BishopAccountability.org
	Critiquing a Recent Priest Story, and More Morning Sentinel January 28 2009 http://centralmaine.mainetoday.com/blogs/conrad/038955.html Readers: From time to time, I share in this blog examples of in-house critiques that I deliver to the staff. Here's one I wrote today: --------------------------- Folks: It's been a while since I've done an in-depth critique. Today, I'll look at the past four days' newspapers, with mostly compliments and a few coulda-been-betters. I'll start by saying we've had a very "newsy" stretch of days again. On balance, we're covering a lot of "hard" local news, covering it well, presenting it well. Ben Sturtevant and I just talked about our Web numbers and why they're up again, and probably will set a record for the KJ site. Our conclusion was simple: There's been a lot of breaking local news lately, and we're not missing it. Good job. Before going into the details about the various papers, I want to review Amy Calder's recent, excellent two-story package on a local woman who wrote a book about the priest who fathered her son and then returned to the priesthood in central Maine, where he served for years. Amy worked on this story off and on for several weeks, basically ever since the woman's self-published book came out. In the book, the woman does not name the priest. However, I felt like we needed a name so as not to cast suspicion over the other priests in our area. So we waited. The woman called Amy about three weeks ago and said she wanted to name him and give details. That's where Amy's new reporting began. Amy and George Myers talked about this story a lot, after Amy interviewed the author anew. They made a good decision to interview the priest, who is alive and at a Lewiston nursing facility. Amy went there and spoke to him. He suffers from Alzheimers but clearly recognized the author from a photo that Amy showed him. That was important confirmation. The story was largely written on Friday, Jan. 23. We decided to hold it past that weekend so as not to rush it, and to give the diocese ample time to respond and respond in some detail. One new fact that emerged the following week was that the woman had sued the diocese for child support in the 1980s and received payments from the church. That was another good detail in Amy's story. I am writing about this story in more detail than normal today because the way Amy and George handled this piece showed a lot of what we've been talking about during our recent ethics training sessions. We recognize potentially sensitive stories when we are on them. We discuss them thoroughly. We take our time with them. And we talk to as many "stakeholders" in the story as possible, in this case the author, the priest, the author's son and some officials with the diocese. In most cases, the result is an excellent and fair story. That's what we got here. I asked Amy to comment on our approach to this story and here's what she had to say about it: I concluded that to do the story right, I had to see the priest for myself, so I visited him at the nursing home in Lewiston. I kept George apprised of my every move while working on the story, which allowed for good feedback and suggestions. George and Eric allowed me the time to do the story right, even putting it off a week to make sure we had all our bases covered. Once I had a final draft done, George asked if I minded if others in the newsroom, especially those who are Catholic, could read it and make comments, which was particularly helpful. ------------------------------------------------------- Sunday A small design flaw here but the first subhead on Amy's story, which ran on A1, left a "widow," a single line of type, beneath it. It just looked a little odd. A strength of our opinion pages is the excellent local op-ed columns we are able to (somehow) land -- and keep landing. The Sunday piece on health-care costs, written by the acting CEO at the Blue Hill hospital, was one of the most informative pieces I've ever read on this topic. There was a "staff report" on page B3 of the KJ, with students commenting positively on Obama's inauguration. No problem, but staff reports should have taglines with a staffer's name attached, just for accountability's sake and in case a reader would want to call or email us about a piece like this. Scott Monroe offered a good trend piece on home buying for our Sunday Business page. These stories take time but have more value than a quick hitter about a store or restaurant opening (which we also should report). One nitpick: When we interview someone and quote him (or her) in the paper, we generally don't have to say they said something "in an interview." That's presumed. On the other hand, if someone emails us a statement or provides one in writing in lieu of an interview, that is good to include. Craig Crosby delivered a fun read on a Vassalboro dog musher for the Real Life cover. (Craig also did a great Real Life story last summer about bugs.) Our reporter rotation for Real Life is resulting in a nice mix of stories here. And I appreciate the effort, with so many of our staffers pitching in. Matt DiFilippo also came through with a great read about the Temple Academy basketball games, which are played in the church sanctuary. He led with a "telling detail," that the court is carpeted. That hooked me and told me, "This is unusual. You'll want to read this." And how about this great quote from one of the players, who generally likes playing hoops at Temple: "The only thing that stinks is the rug burns." Monday Monday's B1 layout in the Sentinel was well done, with a good use of a quote above the headline about the Fairfield town manager story. The schedule says Stan Eames did this page so -- good job Stan. Good Chamber of Commerce roundup story by Larry Grard ran B1 of both papers. Question: Do we have color mugs of Peter Thompson and Kim Lindlof? If not, we probably should shoot them in color. I liked the thinking behind Matt Stone's Monday consolidation vote preview: Ask high school students what they're thinking. Matt's story was based on students. It was a good effort and shifted this complicated topic away from "official-dom." There are many school and local-government stories that lend themselves to this approach. Tuesday Just a great "get" by Andy Molloy and Betty Adams, interviewing a man in the courthouse who just had pleaded guilty to a grisly murder in Augusta last year. This was a tremendous read and, no surprise here, drew great Web traffic. Craig Crosby's B1 home invasion story was good enough to have run A1. Let's keep this in mind if an arrest is made. We have to be careful about not duplicating stories, now that we're sharing stories on-cycle with other Maine newspapers. The AP rewrite on page B1 of the KJ, about Rep. Pat Flood seeking to downsize the state Legislature, was contained in a BDN story we published over the weekend. This wasn't a true duplication, as the BDN story had other issues in it. But it was close. Wednesday Doug Harlow's A1 school-consolidation story made a great point near the jump: That some voters are opting against consolidation because it's complicated, laced with jargon, hard to understand. I had dinner with a friend from Winthrop last night -- a smart, professional guy -- and he said he found the wording of the ballot question itself difficult to follow. Solid A1 story in the KJ about another Gardiner bank robbery story by Meghan Malloy, and Sharon Wood produced a very helpful map showing four recent bank robberies and where they occurred. (Question about the headline: Should we stray from AP style in our heads and go with "2nd" and "4th" instead of second and fourth?) Keith Edwards' B1 story about the owners of Lou's Beverage Barn retiring is an example of solid, community journalism. A lot of our readers probably know this couple and have been to their store. Simple as that.
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