On Sunday, October 11, the Salem Statesman Journal finally engaged in some serious investigative reporting. Problem is, the theme of the stories that took up five full pages in the front page section was...
Criticism of Willamette Week's investigative reporting on the Kitzhaber email scandal.
I found this bizarre, given that the Statesman Journal -- the newspaper in Oregon's capital city -- had done essentially zero original investigative reporting of its own during all the uproar in late 2014 and early 2015 that led to Governor Kitzhaber's resignation.
Plus, under executive editor Michael Davis, the Statesman Journal has been asleep at the journalistic wheel when it comes to substantive reporting on either local or state issues.
I used to think that calling the Statesman a "USA Today clone" was an insult. But Salem's paper has gone so far downhill, now the sections that come directly from USA Today are the best part of the Statesman Journal.
(Some previous rants posts of mine about the Statesman are here, here, here, and here.)
The October 11 barrage of stories in the Statesman Journal included:
"Former Gov. John Kitzhaber breaks his silence"
"The destructive power of one word clobbered Kitzhaber"
"Willamette Week stands by Rodgers"
The supposed Big New News from the Statesman Journal was that Kitzhaber had been unfairly maligned and driven out of office by inaccurate reporting from Portland's Willamette Week and Oregonian papers.
It wasn't true, said reporter Carol McAlice Currie and executive editor Michael Davis, that Kitzhaber had wanted to destroy/delete emails stored on State of Oregon computer servers.
For one thing, that wasn't possible to accomplish, since there were several backups of those emails. For another, Kitzhaber just wanted to "review" the emails, not "destroy" them. This was the theme of Davis' destructive power of one word editorial.
He started his piece off with:
Oregonians, including many in the news media and in politics, wrongly portrayed Gov. John Kitzhaber as seeking to destroy emails.
Well, those were fighting words to Willamette Week. A story soon appeared: "WW Editor Mark Zusman Responds on OPB to Statesman Journal's 'Puzzling' Kitzhaber Coverage."
In its Sunday, Oct. 11 edition, the Salem Statesman Journal made a case for former Gov. John Kitzhaber.
...The Statesman's Oct. 11 stories claim that Kitzhaber was drummed out of office by misleading reporting. The stories take particular aim at the claims of Oregon Department of Administrative Services manager Michael Rodgers, who refused a request to remove Kitzhaber's emails from state servers and instead leaked them to WW.
The Statesman argued those emails were never in danger of deletion, and Rodgers had no reason to believe that Kitzhaber was trying to delete them.
The Statesman's Oct. 11 package relied heavily on Janet Hoffman, the criminal defense lawyer currently representing Kitzhaber in a federal investigation. Kitzhaber also provided the paper with a statement.
In an editorial that set the tone for the Statesman's package, editor Michael Davis claimed that contrary to WW's reporting, Kitzhaber never sought to "destroy" 6,000 emails that his assistant, Jan Murdock, asked be removed from state servers but instead merely wanted to "review" those emails.
Davis' assertion is contrary to emails that WW and other publications have printed that show Department of Administrative Services staff were very uncomfortable with Murdock's request.
Oregon State Police investigators later reinterviewed those DAS staffers, and they reiterated their discomfort with one of them characterized as a "bizarre" and "unethical" request from Kitzhaber's longtime personal assistant.
Today, WW editor and publisher Mark Zusman responded to the Statesman Journal in an interview on Oregon Public Broadcasting, calling the Oct. 11 stories "puzzling." The interview airs today at noon, and again at 8 pm.
The Statesman Journal, Zusman told OPB, is "arguably a pawn in this game."
Sure seems like it.
As the Willamette Week story says, the Statesman Journal's attempt at investigative journalism relied heavily on statements from Kitzhaber and his criminal defense attorney, Janet Hoffman. Not surprisingly, Kitzhaber and Hoffman thought that Kitzhaber hadn't done anything wrong.
Oregon Public Broadcasting interviewed Willamette Week editor Mark Zusman on its Think Out Loud program. You can listen to the interview via an associated OPB story: "Conflicting Coverage of Kitzhaber Ethics Scandal."
One person you won't be able to hear in the interview is Statesman Journal executive editor Michael Davis, the other side of the "conflicting coverage." OPB said:
A recent story in the Statesman Journal calls the email whistleblower’s claims into question and shows Kitzhaber’s lawyer has asked Willamette Week for a retraction, which the alternative Portland paper has declined to issue.
The Statesman Journal declined to join us on the air, and sent this statement:
At this time, the Statesman Journal’s leadership team wants our stories from Sunday’s edition to be read and considered. We may reconsider an opportunity to appear on “Think Out Loud,” at a later date.
Huh? Read and considered? Wouldn't part of being "considered" include the Statesman's lead journalist, Michael Davis, defending the five pages of stories the paper published?
I listened to the 11 minute Zusman interview. He wasn't kind to the Statesman Journal.
At about the 6:30 mark Zusman says that he reached out to Michael Davis and Davis didn't want to engage in a conversation. He calls the Statesman Journal "a pawn in this game" at about the 10:20 mark.
I can't think of a reason why the Statesman Journal wouldn't want to engage with the editor of Willamette Week, if the Statesman staff were truly confident in their reporting.
Instead, they declined to appear with Zusman on the OPB show, which makes it look like their criticisms of Willamette Week were shaky. I hope Davis (and maybe also Currie) will choose to debate/discuss Zusman soon.
Given my disdain for how journalism currently is being practiced at the Statesman Journal, I suspect that Willamette Week is more likely to be correct about what went on with the Kitzhaber emails than the Statesman is.
But I could be wrong.
So let's bring this journalistic pissing contest between the Statesman Journal and Willamette Week into open public view and see who wins. Debate/discuss with Mark Zusman, Michael Davis. Sooner the better.
Brian: I want to extend my thanks for your critiques of the Statesman-Journal. I am not a journalist and have found myself rebuffed by Dick Hughes for pointing out basic editorial issues along the lines that I would be more understanding if I could only walk in his shoes .
Mike Davis has no time to defend his paper on OPB, but he always wants me to call him when I've tried to point out to him similar issues.
We regularly watch Rachel Maddow. She frequently emphasizes the importance of on-the-ground print journalists and the vital importance of local newspapers. I had typed "the role newspapers play" but felt that "play" is what the SJ does, as in "playing games;" "play" is not what journalism is about (though I can be criticized for this as I am not a journalist and hence am not qualified to pass judgment on those who are initiates).
I also thank you for seeking to distinguish the work that the reporters do from the paper itself. We sometimes unfairly lump the likes of Zach Urness, Henry Miller, Victor Panichkul, and the trained reporters with Hughes and Davis.
The paper's decision to be USA today with a spattering of what passes for local reporting as determined by the editorial staff may now be the best part of the paper. I wouldn't know. For several years, we've augmented our subscription to the SJ with the New York Times. I simply pitch the USA today part, and the balance becomes what I call "the moment of silence" as that is about the amount of time that it takes to read.
I am especially galled at the paper's use of their two balancing (?) columnists, Ron Eachus and Dan Lucas: column inches printed without any editorial responsibility.
Again, good job.
Posted by: Richard van Pelt | October 21, 2015 at 06:10 AM