blogs-with-news will undoubtedly further blur the distinctions between (1.) the free-for-all, make-up-the-rules-as-you-go online journals known as blogs (Yahoo calls them “grassroots journalism by everyday people”) and (2.) the news (online, on air or in print), written and reported by journalists who work for professional news organizations.

The scary part about this is that Yahoo isn’t a professional news organization, and its bloggers aren’t trained reporters whose work is fact-checked and edited, with an eye on accuracy, libel and privacy laws, ethics and other standards we consider primary to publication.

Bloggers pretty much agree that it’s OK to write just about anything, regardless of the truth, as long as they admit it and provide some hypertext links to the world outside of the blog. They also don’t keep their opinions to themselves, as journalists are taught to do (except when we write columns and editorials, which are separated from the news and clearly labeled).

Along comes Jeff Jarvis, former-newspaper-journalist-turned-newspaper-critic, who climbs on his high horse to applaud Yahoo and declare that “You don’t need to have a degree, you don’t need to have a paycheck, you don’t need to have a byline. If you inform the public, you are committing an act of journalism.”

I prefer the more moderate words of Bill Keller, New York Times executive editor, who is quoted in Business Week as saying, with regard to blogging, “Most of what you know, you know because of the mainstream media. Bloggers recycle and chew on the news. That’s not bad. But it’s not enough.”

While bloggers have broken legitimate news stories and brought forth some decent, unfiltered content, readers need to recognize the difference between news and blogs, just as they separate news from opinion and fact from fiction.

That’s not easy in the chaotic world of the Internet.

Which brings me back to my own fledgling efforts at blogging. I see the blog as an interactive extension of my Editor's Notes column (not news) and as a conversation with you (faithful readers) about the Tracy Press and the news industry and whatever else comes to the mind of a small-town newspaper editor with a laptop.

You’re welcome to join me in the blogosphere. I’ll watch for your comments and post them!

• Cheri Matthews, editor of the Tracy Press, can be reached in the traditional ways, by phone or by e-mail, or at www.tracypress.com/weblog/cmatthews/.

Staying objective

Earlier this year, our newsroom wrote an ethics policy for ourselves, which includes such items as this: Journalists will not publicly announce their likes and dislikes via bumper stickers, decals, personalized license plates, license-plate frames or articles of clothing used or worn on the job.
We take our objectivity seriously, and so, obviously, do other newspapers throughout the country. Read about how papers like the one in Clovis, N.M., stayed objective in its coverage, even with major economic loss at stake.

By Bob Gorman
Watertown (N.Y.) Daily News
When Cannon Air Force Base was included on the Department of Defense's
base closure list issued May 13, banners reading "Keep Cannon" sprung up everywhere in Clovis, N.M., including in front of the Clovis News
Journal.

But you weren't going to find one inside the newsroom. Despite a page
one editorial begging the community to rally behind state government
efforts to keep the base open, News Journal Editor David Stevens didn't want the rah-rah spirit permeating his staff's stories. Thus, he issued a "no banners in the newsroom" edict.

"When you write about what is going on in the community, every story is like a pep rally," said Stevens. "But we have tried to be that objective observer. We have tried to write about the plusses and minuses of Cannon."

Small and medium-sized newspapers around America faced the same
challenge to their credibility during this summer's Base Realignment and Closure process. Turn the lights out at Atlanta's Forts McPherson and Gillem and you register a blip-less economic loss of $671,000 a year to the Southeast's metropolitan monster. But shutter Cannon in rural New Mexico and you rip $212 million and 7,000 jobs - one-third of the economy - out of a region where the largest city, Clovis, has a
know-all-your-neighbors population of 32,000.

"We prepared two (newsroom) budgets, one with Cannon and one without,"
said Stevens. "And there is a dramatic difference."

How do journalists remain objective when the loss of a military base
will lead to a radical drop in population and business, and eventually
newspaper sales?

You just do it.

Ellsworth Air Force Base near Rapid City, S.D., is not just home to half of America's fleet of B-1B bombers. It is South Dakota's second largest employer behind state government. But when the Department of Defense recommended sending all 29 bombers and $278 million in annual payroll and business to Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas, Editor Peggy Sagen of the 29,618-circulation Rapid City Journal immediately sent a reporter to Texas to see what Dyess had that Ellsworth didn't.

The Journal's stories showed that Dyess had plenty going for it.

"We took some heat from the community," said Sagen. "The chamber (of commerce) called the publisher to complain, but he backed us. He just said 'Write the news.'"

The DoD report was like a sucker punch to community newspapers. The Groton Naval Submarine Base has been a part of the New London, Conn., economy since 1900. After it survived the base closure round of 1995, no one expected the DoD to go after it 10 years later, said Lance Johnson, editor of The Day in New London. Yet on May 13, there was Groton, one of America's best known and historic military bases, on the chopping block again.

Reaction by the 41,113-circulation paper was swift. That afternoon it printed a six-page broadsheet special edition with wire and local stories about the BRAC process and the history of Groton.

Johnson said that as the pending closure of Groton began to sink in, depression in the community — and the newsroom — sunk in as well.

"There are 8,500 jobs on the base and about 30,000 jobs connected to the base." said Johnson. "It's $3 billion — 10 percent of the economy. The Navy is connected to the arts, charity. A part of our history would go away."

Like the subs built at nearby General Dynamics Electric Boat, The Day's management decided to go deep. During the next three months its reporters wrote "a couple hundred substantive stories" said Johnson, about the internal battle within Navy ranks over the value of subs versus surface ships.

The Day's persistence led to the leak of an internal Navy memo that showed "the numbers were cooked," said Johnson. The Navy's sub training center in Groton hadn't been factored in, and thus moving all of Groton's assets to the sub base at Kings Bay, Ga., as the DoD recommended, would end up costing the Pentagon more rather than saving it money over the years.

The summer of discontent ended Aug. 24 when the BRAC commission removed Groton from the closure list. The Day's Aug. 25 headline "Too Good To Close" mirrored the information the staff dug up.

Ellsworth was also removed from the list. The Rapid City Journal's headline, "Flying High," stood above a photo of local leaders clinking glasses of champagne.

Cannon, on the other hand, was given a reprieve but left on death row. The May 14 News Journal headline, "BRAC Attack," had given way to Aug. 25's "Saved – For Now."

The BRAC commission gave the DoD until December 2009 to find a new mission or close the base. In the meantime, the F-16s that roar over the nearby desert are on the way out. How soon the Air Force and its payroll will be leaving Clovis is not known.

The Air Force might just "keep a night watchman there for three or four years," said Stevens.

Taking flak from the rank and file along with the Pentagon doesn't give Stevens much confidence that a new military presence will be assigned to Cannon. But he is clear about how the Clovis News Journal, circulation 8,697, will cover the renewal or death of Cannon Air Force Base.

Said Stevens, "This newsroom, as long as we have one, is going to be objective."

An obit for a dog

This is a first for us. An obituary submitted for a dog. As much as I love dogs, our obituary section in the Tracy Press is reserved for people. However, I sense that this was one very special bassett hound whose family is grieving. So here's his obit here, written by his family in Tracy.

Steve Warn
Sept. 1, 1994 - Oct. 6, 2005
Steve Warn passed away at home surrounded by the family that loved him. He was a best friend to Aaron Taylor, Mike, Kathy and Daisy. He loved peanut butter toast, short walks to roll in smelly things and having his belly rubbed. He will be missed and never forgotten.

Imagine this mistake

I just read that a Gannett newspaper in Wisconsin is being sued over a mistake it made in a banner headline that read: "Former gas station owner may have been 9/11 plotter." Actually, he was only an "applauder," according to federal officials.
Before I make a smug comment, though, I must remind myself that we've made some bloopers in the Tracy Press, too.

We're human. We goof up, and when we find out about it, we run a correction.
Sometimes we're not sure how we made the mistake. Maybe we got the wrong information from a source, or in a hurry to make deadline, we misstated or misrepresented something.
Our most recent correction was this: "Concerning a Page 4 story in Thursday’s Tracy Press titled, 'Trustees dress for success in front of cameras,' Tracy Unified Board Trustee James Vaughn disputed the assertion that he has worn sweat suits to board meetings."
The story was about how appearances mattered during the first school board meeting to be aired on cable Channel 26. The reporter mentioned that the school board member has worn sweatsuits to board meetings in the past but that he was sharply dressed in a button-down shirt and necktie for the first televised meeting.
When the story ran in Friday's TP, Vaughn called and demanded a correction, saying he has never worn anything so casual to a board meeting since he was elected last November. He said that we could ask anyone if they've ever seen him wear sweatsuits to a board meeting.
We did, and they hadn't.
We stand corrected.

Multi-tasking media maniacs

Do find yourself reading a newspaper at the same time that you're watching TV and listening to tunes on your iPod? Or talking on your cell phone while checking your e-mail on your laptop and listening to talk radio?
A recent study out of Ball State University shows that you're not the only one. Consuming media is now the No. 1 activity in America. We spend more time watching TV, talking on the phone, reading magazines and newspapers and surfing the Internet than anything else. And a third of "media time" involves multiple media feeds.
I'm really happy that newspapers are in the mix.

Metaphor of mucking stalls

Here's how I'm learning how to be a good blogger. My son's e-mail just traveled across the country to tell me this:

"About the your editor's blog. It's been four days since you last wrote something. I think you should write something (one, two, three para's) at least every other day. Think of it as a fun chore. The comments can be as off-the-wall as you want, remember. I know you're busy, but even a few sentences will do. And don't think too hard about it. Write whatever comes to mind. Just plop it down. Like mucking stalls, it might be annoying/tedious at first, but
you'll start to see the tedium as calming and even enjoyable. Catharsis is what blogs are truly about."

Posted by cmatthews at October 7, 2005 01:53 PM

Nice web site, what are you going to do with it?

Posted by: Tom Benigno at October 12, 2005 06:42 AM

Hooray for you for including a blog in the updates to your website, it is looking much nicer. I agree with your son, blog something every day or two, at least!
:)

Posted by: Jim Freeman at October 12, 2005 08:45 PM

If it wasn't for our children we might never succeed.

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Calling foul on the sport of cussing

Editor's Notes

I promised to take a cursory look today at cussing in the newspaper.

It all started with a story we ran recently about three high school football players. We wanted to write a slice of their life, let them use their own words to describe what they do in their free time. We didn’t want to censor them. We didn’t want to be stodgy.

We let them swear in print.

Before and after we published the story, we discussed among our editing ranks whether to include conversation that contained a four-letter word used by George Carlin. You remember his “Seven Dirty Words” comic monologue and the words he said would infect your soul, curve your spine and keep the country from winning the war?

Those seven words were from 1973, of course, and this is now, when we would argue that the range of acceptable vocabulary has stretched just as the rules of polite society and forbidden speech have blurred.

Shouldn’t we thus embrace the youth with their verbal vulgarity?

Editors who have mentored me for years said no, in no uncertain terms. Not by quoting them verbatim.

And so did readers. One wrote me a letter to say the whole story was tasteless.

“These boys deserve nothing less than a public apology.”

Another said that the newspaper should have taken the high road when quoting them.

“Kids will say things that aren’t always appropriate, but as the adult present, the Press should realize what should and shouldn’t be put in the paper.”

Even if the story had been about an adult, several callers and e-mailers agreed, the crude expressions added nothing. They should have been paraphrased or, better yet, zapped.

Suffice it to say that I was wrong to allow a story to run that had so much potential to offend readers of all sensibilities, from the mother of one of the boys, to the boys’ coach and athletic director, to the superintendent of schools.

After several sit-down discussions, our editorial policy, from this day forward, will be to err on the side of caution when it comes to language. We’re putting a lid on those seven dirty words and other polluters.

That doesn’t mean that we are going to shy away from accurate reporting or edit in euphemisms. We’ll simply weigh the newsworthiness of expletives against concerns about community standards.

And in the future, when reporters raise red flags about the intemperate remarks of their sources, teen or grownup, we’ll remind them of the story of the three young football players — and of our cursory look at cussing that led to a policy about dirty words.

Posted by cmatthews at October 1, 2005 05:03 PM

Hi Cheri,

I am not so sure it was a mistake to run the article - while I understand the feelings of the parents, maybe there wasn't anything else to print from the interview - unfortunately, it didn't sound like the boys had anything intelligent to say. I think that the parents need to talk to their sons about the language they chose to use in an interview, and not blame the Tracy Press for printing it.

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