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These Newsroom Ghosts Are All To Real
By Dean Rotbart
When I read the business press, I often spot the trail of editorial ghosts - those invisible forces that exert a strong influence over the instigation, tone and/or direction of a story, but whose role is seldom, if ever, acknowledged.
Ghostwatchers, such as me, know that beneath the veil of a single byline, lurk editors, publishers, unnamed sources, public relations agents and even personal family members who deserve credit - or blame - for a lot of what is attributed to a single journalist.
Editorial ghosts arise quite naturally in newsrooms.
They are such elemental ingredients in the making of news that most journalists no longer pay them notice, much less share their role with readers and viewers.
Think about it. While typical business journalists will write feature stories by the dozen each year, they rarely explain to the public the real process behind their choice of individual stories. Who inspired the idea? Why? How did editors or publishers subsequently "massage" the concept? Why? Who stands to win and who to lose from the story's dissemination? And, perhaps most important to understanding the news manufacturing process, what were the motivations other than the public's best interest for running the story in the first place?
Such as?
Such as, we wanted to teach that company a lesson for being so rude to us when we request help. Such as, we've learned that our competition is working on a similar story and we want to thwart their glory. Such as, I need to acquire knowledge for my personal benefit, so I'll propose a story on the subject and get paid to learn from the best experts around what I need to know. Such as, I have an important source who proposed this story and I want to remain on good terms with him or her. And often enough: I didn't have anything better to write about to fill my allotted column space for this week.
These "ghosts" do abound. They are very real. But unless you are intimate with the journalists and editors who produce the nation's daily business news output, it is unlikely that the average reader can do much more than surmise that some "ghosts" must exist.
There are two exceptions. When news organizations write about themselves or about their news rivals, the editorial ghosts hover so close to the surface of the story that even inexperienced ghost watchers often swear that they can spot them.
One such apparition recently caught my attention.
On October 14 [1996], right smack on the front page of The New York Times' business section, is an 1,100- word Market Place column by reporter Steve Lohr on the "Technology and Travails of Dow Jones." The story explains that while newspaper publishers such as Times Mirror, Knight-Ridder, Gannett, The Washington Post and, oh yes, The New York Times are reporting healthy third quarter profits, Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, "is having a rough year" because of declining earnings at the company's Telerate financial information service.
First, to dispense with the "non-ghostly" aspects of the story: the writer, Steve Lohr, is a highly respected business journalist, deservedly so, whose professional standards are above reproach. And, the story on Dow Jones - a high-profile, publicly traded company - is unquestionably legitimate news.
But the ghosts haunting this story seem painfully obvious. Here are some that I've spotted. I'm sure you can glimpse others on your own.
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The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are fierce competitors for business news and any public embarrassment of the Journal is certain to boost morale in the Times business newsroom. The rivalry isn't mentioned in the story. |
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Many key members of the Times' business news section - but not Mr. Lohr - previously worked at the Journal or elsewhere at Dow Jones, meaning that the story is not just about a rival, it is also about a former employer. This fact isn't mentioned in the story. (Dow Jones alumni at the Times business section include: John M. Geddes, business editor; Leonard M. Apcar, assistant business editor; Floyd Norris, Wall Street editor; and reporters Reed Abelson, Christopher Drew, Leslie Eaton, Diana B. Henriques, Edwin McDowell, Peter Truell, Edward A. Wyatt and Laurence Zuckerman, among others. |
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No fewer than a half dozen times in the article, Mr. Lohr attributes his facts to unnamed analysts, without explaining to readers why he doesn't name the analysts. (He does quote one source by name, Dennis Waters, who publishes a trade newsletter.) I don't know why the lack of attribution, either. But I do know that many of the same analysts who follow Dow Jones stock follow The New York Times' shares as well. So, at a minimum, his sources are uniquely important to his publishing bosses, who in all likelihood cultivate those analysts directly to garner favorable stock coverage of The New York Times Company. This isn't mentioned in the story either. |
Lest one think that the Times alone is haunted by editorial ghosts, don't. For all the same reasons that the Times can justify a front page business section story on the woes at Dow Jones, so too, presumably can The Wall Street Journal. So how does the Journal cover its own troubled earnings?
In an editorial box in the top right corner of the front page of its MARKETPLACE section, October 9 [1996], under the bold heading "Media" is the headline "The Journal's Interactive Edition draws over 30,000 paid users." Inside the section on page B5 is a bylined story by Thomas E. Weber, detailing the success of "Dow Jones & Co.'s closely watched publishing venture on the Internet's World Wide Web..." It is an eleven-paragraph story quoting by name analysts, experts and a Dow Jones executive.
On the same page, without a byline, is a seven paragraph story, headlined "Dow Jones's Earnings Rose 20% in Quarter, Due to One-Time Gain." As the story's lead paragraph notes, but for the gain, earnings fell 5.8% - "adversely affected by an operating-income decline in the financial-information-services segment." Voilˆ. The sum total of the Wall Street Journal's coverage of its problems at Telerate.
"You would think that a Wall Street Journal reporter would have a field day with this one. It's the story of a mighty empire whose publications chronicle the rise and fall of business - and quickly pounce on companies that give shareholders short shrift," observes Jack Egan, a long-time business journalist and fellow editorial ghost watcher in the October 14th issue of U.S. News & World Report.
Mr. Egan is correct, of course. But the Journal didn't and never will write that autobiographical story. Nevertheless, a month earlier, the paper did write a somewhat similar front page feature: about James Fallows, the controversial new editor-in-chief at Mr. Egan's employer, U.S. News & World Report. Somehow Mr. Egan forgot to mention that ghost in his own story.
November, 1996
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