Article published November 01, 2009
No 'cover up' of ACORN on the agenda
Several weeks ago, I wrote about The Blade's coverage of ACORN, the controversial social welfare organization. (The name is actually an acronym for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.) I noted that The Blade has run a number of wire stories about the alleged ACORN scandals in recent months.
However, the newspaper hasn't done any independent investigation of ACORN, for, I said, good reason.
As far as can be determined, ACORN no longer has any kind of presence in Toledo.
"That's just an excuse," said one angry caller who did not leave a name. "You owe it to the readers to go anywhere to investigate this scandal, but you won't do it because you are covering up."
I suppose he meant covering up for President Obama, because in a second call, he said that ACORN had stolen the presidential election. (That's highly doubtful, because the race was not close and ACORN would had to have switched millions of votes.)
I also haven't seen any sign that The Blade's news staff is under any orders to cover up or slant any national news stories, about ACORN or any other topic. In fact, some of the cable TV networks are clearly slanted, FOX to the right and MSNBC to the left.Nor does The Blade cover stories with the breathless hype the 24-hour-news networks do, but that isn't necessarily bad. For example, think of the balloon boy hoax two weeks ago.
The newspaper also can't investigate everything, especially not events that happen outside our coverage area. Every paper has limited resources, and with the current economy, nearly every news-gathering organization has fewer resources than in the past.
The editors owe it to you to give you the smartest and fairest compilation of news they can, and to cover events of significance and interest in this area as well as possible, given the space and manpower available. They don't always do it perfectly.
Sometimes they do make mistakes, and I try to point it out when someone brings a lapse to my attention.
Some conservative readers think that because the editorial page has often supported Democrats in recent years, the news-gathering staff is either ordered or inclined to try to make Democrats look good, by covering up their failings and making Republicans look bad.
That would be terribly unethical if that were so, but that's not how it works. The news staff is out to tell you what happened, and look for good, significant, and interesting stories. Partisan politics is supposed to have nothing to do with it.
But if you bring me a case where you can show that someone has slanted things for political reasons, I promise to whack those responsible for it, right here in this column.
•
From time to time angry readers have told me that they think The Blade stinks, but Peggy Kirk was the first who ever told me she had a serious problem with the way it smells.
Recently, she wrote saying "If at all possible, please do not include perfume samples in The Blade. I had allergic reactions to them … and almost missed work last week because of it."
This is a growing problem for many newspapers, some of which have had to establish a "fragrance-free" version of their Sunday papers. The Blade has no desire to make anyone ill.
Dick Fuller, director of circulation for The Blade, went to work on it.
"If the salesperson can alert us to any scheduled scented pieces ahead of time, we can have the folks in the field pull the ad from this subscriber's paper. We will be happy to do that," he said.
Now that sounds like a solution that passes the smell test.
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Anyone who as a concern about fairness or accuracy in The Blade is invited to write me, c/o The Blade; 541 N. Superior St., Toledo, 43660, or at my Detroit office: 563 Manoogian Hall, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202; call me, at 1-888-746-8610 or e-mail me at OMBLADE@aol.com.
I cannot promise to address every question in the newspaper, but I do promise that everyone who contacts me with a serious question will get a personal reply.
Reminder, however: If you don't leave me an e-mail address or a phone number, I have no way to get in touch with you.
Jack Lessenberry is a member of the journalism faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit and a former national editor of The Blade.
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