The Stranger was furious about a story I wrote last week, in which I reported the news (before many of the paper’s own staffers even knew) that the paper was hiring former P-I writer Claudia Rowe as news editor.
In my story, I criticized Rowe’s first article, in which she slammed Mayor Greg Nickels for “[blowing] it on youth violence” and attributed his primary-election loss, in part, to his failure to address youth violence
I wrote that the article was thin and underreported.
By any standard, that’s true: In a piece about Nickels’ failure to address gang violence, Rowe used an anonymous P-I commenter as evidence that drugs, gangs, and “drunk houses” were “rampant” in Ballard, South Park, and Southeast Seattle; strongly implied that Nickels had squeaked through the primary in Southeast Seattle (in fact, he won overwhelmingly); cited a neighborhood activist’s public records request as evidence that “certain areas—the South End, in particular—suffered a dramatic spike in homicides, assaults, and burglaries through 2008,” without citing any statistics to back that allegation up; and did no interviews with anyone involved with Nickels’ $9 million youth violence program.
And the most basic reporting mistake in a piece criticizing the mayor: Rowe didn’t bother calling the mayor’s office.
Stranger editor Christopher Frizzelle told me Rowe didn’t need to call the mayor because “she’s been on this beat a long time.”
Instead of trying to defend Rowe’s underwhelming reporting, however, The Stranger complained about my statement regarding Rowe’s allegation that “Kids were getting shot, but Nickels did not show up at their funerals or the community marches that followed.” I said that was not accurate.
When I called the mayor’s office for my post, his spokesman, Alex Fryer, told me that the mayor had attended several of the funerals of young black men killed in the Rainier Valley, and that he had met with the families of others.
However, Fryer has since clarified that the mayor did not attend the funerals of five specific teenagers that Rowe mentioned in her story.
Nickels did attend the funeral of Tyrone Love, who was killed in a gang-related shooting (Frizzelle dismissed this funeral as unrelated to youth gang violence because Love was not a minor), and did meet with the family of De’Che Morrison (one of the five kids that Rowe goes on to mention); in addition, as we reported, he sent deputy mayor Tim Ceis to a funeral (Morrison’s) in his stead.
So the only “inaccuracy” in my blog post was that Nickels attended one gang-related funeral, not “several,” as Fryer initially told me, and that he met with one victim’s family, not “several,” as Fryer initially told me.
But the larger point of my post, and the substance of most of Fryer’s quotes, was that Rowe’s piece was thin. The story didn’t meet the bare minimum standards of reporting—calling the subject of the story, checking allegations (particularly anonymous allegations) before publishing them, talking to the families about whom you’re writing, citing statistics rather than anecdotes.
In addition, Rowe strongly implied that Nickels did poorly in Southeast Seattle, alleging that “districts that might have carried him by a landslide ended up much closer.” In fact, Southeast Seattle was the only area that went for Nickels, in many areas by more than 40 percent.
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I hope this doesn’t devolve into some kind of food fight. I like me some Stranger, and I like me some Publicola. I know that Erica personally has relationships with both and that might understandably cause some friction, but hopefully that can be resolved off the front pages of both of your blogs.
And, relatedly, while these little tiffs are enough to annoy people like me and drive me away, they certainly aren’t enough to make me care about who is “really” correct. You are all pretty good at what you do (understatement) so long as insider petty stuff is kept under wraps.
The truly unfortunate part is that a slim margin of the Stranger’s readership (which is equally unfortunately huge) doesn’t even care about the possibility of shoddy journalism. We’re so used to it by now.
“Furious” isn’t linked to Frizzelle’s post; it’s linked to Rowe’s story.
The Stranger isn’t journalism anymore, to me. Now it’s a niche blog that seems mainly interested in being tasty. It’s organized like a bunch of hors d’oeuvres on a table; there’s no main dish.
Though I retain some of my differences with the departed authors, I consider Publicola a Noah’s Ark of savvy journalism from the Great Flood of activist choir-preaching that has become The Stranger.
Not that the departed writers didn’t participate in their fair share of rabble rousing, but it seems like their content has shifted in a more serious, thoughtful direction* since they migrated to this blog.
* – Not that they weren’t serious or thoughtful when they wrote for The Stranger… just that they’re more so than before
The point I read was that you took the word of the mayor’s spokesperson on his funeral attendance rather than confirm that statement as reported fact using a single source.
Just sayin’ what they were sniping about.
Somebody has to be the bigger person and stop the fighting, but I gotta go get a beer right now, so, good luck with the bullshit coming from the Stranger.
I wonder how this will get “reported” in the SeattleWeekly.
cat fight
COMMENT DELETED: Sockpuppetry
I’m glad you got out of there, and have a chance to rebuild your own reputation. Neither Frizzelle nor his superiors are qualified to oversee anything related to news journalism.
So here’s the thing – if you guys start commenting about other media and sniping at them vs actually doing real reporting, you lose. I just don’t give a crap about the whiny infighting among small circulation sites and I sure as hell don’t want to see Barnett use this as a platform to get back at the Stranger in any way.
Leave that crap for personal blogs or the bar – use the space here to do good reporting, not to take shots at other reporters (even if those are justified).
COMMENT DELETED: Sockpuppetry
@9,
We’d love to follow your advice. (This is, indeed, silly stuff.)
But here’s the thing: Our former colleagues at the Stranger were spazzing behind the scenes for a “correction,” and so, we decided to end the boring squabble with a post, for the record, that clarified what had happened.
pot meet kettle?
So Rowe has been “tapped” to be the news editor. I think that will certainly “raise eyebrows” around town. I expect the Stranger to start writing about “eats” — and using all kinds of other mainstream journalismocological terms like that. Joy!
@13 for the win. @9 thanks Josh. On to writing that deserves to be called “reporting.”
So Josh and Erica are dumping on Rowe (deservedly so) for doing everything that they themselves have done, and continue to do?
And this is so because someone was “spazzing behind the scenes?” And this is somehow a basis for news decisions?
Yes.
Rowe’s article was one of the worst reported pieces of “journalism” I have seen in a while.
To be fair though, Josh and Erica often times run a story either getting the facts mixed up or not quoting the approriate sources.
Now this is where I would love it if Publicola was a real physical paper. Then you could have buried this internecine non-reporting, as well as the previous piece way in the back in section C or E.
Have you thought about having some major tabs on the site. Maybe you could start with two, News and Not News.
Jesus, what did they do to you over there at The Stranger?
18. I’m starting to wonder if the former writers now writing here were, while writing for The Stranger, forced into rushing pieces containing unconfirmed information to print, due to the paper’s deadlines and editors wanting the story in that particular edition, even though the pieces probably needed a little more time to confirm details… and that’s why they contained factual gaffes. You can rectify errors in a Slog post pretty easily, but you can’t really undo errors in a published paper sitting in news racks all over town.
Hey, @8 and @11 aren’t by me. Someone’s socking me.
It takes balls for Erica to criticize another reporter for not meeting the bare minimum standards of reporting — something she elevated to an art form at the Stranger.
“Furious” isn't linked to Frizzelle's post; it's linked to Rowe's story.