Last Updated: October 01, 1996
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Regarding Richard Harwood's column (The American Editor, June 1996), James Fallows struck the first blow of his encounter with the media and who is better qualified to respond than the opinion editor of the New York Times? I say hooray for Howell Raines.
Dick is surely right in that much of what is presented as Public Journalism is not new. When he and I were young reporters in Nashville, his publisher opposed a state sales tax and decreed that Tennessean reporters always spell it $ale$ tax. The publisher thought that was Public Journalism, but his editors, and, no doubt, many readers, thought it a $illy nui$ance.
No one doubts that advocates of Public Journalism have good intentions, but censors throughout history claimed to improve the news. The issue is whether news should be given a spin, not whether it is a good spin or a bad spin. Historically, editors have opposed spin, but in newspaper groups it is often the publisher, rather than the editor, who decides such matters. Instead of Public Journalism it might be called Publisher Journalism.
My book of proverbs discloses that in 1861 Wilbur Storey, editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote, "A newspaper's job is to print the news and raise hell."
How long would Wilbur Storey last in today's corporate environment?
Watson Sims
Rocky Hill, N.J. (Retired editor)
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