« April 2007 | Main | July 2007 »
A woman from Fort Worth wrote today to say "thank you" for giving her the opportunity to watch the service in memory of nine firefighters who died earlier this week. "All the way from Fort Worth Texas we shed tears for your city."
Charleston.net offered streaming video of the memorial and, in doing so, offered people outside of this area to follow the story that has touched so many.
Two readers with tender hearts wrote me today to say that The Post and Courier has been insensitive and intrusive by publishing photos of families grieving the loss of firefighters who perished Monday night. I'm familiar with tender hearts. I'm a pushover.
This is a tough issue, however. One of the biggest elements of this huge tragedy is the depth and breadth of grief that it has left in its wake. Families are grieving. Friends are grieving. The firefighting community nationally and locally is grieving. The Charleston community is grieving. The paper should be covering that very important aspect of the story, and photos are one way to do so.
Having said that, it is important to show respect and to recognize that there should be limits to what is published. In the case of the grieving Drayton family on 1A Wednesday, the family members were aware of the photo and helped staff members get the right identifications for those in the picture. Today, there was a poignant photo of family and friends of Louis Mulkey -- a photo that drew tears from me. Again, the family knew the paper was there and taking photographs.
Editors, in evaluating photos for today's photo, opted to put a less devastating one on 1A. They opted for a photo of women taking gifts and food to a fire station. However, I would expect more disturbing photos will appear in coming days as the memorial service takes place and as individual funerals are held.
This is a devastating story. The paper's aim is to tell that story to readers within the boundaries of good taste.
If any old-school journalists need to be convinced of the value of citizen journalism as a component of the newspaper business, they might want to check out charleston.net
There is a dramatic video by local videographer, Howard Armstrong. And there are some photos submitted by people who were on the scene.
You might want to check, also, what readers have to say about the fallen firefighters.
Death is a sensitive thing for most people. Some people can't even say someone died. Instead they say he "passed away."
Death is also a key subject for many newspaper readers. Some readers read the front page first. Some read the Sports page first. Some go straight to the comics. But surveys show that one of the pages at the top of readers' lists is the obituary page.
A reader this week wrote a nice letter in which he said that it was "tacky" for the paper to place advertisements for cars or dentures on the obituary page. It is almost as if such advertisements cheapen the gravity of the news about area deaths.
I'm in this business, so I am accustomed to ads being adjacent to news stories. If a heartwarming story about a high school student recovering from an accident appears alongside an ad for home repairs, I am unfazed. I don't have trouble distinguishing between ads and news copy.
Having said that, I understand that death is a sensitive thing. The newspaper's policy is to place ads on obituary pages only at the request of advertisers. Usually the advertisers who ask to be on that page are those who have a product or service that they believe will be of interest to older readers -- dentures, hearing aids, cremations and funeral chapels.
Whenever readers complain about the ads that are printed on sticky notes and attached to the front page of the paper, I tell them that, in my opinion, those ads are better than advertisements using up front page space where news should be displayed.
Indeed, many newspapers across the country are now selling ad space on 1A in an effort to augment revenue which has been slipping.
The trend is disquieting to me. I'm all for newspapers taking care of the bottom line. I've gotten quite accustomed to getting a paycheck every couple of weeks. But I wonder if papers might be sacrificing their credibility for some extra revenue.
Here's my question: What would your reaction be to an ad stripped across the bottom of 1A?
Some things are subjective -- like cropping photos.
Recently, a newspaper reader objected to the way The Post and Courier crops photos -- often chopping off the top of someone's head in a portrait shot or cutting off a tennis racket or a baseball bat in sports shots.
I know when I wrote a news column and my photo was used regularly on 1B, the top of my head was on the cutting room floor somewhere.
What do you think? If you go to www.Charleston.net today, you'll see two examples -- shots of the candidates for mayor of North Charleston. Do you think it is effective to have the faces cropped tight as shown? Or would you prefer to see the whole head?
On Sundays, The Post and Courier publishes wedding and anniversary announcements. The paper charges a fee which is determined by the size of the ad and whether a photo is included. The exception is announcements of anniversaries for couples married 50 years or more. They are free.
Sunday, five couples announced their 50th anniversaries. A reader was furious about one of them. The couple, prominent locally, opted to include only the basics of their lives. Others went into more detail about their families, educations, careers and accomplishments. The woman who called said the paper should have added information to such a distinguished pair's announcement.
I tried to explain to her that the couple had requested the wording that appeared, but she was not satisfied. "If Mayor Riley had celebrated his 50th anniversary, would you have published such a brief announcement?" she asked. Well, yes. If that's what the Rileys were to request, that is what would appear.
It interests me that it was easier for the caller to assume the paper was prejudiced against this couple than to assume that the couple was simply a modest couple putting the focus on their marriage.
Obviously, we have some work to do to earn people's trust.
Monday's front-page obituary for Ninth Circuit Solicitor Ralph Hoisington made the following statement: "Hoisington, a Republican, first was elected solicitor in 2000, defeating openly gay Republican incumbent David Schwacke in the GOP primary and, later, Democrat Bill Runyon in the November general election."
Several readers questioned whether the reference to Schwacke's sexual orientation was relevant.
The next paragraph might have connected the dots for some people: "The primary was one of the closest and most heated races of local note. Hoisington trailed in Charleston County but won enough votes in more conservative Berkeley County to win the nomination."
For others, it was still not clear that sexuality was an issue in the race.
Then there is the bigger question about wheter, in an obituary, it was necessary to raise the issue at all.
I am comfortable with the issue being raised. It's part of the story of this person's life, and I do not think that the issue of homosexuality is, in itself, negative. But I think a newspaper has to make very clear why it is doing so when it raises the issue.
The first time I attended a meeting of the Organization of News Ombudsmen three years ago, the between-session conversations among public editors/ombudsmen tended to deal with news judgments and readers' reactions to them: "How did your paper play the photo of the charred bodies of U.S. contractors hanging from a bridge in Fallujah?" "Did anyone cancel his subscription as a result of it?" "What does your paper do about comic strips that include offensive language? Are they edited?"
During that conference, the over-drinks conversations tended to deal with whether editors and publishers tried to interfere as ombudsmen made frank assessments of the newspapers' work. Some did. Most did not. ONO members were examining the essence of being ombudsmen.
Casual conversations at the ONO conference I attended recently had a different slant altogether. Members first apprised each other of the state of their papers. Had their newsrooms experienced layoffs? Which papers had changed hands? Does the public editor's position appear to be secure? The answers were not all happy ones.
Along with those updates, public editors seemed to focus on the trend toward online news and blogs?
The nature of those exchanges seemed to say that the newspaper industry, often accused of being hostile to change, had changed dramatically since 2004.
That isn't to say that all the ombudsmen were celebrating changes with champagne toasts. Some were longing for the days when you didn't need to plug in anything to get the news. But most seemed on board with these new opportunities.
What seem counterproductive and wearisome to me are pundits who want to insist that the best thing for the public is news delivered online or that the best thing for the public is news delivered on your doorstep. I would say that it is exciting to see how the two work together for the public.
Citizen reporting through blogs doesn't undermine traditional reporting by trained reporters. In my view, it enhances it. And traditional reporting enhances citizen reporting. When the two extremes recognize each other's strengths, the reading public benefits.
Recent Comments