It’s been almost four months since the journalistic maelstrom known as the Diana Griego Erwin affair hit the Sacramento Bee, and the paper is still picking up the pieces and repairing itself.
The paper’s longtime Metro columnist, you will recall, resigned in May after the paper’s editors were unable to verify the existence of several people identified by name in her columns, some going back several years.
It was a national embarrassment and part of what seemed like an epidemic of journalistic fraud at papers such as the Detroit Free Press, the Los Angeles Times and USA Today, to mention just a few, while also providing easy fodder for the media’s critics.
It also raised uncomfortable and significant questions – all posed by readers – such as how could the apparent lies have gone undetected for so long? Were other stories breaching the internal system of checks and balances? Was management inept? Could the paper be trusted?
Things were ugly, and it was all self-inflicted.
The paper at first looked inward, holding a series of staff meetings with reporters and line editors as well as with the publisher and top senior editors. There was second-guessing, but also talk of moving forward, of lessons learned and of how to prevent future transgressions.
Among other things, the paper published a long story by two of its investigative reporters laying out the apparent fabrications in detail as well as the editing weaknesses that let them happen. It was dirty laundry for all to see.
Later this month, the paper will hold a series of ethics seminars led by Bob Steele of the Poynter Institute, a national program that promotes journalistic excellence by seeking to improve the practices and training of individual reporters and editors.
And starting this week, the paper will look outward. I am reinstituting a system of accuracy letters that was initiated by my predecessor, Tony Marcano, but which lapsed when he left late last year.
My office will send letters randomly to sources identified by name in staff-written stories. The letters will ask sources several questions, such as whether the story was accurate and fair, whether their comments and quotes were reported correctly, whether the headline and photos were accurate, whether important elements were missing from the story, and for their general impressions.
Unlike the previous program, though, where the responses were kept confidential, the letters will be shared with the reporter and his or her editor as well as with Executive Editor Rick Rodriguez and Managing Editor Joyce Terhaar.
I will select the stories about which we will send out accuracy letters. Over time, all of the paper’s columnists and reporters – including those in the regional editions – will be included.
Judging from the responses of those who participated in the past, the letters were much appreciated, if for no other reason than sources were happy to be asked about the paper’s performance.
There are several reasons for the letters: gauging the paper’s accuracy; holding reporters and editors accountable; obtaining reader feedback and community outreach. While those are all-important, they aren’t the paramount reason for the letters but rather pathways to the main goal.
And that goal is enhancing and building The Bee’s credibility. Without credibility, the life of this 148-year journalistic enterprise that dates back to the days of the Gold Rush ceases to exist.
Some of the paper’s reporters and editors that I’ve talked to over the last several months in the wake of the apparent fabrications believe that accuracy letters would not have caught the falsehoods. How can you send letters to people who don’t exist, the argument goes.
But a pattern of such nonresponsiveness, I believe, could have triggered early red flags and more in-depth questioning.
Others have bemoaned what they see as an over-reaction to one individual’s journalistic misdeeds, with the paper, they say, bordering on self-flagellation.
But that notion ignores the big picture and the tarnish to the paper’s credibility as an institution made up of the sum of all its many individual parts.
The essence of this high-profile episode cut to the paper’s very core – do we make up things or not? – and to have ignored or minimized it would have smelled of rot.
Many newspapers, including several within the McClatchy chain, have accuracy letter programs.
The Bee’s publisher, Janis Besler Heaphy, supports reinstituting the letters.
“This is in keeping with our commitment to accuracy in our news coverage,” she said in an e-mail. “I’ve made it clear to the newsroom in the wake of the Griego Erwin incident that there are no higher values than accuracy and the readiness to correct the record when we do make a mistake. Our readers count on us first and foremost to be correct and believable.
“Accuracy letters are one way to assure that we maintain our standards. We are pursuing a variety of other techniques to ensure the work we’re producing is fair, balanced and accurate. It is tough to admit mistakes readily. But it’s our job to create a culture that recognizes and encourages our responsibility to do so.”
Late last week, I told the paper’s staff in an e-mail that the accuracy letters were being resurrected.
Once the program is in full swing, I plan on periodically updating readers about the responses and what readers have to say about them, too.
