January 28, 2010
Jim Kravets tries to respond
Mr. Dowie’s letter provided several challenges and several opportunities. The tone was the first challenge, but I’ll address that later.
Despite the tone, Mr. Dowie makes many valid, important points in the letter and I suspect there are others who share his concerns about that article.
Essentially Mr. Dowie’s concerns break down into two categories: The physical appearance of the sidebar and its content.
Sidebars in journalism, loosely defined, are supplementary information printed alongside the main text, graphically separate from the primary story but with contextual connection.
It’s a bit of a catchall. Sidebars may include selections from testimony, historical documents, map legends, anecdotes, book excerpts, recipes, event information – you name it. As such, sidebars don’t carry the same expectation for “completeness” or balance as a full news article. They are, of course, expected to be accurate.
The author of the main article sometimes writes the sidebar, sometimes they’re added by editors. There isn’t a defined convention.
The New York Times and the Marin IJ both had unattributed (unbylined) sidebars on Monday, the day we received Mr. Dowie’s letter.
In the case of The Citizen, our computers say we have printed some 160 items tagged “sidebar.” Less than ten of them were attributed to an actual person.
In the same issue as the Marine Mammal Commission (MMC) story, reporter Andrea Blum’s other Page 1 story also featured an unattributed sidebar. In this same issue there was even a sidebar about Andrea Blum and a benefit she’s planning for earthquake victims in Haiti. In all three cases the sidebars were added by the editor (me) after she filed her story. That’s the way we’ve managed most of The Citizen’s 160 sidebars.
The contextual disconnection to the parent article is regrettable The first paragraph of the sidebar – which introduced the issue of the scientific misconduct charges – was actually part of the reporter’s parent article and occupied the space where the sidebar was ultimately inserted. It was added to the sidebar to make it clearer, but in so doing it strained the connection to the parent article.
The MMC sidebar was poorly demarcated from the main story. The formatting – a slight left indent and non-justified right margin – had some wondering if it was a sidebar at all or just a production error. The formatting was clearer in the MMC article’s .pdf version, which has been circulating online since Saturday.
Some refer to such novel formatting, charitably, as “part of The Citizen’s charm.” Our episodes of novel formatting typically occur when I stick the page designer with 150 percent more editorial content than he can reasonably fit into the paper, and he’s forced to somehow shoehorn it all in.
Was I trying to slip some mischievous passages into the reporter’s story without her knowing? Stick her with the bill? I hope even our fiercest critics give us more credit than that.
In the end, the issue of scientific misconduct as it relates to DBOC-PRNS is too major an issue to put in a 400-word sidebar; it deserves a full news article, if not several. Sidebars help expand understanding, but sometimes not by much. They’re a side dish. Sometimes they leave you wanting more. In this case this sidebar may have left readers wanting a lot more, and that makes a lot of sense to me. I want a lot more, too. Read more...
Content
As for Mr. Dowie’s concerns about the sidebar’s content:
By reporting the latest results of inquiries into charges of scientific misconduct, we are doing just that: reporting. There is no commentary associated with the sidebar; there is only factual information provided; none of it out of context and none of it cherry-picked.
We had and still have no reason to question the authenticity of the documents which sourced the sidebar in the MMC story, but if it turns out they are somehow incomplete or misleading we’ll make a thorough correction in accordance with our editorial policies.
Some have asked us to produce the documents, and we did. As there does not seem to be much controversy about the documents themselves, we’re still deciding whether to post them on our website. (One is a 70-page congressional report.) We’d like to strike the right balance of availability, accountability and transparency while steering clear of what could be misconstrued as broadcasting. In the meantime, I am happy to email copies of the documents on request. Just send an email to editor@westmarincitizen.com
Tone
Among our very few contributors’ guidelines are these requirements: No profanity; No personal attacks; No ad hominem arguments; No inciting violence; Civility and decency, as commonly defined in a community. This last one, admittedly, needs some refinement.
As written, Mr. Dowie’s letter ran afoul of four of those five. But in truth we receive letters to the editor with more challenging tones than his, and to date we’ve been able to work with the author to arrive at a version which satisfies both their intent and our publication guidelines.
We had prepared a sanitized version of the letter for publication, which the author ultimately approved, but in the meantime he emailed his original version to several hundred West Marin acquaintances with the accompanying note:
“Since meeting your guidelines would be virtually impossible I will pass on your offer to refine my language and simply send what I have written to my West Marin list of 644 people. And in the spirit of maintaining my First Amendment right of free profanity, who the fuck are you to be talking about “ad hominem arguments” after publishing that unsigned and clearly ad hominem sidebar, or “civility and decency as defined in a community” after you have so thoroughly fouled the community you work in. I refer, of course, to journalism.”
Curiously, many of those receiving the emailed original advised me that to edit it for publication is to do a disservice to the community. The argument in this case goes that there is as much to be learned about someone from what they say as how they say it, and to sanitize this letter in this case is to misrepresent the author, or at least half of his message.
Understanding
In light of the fact that just about all of the 160 sidebars printed in the history of our newspaper have followed a similar protocol, and the documents that this particular sidebar are based on are authentic, readers might wonder if Mr. Dowie has been as upset about our 150-ish other sidebars. And if he hasn’t, why not? Was there something else about this particular sidebar, which pushed Mr. Dowie to this level of anger?
While you’re pondering that…
We feel that, to whatever extent possible, it is the role of newspapers to make public pertinent behind-the-scenes activities so that readers might have a better understanding of the forces at work which may ultimately affect their lives. In shining a light into the community’s dark alleys, it is also necessary to balance a citizen’s right of privacy. It ultimately falls to the editor to strike the correct balance between “the public’s right to know” and an individual’s privacy rights. It is in this spirit that we include information about other, less public efforts by the letter writer which may help explain, in part, his anger at the news reported.
Something unexpected occurred when Mr. Dowie emailed his original letter to hundreds of citizens
About a half-dozen people who received the email responded to me to let me know that Mr. Dowie’s anger over the sidebar may be related to the fact that he is partnering with Dr. Goodman and others in what was described as a secret negotiations with Robert Plotkin to purchase and operate the Point Reyes Light newspaper.
They told me that a confidentiality agreement exists among those who are involved in the negotiations, and if anyone wanted to know who was involved they should just ask around and see who could not answer.
The volume of unsolicited emails I received informing me of this lends credence to the story, but I have not made any further inquiries. Instead, I invite Mr. Dowie and Dr. Goodman to use our pages to set the record straight about their plans.
Regrettably, the list of those who try to silence others with whom they do not agree is long and still growing. Opponents of free speech be advised: This newspaper will continue to print voices of dissent and perspectives which some readers – and occasionally all readers – will find objectionable. Those who seek to limit diversity of opinions are certain to be unhappy reading The West Marin Citizen.
In the final analysis, we have to accept that The Citizen’s style of reporting will not go over well with those who have already made up their minds on an issue. It’s challenging, because it’s a natural tendency to engage with our critics. We’ll explain ourselves as often as we can and be as transparent as possible. If we remain responsible, respectful and professional, maybe along the way we’ll be able to silence some of our critics, but as journalists we can’t mistake that with our goal.
I expect that good news will come out of this. I genuinely embrace this dictum from Alice Walker: “We must learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise.”
