Lately the Tribune has had more than its usual share of offended readers. I am qualified to make that observation because I am the complaint department.
Hundreds of calls, letters, faxes and e-mail messages arrive at the Tribune daily. Some seek information, some want a sympathetic ear. A few are complimentary, but the majority have a beef.
The recent flurry of unhappiness with this newspaper has been dominated by ethnic groups who have been offended by sports columnists trying to be funny. Attempts at humor can be risky. Will Rogers said, “Everything is funny as long as it happens to somebody else.”
Humor also is an invaluable commodity that needs to be encouraged and defended without apology. But there are times when supporting the comic is difficult, and a few occasions when there is no defense.
One such instance of a difficult defense was a sight gag that worked its way through the Tribune’s editing process, received the proper approval, was published, and caused an outcry from the offended group. We understood their anger, felt badly that they were offended, but felt strongly an apology was not appropriate.
A picture caption in another column, however, could have been interpreted as a racial slur. It missed the safety net, and the columnist rightly apologized.
Two weeks ago another sports column hit an editor’s desk and immediately raised warning flags. Yet we wound up publishing it. Clearly we were wrong.
A last-minute substitution of columnists late on a weekday afternoon led to a hastily written column that bypassed the full safety net of editors generally responsible for reviewing sports columnists’ work. Through a series of misunderstandings and assumptions, this particular column by Gene Wojciechowski was mistakenly approved and published in the next day’s editions. Many people, particularly Asian-Americans, were upset when they read it.
The column was an imaginary conversation between a professional basketball player and a Chicago taxi driver about the future of the Chicago Bulls. It was meant to be humorous. The problem was that its characterization of the taxi driver relied on a series of unflattering and, to many, insulting stereotypes of Asians, particularly Indians.
My role as public editor is to ensure that basic errors and this type of unfair representation do not occur. When they do, we take a number of steps to deal with it.
– Corrections of fact, when necessary, are published regularly on page 3 of the newspaper’s first section.
– Unfair representations, such as the taxi driver sports column, often lead the Tribune to offer those who were offended an opportunity to respond through a letter in the Voice of the People column on the editorial page.
– Tribune editors and reporters frequently schedule meetings with groups who have grievances about the paper’s coverage.
– Formal internal training programs provide information about and review changing ethnic, religious, social and political issues.
– Tribune editorial staff members also meet with community and other groups periodically to listen to readers and communities voice their concerns on local issues.
In this case, five Tribune editors met with a group representing Asian-Americans. Six letters to the editor appeared in the Voice of the People on the editorial page over four days. A group of 40 editors convened to discuss the issue internally. Although Gene Wojciechowski volunteered to apologize in his next column, the editors opted for this forum to say we erred and we regret what has happened.
Apologies are rare here. I can recall only four in my 32 years at the Tribune. This column serves as the fifth.
The Asian-American representatives at our meeting last week were justifiably upset, yet were understanding and even gracious. Awareness was raised about their feelings on a number of issues, and the short circuit in our editing system was pinpointed and, we hope, fixed.
Will there be other groups offended by something printed in future Tribune editions? Yes. There are almost as many interpretations of a piece, particularly columns and opinion essays, as there are readers. We will weigh each complaint independently and objectively and decide on appropriate courses of action. We also learn from each of these encounters and consider dialogue with readers perhaps our most valuable resource.
My telephone number is 312-222-3348; e-mail address is GLangford@Tribune.com; mailing address is 435 N. Michigan Ave., 5th floor, Chicago, Ill. 60611.
