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Tribune executive takes “nonlinear” newsroom atmosphere down a crooked path

Posted in journalism, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 14, 2010| 6 Comments »

Another day, another development and time once again for Kansas City Star employees to be thankful that they’re not working at a paper owned by Chicago-based Tribune Company.

On Wednesday, Tribune Company, which publishes The Chicago Tribune and several other major newspapers, indefinitely suspended Chief Innovation Officer Lee Abrams because of a company-wide memo he sent out on Monday, linking to lewd videos.

The Chicago Tribune reported today that the e-mail “spurred a rash of employee complaints.”

The Trib’s story noted that the Abrams incident followed by less than a week a New York Times front-page story that said Tribune Company managers who took over after an ownership sale in December 2007  had fostered a sexist “frat house” in Tribune Tower, which houses Tribune corporate offices as well as The Chicago Tribune. 

I blogged yesterday about The New York Times story, a well-reported and illuminating piece by David Carr about a once-proud company that has lost its way.

Randy Michaels, chief executive of Tribune Company, said in an e-mail announcing the suspension: “Lee recognizes that the video was in extremely bad taste and that it offended employees…This is the kind of serious mistake that can’t be tolerated; we intend to address it promptly and forcefully.”

It was none other than Michaels, however, who at one time was associated with 61 Country radio in Kansas City, who signed off a couple of years ago on an eye-opening rewrite of the employee handbook.

“Working at Tribune means accepting that you might hear a word that you, personally, might not use,” the new handbook said. “You might experience an attitude you don’t share. You might hear a joke that you don’t consider funny. That is because a loose, fun, nonlinear atmosphere is important to the creative process…

“This should be understood, should not be a surprise and not considered harassment.”

In light of this week’s developments, I guess Michaels, Abrams and other top managers got a little more of a “nonlinear” climate than they wanted.

Today’s Chicago Tribune story says Abrams apologized Tuesday “to everyone who was offended” by the Monday e-mail memo, which contained a link to a video newscast parody labeled “Sluts.” The video included female nudity.

Like Michaels and many others who became top Tribune managers in 2008, Abrams has a background in radio. He was chief programming officer for XM Satellite Radio (now Sirius-XM) before moving to Tribune Company.

A Forbes blogger asked yesterday how Abrams “could have been so reckless as to send a company-wide memo touting a lewd video at a time when he and his fellow executives were already under fire for behaving like frat boys?”

The blogger quoted Dan Neil, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former columnist for the Tribune-owned Los Angeles Times, as saying, “Lee Abrams is an idiot.”

Neil, who now writes for the Wall Street Journal, said that part of Abrams’ job was to send out weekly “Think Pieces,”  theoretically aimed at boosting morale among the troops.

“No one could ever figure out what those Monday morning missives meant,” Neil was quoted as saying. “And all I can say is that at least one of them finally had a positive effect.”

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Radio guys ruin Tribune Company, but newspapers hold sway when it comes to setting the civic agenda

Posted in journalism, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 13, 2010| 5 Comments »

David Carr, media reporter for The New York Times, has had two intriguing pieces within the last week — a front-page news story about the implosion of the Tribune Company and a column in which he explored the “vanishing journalistic divide.”

In the column, Carr deftly used his experience in reporting and writing the Tribune story to help make his point about the ever-hastening confluence of new media and old-school journalism.

Let’s take it from the top.

Phase one.

If you think The Kansas City Star has fallen a long way, consider the plight of The Chicago Tribune and the other papers in the Tribune chain, including The Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun and The Orlando Sentinel. As recently as about 10 years ago, The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times were considered to be among the country’s premier newspapers. 

Like other newspaper companies (it also owns TV stations and WGN America), Tribune fell on lean times and began unraveling financially. Publicly owned, it was sold in 2007 to a group headed by Sam Zell, described by Carr as “a billionaire deal maker,” for a price of $8.2 billion. Thing is, though, the way Zell structured the deal, he only put out $315 million of his own money.

Then he brought in some radio-industry executives to run the show. One of those executives, Randy Michaels, showed some of the old Tribune hands early on that it was a new day and a new game. As Carr tells it, Michaels ran into several other senior colleagues at a hotel next to the Tribune Tower in Chicago. Shortly after he sat down in the bar, Zell said “watch this” and proceeded to offer the waitress $100 to show him her breasts.

“The group sat dumfounded,” Carr wrote.

Michaels proceeded to conduct a management make-over, putting more than 20 former associates from the radio business in key positions. One of the management team’s first moves was to rewrite the employee handbook.

“Working at Tribune means accepting that you might hear a word that you, personally, might not use,” the new handbook said. “You might experience an attitude you don’t share. You might hear a joke that you don’t consider funny. That is because a loose, fun, nonlinear atmosphere is important to the creative process…

“This should be understood, should not be a surprise and not considered harassment.”

They might has well have put out a sign that said, “Let it all hang out!”

It didn’t take long for the boss himself, Zell, to throw at Chicago Tribune Editor Ann Marie Lipinski one of those words that she, personally, probably would not use.

In June 2008, while urging her to more aggressively pursue a story that he was interested in, Zell told Lipinski, “Don’t be a pussy.”

Lipinski, who had been the editor since 2001, resigned a month later.

Before 2008 was out, the company sought bankruptcy protection, listing $7.6 billion in assets and debts of $13 billion. And the financial woes continue. In the first half of this year, The Chicago Tribune’s weekday circulation was down nearly 10 percent, while The Los Angeles Times lost nearly 15 percent of its weekday circulation.

Zell remains chairman of the board but is no longer involved in day-to-day operations.

Phase two.

David Carr

In his column on Monday, Carr talked about the migration of print journalists to Web sites. His peg was the announcement that Howard Kurtz, long-time media reporter for The Washington Post, had resigned to become Washington bureau chief for The Daily Beast, which Carr described as “a two-year-old toddler of the new digital press.”

“More and more,” Carr wrote, “media outlets are becoming a federation of individual brands like Mr. Kurtz. Journalism is starting to look like sports, where a cast of role players serves as a platform and context for highly paid, high-impact players. And those who cross over, after years of pushing copy through the print apparatus, will experience the allure of knocking some copy into WordPress and sending it out into the world to fend for itself.”

And yet, despite its surging popularity, Carr said, digital journalism doesn’t generate a thimbleful of revenue, compared to newspaper companies. 

“The reason that newspapers put all the white paper out on the street is that we get a lot of green paper back in return,” he said. “Put out all the pixels you want, even ones that render scoops, and you will still receive pennies in return.”

Then, Carr proceeded to talk about the thrill involved in piecing together the Tribune story, working on it for months, and finally seeing it “land hard,” lighting up Twitter accounts and generating hundreds of online comments.

The ability to “land hard,” he went on, isn’t limited to The Times: “All over the country, daily regional newspapers in very diminished circumstances similarly still manage to set the civic agenda even as they struggle.”

In Kansas City, of course, The Star — beleaguered and buffeted, scorned and dismissed by many — continues to set the local civic agenda. Not Tony’s Kansas City, not KC Confidential and most certainly not JimmyCsays.

“Yes, you can make news working in your pajamas and running stuff past your cat and now one else,” Carr concluded. “But even in 2010, when a print product is viewed as a quaint artifact of a bygone age, there is something about that process, about all those many hands, about the permanence of print, that makes a story resonate in a way that can’t be measured in digital metrics. I love a hot newsbreak on the Web as much as the next guy, but on some days, for some stories, there is still no school like the old school.”

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Sgt. Calvin Gibbs: Monster in the barracks, sadist on the battlefield?

Posted in journalism, Uncategorized, tagged , on October 6, 2010| 4 Comments »

I had seen, in passing, headlines about some American soldiers alleged to have killed some Afghan civilians, but I had flitted by the stories, thinking — hoping, perhaps — that maybe it wasn’t a big deal and would pass on by.

But then came Tuesday’s front-page story in The New York Times, and I found myself quickly enmeshed.

If you haven’t heard about this story, you need to start following it. It turns conventional battlefield accounts about loss of life upside down and points to the sickness, the infestation that can afflict the ranks of the perceived “good guys.” That would be us.

It’s the story of a high-school dropout from Billings, Mont., who somehow rose to the rank of staff sergeant in the Army and now stands charged with murdering, or orchestrating the murders of, three Afghan civilians.

It doesn’t stop there, however. Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, 26, is alleged to have collected fingers from the bodies of his victims and rolled them out like dice to intimidate a fellow soldier who had reported widespread use of hashish in Gibbs’ unit. Gibbs also is alleged to have kept track, via skull tattoos on his lower left leg, of the number of “kills” he had made in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For the record, the count is six — three in Iraq to augment the three in Afghanistan.

Four other Army enlisted men — two privates first class and two specialists –also are charged with murder. Gibbs is said to have openly discussed how he might kill one of the other soldiers, Specialist Adam C. Winfield, who, Gibbs feared, might report the killings. In one scenario, Gibbs would take Winfield to the gym and drop a weight on his neck. In another scenario, he would take Winfield to the motor pool and drop a heavy piece of equipment on him.

Gibbs earned just one of 20 credits needed to graduate from high school, but it sure appears that he had a vivid imagination when it came to killing.

With The Times’ story, there’s a mug shot of Gibbs, smiling and wearing a plaid shirt, standing in front of a doorway. You look at that picture and see what appears to be a normal kid, whom you probably wouldn’t think twice about if you passed him on the street.

But above his photo is an excerpt of a statement from the soldier who had reported the use of hashish in the unit. The soldier is quoted as saying:

“I was just sitting there on my cot…and that is when CPL (Jeremy) Morlock (another defendant in the case) and SSG Gibbs came back into the room, they calmly sat down and ask (stet) me how my day was going. SSG Gibbs then proceeded to roll out a set of fingers onto the floor. CPL Morlock looked at me and said if I don’t want to end up like that guy then he suggest I shut the hell up and it wouldn’t be an issue for him because he already had enough practice. SSG Gibbs was just sitting there agreeing with CPP Morlock, he was being subtle and quite (stet) but didn’t get worked up. When they were done, SSG Gibbs picked up the fingers, rolled them up and stuck them back in his pocket. Then they left the room.”

Stuck them back in his pocket. The smiling guy in the photo!

As you might expect, the story drew a guttural reaction from readers. (An accompanying story detailed how two of the civilians died.) As of 2:09 p.m. Tuesday, 247 comments had been affixed to the story. At that point, comments were shut off. 

Here are excerpts of a few of the comments:

— From P. Clayton, of New Jersey: “No one wants to admit the ability to see one of our…men behaving in such an abominable way, but it has happened before in other wars that America engaged in so why not now in Afghanistan? Within this article, which probably only scratches the surface when it comes to analyzing Gibbs’ personality, there are many details that fit the profile of a soldier gone awry, including threatening his fellow soldiers and keeping records of his ‘kills’ via tattoos; how gruesome is that?”

— From JD, of Austin: “While Staff Sergeant Gibbs’s alleged actions disgust me and, if true, are a stain on this nation’s honor (one of many…), I challenge you to consider the nature of war before condemning and demonizing him so quickly. War is a nasty reality, and unless you’ve been there, you really don’t know what it’s like or what you would do. I consider myself a pretty humane and decent guy. I served two tours in Iraq, and I did things there that to this day I’m not proud of. War hardens the heart and clouds the mind. Until you’ve been in contact with the enemy, don’t be so quick to write off the soldier as a monster and a murderer.”

— From Ralph, of San Francisco: “Young men with weapons in war time do despicable things. I saw it in Vietnam. Generally, they get away with it. Investigation from the Inspector General’s office are exercises in futility. It just happens. If you vote for war, you get war. If you go to war, you learn that the morality changes.”

— From Andrew, of Minneapolis: “Completed only 1 of 20 credits in high school? Apparently the Army has been scraping the bottom of the barrel. It’s consistent with reports of greatly lowered recruiting standards following the advent of Bush’s wars.”

— From MikeLT, of Boston: “This is what we get for sending video game-loving kids to war. If the allegations are true, he’s elevated the killing in the games to real killing.”

My comment? I’m glad I never had to go to war, and I’m happy to say that the only things I’ve ever wanted in my pockets were cash, credit cards and my driver’s license.

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The tragedy at Rutgers: Let us never forget Tyler Clementi

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 2, 2010| 1 Comment »

Like many people, I am haunted and heartbroken by the death of Tyler Clementi.

It is so hard to accept the fact that this 18-year-old boy — just a month into his freshman year at Rutgers University, with so much talent and maturity — is gone from the earth.  

It is hard to accept that he was so shattered and psychologically undone by his roommate’s callous act of live streaming Tyler’s sexual encounter with another boy that he thought the only way out was to take his own life.

Apparently his last Facebook message, on Sept. 22, the night he died, was “jumping off the gw bridge sorry.”

And with that he walked onto the George Washington Bridge, which spans the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey, and jumped.

His fatal act was prompted, as we all know now, by a decision by his roommate and, allegedly, a friend of his roommate to remotely activate a Web cam in the two boys’ dormitory room and invite others to watch the sexual encounter on the Internet.

This was at least the second case of  “bullying” leading to a student’s suicide this year. In January, 15-year-old Phoebe Prince, a high school student in Massachusetts, hanged herself after being taunted for four months after she had had a brief romantic relationship with a popular, older boy. Phoebe, whose family had recently moved to the United States from a small town in Ireland, had books knocked out of her hands, was called an “Irish slut,” and received threatening text messages. Several students are charged in connection with that case.

Tyler

One of the things that hit me hardest about the Clementi case was the dignified and reflective way that Tyler was trying to deal with the situation after learning that his roommate, Dharun Ravi, was spying on him and baring the most private compartments of his life.

Ravi and his friend, Molly Wei, both 18, are now charged with invasion of privacy, a low-level felony that is likely to get them little or no jail time, even if they are convicted.

Ravi pulled the Web-cam stunt on Tuesday, Sept. 19 , and tried again, unsuccessfully, on Thursday, Sept. 21. After Clementi realized what Ravi was up to, he posted on a gay chat site a message that reflected his maturity and purity of heart:

“Revenge never ends well for me, as much as I would love to pour pink paint all over his stuff…that would just let him win.”

At the same time, he made it clear that he wasn’t going to sit still for the indignity being perpetrated on him. “I ran to the nearest R.A. (resident assistant) and set this thing in motion,” he wrote. “We’ll see what happens.”

That was at 4:38 a.m. the day he took his life. But his mind was such a whirl and the inner demons were tormenting him so — undoubtedly the worries about how he would be viewed, the prospect of being a laughingstock — that he couldn’t wait to “see what happens.”

Reading how it unfolded, I only wish — and I’m sure you do, too — that I could have intercepted him before he headed out for the bridge. I would have sat him down, put my arm around his shoulders and tried to convince him that it was not the end of the world; that his sexual orientation did not define him as a person; that he was a thoughtful and good-hearted person; that even though he was understandably humiliated, it wasn’t his fault; that it would pass and that he would be able to continue on, unadulterated, as a student, musician, son and fellow classmate.

And, oh, my, think about his parents, Jane and Joe Clementi — how achingly they must wish that they would have known what was going on, and how quickly they would have been at his side to help him through the crisis. 

In a statement issued Friday, the family exhibited the same thoughtful reaction that Tyler had displayed in his last days. “Regardless of legal outcomes,” the statement said, “our hope is that our family’s personal tragedy will serve as a call for compassion, empathy and human dignity.”

Compassion, empathy and human dignity. Those qualities are hard to come by, aren’t they? Haven’t we all failed, many times, to show compassion, to be empathetic and to treat people with the dignity they deserve? I know that I have failed in those departments many times. Fortunately, most of us have not failed to the point that it has pushed someone else to the point of suicide.

An Associated Press story in The Kansas City Star on Friday addressed the troubling issue of the “decreased empathy” and “behavior contagion” that technology has spawned. 

“All around you,” the story said, “your friends and acquaintances post information once thought ‘private’: names of boy- or girlfriends, social plans, secrets.”

I’m sure glad I didn’t grow up in the Internet age; I was able to hold my secrets, nurse my insecurities, plow through my adolescent depression without those secrets and insecurities being placed on public display without my knowledge or against my will. 

But Tyler — shy boy, budding violinist — wasn’t so lucky. Couldn’t have been unluckier, in fact. Had a crummy roommate, as Holden Caulfield might have put it, who thrust him into a vortex of negative emotions that swallowed him up.

Where to go from here? What can we learn?

Two letters to the editor in Friday’s New York Times contained helpful and hopeful ideas.

“Our society must enforce appropriate legal consequences to deter the use of technology to so humiliate an individual into feeling that life is untenable,” wrote Lorraine DeRienzo-Buchbinder of Suwanee, Ga. “We cannot afford to lose another young, promising life so senselessly.”

“I hope,” wrote Gracy Yan of West Haven, Conn., “that parents and teachers will encourage young people to create healthy identities and be ‘whole’ without the obsessive need to be connected and share everything over the Internet.”

Amen, I say. And long live the memory of Tyler Clementi, a boy who, through no fault of his own, was deprived of the right to advance to adulthood.

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My night on the fringe of show biz

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 1, 2010| 5 Comments »

I tell you, the life of a blogger can get wild and crazy in short order.

That’s what I found out Tuesday, when I was whisked out of my ordinary, retirement-mode rhythm and thrust into the maw of show business. Before it was all over, I’d met several celebrities — including four members of the famous and infamous Glazer family of Stanford & Sons Comedy Club — and helped judge an amateur, stand-up comedy contest.

Here’s how it unfolded…

It was a beautiful fall evening — sun setting, shadows lengthening — and I was sitting on my deck, petting my dogs and smoking a cigar. Then came the call. It was Hearne Christopher, my friend and fellow online instigator from KC Confidential.

It was an urgent matter…as it always is with Hearne. Seems as though we had to go out on a reporting matter of vital importance. It being a secret mission and all, I can’t give you any details, but, who knows, you might be reading more about it on KC Confidential some day.

Hearne arrived a few minutes later in his undercover reporting car – a tricked-out, white Prius — and off we went, headed toward downtown. Hearne was drinking Red Bull and talking fast, mostly about former girlfriends and prospective girlfriends. He mentioned that we had to hurry along because he was going to judge a comedy contest “over in Kansas” after we finished our reporting mission.

Before we got to our destination, I called my wife Patty, who was still at work, and told her I might be needing a ride home from downtown. Hearne waved me off, saying, “Don’t worry, I’ll drop you off.”  As it turned out, we finished our reporting in less than 10 minutes.

It occurred to me that I should stay put and have my wife pick me up, but Hearne had me in tow, and in moments we were back in the news cruiser. Off we went, westbound into Kansas on I-70. When we got to about 57th Street, I said, “Where are we going?”

“The Legends,” came the answer.

Realization No. 1: I’d been hijacked.

Hearne is always telling people to sit back and enjoy it when good things happen to them, so I thought I’d better just relax. All the way out to Parallel Parkway, Hearne chattered on about his love life, and I have to admit it was kind of interesting because I just don’t hear those kinds of tales from most of my friends, who, like me, have been enveloped in the bonds of holy matrimony for many years.

At the same time, listening to Hearne’s titillating stories, I was glad that I was safely ensconced in the bonds of matrimony because there’s no way I could ride the roller coaster Hearne is on.

After we got to The Legends and were getting out of the car, I asked Hearne, “How long are we going to be here?”

“Not long,” came the predictable answer, as he slammed the door.

Outside the club, a big crowd was hanging around and queuing up — mostly people in their 20s and 30s. Hearne plowed through the crowd and led the way to the back kitchen door, where, inside, Hearne introduced me to Jack Glazer, who was strawbossing the event behind the scenes.

Jack, moving as quickly has Hearne had been, took us out to the bar area, where I was introduced to former Chiefs running back Ted McKnight. Jack then handed me, Hearne and Ted sheets of papers with a long list of names on them.

Realization No. 2: I was going to be a comedy-contest judge.

On the list were 31 names. Every contestant would have two minutes.

Realization No. 3: So much for “not long.”

Then, Papa Glazer – Stan the Man, founder of the original Westport club, man about town and mayoral candidate — came along, and it turned out that he, too, was a judge. Jack gave us some cursory instructions and situated the four of us at a table flanking the stage.

I was on the left, and, Stan was sandwiched between Hearne and Ted. Hearne proceeded to tell Stan and Ted about his recent break-up, and Ted then began lamenting about his break-up with a long-time girlfriend. I thought we might be in for a vale of tears, but Stan brightened things up by noting, “My wife is 36 years younger than me.”

At some point, Hearne said that he’d been told by Craig Glazer that one of the comics — one of two women contestants — was interested in dating him. So, Hearne craned his neck to catch glimpses of the lady and solicited opinions from his fellow judges about her looks. I gave her two thumbs up, but Hearne said he’d probably pass.

After the room filled up with people — many of them friends and relatives of the contestants — Craig, wearing shades and blue jeans, took the mic. He introduced us — the judges — starting with his father. Hearne, being a card, stood up with Stan to acknowledge the applause. Stan returned the favor a couple of minutes later, standing up and waving when Craig introduced Hearne.

Craig introduced me as a former political reporter and editor at The Star and then spontaneously told the crowd, “He didn’t vote for Obama.” I stood and waved and attempted to shout a correction, but my words were mostly lost in the cacophony.

Then began the parade of comics. The first was the lady who allegedly was interested in going out with Hearne. My, she was profane! This being a clean-cut blog, I won’t repeat any of what she said. But she was funny, and I gave her a “7” on a 1-10 scale.

Displaying grit and wit, the comics plunged ahead, one after another. They went by names like “Grasshopper,” and “Jazzy,” and “Ruthless Riley T.” Most of them had day jobs, of course, including one guy who worked as a prison guard in Leavenworth. Many of them were very funny.

For me, the most memorable one-liner of the night was this: “Do you think it’s appropriate to take a kid with ADHD and put him in a concentration camp?”

After it was over, we huddled in a nearby office and determined the top three finishers. They were — in order of first, second and third — Bruce Crosby, Dell Iliff and Chris Holmberg. The woman whom I rated a “7” was in consideration until the end but didn’t make the cut.

On the way home, on Hearne’s car phone, we called Craig, who was taking his father home. Craig asked if we’d had a good time — I assured him that I had — and touched on some of the evening’s highlights. When the subject of the lady comic came up, Hearne told Craig he wasn’t interested. But then Stan said something that changed the complexion of things.

“She was asking about the guy with the spiked hair,” Stan said, referring to Hearne.

“She was?” Hearne said eagerly. “Are you making that up?”

“No,” Stan replied.

And, like a youth who’s just been told that the best-looking girl in class thinks he’s cute — Hearne allowed as to how he just might follow up with that lady.

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Ten reasons why it’s great to be a Kansas Citian these days…

Posted in Uncategorized on September 27, 2010| 4 Comments »

  1. The grand opening for the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts is just a year away.
  2. Thanks to the Power & Light District, downtown is experiencing a revival.
  3. The Chiefs are 3-0.
  4. Two of the region’s three Big 12 football teams are undefeated.
  5. Because of a progressive crime lab, Kansas City has become a leader in solving “cold cases.”
  6. In less than a year, “The Funk” will be out of the mayor’s office.
  7. In less than a year, former Councilman Mike Burke will be in the mayor’s office.
  8. John Covington is on the road to making the Kansas City School District respectable.
  9. If it weren’t for KC Star City Hall watchdog Yael T. Abouhalkah, Local 42 of the International Association of Fire Fighters would be getting everything it wanted from the city, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars to taxpayers.
  10. Red-light cameras at more than a dozen intersections have made driving in Kansas City a safer proposition.

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A bad, bad cop who helped subvert the truth to protect a DEA agent

Posted in journalism, Uncategorized on September 24, 2010| 18 Comments »

Few things frost me more than a dirty cop.

An especially dirty cop stank up the ranks of the Kansas City, Kan., Police Department several years ago. His name is Bob Lane. Formerly, Detective Bob Lane. Three years ago, Lane was exposed as a bum (more about that in a minute), but it was only this week that the fullness of his crookedness came to public light.

But first, the backdrop. On Tuesday, The Star carried a front-page story about a federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent who beat up a Kansas City, Kan., man in 2003, seriously injuring him, in a road rage incident.

The DEA agent, Timothy McCue, thumped Barron Bowling after a minor mishap on North Tenth Street in KCK. Besides beating Bowling with his fist or the butt of his gun, McCue called Bowling an “inbred hillbilly” and “system-dodging white trash.”

It was a clear-cut case of abuse by the DEA agent, but who got charged? Not McCue. Oh, no, authorities closed ranks, and Bowling was charged with causing the wreck and leaving the scene of the accident. He later was acquitted of causing the wreck but convicted of leaving the scene. (And why wouldn’t he leave the scene? He was getting the crap beaten out of him.)

The tide eventually turned, however, and last week, a U.S. District Court judge awarded Bowling $833,250 for the beating, which, The Star said, left him with “severe brain damage and post-traumic stress.”  

The Star’s story focused partly on former KCK Detective Max Seifert, who tried, at the time, to report honestly what happened on North Tenth Street on July 10, 2003.  At the time, Seifert was overridden by other officers, who wanted to protect a fellow badge carrier. The worst was yet to come: Judge Julie Robinson, who awarded Bowling $833,000, said that as a result of his honesty Seifert was forced into retirement before he was eligible for full retirement benefits.

In her ruling, Robinson praised Seifert for his honest work, which, she said, got him “castigated by his superiors, by the prosecutor, by the DEA.” She called his treatment “shameful.”

Lane

Now, enter Bob Lane. An editorial in The Star on Wednesday said he was the first officer to arrive on the scene that fateful day. The editorial goes on to say that Lane told Seifert that DEA agents were helpful to police and the department should “cover for them.”

“Seifert rejected that warped advice and filed a thorough and honest report,” the editorial said.

But The Star failed to tie together all the elements of this sordid tale. Several years ago, Lane, while simultaneously serving on the Edwardsville City Council and the KCK Police Department helped quash two DUI tickets and related traffic tickets in exchange for carpets and a steak-house gift certificate.

To be specific: The attorney general’s office alleged that on Aug. 8, 2005, Lane received $1,200 to $1,400 worth of carpet to conceal and suppress records related to the 2004 arrest of a carpet company owner. In December 2004, Lane allegedly got a $100 gift certificate to Ruth’s Chris Steak House to hide evidence against a car dealer.  

 In 2006, Lane was charged with three felonies — two counts of bribery and one of aggravated intimidation of a witness. He also was charged with four misdemeanor counts. (The Edwardsville police chief, Steve Vaughan, also was charged in connection with the ticket fixing, but those charges were later dismissed.)   

In a 2007 deal with prosecutors, Lane pleaded no contest to the four misdemeanors, including two counts of compounding a crime.

He was sentenced to 10 days in jail and a year of probation. And, oh, yes, he resigned from the police force. (He had been placed on unpaid leave when the charges were filed.)

It’s clear, then, that Lane was running wild — in the most perverted sense — in 2003, 2004 and 2005. It’s too bad, isn’t it, that Wyandotte County District Attorney Jerome Gorman chose to drop those felony charges against Lane in 2007?

Lane is probably thanking his lucky stars he’s not behind bars, where he fully deserves to be, in my opinion.

I have another thought on this situation:

Why in the world would the KCK Police Department allow officers to serve in any kind of political post, not to mention an elected post? It seems to me that the potential for conflict of interest or abuse of power would be pronounced.

On Thursday, I spoke with KCK Police Chief Rick Armstrong, who was appointed chief in July. He said he didn’t think that, in general, allowing KCK officers to serve in political posts other than the Wyandotte County Unified Government posed a significant problem. Armstrong, whom I got to know when I was The Star’s KCK bureau chief from 1995-2004, is a good man, and I believe will be a great chief; but I disagree with him on this point.

Armstrong also took issue with Judge Robinson’s conclusion that Seifert was drummed out of the force for writing a report that put the blame on McCue.  Armstrong defended the integrity of police force operations under recent police chiefs, including James Swofford; Ron Miller, who was chief in 2003; and Sam Breshears, whom Armstrong succeeded.  

Armstrong said that earlier Thursday he had met with 21 police recruits and had talked to them about the importance of ethics, professionalism and accountability.

Let’s hope they get the message…and also that there’s not a Bob Lane among them.

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A teeny-weeny oversight leads to a major scoop and the unveiling of a civil-rights era informant

Posted in journalism, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 22, 2010| 6 Comments »

Let me tell you how a great piece of investigative reporting came about.

Maybe you read or heard about the Martin-Luther King Jr.-era photographer, Ernest C. Withers, being identified as an FBI informant by The Commercial Appeal, Memphis’ major daily newspaper. 

Withers, who died in 2007 at age 85, was giving the FBI boat loads of information about King; about the sanitation workers’ strike that led up to King’s assassination; and about a Black Panther-type group called the Invaders, which operated in Memphis in the late 1960s. Withers is now credited with helping the government break up the group.

Withers also focused on mainstream figures, including King, with whom Withers had unfettered access, and he passed along tips and photographs involving politics, business and everyday life in Memphis’ black community.

He is believed to have been paid for his work, although the FBI has refused to acknowledge he was an informant or that he was paid.

Perrusquia

With that backdrop, here is how veteran investigative reporter Marc Perrusquia unmasked Withers, whose family refuses to believe he was an informant.

Perrusquia first got wind of Withers being an FBI informant more than a decade ago. A few years ago he twice requested — and was twice denied — Freedom of Information requests to copy the Justice Department’s file on Withers. 

The Justice Department not only would not allow the paper to copy the file but refused to acknowledge that it exists. The Justice Department was able to get by with that because an exemption to Freedom of Information Act law allows officials to protect the identity of informants even after death.

What the paper managed to get instead was 369 pages related to a 1970s public corruption inquiry that focused on Withers, who pleaded guilty in 1979 to extorting kickbacks from a nightclub owner while he was a Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission agent.

Perrusquia began scouring those pages, which included redacted references to informants. But in one instance — just one place in all those pages — the guys with the Sharpies (or the computer-keyboard equivalent) screwed up; they failed to hide a reference to Withers’ informant number, ME 338-R.

With that, The Commercial Appeal had the combination that unlocked the vault. Here’s how the paper explained what happened next.

“…(T)he newspaper located repeated references to the number in other FBI reports released under FOIA 30 years ago. Those reports — more than 7,000 pages comprising the FBI’s files on the 1968 sanitation strike and a 1968-70 probe of the Invaders — at times pinpoint specific actions by Withers and in other instances show he was one of several informants contributing details.”

The Commercial Appeal published its big story on Sunday, Sept. 12. It was immediately picked up by other papers and news organizations throughout the country. 

In a column that also ran on Sept. 12, Commercial Appeal editor Chris Peck called the scoop “a wrinkle in history that speaks for the importance of a free press and good reporting,” and he explained why Perrusquia’s scoop was so important decades after the fact.

“Every generation wrestles with this tug between the better in us and those things that, in retrospect, seem less than our best,” Peck wrote. “Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Rush Limbaugh and prescription drugs. Barry Bonds and steroids. We cannot count on two hands and two feet all the head-scratching examples of successful men, talented men who feel compelled to go against their own best interests.

“That’s why the Ernest Withers saga is relevant today. The questions raised by his secret life as an informant seem as pertinent and nettlesome today as they were 40 years ago.”

Thank you, then, Marc Perrusquia and The Commercial Appeal for exposing a deep, closely held secret that explained a lot about the government’s inside track on Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement of the late 1960s.

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The New York Times and a young Sulzberger stake a claim in Kansas City

Posted in journalism, Uncategorized, tagged , , on September 20, 2010| 4 Comments »

Ten days ago, Arthur Gregg Sulzberger began turning out stories in his new job as Midwest correspondent for The New York Times.

Sulzberger, a fifth-generation member of the Ochs-Sulzberger dynasty that has controlled and managed The Times since 1896, was named a Midwest correspondent, based in Kansas City, in June. He moved to Kansas City within the past few weeks and alives near downtown. His grandmother, Annie Gregg, lives in Topeka.   

Sulzberger, who uses the byline A.G. Sulzberger, has had three midwestern stories since Sept. 10. The first was a provocative piece about a video war game that allows the user to become aTaliban fighter and attack American troops. The Army, Navy and Air Force have prohibited the game from being sold on their bases. The Marines had not decided whether to make it available on their bases.

The second story, which was published last Thursday, was about a Mulvane, Kan., man who built a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge over a creek on his property.

The third one, published Friday, was very special. It was a front-page feature on a 103-year-old federal judge in Wichita. Yes, Judge Wesley E. Brown is still hearing cases at a century plus three.

Sulzberger opened the story like this:

“Judge Wesley E. Brown’s mere presence in his courtroom is seen as something of a daily miracle. His diminished frame is nearly lost behind the bench. A tube under his nose feeds him oxygen during hearings. And he warns lawyers preparing for lengthy court battles that he may not live to see the cases to completion, adding the old saying, ‘At this age, I’m not even buying green bananas.’ ”

It might be an old saying, but it sure made me laugh.

As lively and polished as Sulzberger’s writing was, it was a photo that The Times used that elevated the story to a remarkably high level. The photo showed a smiling Judge Brown virtually swallowed by his big office chair and appearing to be sliding down under his big, wide desk. It’s a hilarious picture, and to use another old saying, it’s a picture that’s worth a thousand words.

Wisely, The Kansas City Star picked up the story and also ran it on the front page. Unwisely, The Star chose not to run the tell-tale photo, opting instead for a mug shot.

Before moving to Kansas City, the 29-year-old Sulzberger was covering U.S. District Court in Brooklyn. He joined The Times’ staff early last year, after reporting stints at The Oregonian and The Providence (Rhode Island) Journal.

He is the son of Times’ chairman and publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. He got his middle name from his mother, Gail Gregg. Young Sulzberger has a sister, Annie Sulzberger, who is not in the newspaper business.

I had the pleasure of meeting Arthur earlier this summer, and he struck me as genuine, unassuming and enthusiastic about his Kansas City-based assignment.

This is the first time that The Times has had a Kansas City-based correspondent in nearly 20 years. In my opinion, this is a great move by The Times, which, like the Wall Street Journal, is spreading its reach as a “national” newspaper. Unfortunately, while The Times and the Wall Street Journal are extending their tentacles, the nation’s second-tier papers, like The Star, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Chicago Tribune, are pulling in their horns because of financial problems, and they’re losing their foothold with many readers.

For more than a year now I’ve subscribed to The Times, along with The Star. I understand that the vast majority of people either can’t afford two newspapers or they’re just not interested enough to take both (or maybe either). I would urge all of you, however, to at least try to follow Arthur Sulzberger’s writing out of Kansas City on The Times’ web site, www.nyt.com. If you just check the site every once in a while, you can put “A.G. Sulzberger” in the search box, and his stories will pop up. 

We’re lucky to have him among us. For one thing, it could elevate our profile in the eyes of the nation. So, welcome, Arthur, we hope you enjoy your time in our great city!

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On stabbing story, KC Star leaves competitors in the dust

Posted in journalism, Uncategorized, tagged , on September 16, 2010| 5 Comments »

I frequently hear people say they’ve stopped taking The Kansas City Star because “there’s nothing in it” or “there’s nothing to it anymore.”

But once again, on Thursday, The Star showed why it’s the most indispensable news-gathering organization in our region. The shocking headline atop Page 1 said it all — “Sources: Nixon was target.”

The intended target of the whacked-out, psychologically ill 22-year-old man who stabbed a dean on Tuesday at Penn Valley Community College was none other than Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon.

The story was reported and written by police reporter Christine Vendel and higher-education reporter Mara Rose Williams. 

The scariest thing — the reason this is such a huge story — is that if Casey Brezik, the attacker, had been smarter and better organized, he just might have been able to get to Nixon. Nixon travels with Missouri Highway Patrol officers, but who would have been suspecting an attack at a junior college, where the governor was going to be talking about the benign subject of a state expansion of high-speed Internet services?    

It seems to me that Brezik easily could have caught everybody napping…long enough, anyway, to get in one thrust at the governor.

He was able to make his thrust, but it got dean of instruction Al Dimmit Jr. instead of Nixon, whose plane had just landed at Wheeler Downtown Airport. (Dimmit is in the hospital, recovering from a neck wound.) 

Nixon immediately canceled the Penn Valley visit and went on to Springfield, his next planned stop.

The Star posted its big scoop on its web site, kansascity.com, at 10:15 p.m. Wednesday, just after the 10 o’clock newscasts concluded their news reports and had moved on to weather and sports.

At that point, even if they were monitoring The Star’s web site, the TV stations would only have been able to report what The Star was reporting. They would have had to say something like, “The Kansas City Star is reporting on its web site that Gov. Jay Nixon was the intended target of an attack Tuesday that injured a Penn Valley dean.”

But pride would have stopped the TV stations from doing that; they hate to give credit to The Star, just as The Star hates to credit any other local news organization with breaking a big story. 

As of 10:30 a.m. Thursday, three of the four local TV stations, KMBC, WDAF and KSHB, were reporting the Nixon-the-intended-victim story on their web sites. Two of the stations, KSHB and WDAF, were crediting The Star. KMBC, meanwhile, had done some original reporting and was quoting police spokesman Darrin Snapp as saying that Nixon had been the intended target.

As for KCTV5 ( known for its “live, late-breaking, investigative” self-promotions a few years ago), it was carrying as its “top story” a bomb threat from Wednesday morning that forced the evacuation of a building at 23rd and Main. 

As early as Wednesday morning, The Star intimated the deeper implications of the Penn Valley incident. Its front-page account of the attack included a sub-head that read, “Man described as anarchist is charged in attack that occurred before governor’s arrival.”

Another tipoff that Brezik had bigger things in mind came in the third paragraph of Wednesday’s story, which said that Brezik was “wearing black clothes and a bullet-resistant vest.” In other words, he was prepared for a big encounter.

Fortunately — very, very fortunately — Brezik’s hoped-for, big encounter with the governor didn’t happen.   

So, while The Star is “skinnier” than it used to be, while it is lighter in the hand (except on Sunday) and contains far fewer column inches of news than it used to, it’s still the heaviest and most substantive news source around. If you want the inside information on the biggest local stories, there’s only one place to turn to. 

Hats off, then, to The Star. It truly was a banner day at 18th and Grand.

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