Before Humphrey Bogart and Claude Raines amble off in the rain to their future friendship during the last scene in the classic film “Casablanca,” Raines covers Bogey’s shooting of a German officer by saying: “Major Strasser has been shot. Round up the usual suspects.”
Since then, “round up the usual suspects” has become a cynical shorthand for “no one will pay the price in this instance” or “we don’t really want to solve this problem.”
The phrase has also become a topic of discussion in the world of journalism where the laziest of reporters talk to the same people over and over instead of finding new voices in a public discussion. This kind of cover-your-butt journalism makes for easy daily stories, but it cheats the public.
The rapidity of e-mail and finding information on the Internet has exacerbated the problem.
Time was, a reporter actually had to walk over to the city library or to City Hall or to a source’s office to get background information on a story. The interesting human activity that happened to the reporter as he or she strolled to another building was this: He or she met people and talked to them about what was going on in the city. This led to (egads) new sources for the reporter and stories that brought new perspectives to the reader.
What a concept.
Admittedly, covering some of the beats schools, state government, federal government, cities, the environment for The Salt Lake Tribune can be a daunting task, and reporters tend to feel comfortable if they have a number of contacts in areas of their beat who can be counted on to report little tidbits that lead to big stories.
But the fact that I can look around the newsroom at most hours of the day and see butts firmly planted in desk chairs leads me to believe coverage at The Tribune would improve if more reporters got out of their cubicles and went out to meet some more people on their beats.
Let’s face it, most of the actions that affect our lives are shaped by consensus in the middle, where decision-makers tend to go, after the extreme right and the extreme left have shouted at each other for weeks.
Looking harder for this middle ground and the people who can describe it would benefit Tribune readers.
*Poor excuses: The placement of two Tribune stories upset readers this week. The first was a story in Thursday’s edition that ran on page A-6. It was a small story saying that President Bush personally admitted there was no tie between former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the terrorist attacks on the U.S. on 9/11/01. This was a big story and it should have run on A-1. The administration used 9-11 as part of the justification for going into Iraq. Bush’s admission that the administration was wrong deserved to be on A-1.
The second story was one in Friday’s edition detailing an automobile accident in the Salt Lake Valley in which two children died and a third was critically injured. The children were playing in the driveway of their home when they were struck. The Tribune had a detailed story and it had a photograph of the car. The story ran below the fold on the front of the Utah section. With a little effort, the story and the photo could have run above the fold on the Utah page with a photo. With a little more effort, the story could have run on A-1 with the photograph inside the A section.
Terry Orme, Tribune managing editor for news and business, said the copy desk got the story late, but added he thought the story belonged high on the Utah page and should have been accompanied by the photograph.
The time a story comes to the copy desk is rarely a valid excuse for how it is treated in the news display.
When Squeaky Fromm, a member of the Charles Manson Family, took a shot at President Ford, the first news on the AP wire came 11 minutes before our page deadline at the Fort Lauderdale News. We managed to get eight inches of story stripped across the top of A-1 and we did it in hot type, which took much longer than computer-generated content.
A copy desk should be prepared to handle late-breaking stories and to give them the display they deserve.
*Poor headline: The lead headline on A-1 in Friday’s edition “Perfect Storm” is inaccurate. Hurricane Isabel was a perfect storm while it was at sea: It was perfectly round, the eye was stable and it was huge. But before it hit land, the southwestern portion of the storm was shaved off by a different weather front, so it became disorganized, asymmetrical and far from perfect. Even the story says that.
The Reader Advocate’s phone number is 801-257-8782. Write to the Reader Advocate, The Salt Lake Tribune, P.O. Box 867, Salt Lake City, Utah 84110. reader.advocate@sltrib.com.
This week’s stats:
*Number of readers surprised by our spelling of a town in Arizona: 3
*Number of readers upset about the play of the story in The Tribune in which President Bush admitted Saddam Hussein was not tied to 9-11: 32
*Number of readers upset over the play of a story detailing the death of two children in a Thursday night auto accident: 11
*Number of readers who hate certain daily comics: 18
*Number of readers upset over the weekly TV section: 21
