Given that he was sitting in Winnipeg, Canada, Barry Mullin was surely one of the odder victims of the Los Angeles riots. No, he wasn`t hit by a molotov hockey puck.
Mullin, 50, is a veteran reporter and editor at the 180,000-circulation Free Press, the big paper in Winnipeg and part of the Thomson chain. Since 1987, he has been the ombudsman, meaning he listens to reader gripes and writes a column each Friday.
The publisher who appointed him in 1987 left him free to criticize the paper, and he has done that. It`s a task that rarely makes him the newsroom`s Mr. Popularity, especially given his job`s occupational hazard of self-righteousness.
The riots followed the April 29 assault acquittal of four white police officers. The impact on Mullin resulted from his paper`s first edition for the next day: It ran an early wire service report in Section D, Page 56.
It later placed the story on Page 1, but first-edition readers complained. Mullin made it the topic of his May 1 column, writing,
”Yesterday`s temporary failure to recognize the eruption of violence in Los Angeles . . . was shocking,” and citing several reader responses.
He mentioned ”a not-so-subtle shift in the news focus” of the Free Press, allegedly turning to a softer approach after a survey indicated that`s what some readers wanted.
”Underplaying the L.A. story even in 30,000 newspapers does little to improve our credibility as a newspaper readers can take seriously,” his column concluded.
Mullin was summoned by publisher Maurice Switzer, who`d arrived from the Sudbury Star (circulation 28,000) about six weeks earlier, and was read the riot act.
Mullin said he was told by Switzer that the column was irresponsible and that he had to accept five new conditions. Those included reporting to managing editor David Lee, rather than being independent of the news-gathering process; submitting any column 48 hours in advance; and printing an apology.
Given 20 minutes to take it or leave it, he handed in a resignation, which his lawyer later counseled him to rescind. He may sue.
John Sullivan, the assistant managing editor, said Friday that Mullin`s column was inaccurate. According to Sullivan, when presses rolled for the first edition, the paper (which has not reported the flap) merely had an
”iffy” wire story. When word came of the first fatality, it redid the front, he said.
Although there are only about 40 newspaper ombudsmen in North America, they have their own association of which the Sacramento Bee`s Art Nauman is secretary-treasurer.
He contends this is the only instance of an ombudsman being sacked for offering an opinion, and it`s hard to demur from his final assessment.
”I certainly didn`t see his column as any big, (expletive) deal. The punishment didn`t fit the crime,” Nauman said.
Dawn Stensland, a green and theatrical young reporter at Chicago`s CBS-owned WBBM-Ch. 2, fronted a Wednesday night news story tagged ”Armed and Dangerous,” about the ease of buying guns.
The effort included going to suburban gun conventions with a hidden camera. At one point, viewers saw Stensland, an apparent graduate of the Meryl Streep School of Journalism, shopping for guns, with the story cutting to her rather breathlessly opening a car door and declaring:
”OK, here`s what we got! We got a 20-gauge double-barrel shotgun, bought it in about 10 minutes, completely untraceable, completely illegal for them to sell this to us, and federal agents tell us this can be more deadly than a submachine gun.”
Station sources indicate that, because of a foulup, the station didn`t have a video of the gun purchase. So several weeks after the buy (apparently by a producer, not Stensland), sources say, the station staged her breathless return to a car. If true, that violates the CBS news guidelines under which the station operates.
A staff member who orchestrated something comparable at a major newspaper would be censured, if not canned. At Channel 2, such acts may have the blessing, perhaps even come at the direction, of managers (who didn`t return calls on the matter). And they`ll probably bring better ratings, so who cares about ethics?
Reading a column on the Los Angeles riots by colleague Bob Greene, I wondered if it unintentionally reinforced some race-ridden misperceptions;
such as how the long lines of people at South-Central Los Angeles post offices on May 1 were, as Bob put it, ”waiting for their welfare checks.” Given the riots, ”You couldn`t ask for a more graphic illustration of what bothers the middle-class taxpayer. . . .”
Although he never used the words white or black, I suspect that many readers, especially whites, came away thinking, ”Boy, all those black jerks burning and looting, then having the nerve to still feed off the government. While we work for a living!”
But was the underlying premise a fair one?
I called Elena Ackel, a Legal Aid lawyer who works and lives in that same South-Central area, and David Mazer, communications manager for the Los Angeles division of the U.S. Postal Service. They figure that not even a majority of those in line were waiting for welfare checks.
At least half, maybe even a good majority, were elderly people awaiting Social Security checks. The rest awaited welfare, as well as veterans` and various survivor benefit checks. They all come on the first of the month.
Of the two post offices that had the biggest lines, Mazer said, one has a high percentage of the South-Central area`s Social Security recipients as patrons. The second had the checks not just of its normal clientele but also those of a post office torched the previous day.
When I brought this up Friday with Bob, he disclosed that he`d been approached by an editor with the same misgivings. Realizing the potential misunderstanding, he changed the syndicated version to read that ”many” in line awaited welfare checks.
Having arrived at the Tribune from the Sun-Times, I know that immediate love and adoration in a job switch is not assured. ”Why do we need you?” one new colleague asked during my first week here.
But that was peaches and cream compared with the initial reception for Chicago radio late-night mainstay Eddie Schwartz at WLUP-AM 1000.
Schwartz turned heads last week by revealing his planned switch to WLUP from Tribune Co.-owned powerhouse WGN-AM 720 (which conceivably could match the new job offer but is unlikely to). For many years, his style and girth have made him the object of incessant ridicule by WLUP`s stars, notably Steve Dahl, Garry Meier and Kevin Matthews (the latter`s live shows have included a Schwartz sendup called Ed Zeppelin).
Upon learning the news Thursday, Dahl and Meier didn`t relent, nor did morning star Jonathon Brandmeier on Friday. Dahl and Meier bashed Schwartz, his weight and his listeners (”a bunch of drunk 50-year-old women or security guards,” said Dahl); chided the station`s owner, its general manager and its program director, who himself was called during the show by Don Ephraim, an agent who bargained a big pay increase for Schwartz, who`s not talking but was known to be distraught.
The situation was well articulated by Dahl and Meier. They didn`t deny a certain potential allure to the move, given its very implausibility, but Dahl conceded to listeners, ”Right now I`m going on 13 years of Eddie-bashing and I can`t do a 180 in five minutes.”
Schwartz likely has misgivings, but the move may be far from wacky. WLUP stands to boost the low-rated late-evening timeslot with Schwartz (whose arrival may be bad news for incumbent Ed Tyll); garner lots of publicity from the untidy fit of personnel; and perhaps weaken WGN, the top dog.
How much WGN might be hurt is debatable. Schwartz had a hefty share of the very-late-night audience, but it`s a smaller pie.
By an untidily called index, ”cume persons,” which represents the total number of people who listen to a station or program for at least five minutes, an average of about 1.2 million listen to WGN during a week and about 480,000 to WLUP-AM.
About 800,000 listen to WGN`s morning star Bob Collins during the week, and about 180,000 to Schwartz.
The differential in what ads cost on the Collins and Schwartz shows is at minimum 10-1.
Clashing personalities and frayed loyalties aside, don`t forget that radio is a business.
