Last Updated: May 20, 1999
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Covering sacred cows
Covering the company in a company town
Virtually every community has one. A dominant institution or corporation.
An entity that employs or otherwise touches the lives of much of the local
citizenry. A sacred cow.
Covering these sacred cows can be one of the biggest challenges facing
an editor. It can make or break a newspaper’s reputation. Aggressive coverage
may win journalism prizes but can anger readers and advertisers. Booster-ish
coverage can be the path of least resistance but doesn’t necessarily serve
the community’s long-term interests.
"How the hometown paper comports itself in the maelstrom of big-story
coverage says a lot about its values and sensibilities, its willingness
to balance journalistic aggressiveness with an appropriate level of restraint,’’
John Armstrong, editor of the Contra Costa Newspapers in Walnut Creek,
Calif., wrote in a column earlier this year.
Some editors take the view that sacred cows make the best hamburger.
But, as E. coli and "mad cow disease" show, beef can bite back.
Consider what happened in Corning, N.Y., in September when the daily
newspaper, The Leader, reported that one of Corning Inc.’s major business
lines was in serious trouble. Angered by the report, senior executives
ordered two of the newspaper’s boxes removed from the company’s property
and deposited on the Leader’s loading dock.
Or what happened last October, when The Seattle Times reported on the
rudder problems of the Boeing 737 jetliner. "How would you like it if 80,000
Boeing employees canceled their subscriptions?" one letter writer asked.
In both cases, the publication of unwelcome news about The Company in
a company town put the local editors in the hot seat. People who’ve taken
the heat in these and similar situations give this advice:
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Get the facts straight. There’s no substitute for fair and accurate reporting.
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Have knowledgeable reporters who can write with authority about the subject.
This can be a particular challenge for small papers with rapid turnover
and reporters who lack a sophisticated knowledge of business and finance.
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Obtain support from publishers and corporate owners in advance for tough
reporting that may have negative short-term financial consequences.
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Maintain lines of communication with the top managers of the company being
reported on. Being able to talk to the executives on the phone "is an effective
way of defusing the situation," says Robert Giles, former editor and publisher
of The Detroit News, which had rocky relations with Chrysler Corp. during
its reporting of financier Kirk Kerkorian’s attempted takeover of the automaker.
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Explain to readers why the newspaper is reporting the story the way it
is. A special column or letter from the editor can go a long way toward
reassuring readers about the newspaper’s methods and motives. "If the newspaper
itself is going to become part of the story, you have to anticipate that
and determine how to deal with that," says Michael Fancher, executive editor
of The Seattle Times. "You just need to be prepared for a lot of scrutiny
of your motives and methods."
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Anticipate hostile fire. Corporate executives can be surprisingly thin-skinned
about negative coverage, says James Arnold, chairman and CEO of a New York-based
management consulting firm. "I think they tend to overreact," Arnold says.
"A lot of these companies that operate in company towns tend to operate
in a paternalistic way. They do all sorts of good deeds in the town ...
Management thinks everyone should be on their side and should assume they’re
good guys ... They tend to be very dismissive of the quality of the reporting
in the local paper. I think that creates a kind of antagonistic attitude."
On the other hand, Arnold adds, some journalists in company towns see the
dominant corporation as a "huge target" and go overboard trying to prove
their independence.
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Allow readers to vent. When the Syracuse (N.Y.) Post-Standard ran stories
in late 1991 about NCAA violations by the men’s basketball team at Syracuse
University, "the immediate impact was a detonation," says executive editor
Michael Connor. "We learned that when you slay a true sacred cow in the
community, no amount of reasoning in letters or phone conversations or
public appearances will satisfy the mourners ... Better to listen well
than try to overcome the objections. In hindsight, I’d devote much, much
more space to publication of the letters from our legions of critics. We
published many, but the volume and intensity of them warranted a special
section, say, or a page or two a day for many days. We should have given
their voices a lot more prominence in the aftermath, let their discussion
become the story for a while."
So how good a job are newspapers doing covering sacred cows? Some journalism
professors say the focus on quarterly profits and a "keep-the-readers-happy"
mentality has led to timid reporting about powerful institutions, especially
in smaller newspapers. There is no way to measure the articles that don’t
get written, except when another news organization breaks a major story
on the local paper’s home turf.
But the Corning and Seattle cases show newspapers both small and large
are willing to tackle difficult topics. "I think newspapers are covering
the sacred cows with increased aggressiveness, often to the benefit of
the company and the community," says Giles, a past ASNE president now at
the Freedom Forum’s Media Studies Center in New York City.
In Corning, the uproar began after the 15,700-circulation Leader
reported in early September that Corning Inc. was facing a number of business
threats, including a drop in demand for its important optical fiber line.
The headline: "`Heads may roll’ at Corning, sources say, as fiber business
faces uncertain future."
After the article appeared, Corning denounced the reporting as inaccurate,
misleading and irresponsible. In addition to dumping two of the Leader’s
racks at the newspaper, Corning asked the paper to remove eight other boxes
from company property. A plunge in the price of the company’s shares prompted
a flurry of angry letters from readers whose retirement nest eggs are tied
up in Corning stock.
"It was a firestorm," says William C. Blake, publisher of the Leader.
The paper’s reporting was vindicated to some degree a couple of days later
when Corning lowered its earnings estimate for this year, citing lower
growth rates for its optical fiber and cable business.
Still, Paul Rogoski, manager of corporate information for Corning, says
the headline was "kind of inflammatory" and the reporting "a little off
base." He says the fiber business is not in a state of emergency, as the
Leader reported, but is simply "less robust, a little less wonderful" than
earlier expectations.
"We’re not saying if we do something wrong, don’t report it," says Rogoski.
"We’re not saying everything has to be blue sky, but don’t hype it up.
If you’re going to report the news, you have to have balance."
Blake says the newspaper stands by its story, although, in hindsight,
the headline may not have been the most prudent. In the aftermath of the
flap, "We’re focusing on how to build a better relationship without compromising
our journalistic integrity."
The newspaper’s corporate owners, the 17-newspaper Howard Publications
group of Oceanside, Calif., have been "really supportive," says Blake,
who has been publisher for about 18 months. "We won’t back away from stories
that are sensitive or controversial."
Blake has been meeting with Corning executives, and he says he’d like
the Leader to be a model for other small newspapers that cover Fortune
500 companies.
The company also appears to be looking for reconciliation. "We all live
in the same town," says Rogoski. "They have a job to do and we have a job
to do. We can’t do our jobs if we’re not talking to each other."
In Seattle, Boeing was already refusing to talk to Times reporter Byron
Acohido when Acohido began looking into reports of problems with the rudder
controls of the 737, the world’s most popular commercial jetliner.
Boeing, by far the largest employer in the Seattle metropolitan area,
had campaigned to get Acohido taken off the air-safety beat, but the Times
would not allow a newsmaker to dictate its coverage.
The result of Acohido’s reporting was a five-part series, which began
in October 1996, describing the rudder problems, the company’s resistance
to acknowledging the problems and the Federal Aviation Administration’s
reluctance to take any action.
On the day the series began, the Times ran a column by Fancher detailing
the background of the story, Acohido’s track record and Boeing’s refusal
to answer questions. "I think the most important thing was we went into
this knowing that it was important for people to understand why we were
doing the story," Fancher says.
Adding to the paper’s fortitude was its history of arms-length dealings
with powerful local institutions. The Times’ coverage of a labor dispute
at Nordstrom led the big department store chain to pull its advertising
for a year. And its reporting on the University of Washington football
team led to NCAA sanctions.
"There aren’t any sacred cows here," Fancher says. "Sometimes you’ll
pay a price in public relations for doing solid reporting ... Sometimes
along the way you’re going to make people angry."
The Boeing series made a lot of people angry at first. The negative
reaction from current management and employees was strong and emotional.
But within a day after the series concluded, the company acknowledged publicly
for the first time a potentially serious problem with the 737’s rudder,
and the FAA ordered immediate inspections. The series went on to win a
Pulitzer Prize.
One footnote: After the crash of TWA Flight 800, Acohido began reporting
on the fuel tank of the Boeing 747, and company officials were remarkably
cooperative. Says Fancher: "We were frankly stunned."
Sternberg is Washington editor of USA Today.
