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."