Does the Star Tribune newsroom play footsie with some advertisers and allow editorial page opinion to influence coverage of others?
Did the newspaper overplay the Rainbow Foods announcement that it would begin bagging and carryout services by displaying the story at the top of the Nov. 10 Metro-State section?
Michael Griffin asked: “How does this rate such coverage? How is it news? It seemed more like advertising copy?”
South High School teacher Mark Jensen criticized the newspaper’s scarcity of coverage of a “complicated accounting scandal” at Supervalu Inc., which owns and franchises Cub Foods supermarkets.
William Cooper, CEO and chairman of TCF Bank, takes a different tack. He has not advertised in the Star Tribune since November 2001.
“I’ve been very clear. I feel that the Star Tribune does not represent the best interest of my business. I cannot support an entity which is predatory to our business.”
Cooper, a power in state Republican circles, says the newspaper’s “editorial policy spills over hugely into the newsroom. It affects the business page. Coverage in the business and news sections are tilted.”
He declined to give me examples.
TCF’s last quarterly financial report on Oct. 17 rated a four-column headline, “TCF quarterly earnings up 11%,” heading the corporate earnings page.
Rainbow and Cub Foods are shelf-to-shelf adversaries in championing lower prices to consumers tightening their expenditures. So Rainbow initiating baggers and carryout to captivate that huge audience was more than a bagatelle. And if Cub does the same, that would seem to qualify for equal treatment.
Teacher Jensen was concerned about the paucity of follow-up coverage on Supervalu’s June 26 announcement that an employee had overstated profits in its pharmacy unit and the company would either restate the earnings or take a charge of $19 million to $21 million.
The employee had resigned, the company said.
The next day its stock lost $6.11 per share, or 21.8 percent. It gained back $1.29 on each of the next two days.
The Star Tribune played the restatement story on its business cover, and on Sept. 17 published a 14-inch story on Page D3 reporting that Supervalu faces shareholders suits over an earnings restatement.
But Jensen wondered if an investigative piece was justified, or a human interest story on shareholders who were hurt by the stock’s crash.
Reporter Ann Merrill, who covers the food industry, assured Jensen, he said, that she had not been looking in the wrong direction.
Analysts told Merrill that “reporters and their bosses are keen to find the next Enron,” but said that “they had no reason to doubt that this was anything more than an isolated incident.”
Merrill told Jensen she spent half a day prowling through Securities and Exchange Commission documents, hoping to find the former employee’s name. “We also have contacted lawyers trying to find her identify,” she wrote Jensen. “So far, we’ve come up dry.”
William Abraham, representative of metro area auto dealers since 1971, says, “Rightfully so, news should not be influenced by advertising.”
He acknowledged that on occasion “when an article is written that hurts a business you have the right not to advertise. It’s a natural reaction. In most of those instances people get mad and a week later it has subsided.”
Comment: The newspaper’s resolve to insulate the newsroom from advertising pressures is very strong. It preserves the integrity of the newsroom staff and the advertisers. The notion that the newspaper’s editorial policies influence news coverage, raised by Cooper, is simply wrong, no matter how often it is repeated for political effect.
