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May 2008
Of prayer and politics
Nothing animates people like politics and religion. Throw the two together in a story like, say, the atheists asking the Grand Junction City Council to stop praying before meeting, and you’re sure to get people talking. The story is barely 24 hours old and already we have 109 comments on Community.GJSentinel.com
I don’t know if that a record, but I’d guess it is. Check it out. Join in the discussion.
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Orange & Black wins yet another award
Congratulations to the Orange & Black, Grand Junction High School’s award-winning newspaper for winning the high school division of the Weekly Reader Student Publishing Awards.
Big-time national awards and the Orange & Black are hardly strangers. GJHS student newspaper adviser and journalism teacher Mark Newton routinely guides his students to national honors.
Mark might tell you he’s been lucky, that he’s just had some good staffs over the years. Well, maybe. But I think it takes a great teacher to bring out the talent that he seems to get out of the kids who produce a newspaper at GJHS.
The Orange & Black is a well-written, well-edited student publication, one that’s not afraid to tackle difficult issues, and one, frankly, that has beaten us on more than one story over the years.
Grab a copy if you haven’t. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at the quality of work that can be done by high school students.
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Schaffer’s mountain
Here’s a common question reporters get when they’re working on a story and ask a questions that the interviewee doesn’t particularly like: “Who told you that?”
More often than not we don’t mind answering the question. Occasionally we’ve agreed not to divulge that information for one reason or another, so we don’t.
The question really goes to motive. The person in the uncomfortable position is often quick to add that the instigator of the story has some ax to grind or is himself or herself not without a set of problems. That is often true.
We know that when people call us with story ideas they don’t do so with the interests of Daily Sentinel/GJSentinel.com readers utmost in their minds. They almost always have a personal agenda. The question we must always ask then, is this: Is the information a story? Is it something that our readers will find valuable? If we answer that in the affirmative we pursue it, if not, we don’t.
So Wednesday, when a left-wing Colorado political blog called and said we should check out Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer’s newest television ad, which features Schaffer talking about Pike’s Peak with a picture of Mount McKinley in Alaska as a backdrop, he didn’t have our readers in mind. What he had in mind was embarrassing the Schaffer campaign.
But we, and I suspect a lot of other Colorado media outlets, decided it was a story our readers would find interesting.
You can bet the Schaffer people are looking for some misstep on the part of Democrat Mark Udall so they, too, can give us a call.
We’ll be here.
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It’s a political year
Newspaper editors and political reporters don’t need a calendar to tell them that it’s an even-numbered year. Even-numbered years are election years. We can tell that because those are the years when we get complaints from politicians and their handlers. It’s as predictable as Rick Wagner staking out a position to the right of just about everybody else.
We got a couple this week, and I think they are instructive. One was nothing more than a political handler trying to bully a reporter, the other a legitimate question about why we failed to do something. One was ugly, the other a genuine discussion between people who saw the same thing differently.
First the ugly.
Early in the week Democratic Senate candidate Mark Udall proposed the government quit stockpiling gas in the strategic petroleum reserve.
Reporter Mike Saccone, as any good reporter would do, called Udall’s opponent to get a response. Republican Bob Schaffer is very seldom available. He called Dick Wadhams, Schaffer’s campaign manager. I don’t think he ever even got to tell Wadhams why he was calling. The minute Wadhams got on the phone he launched into Mike, telling him he was a biased reporter, that he’s taken cheap shots at Schaffer and asking when we were going to do the same thing to Udall. I listened to the tape of the conversation. Mike seldom got to complete a question. Every time he tried Wadhams interrupted with yet another complaint about Mike and/or our coverage. He did manage to ask Wadhams for specific instances of biased reporting or cheap shots and Wadhams provided none.
The exchange was amusing. I don’t know what Wadhams was trying to accomplish other than to try to get our reporter to go easier on his candidate in future stories. Whatever it was it will have no effect whatsoever on how we cover the Senate race. We’ll continue to cover it as completely and fairly as possible.
Then there is Mesa County commissioner candidate Jim Doody, a pol with much less experience than Dick Wadhams, but one who chooses not to come out guns-ablazing when he doesn’t like something we did - or in this case didn’t do - but instead just wants an explanation.
Former state representative Matt Smith very publicly helped Doody gather signatures for Doody’s candidacy petition on Tuesday and we had nothing in the paper about it. We had a reporter and a photographer there and the reporter returned and wrote a long, and very good feature story about the event. We opted not to run it. Doody politely asked why. Here’s my response and Doody’s:
“Jim,
“The call to not run anything today was ultimately mine, and it came down to whether we thought it was news. The story as written was a feature, and a very good feature. The problem was that had we run it, then we would have been committed to doing the same thing for every candidate in that race. Had we not, readers might perceive the story to be nothing more than an effort on the part of The Daily Sentinel to drum up support for your candidacy. We decided we didn’t want to commit to doing more stories about that race at this time. We will do stories about all the candidates when there are significant dates looming, i.e., the deadline for filing petitions, the primary election, etc. It’s a problem we run into virtually every election cycle, and it is, admittedly, difficult. Just as I’d hope readers wouldn’t read any institutional support for your candidacy had we done a story, I hope you don’t think that our lack of a story means we are opposed to your candidacy. We haven’t taken a position on your candidacy, and, on the news pages, won’t. I hope that answers your question. Please feel free to get in touch with me if you’d like to discuss it further.”
“Denny -
“Thank you for your reply. Though I disagree with your logic I respect your professional opinion regarding local politics and the high standards you hold for the Daily Sentinel. I personally do not consider myself as a candidate (either does my opponent) just an aspiring one that may happen when I obtain enough signatures to get on the ballot. I do believe there is reportable news when a prominent person (Matt Smith) in the community wants to publicly announce his endorsement of another who has distinct differences about what our future could hold.”
We weren’t quite sure whether Matt Smith had formally made an endorsement on Tuesday, and that’s why we ran nothing. We typically run a brief when a candidate gets an endorsement. On second thought we decided that Matt did indeed endorse Doody and we ran that brief today.
Dealing with rants from handlers like Dick Wadhams goes with the territory of being in the newspaper business. But it’s a lot easier to deal with the likes of Jim Doody.
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Everything you wanted to know about The Daily Show
You probably won’t find this interesting unless, like me, you’re a Daily Show junkie.
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Guidelines for Community.GJSentinel.com
Some of you who read and participate on Community.GJSentinel.com, our user-driven website within GJSentinel.com, know that we’ve had a some problems with civility in the discussions that go on there.
Those problems have caused no small amount of discussion in the newsroom. Some of us think the site at times has been out of control. Others think such sites should be free-for-alls and require little if any moderation.
So we decided to let a committee of fairly young staffers decide what our policy should be. The thinking was that they are more savvy in the ways of the online world than some of us who are a little — no, a lot — older.
The group got together yesterday. They listened to my thoughts, along with those from Editorial Page Editor Bob Silbernagel, GJSentinel.com Content Editor Todd Powell, GJSentinel.com Content Coordinator Chris Froese and Managing Editor Laurena Mayne Davis.
Our recommendations were all over the board, from do nothing, to moderate the heck out of it.
The committee, which included Feature Writers Sam Stiles and Melinda Mawdsley, Reporters Mike Wiggins and Mike Saccone, Intern Alex Carlson, Action Desk Reporter Richie Ann Ashcraft and Assistant City Editor Duffy Hayes, took their job seriously.
Here’s their report:
1) Community.GJSentinel.com should be moderated to a degree only because it is tied to The Daily Sentinel/ GJSentinel.com brand.
2) If a comment meets any of these conditions, then it may be taken down:
Profanity.
Words that incite violence or criminal behavior.
Libel.
Hate speech.
3) When a comment violates any of the above conditions it may be taken down with no explanation on The Daily Sentinel’s behalf.
4) Registered Community users may express concerns or questions regarding other member comments to a designated email address. The Daily Sentinel does not have to heed the user’s advice unless it meets the above conditions. We understand user moderating already exists.
5) Editing of user comments must be all or nothing.
I think those are thoughtful recommendations and we’re going to follow them. They will soon be posted on the site.
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Nary a peep
I don’t know whether Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein was ever associated with terrorists in Iraq.
Hussein was held by the U.S. military for two years but was never brought to trial before being released two weeks ago, presumably because the military finally determined there was no case.
I do know that during those two years both Hussein and the Associated Press were savaged, viciously, by the right-wing blogoshpere, whose members became huge megaphones for the military.
Here’s a good take on what has happened since Hussein was released. This blogger quite rightly wonders why the right-wing bloggers are so quiet now.
Those of us in the mainstream media hear similar complaints when occasionally someone who has been charged with a crime has the charges dropped. We try to keep track of those things and report them when they happen. Sometimes we miss one, and we get a call or an e-mail wondering why we haven’t reported that charges have been dropped against someone. When that happens we report it.
