This Week in Gate Keeping

It was another busy week at the barricades of truth in newspaper reporting this week. And by busy, I mean from the constant parade of barbarians and vandals merrily marching on through the gates, as if there wasn't anyone watching at all.

I'm sure the layers of gatekeepers employed by the mainstream media caught something in the last week. But whatever they chose to occupy their time with simply didn't allow them to notice the following.

Village Voice Senior Associate Editor Nick Sylvester (his title alone implies a minimum of three layers of oversight unto himself) brazenly taking real people and making up stories about them in his article about the dating scene in NYC. Didn't he learn anything from Jayson Blair?

Early Wednesday morning, the Voice learned that the concluding section of this week's cover story, "Do You Wanna Kiss Me?" by senior associate editor Nick Sylvester, contained fabricated material. In that section, Sylvester says he met at a New York City bar with three TV writers who had flown in from L.A. to test their updates of pickup techniques from Neil Strauss's book, The Game.

That scene, as Sylvester now acknowledges in the statement below, never happened.

Oh well, I'm sure an essential truth was revealed in there somewhere. And I think it's that they have all the editorial oversight of The Nihilist in Golf Pants.

Speaking of things never happening, despite what you may have heard last week, blond people are not about to go extinct. And the World Health Organization never did a study purporting the opposite conclusion. They state as much on their Web site. And back in 2002, the Washington Post did a report on this urban legend getting face value coverage in the mainstream press.

But that was a mere 3.5 years ago, which is apparently not enough time for Pioneer Press news columnist Laura Billings to catch up with the story. Yes, she devoted an entire column to presenting this phantom study as fact, then flogging it with her wit and wisdom. The Amen Corner for a day, David Strom and the City Pages, have more on this story.

We finish with a follow up to yesterday's item about Star Tribune's Kate Parry and her latest ode to her colleagues and her boss under the guise of doing a "reader's representative" column. Patrick from Blaine chose to engage her directly on it and was introduced to the kind of representation Star Tribune readers have come to expect:

Hi Kate,I found your column in yesterday's paper to be rather strange coming from a "Reader's Rep" since it seemed to me to be an almost total defense of the paper you are meant to be critiquing, outside of your critique that the columnists not being well labeled on the website.

Whether you consider yourself a social anthropologist or not, your general labeling of those who disagree with partisan columnists as a part of the "extreme" wing of either party is patently unfair, and you do your readers a disservice by framing your column around the Emory University study.

For those who claim no "extreme" political affiliation that would read your column, I imagine they would be lead to believe that any criticism of the content of a column would be based purely on "getting a fix" and most likely would not include a legitimate reason for being upset. I don't wish for columnists to be fired just because I disagree with them, but I do expect the editors of your paper to do a better job of checking the facts of a column before sending it off to print, just in case the "story" they are trying to tell might be less than completely truthful.

Maybe it's unreasonable to expect Editors to be looking over columnists shoulders, but in the aftermath of scandals that have arisen following Jayson Blair's fabrications, I would hope your paper is concerned enough about it's reputation and declining circulation to be willing to bruise a few egos. Thank you for taking the time to read my letter and I hope to see more of a reader's view in future columns versus interviews with your Editor-in-Chief.

The response, in summary, Patrick meet brick wall:

Hello Patrick,

Thanks for taking the time to write with your thoughts on this. I'm sorry you didn't agree with the column, but I don't write them expecting everyone will agree. I appreciate it when readers engage in some debate on the column, as you have. I do write columns that examine readers' complaints and also columns in which I'm quite critical of the Star Tribune on behalf of readers.

But I also do columns intended to give readers a window on why the newspaper does what it does. I've had enough readers write in complaining about the metro columnists that I figured it was time to give them an explanation about why those columnists exist. I don't have any problem with readers who write in arguing forcefully about something the columnists have said, about the issues raised. My column was aimed at readers who keep writing in suggesting we fire columnists with whom they don't agree. That seems pretty counterproductive to me.

Kate Parry
Reader's Representative

I believe there is a perfect correlation between having a monopoly and having your customer service representatives reply to an intelligent, polite critique by saying "I'm sorry you feel that way." Undaunted, Patrick wrote back, but never got a second reply. We, like Kate Parry, will give him the final word:

Hi Kate,

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I appreciate your position and agree that it is counterproductive to demand the firing of columnists unless they have engaged in some sort of very deliberate deception. Whether or not that required a sweeping generalization of political partisans in general (which from your response doesn't sound like your intent, but I believe it could be fairly inferred from the content of the column.) as "the extremes" is still unfair. Also, perhaps my assumption of a Reader's Rep or Public Editor's job might not be correct, but my thought on the position is that it's primary, if not only, goal should be to hold the paper accountable for it's actions and mistakes, not to provide cover for it when some readers go overboard in their rhetoric. We can respectfully disagree on this point, but I wanted to let you know how I felt about it anyway. Thanks again for your response and best wishes.