An extraordinary correction popped up in Wednesday’s Kansas City Star.
Usually, when you see a correction, a single fact is corrected. Occasionally, you see a double-barreled correction. But not often does it occur that a correction addresses three or four facts in a story.
That’s what happened Wednesday — a grand slam correction; four in one.
It all stemmed from a July 10 story by Jason Noble, The Star’s Jefferson City correspondent. The story, which led the front page, was a “gotcha” on state Sen. Rob Schaaf, who, in the last legislative session, apparently steered a bill he didn’t like to a committee where he is vice chairman.
There, the bill — which would have more strictly regulated Missouri’s medical-malpractice insurance industry — died.
And why was Schaaf dead-set against the bill? In his story, Noble reported that Schaaf, a Republican from St. Joseph, is “co-owner of the Missouri Doctors Mutual Insurance Co., known as MoDocs.” The bill that died in Schaaf’s committee, Noble wrote, “would have required his company to substantially increase its cash surplus and rewrite its policies for charging customers.”
One of the pivotal, substantiating points that Noble made to help demonstrate Schaaf’s keen interest in getting the bill assigned to his committee was this:
“When Senate Bill 302 was read into the record on Feb. 21, lawmakers recalled that Schaaf rushed to the office of Senate leader Rob Mayer, who is responsible for assigning bills to committee.” (Note that Noble said “lawmakers,” plural.)
As you can see, this is a story that made Schaaf look very bad. The senator did his best to defend himself in the story, saying the bill was “a bad idea,” but at the same time asserting that “I doubt I had much influence on the trajectory of the bill.”
It was after the story appeared, however, that Schaaf apparently mounted his strongest counter attack.
From the looks of this seven-column-inch correction, I would guess that Schaaf might have had the help of a lawyer. Schaaf obviously lit into Noble and his editors very aggressively.
This is the type of situation a reporter absolutely hates to get into, especially when you’ve screwed up key parts of a story. You go from being on the offensive to completely on the defensive.
Working through Schaaf’s counter allegations and Noble’s self-defense must have taken several hours over several days inside the newsroom. The fact that the correction appeared 10 days after the story was published tells you it was a very sticky situation.
The deputy managing editor for Metro, Anne Spenner, was undoubtedly involved, and I’m sure Managing Editor Steve Shirk was involved, too. Editor Mike Fannin was probably alerted.
So, here are the points that needed to be corrected:
— It was just one lawmaker, not two or more, who told Noble that Schaaf “rushed to the office” of the senate leader…When you’re doing a “hit” story, you have to be very careful and precise, and in this case Noble overreached, sliding from the singular to the plural. That goes beyond soppy; it’s intellectually dishonest.
— Noble said Schaaf is “co-owner” of MoDocs. He’s not. He is co-founder, secretary, treasurer and chairman of the board. A nonprofit, MoDocs is owned by the members it insures…That mistake was the result of sloppiness, laziness and being in a hurry to close in for the kill.
— Noble’s story indicated that all previous medical-malpractice insurance reform bills had been referred to another committee, never Schaaf’s. It turns out, though, that at least one other such bill had been assigned to Schaaf’s committee…More laziness.
— Finally, in an accompanying, or “sidebar,” story, Noble screwed something up regarding a holding company that Schaaf co-owns. Because of the way the correction is worded, however, it’s impossible to tell exactly what the problem was.
Another interesting part of this correction is that it exposed the weakness and inherent silliness of The Star’s longstanding policy of not repeating, in corrections, the erroneous parts of original stories.
Usually, all you get is head-scratching corrections that give you new information but don’t put it in the context of what was wrong in the first place.
In this case, however, the policy came back to bite The Star right in the ass.
In the first three parts of the correction, The Star had to repeat the erroneous items in order for the correction to make any sense at all. I mean, can you imagine the correction simply saying, “The story should have said a lawmaker recalled that Schaaf rushed to the office of Senate leader Rob Mayer.” It would have left the readers completely befuddled.
But, then, in the fourth and final part of the correction, The Star stupidly reverted to its policy of not repeating the original error, and the reader was left to try to figure this out:
“An accompanying story…should have said that a holding company co-owned by Schaaf that provided management services to the insurance firm collected a maximum 10-percent surcharge on the firm’s employee payroll expenses.”
What the hell does that mean? What’s the context? Unfortunately, the sidebar is no longer available online, so the reader can’t possibly tell where it was wrong or lacked clarity.
Oh, and one more thing: As of late Wednesday night, the online version of the story had not been altered, and no correction was appended.
There are two lessons here:
Jason Noble needs to be watched very closely. (He probably faces some disciplinary action, perhaps a suspension.)
The Star needs to get out of the Dark Ages with its corrections policy and acknowledge, each and every time, exactly how it screwed up. That’s what The New York Times does, and there’s no shame in following the lead of the nation’s best paper.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Fitz,
I worked with Jason Noble in The Star’s Northland bureau. He’s a good guy and I absolutely hate seeing this happen to him. Star management has to share a major part of the blame for this. Before the layoffs, The Star used to have two reporters covering the Missouri statehouse. They had an excellent reporter Kit Wagar covering it as well.
Before Jason, Tim Hoover was the other Jeff City reporter. He left The Star about a year before the layoffs started and was replaced by Jason, who I believe was in his early or mid 20s at the time_ very young for a Star Jefferson City correspondent.
I believe that Kit may have landed in Spenner’s doghouse for some reason. After the second round of layoffs in September ’08, which is when I was laid off, Kit was taken off the statehouse beat. He was laid off two months later. Since then, Jason has been the only reporter assigned to Jefferson City.
Star insiders know that to cover the statehouse well, you have to have more than one reporter. There are a lot of vindictive, moronic and corrupt leaders down there. They are implementing laws that affect all Missourians and it takes more than one reporter to cover them. But when the bottom fell out for the newspaper industry and The Star was forced to make cuts, they cut in places where it was certain that important stories would either get botched or ignored entirely. Sadly, the former happened.
Hey Mike & Fitz,
Interesting post. I think I can offer a few insights into this situation as well as one correction on Mike’s comment. First, the correction: Mike gives a good analysis of the situation regarding Jason’s promotion to the Jeff City bureau in 2008. However, I covered the Missouri statehouse the entire 10 years I worked for The Star and never left the beat before I was given my unconditional release from the paper in November 2008. Mike probably thought I left the beat because so few articles were coming out of Jefferson City the last six months. That was because I was the only staff member covering the governor’s race. The Star was the first newspaper I ever worked for that assigned a single reporter to cover the entire governor’s race. The three dailies I previously worked for always assigned a reporter to each candidate to ensure thorough coverage. But The Star was always chronically understaffed. Therefore, I covered the entire campaigns for governor in 2000, 2004 and in 2008. The only difference in 2008 was that I also had to cover many of the big stories involving the races for attorney general, lieutenant governor and secretary of state. Jason was supposed to cover those down-ballot races. But his inexperience resulted in editors asking me to drop what I was working on in the governor’s race and step in every time a significant story broke involving those other races. I had to do the stories about Chris Koster’s ex-wife making huge contributions to his opponent’s campaign. I even had to do the profiles of Democrat Sam Page and Republic Peter Kinder, who were seeking the lieutenant governor’s office. Those duties pulled me away from some potentially great stories in the governor’s race. But The Star’s editors didn’t care; they had long before lost interest in anything involving government unless it fit some cliché assumption they had about state elected officials.
As far as the massive correction, I would reach a slightly different conclusion than Fitz based on my experience working next to Jason. The big problem wasn’t sloppiness or laziness, although both of those are factors. The root of the problem is even more basic: Jason simply didn’t have the knowledge of civics and how government works to do his job. He is a good guy and wanted to do a good job. But he seemed to get most of his information from listening to the shop talk of other reporters. And he was far too willing to take one person’s word for things. He would base entire articles on one person’s highly questionable account. I wish I could cite examples, but this has been tree years ago. They were usually minor stories and I just can’t remember specifics. But I remember often warning him to go check with additional sources.
My recollections fit completely with the correction about “lawmakers” actually being one person. I remember warning him to be more thorough. But the second example Fitz cites is even more telling. Calling Schaaf a co-owner of a non-profit company is just typical. Jason often didn’t know basic legal concepts. Yet it rarely slowed him down. Such carelessness is common in young reporters who are too inexperienced to know what they do not know. The real travesty was the editors at The Star putting him in the situation he couldn’t handle because they simply didn’t have enough respect for their readers to ensure they had someone in the position who understood how the government worked.
Fitz’s third point about Jason claiming that previous bills had always gone to other committees certainly shows laziness. But I believe it’s a result of my previous point: Jason didn’t check because he didn’t do enough reporting to realize what he didn’t know. So he assumed.
The last point involved in the correction illustrates my point again. But it also shows how sloppy and inept The Star’s editing has become. The correction stated that the original article “should have said that a holding company co-owned by Schaaf that provided management services to the insurance firm collected a maximum 10-percent surcharge on the firm’s employee payroll expenses.”
That sentence should have raised flags. A holding company, by definition, is a company that owns other companies. They rarely, if ever, provide products or services themselves. So, if it was a holding company, it wouldn’t have been providing any services. If it was providing such services, it was an operating company, not merely a holding company. It’s a technical concept, but an understanding of the legal structure of businesses would have caused a good editor to ask a question about such an assertion and to fix the error before it was published.
All of these examples show not just laziness or sloppiness. They reflect deeper problems that result from inexperience. I don’t think it’s overly harsh to call this incompetence. And not just by the reporter.
That’s a good analysis, Mike. In addition to flying solo in Jeff City, he doesn’t appear to be getting much help from his editors. With a young reporter like Jason, the line editor really needs to hold his feet to the fire and question almost every fact.
I remember when Mark Wiebe of the KCK bureau got his first front-page story. I was off the day the story was edited, and it contained a major error. (I might have caught it, might not.) Anyway, the story was published with the error, and Wiebe got suspended for three days. I thought it was an overly harsh action, but, in the long run, I think it was a good call because Wiebe soon became one of the most accurate reporters at the paper. He’d make a printout, highlight his facts in red ink, then go back and verify every point. It took longer, but it was the safest route. The pressure is always on to turn out the stories, but it’s so true in journalism, as in many other disciplines, you often have to slow down to get ahead.
I couldn’t believe it when The Star sent such a green reporter to Jefferson City. Not that a young reporter can’t do the work, but these are complicated stories with a lot of background. And you’re continually being manipulated by your sources when you cover politics. You need someone who’s been there to help you through it.
I don’t know what I would have done when I was covering some of the hairy issues at the Kansas Board of Education if I hadn’t been able to consult Jim Sullinger. He was an invaluable resource for young reporters.
I remember that, inside the newsroom, Noble’s was a controversial promotion. I don’t think there have been any bad ramifications, until now. I hope Jason can recover from this and progress steadily. He’s got a lot of talent and is a very good writer.
KC Star corrections are always interesting. Since reporters get in trouble for errors and it could impact their performance reviews some will do anything to get out of doing one.
A Star reporter once did a major piece on a company I represented, but misspelled the name of the company all through the article (and even in the headline).
He agreed to give me a corrected reprint of the original article and do a major feature on the company several months later. No need to get an editor involved…
It was a win-win for my client and the reporter.
My, God. First of all, John, I don’t know how the reporter could give you a corrected reprint. Once the story is in print, there’s no going back and getting it run through the presses again, correctly.
Second, he was completely out of bounds to offer a make-up story…If that had gotten back to an editor, the guy probably would have been fired. That’s not exactly reporting “without fear or favor.”
The reporter just gave me a corrected proof copy of the story so that my client could make copies and use it as part of their sales materials.
All I can say, Jim, is that when reporters are terrified of corrections and could lose their jobs over them, things can get dicey. That policy sometimes rewards reporters who actually write the fewest stories.
In my career, I have never gone to an editor and demanded a correction to a story. A confusing Page 14 correction is worthless to me and my client.
Reporters are like normal employees. They appreciate PR folks who don’t go over their head and complain to their bosses.
Thanks, John…Readers, John has a corporate communications firm, Bottom Line Communications, and the best blog — bottomlinecom.com — for keeping up with personnel movement and developments on the media scene, electronic and print.
As John’s story makes clear, sometimes, in the print world, the issue of corrections can take on the veil of gamesmanship.
Fitz: I appreciate your empathy for a young reporter who you seem to admire. Four errors in one story, that all seem to be the result of sloppy work, should get you sent to the Penn, Steve Penn, shaken not stirred.