Even editors worry about their kids ... especially journalist kids

Victim of Salt Lake City mall shooting (Photo by Ashley Franscell)

I remember the day my daughter told me she might be interested in a journalism career. I was shocked. After all, I and her mother -- also a newspaperwoman -- had tried mightily to convince her to pursue something more lucrative and less corrosive to your personal life. Now, in retrospect, we should have encouraged her to go into newspapering if we'd ever hoped that she wouldn't.

But she did. She studied photojournalism in the best journalism school in America (maybe the world) at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and is now a professional news photographer in Utah. She's traveled to Europe, and Central and South America, studied with Pulitzer Prize-winner Eddie Adams, and is just starting her career.

Dads worry about daughters (and sons) ... especially if Dad knows the lengths to which a journalist must sometimes go on a news assignment. I was mildly worried when she was shooting in the slums of Ecuador and El Salvador, but I knew Ashley was nothing if not careful.

Besides, I wasn't exactly the best role model. I'd wandered around the Middle East after 9/11, flown in a stunt plane, gone hunting for radical militiamen in backwoods Montana (after which a bullet hole was found in the back panel of my Jeep), spent the lonmgest night of my life at the scene of a grisly murder, and stumbled into the middle of a store robbery after beating cops to an emergency call ... all to get a story.

When Ashley told me she'd been sent to Monday's mall shooting in Salt Lake City, I shuddered like an Accountant Dad, not a Newspaperman Dad. Why was she taking such risks? Couldn't they use wire photos? What imbecile editor was sending my sweet little girl to a mass murder?

But the Newspaperman Dad took charge. Did she get the shot? What obstacles to access did she have at the scene ... and how did she get around them? What did she do differently from everyone else? Did she zig when they zagged? What questions did she answer for readers with her camera?

When we finally talked about it and I saw her grim photos of death and fear, I was neither the Accountant Dad nor the Newspaperman Dad. I was just Dad.

"Are you doing OK?" I asked her.

"I cried," she said. "But I'm OK now."

~~~~

Read Ashley's blog-posting about the shooting here.

Mother and child leaving shooting scene (Photo by Ashley Franscell)

Sometimes you really don't want to know

One of the major roles of a free press is to defend the public’s right to know. Journalists do battle on a daily basis to open meetings to the public, to attain records involving public figures or public money, and to make sure that anyone who cares to seek out information has access to it.

That said, sometimes you really don’t want to know all the details. The kinds of things the public might not want to know include specifics concerning criminal activities, specifics about crime scenes and graphic details of accidents.

When those issues arise in the newsroom, we discuss them. We try to balance public interest and rights with concerns about the people involved and, quite frankly, with the graphic nature of the information.

Last week we ran a story containing some fairly graphic information about the body of a man who apparently had been dead for some time. The reporter discussed the information with editors and a decision was made to include that information, but not in the lead (the first paragraph) of the story. In other words, we were willing to share that information with our readers, but we didn’t want to slap them in the face with it.

Those who might have missed the story and want to read, what, admittedly, is a difficult story, can find it here.

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17830714&BRD=2287&PAG=461&dept_id=512588&rfi=6

Today, we ran another story, which also contained some graphic information. In this case, there was no discussion, no red flags raised, and no opportunity to ponder. The reporter didn’t use good journalistic judgment in including unnecessary information.

You won’t read that story here, because we have modified the version on our Web site to omit the graphic elements.

I could, at this point, expand this entry to wail on about deadlines and time pressures and the amount of material that moves through our computers on a daily basis, but the reality is we shouldn’t have done what we did. We apologize for the lapse in judgment.

All's as fair as possible in love and politics

Valentine’s Day might be the subject filling the advertisements in The Enterprise for the next couple of weeks, but the date having the most impact on the newsroom is May 12th, when most local city and school board elections take place.

Although the official filing period for the elections has not arrived, numerous candidates in cities throughout the region already have announced their intentions to seek office.

We like to think all news that passes through our computers and into publication (either in the print edition or on-line at BeaumontEnterprise.com) gets careful scrutiny and consideration. We also like to think that fairness is always a consideration in our news coverage. Even in criminal cases we ask ourselves: "Is it fair to the defendant?" and "Is it fair to the victim?"

But, in covering elections and candidates, there’s one more layer built into that consideration. We ask ourselves, not only, "Is it fair?" but also "Is it equal -- or at least comparable?" We go to some lengths to make sure that candidate announcements are comparable, in timing, in placement, in headline size, in length of story and in use (or not) of photographs.

Sometimes that doesn’t work out, especially early in the political season, before we get into our routine. Maybe different people do the announcement stories, and they vary. Maybe we don't have a file photo of the candidate, and the candidate doesn't have one available. We can't wait till we have a photo to report the announcement.

And news happens. If candidates choose to announce their participation on a day of a major news event, it may well have an effect on the resources we can spend in treating their announcement story the same as we have their opponents'.

In any case, the treatment of political announcements is ALWAYS a news decision. Those who might choose to construe one announcement vs. another as some type of endorsement -- or negative comment -- are misinformed.

The Enterprise, as most respectable newspapers, saves its opinions, clearly identified as such, for the Editorial pages. We will, I’m sure, before the election arrives, express the collective opinion of the members of the paper’s editorial board, concerning endorsements in many of the races.

That’s where those opinions belong. In the meantime, watch the news pages for the continuing stream of political announcements, delivered in as fair and equitable a manner as we can.