Last Updated: May 20, 1999
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Tough calls
Development planners are notorious for asking newspapers
to hold what they know until the deal is final; we asked editors if they
would wait
You’ve heard it all before. It’s Friday and you’ve got the big story
for Saturday sewn up. XYZ Corp. plans to build a big factory and bring
500 jobs to your town. But when you call the local economic development
director, he’s aghast.
“If you run that story you’ll blow the whole deal!”
Your newspaper, he says, is going to cost your community 500 desperately
needed new jobs. But, he says, if you hold the story until Monday, when
an official announcement is scheduled, everything will be OK.
Editors were asked through a recent informal e-mail survey how they
deal with this common situation. The nearly 40 who responded did so with
a resounding, “It depends.” The majority also said they would likely print
the information as soon as they had it. A couple said they might yield
to the economic development directors concerns, in part, out of concern
over jobs. Interestingly, the hypothetical also yielded a thoughtful discussion
about the role newspapers play when it comes to economic development in
their communities. Should newspapers be economic development boosters?
And how does that fit in with their responsibility to the community to
print all of the news?
Regarding the specifics of the XYZ hypothetical, most editors said they’d
listen to the development director’s arguments, but they’d be skeptical.
“If a project would be killed because a newspaper broke the story two
days early, then I question how serious XYZ really was in planning a big
factory and 500 jobs,” wrote Ron Royhab, executive editor of The Blade,
Toledo, Ohio.
While economic development officials insist that early press coverage
can and has blown deals, editors, many with decades of experience, said
they’d never heard of any instances when early press coverage killed a
legitimate development project.
“I’ve heard that claim – in various forms – for 25 years,” said Paul
Merkoski, editor of The Press of Atlantic City, Pleasantville, N.J. “And
it always comes down to this: Someone in some company is convinced that
he/she will lose his/her job if his/her boss doesn’t get to make the Big
Announcement at the Big Press Conference set up for tomorrow or someday
next week.” The claim that early publication could break the deal “is always
bogus,” Merkoski said. “Strap some on and run the story,” he said. “That’s
what newspapers are paid to do.”
Not everyone agrees. Lucien Gosselin, president of the Lewiston Auburn
Economic Growth Council in Lewiston, Maine, said newspapers should consider
their potential impact on economic development negotiations. He remembers
a time when premature publicity blew an important deal with an investment
firm from Boston. The company wanted to relocate and would have brought
hundreds of jobs to Lewiston. Gosselin and other state development officials
called a press conference and announced the deal. After the announcement,
Boston lured the company back to its own city limits.
In this case, the local newspaper wasn’t at fault because state officials
misjudged the timing of the press conference, Gosselin said. But it goes
to show how significant premature news coverage can be. Further, he said,
“the media can be a tremendous asset to economic development.” If the media
tend to be negative, “it makes it difficult to attract someone to the community.”
Charlie Webb, vice president of the Greater Cleveland Growth Association
in Ohio, agreed. He added that support for economic development is in the
newspaper’s best interest.
“Since newspapers are creatures of advertising,” Webb said, helping
to shore up “the regional economy just makes good business sense.” Instead
of “just being a journalistic report and antagonizing” over issues such
as tax incentives, wages and so on, the management side of the newspaper,
should be active in the business community, Webb said. That “can have a
stimulating effect,” he said.
Some editors are sympathetic to this point of view. Ted Natt, editor
and publisher of The Daily News in Longview, Wash., said that since he
helped found the local economic development council, he is “quite sensitive”
about the timing of such stories.
“Absent some compelling news reason to break a story early,” Natt said,
“we would probably agree to sit on it until release time provided our competitors,
broadcast included, do not get a jump on us.”
When a city is hurting, it’s tough for a newspaper to ignore economic
development people, said Tom Kelsch, former executive editor at the Sun
Journal in Lewiston, Maine. Indeed, when blight in downtown Lewiston was
at its worst more than 10 years ago, the Sun Journal agreed to keep negotiations
for a new downtown call center between city officials and the giant retailer
and mail-order company, L.L. Bean, confidential. L.L. Bean, considered
a very important company in Maine, insisted on secrecy, said Kelsch, who
is now executive editor of Stars and Stripes in Washington.
At one point, Kelsch said, company officials said they wouldn’t come
unless the city agreed to finance a parking lot. The newspaper agreed not
to publicize a meeting at which city officials approved the parking lot
and allocated “a large sum of money” for it, Kelsch said.
“It was, in essence, an illegal executive session which we helped bring
about,” Kelsch said. After all was said and done, the Sun Journal published
a lengthy article headlined, “The courtship of L.L. Bean.” And “Lewiston
has benefited greatly ever since,” Kelsch said.
This kind of cooperation may be an economic development director’s dream,
but is it an appropriate role for newspapers?
“I don’t know,” Kelsch said. “The stakes were very high. We dreaded
to do it. And 10 years later, I still don’t know if it was the right thing
to do. It just violated the strictest journalistic principles. … It was
a tough decision.”
Another editor said he struggled to keep his role on a local economic
development board separate from his newsroom responsibilities. Others said
they had no trouble drawing a line in the sand. When it comes to deal making
and private negotiations, they said, they believed publishing more information
was always better than less.
“Serious industrial prospects to a small community are the equivalent
of national security stories and have to be treated accordingly,” wrote
ASNE president Edward Seaton of The Manhattan (Kan.) Mercury. “But just
like most national security issues, sunshine is appropriate.”
In more than 20 years of publishing stories about major industrial developments,
John Meyer, managing editor of the Morning Star of Wilmington, N.C., said
he has learned that not all such proposals are legitimate. Additionally,
he said, “aggressive coverage has uncovered serious environmental problems,
corporate wrongdoing and official misconduct.”
In his newsroom, Meyer said, it “is a clear expectation … that major
industrial developments will be reported as we learn the facts, not when
public agencies or corporations choose to announce them.”
Wendell is a reporter for the Sun Journal in Lewiston, Maine.
