Comments on all things journalism and answers to questions from readers about news coverage and operations at the Tracy Press.

Friday, April 27, 2007

New challenges, old ethics

A woman who identified herself as a parent called the newsroom Monday to tell us we should read a certain comment left on our Web site.

Someone using the name of the West High School student arrested three days earlier on suspicion of making a bomb threat, making terrorist threats and creating a disturbance on a school campus had posted something that looked to be another threat.

“I was the one who set the bomb up,” the comment read. “The bomb is still located inside the school. To tell you the truth, there is more than one bomb. I set one inside the clock tower and another inside the school district.”

Online comments are uncharted terrain, as we’ve found in the less-than-two months since we’ve added this challenging function to our newspaper Web site.

Information, however, is nothing new for us. The job of newspapers is to gather news and information, and sometimes that information arrives unsolicited, as it does in the online comments.

Rarely, though, does information put us in the kind of situation it did Monday, where we find ourselves becoming part of the story that we also have to cover.

When we read the comment at 1:30 p.m. Monday — about 10 minutes after it was posted, as it turns out — we called Tracy Unified School District Superintendent Jim Franco and faxed a copy of the comment to his district office, which contacted the police.

Then we drove to West High with cameras and notebooks in hand. School had let out at 1:30 p.m., so there were few students milling about. We waited about 15 minutes before we noticed Franco and a campus security guard looking inside the clock tower.

Two hours later, long after the threat to public safety had presumably passed, the police called to ask us for a copy of the e-mail address that had accompanied the comment.

Until this point, everything we’d provided to the school district had been information made public on our Web site, except for the Internet Protocol address, which showed that the comment had been made using the school’s computers.

I called a newspaper attorney in Sacramento to talk about whether we should give up the e-mail address, something I’ve told readers in the past would not be shared.

Telling the police that we wouldn’t give up the unpublished information without a subpoena isn’t all that different from demanding a search warrant before letting an investigator onto private property. Of course, even with a court-issued subpoena, newspapers legally don’t have to give up unpublished information.

Why?

All unpublished content — photos, reporters’ notes, tapes, data, eyewitness observations, unnamed sources, e-mails and addresses — is protected in the state Constitution under the California Shield Law.

We take this legal right seriously, because it sets us apart from the government and entities we write about. It puts us on the side of the people, who provide information to us — and all media — without expecting that it will be used for something other than newsgathering.

If we’re so quick to hand over information to the police, without regard for the ethics of doing so, how can we expect the public to trust us with the information they give us in the future? We don’t want to lose that trust.

I found it interesting that William Dean Singleton’s MediaNews Group followed this news story in its San Joaquin Herald with the headline, “Police upset over response to threat.” It contained more false statements made by the reporter than truth, quoted only one side of the story and editorialized about the part the Tracy Press played in the “lost investigation time.”

MediaNews owns or controls almost every daily newspaper in the greater Bay Area, except the Tracy Press and the San Francisco Chronicle, the latter of which is owned by media giant Hearst Corp. Hearst and MediaNews’ attempt to consolidate in the last year was slapped down by an antitrust lawsuit, followed by a settlement agreement just this week.

I think it’s important for people to realize that the future of newspapers in the Bay Area under Singleton’s control isn’t just a monopoly situation. Under MediaNews, newspapers are becoming more the mouthpiece of government than the communities they serve. They have little regard for the rights of the people and the press and the laws that protect them.

Sadly, the California Shield Law has little future unless it is exercised.

Cheri Matthews, editor of the Tracy Press, can be reached by phone (830-4201) e-mail (cherim@tracypress.com) or blog (www.editor-matthews.blogspot.com).

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Good news for Bay Area journalism

The lawsuit against the Hearst Corp., which owns the San Francisco Chronicle, and William Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group, which owns every other daily newspaper in the region, ended this week in a settlement. Clint Reilly filed the federal civil suit a year ago in an attempt to block the would-be competitors from sharing monopoly control of the Bay Area's daily newspaper establishment.

The deal blocks any future business deals between Hearst and MediaNews. Read more on the San Francisco Bay Guardian Web site.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Tracy Press subpoena

I want to let everyone know that I'm following the comments on the bomb threat story, and I can see that I need to write about the decisions we made yesterday regarding the release of unpublished information. Coming soon: An Editor's Notes column.

Legendary journalist Halberstam dies

Pulitzer-prize-winning author and journalist David Halberstam, 73, was killed in a car crash in Menlo Park early today.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

What's your (local) news IQ?

Sad but true. In a poll released this week, respondents were less able than those polled in 1989 to name the vice president, their state’s governor and the president of Russia. More than half of those in the most knowledgeable category listed as news sources cable TV shows such as the “Daily Show,” the “Colbert Report” and the “O’Reilly Factor.”

If you want to see how you fit in the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press' survey, you can take the test yourself. You might be surprised.

Or maybe, thanks to your loyal reading of the Tracy Press, you'd do better on a test with all local questions. See how you do with these:

1• Do you know who the mayor of Tracy is?
a. Dan Bilbrey
b. Tom Benigno
c. Brent Ives

2 • Who is the longtime city attorney?
a. Debra Corbett
b. Dan Hobbs
c. Mark Connolly

3 • What form of government does this city have:
a. Council-manager government
b. A mayor-council government

4 • In the latest population count released by the state Department of Finance, Tracy had how many people:
a. 65,000
b. 80,000
c. 120,000

5 • How many casualties has Tracy had in the Iraq war?
a. Six
b. Five
c. Four

6 • Is there a U.S. congressman or state assemblywoman from Tracy?
a. yes
b. no

7 • How many high schools are there in Tracy's city limits, including alternative and charter schools?
a. Two
b. Three
c. Four

Good luck! If you want, you can leave your answers on the comments with your e-mail address, and I'll send you the answers. And if you have questions for me to add, leave those, too!

Saturday, April 14, 2007

No competition


I went to the firehouse dedication today with my camera, but luckily, Glenn also showed up on his day off, so readers won't have to settle for my shots.

Meanwhile, Glenn's already posted photos of me on his blog, so here's the only shot of got of him. One of these days, I'll get something without his camera in front of his face. Maybe.
(By the way, thanks for helping me lighten my shot, Glenn.)

Silly editors


While I'm at it, here's a shot of two of the Tracy Press editors at a news meeting — Eric and Jon.

Thursday, April 05, 2007


Tracy Press sues city

In case you missed this in today's paper, the Press filed a lawsuit Wednesday to obtain e-mails that Councilwoman Suzanne Tucker sent to the Lawence Livermore National Laboratory — e-mails the city attorney argues are private.

I think the California Public Records Act and California Constitution, along with Proposition 59, make it clear that the records sought should be made public.

If you want to see the actual petition for writ of mandate, go to the wiki I just created.

Meanwhile, if anyone wants pdfs of the actual petition and "points and authorities," e-mail me at cherim@tracypress.com.