This may sound like heresy, but sometimes it’s good to follow the herd because, every now and then, the herd knows best.
That’s what happened several days ago when Tim Russert, whom The Bee described as “probably the most influential political reporter in this age of television-driven politics,” died after collapsing at work from a heart attack.
The herd went one way and The Bee went the other way. Papers around the country, from the San Diego Union Tribune and the Kansas City Star to the San Francisco Chronicle and Plain Dealer in Cleveland, plus many more, put Russert’s death on the front page.
The Bee put the story inside the Metro section, on page B4, where most local and wire obituaries run. Several readers were surprised, and they questioned the decision, and so do I.
“I was appalled that The Bee’s story on Tim Russert’s untimely passing ran on page B4,” wrote Doug Kelly of Sacramento in an e-mail. “By any measurement, Mr. Russert was an icon of American journalism.”
“I for one did not always agree with Mr. Russert’s views (but) his passing could have and should have been relayed locally in more prominent fashion.”
Clearly, decisions on where to play stories about the deaths of prominent people are subjective. The standard for putting such news on the front page is and should be high.
Russert, in my opinion, rose to that standard. Just look at the bipartisan reaction to his passing in the past week, including the attendance at his memorial of both presidential candidates, Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama. That doesn’t happen for just anybody.
“He was to Sunday morning TV what Johnny Carson was to late-night shows,” wrote Jon Friedman of the Web site MarketWatch. Others said he simply revolutionized Sunday morning television.
Russert was at the top of his game when he died. His show, “Meet the Press,” was the most popular of the Sunday morning news programs. He was the host for 17 years.
As The Bee’s Rick Kushman wrote in his fine obituary, the NBC Washington bureau chief “helped transform TV coverage of American politics.”
Not to mention we’re in the midst of one of the most interesting years ever in presidential politics, with Russert’s show influencing coverage.
And then, of course, there was the suddenness of his death, while at work, at the age of only 58.
(You can make a case that coverage of his death reached oversaturation in the days following, especially on television. My comments are directed at and confined to coverage in the paper the day after he died.)
Managing Editor Joyce Terhaar explained that on a different day, the news of Russert’s death likely would have gone on Page 1.
“I would have liked to have had it on A1, but I don’t know which (other) story I would have bumped off,” she explained, noting there was a front-page teaser with a photo to Russert’s obituary on page B4.
News Editor Linda Gonzales, who also was involved in deciding where to place the story, said in a e-mail she didn’t think Russert’s death merited front-page play and, like Terhaar, thought “the other stories (on the page) were stronger.”
This is another area open to natural second-guessing. While there were solid stories on the front page, such as news of a huge brush fire threatening the town of Paradise, floods in the Midwest and phase two of the Interstate 5 shutdown through Sacramento, there were others that weren’t so timely.
One was a local story about how the high cost of oil and gasoline was hurting the region’s economy. The story wasn’t going to change by holding it off the front page for a day or two.
Terhaar also explained that news of Russert’s death had been out much of the day on television, radio and the Internet, so would be old news by the time the paper was published.
Usually, I agree with that perspective on lesser stories. On bigger and more important stories, though, the paper sometimes outsmarts itself by using this as an automatic, catch-all reason for keeping stories off the front page.
There are a lot of smart editors at the other papers where Russert’s death was front page news, in stories that analyzed his historic place in television journalism and national politics. Certainly, they considered the same issue of timeliness and certainly they had good local stories they liked for Page 1. Yet they found room for what they obviously considered an important and more far-reaching story.
Terhaar acknowledged, “You can make a strong argument to put it on Page 1,” but at the same time she cautioned that “to journalists (the story) matters a lot. I don’t know if it’s as huge for all our readers,” especially those who don’t follow media and politics.
As I noted earlier, decisions on placing obituaries on the front page are subjective and what someone finds important and compelling, someone else finds irrelevant and boring.
So far this year, here are the obituaries The Bee has placed on Page 1:
A local homeless man nicknamed “Gremlin” who was killed coming to the aid of another homeless man; a local man who lived to 105 years old; a Tennessee woman who spent most of her life in an iron lung and died when a thunderstorm cut power to her life- saving machine; and the following well-known people:
William F. Buckley Jr., Charlton Heston, Yves Saint Laurent and Robert Mondavi. Two others, Bo Diddley and Jim McKay, had their obits on the covers of Scene and Sports, respectively.
Here are two others who, like Russert, recently landed inside the Metro section: Sydney Pollack and Harvey Korman.
So where do you think The Bee should have placed the Russert obit? Please let me know your opinions and I will post them online at the Public Editor’s Forum. To participate, visit www.sacbee.com/public. Please include your name and hometown.
