Hoyt on his own petard

Posted on March 30, 2008 by admin

Afraid I’m going to ask Clark Hoyt, public editor of the New York Times, for a correction to a Times story.

But first, I have a question: How often has Columbia University bestowed its coveted Pulitzer Prize for national news reporting on reporters who DECLINED to publish a big story?

At least once. It happened in the case of Hoyt and Robert Boyd, who received the 1973 Pulitzer for their gumshoe work uncovering the psychiatric hospitalizations of then U.S. Sen. Thomas Eagleton, a Democrat from Missouri who briefly was his party’s nominee for vice president in 1972.

Eagleton’s ascent ended abruptly, brought down by Hoyt. Who is Clark Hoyt? After a distinguished career with the Knight and Knight-Ridder chain of newspapers, he now writes columns that judge the wisdom, ethics and intelligence of Times staffers.

It seems only fair that Hoyt himself be hauled into court once in a while.

The revelation that earned Hoyt and Boyd that 1973 Pulitzer? Hoyt confirmed a fact long-suppressed by media in Eagleton’s home town of St. Louis, Missouri — that Eagleton had suffered from depression. He’d been hospitalized three times and twice had received electric shock therapy. Such a scoop might have prompted Eagleton to withdraw from the campaign had it been published by Hoyt and Boyd’s employer, the Knight chain of newspapers. But we’ll never know what might have happened had Hoyt and Boyd actually beaten everybody with that story, because it never hit the streets. At least, not as a scoop for the Knight papers.

I became interested in this footnote in journalistic history while researching the background of Hoyt, whom I’ve taken to task a couple of times in joelontheroad.com for writing Times Op-Ed columns which, I think, harm the reputations of hardworking reporters and editors on the low end of the Times feeding chain. But I have to admit that even though I criticize him, I find his columns fascinating. He’s usually thorough, follows leads well below the surface and takes the bigwigs to task, too. Sometimes I think he fails to understand the complexity of writers’ jobs, but his column is one of my must-read pieces in the Sunday Times, along with Frank Rich, Randy Cohen and Deborah Solomon.

But as I say, it seems only fair that he who judges ought now and then to be judged. Recently, I was gearing up to write a searing column about Hoyt’s column on a recent Times embarrassment when I found myself accidentally wandering a side path.

It seems completely unrelated, my research into questions about events I watched or took part in during the spring of 1965, when I was a $75-a-week clerk-intern in the Washington, D.C. office of then U.S. Rep. and House Minority Leader Gerald Ford. I’ve been trying to learn more about Ford’s press secretary of the time, Jim Mudge. (You can read about Jim in my post, “Jerry’s Memory Hole,” in the category “Jerry & Me.”) Jim had worked for the Detroit Free Press before coming to Washington, and in January 1966, I recently learned, he went back to the Free Press to be chief of the paper’s City-County Bureau. (Many years later, without realizing Jim had been there, I worked in that same office covering Wayne County for the Free Press.)

Anyway, when I retired last November, I was given a copy of “On Guard,” by Frank Angelo. It’s a history of the Free Press. Funny thing: I was given a copy of “On Guard’ when I hired into the paper in 1984. I looked Jim Mudge up in the index and found him mentioned as reporting on the Detroit riots in 1967. My eye strayed to another page and the name Clark Hoyt jumped out at me.

Suddenly, I was reading about a different Clark Hoyt. No, the same person, just 30 years ago. In 1978, then Free Press Executive Editor David Lawrence “named Clark Hoyt assistant to the executive editor with responsibilities in the news area,” according to the book, which continues, “Hoyt joined the Free Press in 1968 as politics writer and served later in the Knight Newspapers Washington bureau. It was while he was in Washington that Hoyt, and bureau chief Bob Boyd, won a Pulitzer Prize for uncovering the history of mental illness of 1972 Democratic vice-presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton. That reporting was based on information supplied anonymously by telephone to John S. Knight III, a talented Free Press reporter who later became an editor at the Philadelphia Daiily News and was murdered in late 1975. Boyd, a Free Press reporter before going to the Washington bureau, and Hoyt were awarded the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.”

I wondered if Hoyt and Boyd filched the tip from the other reporter, Knight. Nope. I’m told by an old Free Press hand that this young Knight was of the same Knight family that owned the Free Press, but he was an intern. Interns don’t normally follow up tips on national stories. And I learned that the tip was relayed to Hoyt on his way to St. Louis to look into the background of the relatively unknown first-term senator, Eagleton, after he was nominated for VP at the 1972 Democratic convention.

I find the language of “On Guard” interesting: Hoyt and Boyd won a Pulitzer for “uncovering the history of mental illness” of Eagleton. Doesn’t say they wrote a story.

They didn’t.

Here’s how Eagleton’s obit in the March 5, 2007 New York Times put it: After the convention, “rumors began circulating among politicians and journalists. Mr. Eagleton held a news conference on July 25 in Custer, S.D., where he had just briefed the vacationing Mr. McGovern over breakfast.”

Not exactly how it happened. It wasn’t rumors that forced Eagleton out.

It was Pulitzer Prize-winning news reporting.

Seems Hoyt took the Free Press intern’s tip and used it to guide his reporting in St. Louis. He started reading newspaper clips about Eagleton and found gaps — periods when the politician, normally in the news, suddenly disappeared. He kept digging and found references to hospitalizations — and a physician’s name. When Eagleton’s doctor slammed his door in Hoyt’s face, the reporter knew he was onto to something big.

Why didn’t he write and publish it?

Maybe he wishes he had. But I don’t think so.

Here’s what I suspect happened. He and Boyd had evidence that a potential vice president — a man within reach of the presidency — suffered from periodic bouts of depression severe enough to require hospitalization. Maybe not so problematic for a U.S. senator, but certainly worth concern in a man who could set off a nuclear inferno. At that level, it’s political — no longer just between his doctor and the senator.

The reporters had the story and could have written and published it. They were at that moment where they needed, out of fairness to Eagleton, to let him know what they had and give him a chance to respond.

Think of the temptation: They had a really hot story — as it turned out, a Pulitzer prize-winner. Why not just go with what they had?

Ever see those disclaimers in news stories that say the subject didn’t return a phone call for comment? Hoyt and Boyd might have placed a call to Eagleton shortly before deadline and then run a story breaking the news and saying there was no word from Eagleton by press time. If they’d happened to connect with someone in the campaign, they could have used whatever quotes they got. And if there was no comment, so be it. Who could reproach them? They’d have preserved their scoop.

I learned from a column by Joe Strupp at Editor & Publisher what happened.

It seems they recognized the gravity of the story and its potential impact. This was about more than competition among media.

They weren’t taking short-cuts. They learned Eagleton and presidential candidate George McGovern were staying at a log cabin resort in South Dakota. Hoyt and Boyd traveled to Montana, found the resort, located the campaign manager and unloaded their bad news. Eagleton, it turned out, hadn’t leveled with McGovern and the story was a big shock to him. Eagleton called a press conference. The beans were spilled. Everybody had the story.

Eagleton tried to hang in, but withdrew a few days later under pressure from McGovern.

The Times needs to clarify if not outright correct Eagleton’s obituary. It was not “rumors” that pushed the senator to withdraw. It was the force of truth, well and thoroughly reported by Hoyt and Boyd.

Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

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Joel’s water taxi 2.0

Posted on March 29, 2008 by admin

Guess I jumped the gun.

I’d heard that one of the plans for the Rouge River was to have water taxis taking tourists to such destinations as the Ford Motor Co. Rouge assembly plant, Greenfield Village and Henry Ford Museum, and the Henry Ford Estate, aka Fair Lane mansion.

All of these places can be reached by water on the Rouge River.

In fact, when we canoed the Rouge River not quite three years ago, Detroit Free Press photographer Patricia Beck and I passed all of these places. At the time, we could not have reached Greenfield Village because the concrete sides of the river blocked passage to the old Rouge meander that once allowed Henry Ford to cruise his motor boat down from his mansion to the Village.

By the way, watch for our book, UP THE ROUGE! PADDLING DETROIT’S HIDDEN RIVER, about our five-day, 27-mile odyssey on the Rouge. It’s being published by Wayne State University Press early next year.

Since our trip, the old meander, called an “oxbow,” has been reconnected to the main course of the river. You could now take a canoe, and maybe even a motorboat, from the main part of the river into Greenfield Village.

That’s where I maybe was a bit premature. See, I have this motorboat, a 16.5-foot Crestliner Fish Hawk with 60 hp outboard motor. No more battling headwinds from a heavy-laden canoe. I can take people up the Rouge in my new boat. And what better destination than Fair Lane manor, where we could dock and have lunch at the Pool Restaurant?

It’s actually a scenario imagined in the Rouge Gateway Partnership master plan for the Rouge — tourists arrive by water taxi at these neat places.

So I called Gary Rodgers, manager of the Henry Ford Estate. Gary helped Pat and me plan for our portage at the mansion on June 6-7, 2005. After struggling against 30 mph gusts all day, we pulled the canoe out below the dam at Fair Lane on June 6 and upstream of the dam we launched another canoe, a shorter one, the following day. At Fair Lane, they told us if we got there in time on Monday, June 6, we could tie up the canoe and order box lunches from the restaurant.

So I’m thinking, why not do the same thing with my new boat? Cruise the nine miles from Zug Island to Fair Lane, tie up the boat and have lunch at the Pool Restaurant.

Not to be. I heard from Gary Rodgers, and the news is not good for hungry river navigators.

“I’ve seen people come up the Rouge fishing, very seldom, but there is no place to tie up at the Estate,” Gary said in a voice mail. “We don’t have the facilities. In the future, we hope to have that, but it’s probably quite a few years off.”

Darn!

But wait — all is not lost. The oxbow leading to Greenfield Village is open now. I’ll give The Henry Ford a call, see if I can tie my boat up and have lunch at the Village.

Stay tuned…

Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

Posted in Adventures on the Rouge, Places, retirement | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

How many reporters does it take…

Posted on March 26, 2008 by admin

No, not to screw in a light bulb.

I think most reporters are capable of accomplishing that chore without much help.

But how many does it take to cover a political candidate?

Let me put it differently — did we really NEED that long page one story in today’s (March 26, 2008) New York Times about the tragedy du jour — namely, the decision of various news organizations not to pay two grand apiece to fly with Barry. And they’re not flying in droves with Hill, either, according to “Press Cutbacks Leave Room on Campaign Bus,” by Jacques Steinberg. their reporters hanging out with Hill and Barry?

We hear that the public is sick of horse race stories masquerading as political analysis. Yet here’s the Times boring us with yet another horse race. But this contest is among journalists, not politicians.

Talk about insider baseball.

Democracy is in peril, folks! According to the Times, “…the absence of some newspapers on the trail suggests not only that readers are being exposed to fewer perspectives drawn from shoe-leather reporting, but also that fewer reporters will arrive at the White house in January with the experience that editors have typically required to cover the president on Day 1.”

What experience would that be — hefting pints of beer with their favorite candidate?

You’d think the Republic’s very foundations were threatened because there won’t be enough reporters to chow down with the politicos.

If the only thing reporters can write about is themselves, it’s time for all of them to go home. The smart media are the ones who cut their losses and pulled up stakes.

Who does that leave? The biggies like the NY Times, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, all of whom are in their own little horse race to see who can lose the least circulation.

All of them racking up huge bills, screwing in the same light bulb.

Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

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A TRUE ethics policy

Posted on March 25, 2008 by admin

“Ride hard, shoot straight and speak the shining truth.”

Why would I post a one-line, nine-word bromide that is open to a wide range of interpretation and claim it as my blog’s ethics policy?

Because it contains three elements missing in the long-winded, self-serving, so-called ethics policies put out by many major and minor American newspapers to impose “ethical” standards on their editorial employees.

First, my policy is short.

Second, it is actually possible to parse sense from it.

And third, it contains a word missing from its supposedly more sophisticated brethren. More about that word later.But now, time for a warning: I have a pony in this race. Six months before I took a buyout from the Detroit Free Press, I was disciplined for behavior that managers, long after the fact, decided was “unethical”. In fact, they agreed that what I did was not unethical at the time I did it, but after they found out about the horrible act I had committed three years previous, they tinkered with the language of their “ethics” policy to make it, ex post facto, a breach of their new re-jiggered and ever plastic guidelines. In other words, don’t do it again. If that seems convoluted, don’t blame me. Having amended the meaning of “ethics,” managers then asked me if I would ever do what I had done three years before — again. What they failed to tell me was that they had already decided that if I answered “Yes,” they planned to punish me, possibly even fire me. Ain’t they sweet?In the next days, weeks and months, I’ll be exploring “ethics” issues on joelontheroad.com, and I’ll be discussing the ramifications of newspaper “ethics” and what this little adventure in pseudo-philosophy has meant to me. Example: Anyone who thinks this episode towards the end of my 30-career in journalism didn’t play a significant part in my decision to retire from the Free Press should read a book about the business practices of Gannett, the corporation that owns the Free Press. It’s called “The Chain Gang,” by Richard McCord.My supposed sin? As a citizen of the United States of America, I participated in the political process in fall 2004 by contributing $500 to the Michigan Democratic party.Horrible, horrible me. But as I say, at the time I did it, donations didn’t violate either the Knight-Ridder or Gannett ethics policies. And, while I continued at the Free Press, I didn’t donate money to political parties. Not so our bosses. At least one of our managers, AFTER he’d re-tooled the ethics policy and his minions had played their little head games with me, actually donated money to a political organization — $175 to the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce Political Action Committee. Yesiree, right there on the Michigan Secretary of State website for anyone with a computer to take a gander at. The Eliot Spitzer Moment for Shameless Hypocrisy.But back to my ethics policy which, following industry standards, is subject to change at my whim. I really think my ethics policy du jour has it all over those fatuous policies put out by the big name newspapers.Take a look at the creme de la creme, which is to say the ethics policy of our nation’s elite newspaper, The New York Times. The Times was so proud of its 54-page tome on newsroom social control that it saw fit to attach an index.An index! This thing must be really important. Hmmm. Gosh, I don’t see any index entries for “Newspaper Guild,” or “union,” or “collective bargaining agreement” or “contract.” Guess this hyped-up, obese document isn’t part of the New York Times contract with the New York local of The Newspaper Guild. Wonder how meaningful it really is.I haven’t seen another American newspaper ethics policy that reached quite the Times’ height of fatuous self-importance and pomposity, but they all have these elements in common: Florid, grandiose but murky verbiage in describing goals or standards impossible to meet. At least Eliot Spitzer was a one-trick — or should I say, SAME trick — horse. The Times sows hypocrisy far and wide.

Okay, I’ll stop kicking the Times around. For a minute or two. Here’s one of my favorite examples of a double standard, found in the Dec. 13, 1984 edition of the Detroit Free Press’ “Ethics Guidelines.” It says: “No staff member should write about, report on, photograph or make a news judgment about any individual related to him or her by blood or marriage or with whom the staff member has a close personal relationship.”

That ban existed for years in the Free Press’ Ethical Guidelines, then disappeared without explanation. Here’s what I bet happened: Someone in management with the power to re-assemble these elastic ethics policies belatedly figured out that the prohibition on writing about family members was being violated with impunity every day of the week by then columnists Jim Fitzgerald, Susan Watson, Bob Talbert and others. Of course, lowly reporters like me had to abide by it or face recrimination, humiliation and even termination from editors. But the columnists were and are the paper’s stars, paid far better than other writers to ruminate on anything that bestirred them, which often was a spouse, a kid or a grandchild. In direct violation of the paper’s behavioral edicts.That’s the problem with so-called “ethical guidelines” or “ethical policies” — their lofty, pompous proscriptions too often collide with workplace reality. Everyone in the newsroom knew that those columnists were highly prized for their ability to spin homey yarns about pals or hubbies into down to earth essays that persuaded people to trade their spare change for the newspaper. Why, people would even swap good money to buy books that collected these family-oriented columns. Meanwhile, a rule that insiders know is being broken, if they think about it, is unknown to readers. How often do you see a newspaper’s ethics policy in print where its readers can easily find it and compare what they’re reading to the paper’s ethical cant du jour? The hypocrisy goes unrecognized by the public and therefore it has no importance to newsroom managers who write the regs.

Here’s another “ethic” I find entertaining, because it has survived and lives on in current iterations of many newsroom ethics policies. I quote from the 1984 Free Press document: “A staff member may not enter into a business relationship with a news source.”There was a time at the Detroit Free Press when a certain columnist had a book deal as co-author with a certain famous but now-dead football coach whom he continued to use as a news source. It was okay by management, despite the seemingly emphatic prohibition, that Mitch had this deal with Bo.

Really, the language is pretty vague. What does it mean to say “business relationship”? If I buy a book from a bookstore, then write a story about the store manager, was the purchase a “business relationship” that violated the policy? If I pay for lunch at a restaurant, then write a review of that eatery, am I in trouble?

Don’t ask me. I don’t write the rules.We know who writes them. Newspaper owners, or their managers.

I’m told (by a lawyeer from Gannett, wouldn’t you know) that the New York Times’ ethics book is the “gold standard” of ethics policies. Wow. That is really impressive. It stands to reason. They are the classiest newspaper in the country. They must have the smartest writers, deepest thinkers, so it’s natural to turn to them as the wisest of the wise.

On page 19 of their hefty book, I find the Times’ rules for staffers regarding “Voting, Campaigns and Public Issues.”

I’ll be writing in depth about this section later, but right now I’m interested in the opening line: “Journalists have no place on the playing fields of politics.”

What a mouthful that is.

At risk of being branded a smart-ass, I’d like to know — can somebody explain to me? — what the phrase “playing fields of politics” means?

I picture an immense soccer field with goal posts all along the sides. Lots of soccer fields. No, wait a minute. They’re football fields. No, baseball fields. See what I mean? What the hell DOES it mean?

It is my understanding — correct me if I’m wrong — that Times reporters travel with political candidates and government officials either on campaigns or as part of the officials’ governmental duties. It is my understanding that reporters attend press conferences called by officials and candidates for political office. Am I wrong to believe that reporters sometimes hold private conversations with politicians and government officials, say over lunch, and that they sometimes shoot the bull about politics in off-the-record contacts and may even discuss the ins and outs of political maneuvering with people who have a political leaning of one kind or another? And that these unpublicized conversations between journalists and politicos from time to time affect the course of political history?

Hmmm: Could these scenes be construed as “the playing fields of politics”?I’m sitting in the dining room of my home writing this, having perused the front page of today’s (Jan. 20, 2008) New York Times. Oh my, here’s a headline, “VOTE OF WOMEN PROPELS CLINTON IN NEVADA CAUCUS, followed by a deck, “OBAMA IS STRONG 2ND” and a sub-deck, “G.O.P.’s Primary Goes Down to the Wire in South Carolina.” The article was co-written, we are told through a by-line, by JEFF ZELENY and JENNIFER STEINHAUER.Where did Mr. Zeleny and Ms. Steinhauer learn about these elections if it was not on the “playing fields of politics”?

Gosh. I wonder if these two reporters will be cited for ethical lapses if it turns out that they in fact conducted some or all of their reporting on “the playing fields of politics”?

Don’t ask me. I don’t make the rules.Isn’t it just possible that these very articles might have some impact on the behavior of the very politicians they cover? Might not politicians choose to do one thing and not another based on conversations with reporters or based on their reading of the reporters’ articles? How about the Times’ articles about National Security Agency wiretapping? Didn’t those articles affect government behavior? It seems like the very publication of articles takes place on one or more of those “playing fields,” doesn’t it?

I’m not even going to get into the question of why the Times’ ethics gurus chose that term, “playing fields of politics.” Were they perhaps sports writers or sports editors? It’s a pretty lame metaphor, made more so by its choice of athletic lingo. It’s a cinch they aren’t philosophers.I’d like to know this: Why do newspapers write these hyperbolic policies if they can be construed and re-construed to the point they’re meaningless?In my opinion, the people who run newspapers see these rules as clubs they can use to beat on reporters when no other weapon is handy and whenever it suits them. Control. Keep those lackies in hand. That’s not what the managers say, of course. I recently heard a top newspaper editor explain what these policies are meant to do: Preserve the paper’s credibility. You see, in this manager’s view, readers lose confidence in the paper as a believable source of news if they find out their favorite writers have conflicts of interest.

Problem: All those exceptions. The sports writer with the book deal, columnists writing about family members. Another problem: Those “conflicts” were obvious to readers, who never knew they were “ethics” conflicts because they were never told about the policy. If they had known, would they have cared? Who knows? Who cares? Columnists provide entertainment. The whole paper can’t be murder and mayhem or politics and courtroom folderol. Managers know it. They give those writers great latitude, freedom to break the rules because it sells papers.

Did readers give a rip, really?

According to the editor, though, if the public realizes there’s a conflict, they will stop buying the paper. That would hurt the paper’s bottom line.

Did it hurt the paper’s bottom line to let writers wax on about their families or write about sources they had deals with? Not if readers didn’t know. They wouldn’t have cared, anyway. They continued to buy papers, maybe bought even more papers, thanks to the wit and homeyness of the columns.

But we then hear it’s not even reality that matters. It is perception. If people PERCEIVE a conflict, they may stop buying. That would be bad. But all those years when columnists wrote about family members and didn’t get caught, that was okay. There was no PERCEPTION of a conflict. So people kept buying papers and there was no economic harm to the publishers.So what ethics really are about is not credibility at all. What “ethics” are about is selling newspapers. Ethics equals money.

Why is this important to me? I love newspapers. I see them dying. No, I see them killing themselves. I see them doing dumb things they got away with when they were the only show in town. But now, with competition from the Internet, they are like deer in a forest of klieg lights. Either they’re paralyzed with fear or simply lack the basic intelligence they need to survive. This is about the future of newspapers.

It’s worth looking again at those highly-paid columnists who write to a different standard from other staffers. Managers assume that readers buy more papers because they want to read those columnists. If the issue is economics, as the editor said, then if what they write sells papers, then everything should be okay — even though they may violate ethical standards. No credibility problem as long as the cash flows in. And as long as nobody blows the whistle.

I keep reading these ethics policies, and there’s one word that I don’t find in any of them. “Credibility” is all over the place. But that word which readers REALLY prize more than credibility, well, I can’t find that word in the index to the Times’ “Ethical Journalism: A Handbook of Values and Practices for the News and Editorial Departments September 2004.” I don’t find it in the Free Press policies, of which there have been so many it’s difficult to catalog them.

Okay, I made fun of the Times’ pompous index, but maybe it can help us out here. Oops. No sign of the word that comes between “trustees” and “University of Missouri awards for consumer journalism.”

My little policy is not 54 pages long. It has no index, only nine words.

But yes, my policy has that most important of words.

Ride hard, shoot straight and speak the shining TRUTH.

Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

Posted in future of newspapers, Joel's J School | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Christine Beatty’s to-do list

Posted on March 25, 2008 by admin

If the Detroit Free Press can recycle my blog stories (see joelontheroad.com “Free Press recycling plan,” Feb. 19 under “Kwamegate”), guess I can push the replay button, too.

On Feb. 8 I wondered how long it will take for Christine Beatty to crack. You know, turn on Kwame. Now that the Wayne County prosecutor has charged her with obstruction of justice, conspiracy and perjury crimes that carry some hefty prison time, if she’s convicted — I can’t help raising the question again. But wait! Why write it again? I’m a firm believer in recycling, too. So here’s that Feb. 8 post:

Wonder if Christine Beatty will flip.

You know, the Detroit mayor’s recently retired chief of staff who, according to published text messages, had an affair with hizzoner about which they both allegedly lied in court.

AKA perjury.

Will she cut a deal with the prosecutor?

In the movies, they call it “turning state’s evidence.”

In other words, snitch on hizzoner.

Wouldn’t that be, well, betrayal?

Isn’t that what this whole saga is about?

Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

Posted in Kwamegate | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Retirees of the world, unite…

Posted on March 22, 2008 by admin

I thought I’d heard every kind of low, sleazy corporate scheme for robbing workers, but then I opened my Saturday, March 22, 2008 Detroit Free Press and discovered a new angle on business banditry.

Can you believe the gall of General Motors and Chrysler? They’re planning to loot their workers’ pension funds to pay for buyouts to employees they want to leave.

Downsizing is a corporate advantage that ought to be paid for with shareholders’ money, not funds reserved for paying the pensions of retirees. But bookkeepers say the pension accounts are “overfunded,” meaning that today, stock market values are such that the funds’ investments could more than cover their pension obligations.

What we learn from an excellent piece of reporting by Free Press auto writer Tim Higgins is that this company gambit of digging into workers’ pockets is not really new. It’s been done before. The only difference today is that it’s happening with a union pension fund. Question is, will the United Auto Workers wake up and push back?

Do I have a pony in this race?

Darn tootin’ I do. It happens that I belong to Detroit Local 22 of The Newspaper Guild, which is part of the Communications Workers of America. For years until I retired with my buyout, I was a steward and a member of the local’s Executive Board. My buyout amounts to two weeks of full salary for every year I worked at the Free Press. Since I was there for 23 years, I’m getting 46 weeks of pay.

Deciding whether to take the “voluntary severance” wasn’t easy. I actually enjoyed my job at the Free Press. I wrote a personal column, met lots of neat people and had more freedom than most reporters. But the buyout was tempting. See, I have all these books I’ve written over the years, and I’m working on others. The chance to receive a paycheck for nearly a year — I call it the “Gannett Grant” — while devoting full time to writing and promoting my work was a temptation, and I decided to go for it.

But lurking in the back of my mind — and I’ll bet the other 15 or 16 staffers who took buyouts at the same time were thinking this way, too — was the notion that the Free Press would come around with a better buyout offer in a year or two. Why not? We all knew about the Flint Journal, where two weeks per year didn’t entice enough people, so the paper upped it to four weeks of salary for every year of service, with no cap. At the Free Press, the company limited the payout to one year of salary, no matter how many years of service the staffer had.

What does this have to do with GM and Chrysler and their slimy, thieving rob-the-pension buyout scheme?

Well, what if Gannett, which owns the Free Press, decided to lure more workers out of their jobs with a really sweet buyout offer, say as generous as the Flint Journal’s?

And what if Gannett, skinflints that they are, decided to do the deed at no cost to their corporate books? Maybe they read Tim Higgins’ Free Press story, too, and are thinking, Hey! The Free Press/Newspaper Guild pension is over-funded just like the ones at the automakers. Numbers change depending on the stock market and how pension fund investments are doing, but last I heard, the Free Press/Guild pension was over-funded by $13 million.

The Guild for years has pushed to increase the paltry monthly payouts for retirees, but the company has always refused. Right now, the payout — and this is no exaggeration — is not enough to support anything more than a poverty-level lifestyle.

Free Press owners — first Knight-Ridder and now Gannett — have always refused to raise the monthly pension allotment. Too risky, they said. What if stocks fall and the pension value declines? Don’t want to risk the whole thing by being generous. There was always the specter, though, that the owner might simply grab that over-funding pile of cash and walk out with it.

But what if Gannett threw caution to the wind upon seeing a golden opportunity to seduce more people out the door at no cost to the company? Finance the buyouts with the over-funded pension?

I wouldn’t be pleased. A few people taking buyouts would be digging into assets reserved for the entire cadre of Free Press retirees. More galling yet, some of those workers might not even be union members. That’s right, under the post-strike contract, Free Press editorial workers got an open shop. Membership is at 67 percent, but that means a third of staffers are freeloaders — moochers who reap the benefit of a union — better health insurance, minimum pay levels, grievance procedure, overtime/comp time, etc., INCLUDING A DEFINE BENEFIT PENSION — without paying union dues.

I would not be pleased if a few people were awarded a windfall out of a pension fund meant to cover the entire pool of present and future Free Press retirees.

Tim Higgins concluded his Free Press story with a quotation from onetime chairman of American Motors Gerald Meyers, now a University of Michigan business prof who termed the automakers’ pension grab “a redistribution of wealth to a limited number of people.”

“A pension fund,” Meyers said, “Is set up to cover the needs of the greater good, not just the few people leaving the company.”

Now, this hasn’t happened yet at the Free Press. But supposed it did — how could we stop it?

We could rely on our union to stand firm. The Free Press/Guild pension is overseen by a board with two company members and two Guild members. But as we know, in this world, everything is for sale, everything is up for grabs, and every three years the Guild and Free Press negotiate a new contract. No reason this kind of freebie buyout couldn’t be placed on the table to become chip for some other issue like, say, health insurance.

I doubt that would happen. The Guild has always been very protective of its retirees. Hey, every working employee knows he or she will be retired some day, and they want to make sure those benefits are there for them and for everybody. In fact, I can imagine certain Guild leaders reacting with fury at today’s Free Press story about GM and Chrysler’s shenanigans.

Still, what if something happened that we can’t imagine. What if Gannett managers, not exactly geniuses at figuring out this Internet thing that is so vexing newspapers, so bungled its management of the biggest newspaper chain in the country that they were forced to consider closing the Free Press unless they could radically reduce staffing. Then maybe that pile of pension cash might seem very tempting.

In other words, as the saying goes, you never know.

Those of us receiving pensions would have to fight the battle ourselves. No reason why we couldn’t hire a good lawyer and try to stop the plunder.

I wonder if any other unions with defined benefit pensions are worried about this kind of corporate raiding?

I’m hoping the UAW will fight this attempted theft. If they quashed it, chances are slim that companies like Gannett would try it.

But if not, we will be alone in the world against a corporate giant. Unless, well, unless we organize!

Retirees of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your pensions.

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Jerry’s memory hole

Posted on March 19, 2008 by admin

I always thought that New York Daily News headline, FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD, on Oct. 29, 1975 was a newspaper copy editor’s pithy but accurate translation of then late President Gerald Ford’s longer message that he was against bailing the Big Apple out of its financial mess. It never occurred to me that Ford might actually have uttered those two fateful words until I read a New York Times article Dec. 28, 2006 which repeated Ford’s denials that he ever told New York to DROP DEAD. My suspicions were further aroused by the — to me — cryptic kicker on Sam Roberts’ story: Of the DROP DEAD quote, Ford was reported to have said with “a weak smile,” that “it was totally untrue. We burned all those papers.”

Burned all WHAT papers?

The drafts of his speech that may or may not have contained the “drop dead” quote, or the newspaper itself?

Since the “drop dead” quote may — along with his pardon of former President Richard Nixon — have cost Ford his re-election in 1976, it is historically intriguing.

But I have my own reasons for being interested — and confused.

Ten years before Ford maybe told the inhabitants of Gotham to commit collective suicide, I was a $75-a-week clerk-intern working in Ford’s office in the U.S. Capitol.  I was 20 years old, a sophomore at Kalamazoo College, where we were encouraged to find a spring term job that somehow meshed with our career plans. Since I wanted to become a history professor, I thought it would be beneficial for me to learn how government works. I was not to be disappointed.

The congressman from Grand Rapids had only recently been elected House Minority Leader, and he had suddenly been thrust on the national stage as a spokesman for congressional Republicans. Once a week, television cameramen would converge on the Capitol for the “Ev and Jerry Show,” an interview with Ford and then Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen.

As minority leader, Ford was called upon to make speeches around the country, but being a busy man, he hired a former Detroit Free Press reporter, Jim Mudge, to be his press secretary and write speeches for him.

I remember Jim Mudge. He was the funniest man I ever met. He had a wonderful sense of humor and often had me in stitches. He was also very, very conservative. His conservatism was in line with the politics of the vast majority of people in the 5th congressional district in western Michigan, where Ford had been elected and re-elected without serious Democratic opposition. Jim Mudge’s thoughts may have represented the ideas of Ford’s constituents very well, but they were not in tune with what many people around the country felt, thought or believed about politics, including world politics, which arguably were not his boss’s forte.

What follows is based on my memory of events that involved me 48 years ago. But what happened around me in the U.S. Capitol seemed pretty important, darned fascinating, and I have pretty clear memories of them. I recall one instance when his conservative approach to world politics got Jim Mudge into trouble. And but for some nimble thinking on Jim’s part, Ford would have been in a bit of a PR jam.

One day, Jim banged out a speech and handed it to Ford on his way to speak on the East Coast. I recall that he was speaking to the Yale Law Club, an easy commute from the people he’d later advise to drop dead or maybe not. Whatever else Jim Mudge wrote in the speech I don’t remember. But there was one phrase — like DROP DEAD, just two words –“ that would land him and Ford in a pickle. It was soon after the U.S. invaded the Dominican Republic to put down an alleged Communist insurrection. It was also only a few years after the U.S. under President John Kennedy had tried and failed to topple Fidel Castro.

In the speech, Ford said the U.S. should invade Cuba and “eradicate Castro.” Just the kind of jingoism that would play well in my home town of Lowell, not far from Ford’s home town of East Grand Rapids. Not the language of a senior statesman, though.

My assignment was to take the speech, which Jim had typed on stencil paper, and run off mimeograph copies. In those days, photocopying was a laborious chore involving placing separate pieces of paper and pink flimsy against the original, and it took a lot of time. The old mimeograph machine was a faster way to churn out lots of copies. Anyway, Ford took the speech, jumped into his long black limousine and headed for New Haven, or wherever. I took a stack of mimeo copies of the speech up to the press gallery and handed them out to AP, UPI and other media outlets.

I went back to the office to do one of my other jobs – opening Ford’s mail, reading it and directing it to legislative aides. He’d been elected Minority Leader only a few months before, but was already receiving mail not just from Kent County, but from all over the country. Within a few days, I began to read some letters that were pretty hostile to that “eradicate Castro” remark. Apparently, the letter writers were reading local newspaper reports based on those copies of the speech I dropped off at the Capital press gallery.

Ford was taking heat for wanting to “eradicate Castro,” and Jim Mudge was feeling some pain. He had a solution, though. Straight out of 1984, the George Orwell book about totalitarianism where the protagonist revises history, dropping unwanted facts down a “memory hole.” Jim Mudge, the former Detroit Free Press writer, showed me — the future Free Press writer — how to create a memory hole.

Jim asked me, “Where is the original stencil?” I dug the stencil out of a stack of old speeches and handed it to him. He located the page where he’d written “eradicate Castro.” He had a scalpel. Stencils have a carbon backing that is perforated by the typewriter. My job, Mudge said, was to scrape the ink off the paragraph with the bad quote. Then I was to re-ink it. Let the ink dry. Then type over the fresh area a new sentence he’d concocted to replace his inflammatory comment with one that was the epitome of bland.

No hint of the military knocking off Castro.

I was a 20-year-old college sophomore and I knew it was wrong. But what is a $75-a-week intern supposed to do? I did what I was told, and waited for a chance to tell about it. Because I knew it was dishonest, I have a very clear memory of the episode. I was to get rid of all mimeo copies with the “eradicate Castro” quote, Mudge told me. Anyone who wrote to criticize Ford for making that stupid, incendiary remark would be sent a copy of the memory hole version with the phony innocuous paragraph.

Who needs a time machine? With a scalpel, we re-wrote the past.

I have no idea whether Ford knew of this scheme. I assumed he did. And I assumed he read it verbatim to his audience. But it is conceivable that he read the speech in his limo, realized it was dumb to call for the Marines to “eradicate Castro,” and skipped over that sentence. In that case, the newspaper reports, based on the original speech, would have been incorrect, and Jim Mudge was simply, albeit surreptitiously, correcting the record. But I never heard anyone say that happened. It was all about eradicating history.

This is why I’m confused when the late and former president is quoted saying, “We burned all those papers.” In the “eradicate Castro” case, we destroyed the original, incriminating copies of the speech, but couldn’t retroactively recall the copies I handed out to the press corps. Jim Mudge might very well have wished to burn all those copies, but the presses had run, and no way was he going to burn all the newspapers, one by one.

Now I wonder about that other pair of words that may or may not have come from Ford’s mouth.

DROP DEAD.

Did he really say that?

Did a speech writer put those words in his mouth?

Maybe it’s in the draft of his speech.

Unless somebody took a scalpel to it.

Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

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Jerry & Me — The Preface

Posted on March 18, 2008 by admin

If I told you I’d had half a dozen chats with Jerry Ford, I’d probably be stretching the facts. Three or four, maybe five — that would be about right. I remember the last time very well — there’s a little story about that.

It is true that I knew the former president, and there is a story in the way I, a kid without rich parents and coming from a hick down in western Michigan, could wind up working in the office of a congressman who would become minority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives and eventually, vice president and president of the United States. Quite a mouthful. And I was indeed pretty much without political connections, or so I thought. Well, anyone who knew me as a high schooler in Lowell, Michigan during the 1960s and later as a student at Kalamazoo College could have been forgiven for taking me as someone who didn’t exactly play his cards like a pro.

Just as there is a story in the manner in which I got the job with then U.S. Rep. Gerald R. Ford, R-Grand Rapids., so there are other stories. For instance, how I got advance word that the U.S. Marines would invade the Dominican Republic in spring 1965. Or there was that stroll through the hotel and up the elevator with a defeated candidate for U.S. President and California governor named Richard Milhaus Nixon. Or there was that wild ride through Washington, D.C. on the jump seat of Ford’s big limo with the license plate that said “53” with a U.S. rep from Wisconsin spouting off about how the proposed Medicaid law — this was ’65, remember — would be “the death knell of free medicine.” This was Melvin Laird.

It’s no exaggeration to say that I learned lessons in Ford’s office that helped me understand politics that later unfolded as I covered politicians like the late Wayne County Executive Ed McNamara or his deputy, Mike Duggan, when I worked as a reporter for the Detroit Free Press. The irony is that I may have misunderstood some of the things I was witnessing in and around H-230 and H-231, the U.S. Capitol offices assigned to Jerry Ford in January 1965 after the House Republicans elected him their Minority Leader.

There were things I saw, and then there were things I did not see. Some of those things not seen helped me understand Detroit and national politics, too. For instance, when I investigated U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr.’s abuse of legislative staffers in stories I wrote in 2003 and 2004 for the Free Press, an excuse given to me by an editor to explain why the paper wasn’t too interested in printing more of my findings was the old saw, “Everyone’s doing it.” Very few reporters could have responded as I did that I had worked for a congressman who could easily have done what Conyers did, ordering me and other staffers to do campaign hack work on the government dime, but he didn’t abuse his power and didn’t steal from taxpayers. It’s that kind of knowledge that puts the lie to editors’ and other apologists’ lame excuses that “everyone does it.” Goddamit, everyone does NOT do it!

I’ve known for years that the answers to many of my questions about things that happened in Ford’s office, things that I incompletely understood, might be found just a few miles west of my home in Plymouth, Mich. In Ann Arbor, on the North Campus of the University of Michigan, there’s the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library. Now that I’ve retired, I’ve made several trips to the library. I’ve been finding documents that have cleared up some mysteries. But some have only deepened.

I didn’t keep a diary of my three months as a $75-a-week clerk-intern in Jerry Ford’s office. I didn’t make notes and in those pre-Xerox days, I didn’t lug home reams of photocopied documents. Over the years, 43 of them, since I worked for Jerry Ford, I’ve relied on my memory alone. In some cases, I’ve had help. My office mate in Ford’s Capitol suite was also my roommate in the house where a few of us K College interns were living in Arlington, Virginia. Jon Muth is an attorney in Grand Rapids. Over the years, Jon and I have bolstered each other’s recollections of that very exciting time in our lives.

The archivists at the Ford Library want to do a video interview with Jon and me. It appears that former employees, even lowly interns, of Ford are a rarity at the library. In my case, it turns out that I can shed light on the very system, if that is the term, for organizing the records in Ford’s congressional office. I am the one who created the system that I’m sorry to say only partly reformed the filing of Ford’s correspondence. It is not always easy to find things in the archive. That too is part of the story.

Jon Muth and I have had some good laughs about some of the things we saw and heard in the so-called “Board of Education Room,” better known as H-231, the little annex office where he and I worked. The most amazing and enduring of my memories from working in Jerry Ford’s office flashed back to me around the time Jerry Ford died, Dec. 26, 2006. I read a newspaper report about Ford’s alleged comment in the 1970s to New Yorkers seeking aid for their financially strapped city. He supposedly told them, “Drop dead.” And then again, maybe not.

What Ford said about Fidel Castro is also a mystery, but one that fascinates me, since I played a part in suppressing the tale.

I plan to write occasional essays about my memories from Ford’s office and my experiences in the Ford library. First, I’ll tell stories as I recall them nearly a half century after they happened. Later, I’ll revisit them, having scrounged for corroborative or elaborative details in the Ford Library.

I’ll start with that elusive story about Castro.

Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

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Beating the Free Press — again

Posted on March 7, 2008 by admin

I wondered why I was having such a feeling of deja vu as I read the Thursday, March 6, 2008 Detroit Free Press.

I kept thinking, I’ve read this before.

“Attorneys’ conduct questioned in scandal,” the Free Press headlined in its top page one story.

The lead by ace reporter Joe Swickard stated, “Lawyers connected with the Detroit police whistle-blower cases face an ethical minefield that could well leaave some of them professionally maimed or worse, legal ethics experts said after examining documents, agreements, secret memos and depositions from the lawsuits.”

Boy, that seemed like familiar stuff. Where had I read this before?

Never mind where did I READ it!

I WROTE it!

Yes, indeedy, folks, Joelontheroad.com had this story long before the Free Press.

‘Course, I didn’t bother rousting out a platoon of talking heads to justify what I already knew to be true.

On Feb. 6, ONE MONTH BEFORE THE FREE PRESS STORY, joelontheroad.com posted a story called “Kwamegate out of control.”

In that post, I wrote about the dangers lurking for Kwame’s lawyers:

“The attorneys on both sides agreed to suppress the messages. Some of Kwame’s attorneys lied, saying the messages didn’t exist,” according to my post. You can read the entire essay on joelontheroad.com — it’s under the category, Kwamegate.

“Imagine the turmoil,” joelontheroad.com continued, “Of conflicting emotions going on in the minds of Kwame’s lawyers. As I type, it’s quite possible that someone is pushing the “send” key to transmit a complaint against one or more of those attorneys, as well as Kwame, to the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission. Any lawyer who lied about those text messages, and this includes the cops’ attorneys, could face questions from the AGC . Lawyers aren’t supposed to lie. They have something called the Canon of Ethics. If the commission considers the complaint serious enough, it could refer the case to the Michigan Attorney Discipline Board. It’s no small thing for a lawyer to face that kind of questioning; the loss or suspension of a lawyer’s license to practice law is like a job layoff. It could prove financially costly, and it would be a terrible blow to one’s self-esteem. Some of Kwame’s lawyers may be weighing where to pledge their loyalty — to the boss, or to themselves.”

The latter-day Free Press story, echoing my post, raised questions about the behavior of Mike Stefani, the cops’ attorney.

But joelontheroad.com went further than the Free Press, by questioning whether it was and is proper for city lawyers paid with tax dollars to represent the mayor in the criminal investigation now unfolding in the Wayne County prosecutor’s office.

“Incidentally, there’s another issue involving Kwame’s lawyers that I frankly don’t understand. How is it that lawyers from the city’s Legal Department are representing the mayor in a criminal case? Why should city taxpayers foot the bill for problems Kwame allegedly created on his own hook and not on behalf of the city?”

Moreover, I suggested city lawyers and other officials, including the mayor, may have violated a state law that makes it a crime for government officials to withhold finaqncial records — which the text messages surely are — from members of the public who ask to see them.

The Free Press has been the leader in breaking stories about Kwamegate, but the big papaer isn’t invincible. It’s gratifying to know that a little blog can occasionally scoop the big city daily. This is actually the third time joelontheroad.com has done it.

See my post, “Free Press recycling plan” on Feb. 19 for my other two Kwamegate scoops. Naturally, it’s also under Kwamegate.

Contact me at joelthurtell(a)gmail.com

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A thimble-full

Posted on February 27, 2008 by admin

A couple decades ago, an editor at the Detroit Free Press was sent to a seminar on ethics in journalism. When he returned, someone remarked approvingly on the cause of his absence, journalistic ethics being a sacrosanct concept heavy on the minds of many in newspaper work.The editor replied, “Ethics in journalism? — that’s a thimble-full.”I thought of that piece of newsroom repartee when I read Clark Hoyt’s January 20, 2008 dissertation in the New York Times on the private life of Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse. Later, I’ll get into the nuts and bolts (mainly nuts) of the Times’ Public Editor’s latest fulmination. The crux of the story is that Greenhouse is married to a lawyer who sometimes argues cases before the Supremes, and as I understand it, her mistake was failing to ask her editors’ permission before she accepted this man’s hand in marriage.Right now, I’m not going to delve into how this discussion was prompted by some right-wing looney who snitched on Greenhouse or the kind of latter-day McCarthyism and Big Brotherism that are the natural results of proscriptive, self-styled ethics policies at newspapers. Later.What I find fascinating is Hoyt’s use of the old newspaper gambit of appearing to bolster his conclusions, or indeed seeming to come to his conclusions, through the quoting of self-proclaimed experts. In his essay, Hoyt quotes a professor of journalism and allows him to expound on the issue of conflict-of-interest as an ethical issue. This is nothing unusual. The normal course for journalists promulgating rules of reportorial behavior is to dial up a J school prof.But wait! Since when is ethics a branch of journalism? I thought ethics was a subsidiary of philosophy. Why not call a philosophy prof who’s an expert in the broad field of ethics, not just “ethics” as applied in newspaper work?I can think of a couple reasons: Just didn’t think of it. Too lazy to find out who the philosopher experts are.Or, just maybe, asking somebody outside the thought-conditioned realm of journalism might elicit, well, the wrong answer.Hmmm. Wouldn’t it be neat to shrug off the J school pontifications and head for the P department?Let’s see what some prominent philosophers have to say about newspaper ethics policies. I’d like to start by having a panel of real ethicists analyze what some call the “gold standard” of newspaper ethics policies — that 54-page epic published by The New York Times. They call it “Ethical Journalism: A Handbook of Values and Practices for the News and Editorial Departments.” It even has an index! Wow. This must be the real thing.Maybe not. What I want to know is whether newspaper ethics policies are really meant to encourage honest, fair reporting, or are they simply tools for controlling the behavior on and off the clock of newsroom employees?Well, okay, I know the answer. I don’t need any talking heads to say it for me.Of course those policies are meant to manipulate and condition employees’ behavior.What if there were a car repair shop and suddenly the manager decided the mechanics should become expert in the ethical repair of automobiles? Instead of just going ahead and installing new head gaskets or brake linings, the mechanics are asked to master philosophical concepts outside the realm of car repair. The ethics of the ring job. Imagine the drag on productivity. Which is why it wouldn’t last five minutes in a production-dominated workplace.But think about it. Newsrooms are not production-dominated. Oh sure, writers grind out words to meet deadline. But there’s no customer waiting at the end of the day to pick up her keys and drive the car away without regard to how ethically the brake job was done. There’s no objective standard for telling whether a journalist’s “product” has been executed properly. Given the number of heads that muddle over a story, there’s no way to tell by the end whether the beginning — the actual story — was competently written. Evaluations of journalists are done in a very loosey-goosey way, when they are done at all, with lots of room for lies, propaganda, hype. Did you actually do that ring job by the book and on time? You can evaluate a car mechanic. Impossible to know with a journalist.For this reason, it’s possible to pump smoke into a newsroom and incite journalists, who gossip-prone, nattering about their colleagues’ purported “ethics” violations.Now, where ethics is important in the car shop is in, say, diagnosis, as in not selling a brake job when it’s not needed, not billing for more hours than were worked, not charging new prices for used parts. Pretty basic.So it is with journalism. The rules are pretty simple: Only write that which is true, don’t lie to editors, don’t compromise the integrity of your newspaper.Instead, we get 54-page indexed tomes we’re told are “gold standards.”And more: Distraction. Confusion. Finger-pointing. Backstabbing.Is that what managers want? Maybe.Divide and conquer.Ethics in Journalism: Full of sound and fury, but still only a thimble full.Contact me at joelthurtell(a)gmail.com 

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