It is intriguing for journalists across the country to weigh in on how reporter Jayson Blair managed to get away with plagiarizing, lying and fictionalizing as a reporter for the revered New York Times.
It is more important for newspapers to do some soul-searching about whether they are susceptible to the same thing.
In truth, every newspaper is vulnerable. Readers need, more than ever, assurances that their newspapers are fair and accurate. Journalistic think tanks have determined that readers have doubted news organizations’ credibility for some time now.
That is the reason The Post and Courier established the position of public editor last July.
In this post, I invite readers to voice their concerns to me and to point out things we do wrong.
I have been told that readers are reluctant to register complaints. I hope that will change. Readers can help The Post and Courier make improvements.
Often reader insights are on target. I take that information to the staff so that they can make corrections and clarifications.
In cases where the observations are not exactly on target, I try to help the reader understand why and how The Post and Courier did what it did.
If I do my job right, it is a win-win situation. The staff learns from its mistakes and corrects them. And readers who lack confidence in the newspaper are assured a way to get answers to their questions.
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Several readers have contacted me to ask why Kim Kommando’s computer column has stopped appearing in Business Review on Mondays.
Business Editor Alan Greenberg said readers wanted a computer column that was not so basic as Kommando’s. He agreed, and is in search of a replacement.
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Objective news belongs on news pages. Opinion belongs on editorial pages. That’s one reason a reader took issue with a Knight Ridder story that ran Thursday. It said a deal “appeared to guarantee President Bush a stunning triumph” with a $350 billion tax-cut bill — one of the largest in the country’s history.
The reader suggested the story was off the mark because it wasn’t a “stunning victory.” Bush had hoped for a tax cut more than twice that large.
Furthermore, it is understandable that the reader suggested that calling it “stunning” was editorializing.
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A week ago, the Saturday paper inadvertently ran two nearly identical stories about a concert to benefit Mepkin Abbey. It ran once on Page 3B and once on Page 3F.
The goof occurred because a feature page designer mistakenly omitted the story from an earlier day’s paper. Both the news desk and the features desk, in an effort to compensate for the mistake, ran the story. The departments needed to communicate with each other.
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Recently, The Post and Courier ran a story about the Department of Natural Resources asking the public to avoid certain islands to protect birds nesting there. The story ran with a picture taken by Wade Spees of nests on one of the islands.
It was Spees who pointed out that the readers deserved a better explanation than they got in the caption.
It might have appeared that The Post and Courier was doing just what the DNR asked the public not to do — visit those islands where birds nest.
It would have avoided confusion to have explained that the photographer got the photo while accompanying a team from DNR.
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A reader wanted to know why the addresses of some people who write letters to the editor are complete while others are incomplete. Some include a city or town. Others do not.
Letters are assumed to come from the place where the paper is published unless otherwise noted. So an address that does not specify a city or town is an address in Charleston.
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Two people from Indiana have written to express horror that a recent headline referred to Indianans. Indianans? They’re Hoosiers, both said.
That is good enough for me. I’ll not refer to them as Indianans. But our copy desk did its homework. Webster’s actually says Indianans is a legitimate name for Hoosiers.
