Turning a rumor into news…

Do unsubstantiated rumors have a place in The Courant? When the rumors are about Hollywood or sports celebrities and the like, there isn’t much argument: Celebrities appear to be fair game. When the rumors are about a public official’s marriage, that’s a game I don’t like to see The Courant play. But there are clearly two sides to the debate.

After weeks of wrestling with rumors, tips, questions and speculation about the state of Gov. John G. Rowland and Patricia Rowland’s marriage, The Courant on Monday published a “Staff Reports” story at the bottom of …

Self-serving promotional ads hardly deserve the lofty compan…

Myths were once the inspiration for valiant acts, the explanations for the creation of the universe, the way people mapped out the virtues of their nations.

Originally stories spun out by the story-tellers as the clans gathered around fires, myths have gone from oral history to a sort of popular culture reference to mistaken beliefs.

And when that transition occurred, the beauty whipped up around the campfires to explain a tribe’s location or the nature of a god or the meaning of a virtue was swept up like so much flotsam and jetsam to …

Extra sensitivity needed in news stories about death…

Dearth is a tender topic, and readers don’t hide their anger when they feel the Globe doesn’t show proper respect to accident victims or their families. Two recent cases make the point.

A Dec. 11 story on the front of the City & Region section carried the headline, ”Two elderly women in car killed by train.” It began: ”It was a double bingo day … ”

The story went on to describe the circumstances of the accident – how Mary Siegel, 80, driving along a familiar route, failed to see the warnings at the North …

Her Christmas list is simply perfect…

Several years ago, my family asked me to do something I don’t ordinarily do

– make a Christmas list. Being a novice, I gave everyone the same list.

Under the tree that year, I found three can openers, three black slips and

two pasta bowls.

After that experience — remembered with glee by my family and friends — I

ceased making Christmas lists. I have been happy with whatever people have

chosen to give me. But this year, I’ve had a change of heart. I’ve prepared

an ombudsman’s list that applies equally to readers …

It’s your turn to be the editor …

Consider it a little holiday gift: Today you get to be the editor.

It is Sunday afternoon, and you are the last word on what will go in Monday’s paper. Among the day’s most significant stories are Al Gore deciding not to run for president in 2004, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott losing support because of remarks he made at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday celebration; and four boys dying in the icy Merrimack River in Lawrence, Mass.

You suggest those are all front-page stories and your staff agrees. The Gore and Lott stories …

For just a few…

For just a few

By Bernardo Ajzenberg

December 22, 2002

The special section about the administration of outgoing President Fernando Henrique Cardoso on Thursday caused me to think more deeply about expectations we have of journalism and at Folha in particular, before the end of an era and the installation of a new administration in an economic environment with obvious restrictions and unpredictability.

Inflation and unemployment frighten people, as does continued social inequality. There is no sector in the economy that is not, at least, nervous about the change in administrations, high interest …

Gay-Lesbian Coverage Hasn’t Been Negative — But It Hasn’t B…

Few conversations with readers are as prolonged and thoughtful as one I had a week ago with a reader who called to complain about negative coverage of gays and lesbians in the news media.

Let’s face it, many callers reflect on the legitimacy of my birth, my political persuasions and my evil genius. But this man called to talk about a subject that few in this state approach.

As he described his complaint with a Salt Lake Tribune article on the public flap over the easement through that Little Bit of Paris on Main …

Nitpicker’s Quiz: A Christmas edition…

Whenever human beings peck away at newsroom computers, bad stuff can happen and frequently does.

Fortunately, gimlet-eyed Star readers like Herb Grimm of King City are there to spot annoying, even infuriating, glitches that despoil the world of print.

Ever charitable, Grimm refers to spelling and grammatical stumbles as zwiebelfische, a German word for “onion fish.”

Among printers, he notes, a zwiebelfische is a jumble of type.

Let’s see how good you are at zwiebelfisching in our Christmas edition of The Nitpicker’s Quiz. Find 10 boo-boos that got past the editors and landed in the …

Lott controversy makes some reporters pause — except one…

When Sen. Trent Lott uttered his now-infamous statement of support for Strom Thurmond’s 1948 presidential campaign, not many journalists noticed. Some even thought it wasn’t worth reporting. What happened to aggressive journalism?

This is one of those occasional moments of journalistic self-flagellation over missed, or almost missed, stories. It took several days before the story was widely reported. Now some journalists are asking if there was undue reticence about reporting the story. And some listeners ask if NPR felt intimidated about reporting this story for fear of being accused of a “liberal bias.”…

The offensive art of secrets and lies…

A bit more than a week ago, on Dec. 9, Douglas Turner, a columnist for the Buffalo News, wrote a column in which he took the Associated Press to task for promiscuously using anonymous sources for stories on U.S. intelligence about Al Qaeda.

Most of these sources appear to have been Bush administration officials who were seeking to establish in the mind of the American public what has not yet been established in fact: that “Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was working with Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks” and …