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August 29, 2006
Roger Aylworth
ER Editor David Little’s column on how the newspaper handled ER writer and columnist Roger Aylworth’s unexpected participation in a County public hearing he was covering was intriguing.
I understand the decision made by the ER’s management to reassign Aylworth since he’s, I suppose, now “tainted” from the appearance of objectivity that reporters must convey when covering their beat assignments.
Nevertheless, I’m a media skeptic - just like the media is skeptical of government officials. There’s a mutual love/hate relationship between government and media.
I don’t believe in “objective reporting” since there are countless subjective decisions made by reporters and editors - decisions about the story to cover, the headlines to publish, who to quote, the quotes to publish, the story frame or angle, the layout placement of the story, the timing of the story publication, and the issues to push through repetitive coverage or complementary editorial writing.
I tend to disagree when Little writes: “That's another thing we journalists know and embrace: We are observers. We are not participants.”
Actually, I think journalists are both observers and participants, or participant-observers as the street-level sociologists like to say. I think journalists like to think the public perceives them as simply observers providing objective news coverage.
The ER certainly covers the news, but it also helps create the news by the daily choices its reporters and editors make. The ER covers the public agenda-setting by local leaders and community members, but it’s also an agenda-setting institution too.
Aylworth's public comment duirng a County Supervisor hearing just highlighted in full display that reporters and editors have opinions, but typically those opinions are shrouded in the many subjective decisions they make on how to write and publish a story.
Personally, I’m not offended by Aylworth’s mistake. If you had to sit through these meetings, you’re bound to have a mental lapse and he likely needed a stretch break anyhow from sitting in those uncomfortable seats for hours.
In fact, when Aylworth eventually retires - he is a 30-year newspaper veteran - I’m ready to help with his campaign for local office so he can speak up all he wants. But I suspect his saintly Susan and his widgets would prefer another retirement plan.
Or perhaps The Chico Beat is looking to hire a County beat reporter.
It will be interesting to see how the ER will reassign its reporters to deal with the latest reassignment.
According to Little, “We talked the next day and decided to write about the meeting in this column, and to let our readers know that we are reassigning Aylworth to another beat. He won't be covering the county supervisors anymore.”
Melissa Daugherty covers the university, a beat that Aylworth once covered. Laura Urseny covers Park Commission meetings. Jennifer Scholtes, a staff intern, has been covering the City Council now that Ari “killer” Cohn has moved. Chris Gullick covers CUSD.
I wonder who is going to draw the short straw to cover the Board of Supervisors. If you’re a reporter living in Chico, you’d prefer your newspaper beat to be in Chico - not in Oroville - to save on driving time.
I recommend the ER approach Judge Darrell Stevens, who helped set up our local Drug Court, to create a program where offenders are asked to cover the County Supervisors as community service in lieu of jail time.
If there's anything that might straighten out offenders, it's the possibility of having to attend local government meetings and then writing about it. But then again, some might consider this assignment excessive punishment.
Today’s Scrabble word is reassign, or to assign to a new position, distribution, or function.
Posted by dan_nt at August 29, 2006 04:08 PM
Comments
Michelle MacEachern was the champ at setting the issues. They were often trivial, but it was a lot of fun. Michelle was at her best (or worst) while Jack Winning was editor of the E-R. Rick Keene made his political career out of being nice to Michelle (that means being available for quotations on short notice), and acting out Winning's chosen issue for the month.
Michelle got mad when we put an image of her in our website, ChicoPolitics.com. She said she wasn't a political figure. She immediately thereafter apologized. I miss her.
Ari Cohn sent a demand that I remove the image I had of him from the website. He ignored my reply, and never apologized. I always wondered if he disliked a letter-to-the-editor of mine criticizing him for leaving the county PACs off an article on campaign contributions he wrote. I don't miss him.
Roger is a nice guy. The usual criticism is that he is too nice to his subjects, especially to the university administration. I'm kinda proud of him for speaking his mind, even though it was inappropriate.
Tom Gascoyne of the Chico Beat and late of the CN&R is a mean old fart. He likes to break what ever it is any motivated, sincere person is doing. It confirms his cycnical worldview.
I think it is fair for the participants in the public meetings to know who the reporters are. We were leveling the playing field. Don't doubt that the adept politicos know who they are and how to approach them in a way that doesn't appear to be pandering.
Dan N-T is good at this, and is good at not being too committal, while still sounding authoritative.
:-)
Posted by: Michael Jones at August 29, 2006 06:33 PM
Hey Dan - Nice commentary!
The ER certainly covers the news, but it also helps create the news by the daily choices its reporters and editors make. The ER covers the public agenda-setting by local leaders and community members, but it’s also an agenda-setting institution too.
That's exactly right. One article that comes immediately to mind was published a couple years ago, after the liberals took back the city council. The E-R ran an above-the-fold front page story on the influence money supposedly played in getting commission appointments. Apparently, some newly-appointed commissioners donated between fifty and a few hundred dollars to the winning council members, and according to the E-R, got a nice commission position as a pay off.
Of course, this is absolutely absurd. It showed in stark relief how the E-R distorts its coverage to cast liberals in a bad light. Instead of illuminating the real corruption -- the influence bought with tens of thousands of dollars given to pro-pavement councilmembers by a handful of developers -- the E-R chose to invent liberal corruption.
Posted by: Chuckles at August 29, 2006 07:16 PM
Interesting comments by both of you. Or maybe not. But perhaps I'm simply non-committal.
I recall the story on some campaign contributors receiving commission appointments.
This is a good example of the subjective choices reporters and editors make to create a news story or at least a news story angle.
In that story, the ER failed to:
1. Highlight all the new commission appointments from people who DID NOT give any money to candidates.
2. Highlight many of the returning commissioners who did receive renewed appointments, even if they were appointed under a different City Council.
3. Highlight sitting commissioners who were already appointed and previously gave to other City Councilors.
A few former Commissioners were not reappointed or reassigned to different commissions with the new City Council make-up.
But if any or all three of the above issues were covered, the article would have been more balanced and would have provided more context.
Maybe I would sound a bit more authortitative if I could actually cite the article, but then I'd have to pay the ER to read the over two-year old archived front page story.
Posted by: dan_nt at August 29, 2006 07:42 PM
It is not always the reporter's fault if a story appears unbalanced. The article submitted by the reporter may have been edited by the night shift "city desk" or other editors during the paste up process just before print deadline to make a story fit into the page in the space alloted.
I've seen the same thing happen to TV news stories. A reporter spends all day on a package going into it thinking the package will be 2 minutes long. Then a half hour before airtime, the producer discovers that a whole bunch of news is backed up and running over time limit, and somethings gotta give. In that case the reporter could get the command at the last minute to cut :15 or even :30 seconds from the story. The reporter then has to hack out parts of what may have started out as a fully balanced story. I've seen some real heated arguments just minutes before airtime on this topic.
Often the TV weather segment (because its presented live and a little more flexible) is asked 30 seconds before going on live to take a 2:30 weather presentation and make it last 1:30, and thats after all the computer graphics were already loaded and no chance to edit in the short time left. So some nights if the tv weather presenter sounds like he/she just had a coffee and helium balloon bender, its often because the producer booms over the earpiece KILL A MINUTE NOW. I've done it hundreds of times. The trick was to make it look "natural".
Same goes for paste-up in newspapers...though I don't think they have the same heated arguments minutes before the presses roll. The format and space alloted determine how many column inches the story gets. Other stories submitted, plus advertising load determine the available space. Get a last minute breaking news story...and whole stories sometimes get bumped until the next day, or worse, chopped up to a portion of ther original size.
And, if the headline sometimes seems a bit bolder than the story content, or photo captions don't quite seem complementary to the story, bear in mind that the newspaper reporter does not write either the headline nor the photo caption. The editors choose the headline, the photographer provides the caption.
So, know that when you read a story, reporters don't always get to see their product through intact to the final result.
Posted by: Anthony Watts at August 30, 2006 10:30 PM
Anthony - I agree with you that the reporter may not be responsible for getting a story wrong. The story I referenced was written by Ari Cohn, a well-respected reporter. Although Cohn may have simply done a poor job of reporting (possible, but not likely), in this case I believe the blame lies primarily with management.
Posted by: Chuckles at August 30, 2006 11:45 PM