There was hubbub at the Tribune last week when a Mike Royko column nearly didn`t get into the paper.
But more surprising is that there wasn`t tumult at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch over an effort by its top columnist.
A piece of typical Royko satire, based on widely reported racist language used by Los Angeles police officers, angered some minority staff members. For a brief period, it was killed by an editor. That decision was later reversed.
Word of its temporary demise inspired a Washington Post story, recounting parts of an inelegantly handled affair.
It was reprinted overseas in the International Herald Tribune, replete with the assertion that the Royko column ”conjures up a character he calls Sgt. Joe Friday,” when, in fact, he was merely reviving Jack Webb`s law-and- order hero of ”Dragnet.”
In St. Louis, columnist Bill McClellan was more direct: He attacked the publisher of the Pulitzer-owned, 390,000-circulation paper, Nicholas Penniman. Relations between publishers and rank-and-filers can be rife with misunderstanding. Publishers sometimes are shielded from certain goings-on by top editors, while the rank-and-file may have a stick-figure view of publishers as bloodless, budget-cutting meanies.
Newspapers, like all media outlets, tend not to be rigorous in covering themselves and their honchos, finding it less complicated to shill than to shell.
Even when they take public roles and debatable actions as private citizens, publishers rarely receive critical appraisals in their papers.
In St. Louis, Penniman has taken a post in a civic effort to ensure the health of Forest Park. Site of the 1904 World`s Fair, it is one of the grand urban parks and includes a dandy zoo, an art museum, a science center, a history museum, golf courses and bicycle paths.
As head of a regional organization, Forest Park Forever, he has sought to navigate amid feuding between officials of the city and St. Louis County over the management, funding and proposed alteration of a now-underfunded park in need of improved upkeep.
McClellan`s sense of Citizen Penniman`s performance came early in his column Wednesday: ”It`s not often that the publisher of (McClellan`s)
newspaper goes around wearing a sign on his back, `Kick Me.` That`s what Nicholas Penniman is doing.”
The columnist, 43 and a native of Chicago`s South Side, asserted that Penniman had upset environmentalists, landmarks officials and architects. ”He had alienated almost everybody. The only people he had missed were the politicians. So he went to work on that.”
After making his case that Penniman mishandled black politicians, McClellan concluded that last-ditch negotiations ”might yet rescue the plan from Penniman`s bungling.”
Bank on it: Most editors would not run such a column, even if the critique was on the mark.
”Whenever someone from the paper takes a high-profile position in the community, he enjoys no immunity from criticism,” said Post-Dispatch Editor William Woo.
Woo did apprise his boss that something was up during a corporate meeting Tuesday, saying something like, ”I hope your sense of humor is screwed on tight, since you`re going to get kicked around tomorrow.” He didn`t show the column to Penniman.
McClellan, who once wrote a column about a custody fight within St. Louis` fabled Busch family, found clear sailing this time.
”It`s been a pressure-free situation,” he said. ”It`s being treated as if I criticized anybody else.”
Penniman?
”I haven`t had this much fun since basic training at Ft. Jackson, S.C.,” he claimed.
But be informed that publishers chronicled in their own paper may not be much different from others, regardless of their station in life, who are assessed harshly.
”There are facts in that column that are simply in error,” said the publisher.
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A news release from Nielsen Media Research News, on average weekly TV use in homes in the top 20 markets, is perplexing.
Atlanta, Detroit, Houston and Chicago lead with about 50 hours per week. At the bottom is Cleveland, at 36 1/2 hours.
Why such a huge difference? A Nielsen spokesman couldn`t say. Are Clevelanders curling up in bed with encyclopedias after dinner?
”That`s mind-boggling. I don`t believe it. It makes no sense,” said Virgil Dominic, general manager of WJW-TV, the CBS affiliate.
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Some media chiefs meddle.
On Friday, July 12, Kansas City Star reporters were hurriedly given assignments for a package of 10-years-after stories for last Wednesday, anniversary of the July 17, 1981, skywalk tragedy that took 114 lives at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in the Crown Center complex.
Why such frenetic dispatch?
Some staff members believe that the 290,000-circulation paper, owned by Capital Cities/ABC, hadn`t planned to do anything, having succumbed to pressure from the Hall family, major domos of Hallmark Cards Inc., the town`s power and builder of the Crown Center. Some suspected the paper was prodded belatedly by an Associated Press anniversary tale.
The Star won a Pulitzer Prize for its 1981 coverage of the disaster, partly because publisher Jim Hale, a tough, unorthodox and savvy Southerner, displayed real nerve in standing down a city establishment that wanted to make as if the accident never took place.
But he has mellowed, some say, and is cozier with that establishment. He denies any pressure from the Halls but wasn`t big on an anniversary story and ”reliving that day.”
Editor Joe McGuff believed that, ”journalistically, we had to do something.” After much discussion, he persuaded Hale to let him try.
When done, he showed the stories to Hale, who edited out portions. ”I took out what I thought was rehashing,” Hale said.
”It got down to how deeply we got into people`s recollections of that night,” McGuff said. ”He (Hale) just didn`t want to get in too deeply.”
On Wednesday, there was a discreet ”refer” at the bottom of Page 1 to the stories, which ran on Page 10. Hale said he was very pleased with how things turned out.
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Publisher Jim Hoge`s departure from the New York Daily News isn`t the only legacy from a 147-day strike that prompted Tribune Co. to sell the tabloid to Robert Maxwell.
An ongoing internal Newspaper Guild disciplinary proceeding meted out its first punishments last week against some of the 150 unionists who crossed picket lines during the strike.
Fines ranging from $800 to $6,500, along with suspensions from the union of up to five years, were penalties in the first six cases. Appeals can be taken to the union`s national hierarchy in Washington.
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WFMT-FM 98.7, the celebrated and embattled fine-arts station, has refused to bargain with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, which won a representation election at the station. The National Labor Relations Board spurned station objections and upheld the vote.
Like a boxer purposely getting knocked down, the station has now been hit with unfair-labor-practice charges by the board for its refusal. It invited such a rebuke as a legal gambit so it can try to persuade a federal appeals court to review the election finding.
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In this age rife with ”politically correct” thought, you can never be sure what will upset people.
Royko`s column in the Tribune infuriated some minority reporters but elicited scant negative response from readers. WMAQ-Ch. 5 rankled more folks during its 10 p.m. newscast Wednesday by showing a streaker at a baseball game.
The station apologized profusely Thursday and its new head, Pat Wallace, strongly rebuked the highly rated newscast`s executive producer, Don Dupree, who was sent home early that day.
Now you want a real ruckus? WCIU-Ch. 26, part of the Univision Spanish-language network, found a way.
It was airing Univision promotions for the network`s broadcasts of the ongoing America`s Cup soccer games, a huge event in South America. Initially, the network spots didn`t indicate that some stations, including Channel 26, weren`t carrying the games.
”It`s an insult,” said Juan Gil, a soccer-loving Chicago reporter for Eco International, a Spanish-language CNN.
So Gil organized America`s Cup parties at a West Side nightclub, using its satellite dish to pluck the contests out of the air.
