The Terri Schiavo case was, predictably, critics’ topic of choice last week but, almost without exception, the comment was ideology-driven, leaving little room for real conversation. To those who ask, I say the paper has done a solid job reporting this emotional story, and the prominent Page 1 play has been appropriate to the seriousness of the right-to-die issue.
Other recent challenges to the Globe’s Page 1 decisions — all involving stories of considerably lower profile than the Schiavo case — strike me as more thought-provoking and worth a closer look.
The flurry of complaints began with the March 8 paper. A succinct e-mail from Dr. John Kulig, a pediatrician, noted the headline atop Page 1 — ”Dog’s family demands $740,000″ — and then a headline inside, on B1, which read: ”Child’s death in foster care probed.”
”What’s wrong with this sequence?” he asked simply. Point made.
Milton resident Karen Horan cancelled her subscription, writing, ”I am shocked, appalled, and disgusted with any news media that led the front page with the story of the . . . dead dog over the poor black child who died in state custody.”
The next couple of weeks brought varied complaints about story display, most notably the decision to put on B1, rather than A1, the March 20 and March 21 stories on the shootings and stabbing that left four people dead in Boston. Four murders in 12 hours, e-mailed Bill Toscano, ”was as important as anything on the front page other than the Terri Schiavo story.” The inside play, he said, bordered on ”egregious.”
But the loudest complaint was about two Harvard-related stories on Page 1.
A March 26 feature examined students’ protest over the removal of favored brand name cereals from the dining halls. Three days later came a story on Harvard students’ relative dissatisfaction with campus life. The combination struck a nerve.
”Frankly, who cares?” asked reader Kevin Bowe. ”At the same time, inside in the B section, you have a story about the UMass community and who is going to be their next chancellor . . . Your news judgment is more concerned with cereal and social life at Harvard than who will be the next chancellor of UMass-Boston. The next time you get accused of being an elitist newspaper, there’s your proof right there.” Another reader dryly suggested a follow-up story on ”the thread count in Harvard sweatshirts.”
”Aren’t there more newsworthy and interesting stories for page one?” asked Amy Yatsuhashi. ”Please explain.”
Globe editor Martin Baron obliged. Stories on Page 1 need to reflect the ”variety of life,” he said, and the cereal story was the kind of offbeat feature that provides ”a little relief from the gravely serious stories.” And Harvard is not the only school that gets Page 1 play, he says; so do UMass, Northeastern, Boston College, Boston University, and MIT, among others. ”Harvard is one of the most prestigious names in higher education, so it will get an extra amount of attention, and why shouldn’t it?”
As for the stories on the four slayings, he said, ”every murder is serious” but ”you have to weigh the circumstances of each one” and not all belong on Page 1.
And on the first issue raised by readers — putting the story of a dog’s death, but not a child’s, on Page 1 — Baron said the paper erred. ”We grossly underplayed the foster child story,” he said. It turns out the foster child story had not been called to the attention of the editors who each evening pick the stories — usually six — that go on Page 1. It should have been.
Not often does the ombudsman office get a cluster of complaints about how the front page is used (or not used). It’s admittedly dicey to second-guess Page 1 calls. Often there is no right or wrong, just shades of arguable.
But these readers all raise good points. They see the paper in a way that editors and reporters cannot. And they look to the front page to tell them something about the paper’s priorities and its character — whether or not editors intend that message.
The story on the child’s death deserved to be on the front page, and the presence of the dog story there instead underscored its absence. The account of four murders warranted a prominence that reflected what I hope is outrage over, not acceptance of, violence on the streets of Boston. As for the Harvard stories, well, like cereal, it’s a matter of taste.
