Editor’s note: Jon Margolis is VTDigger’s political columnist.
Let’s not get carried away here, because on the face of it this is no big deal.
It’s one story in one newspaper, and it’s not even on the front page, only on page seven.
Still, in this newspaper, the Burlington Free Press, page seven was a major news page last Thursday. It was part of what folks in the news biz call “the news hole,” meaning the part of the paper not filled by advertisements, the TV schedule, and other diversions such as, for instance, the horoscope. (Tuck that example into a corner of your brain for just a few minutes).
In fact page seven on Jan. 2 was the very first page of what was that day a seven-page “NATION” section in the Free Press.
Meaning the story under review here was the lead story of the section, apparently the story the editors found more important or more compelling than any of the others.
And how could this story be appraised?
Well, it was not the worst news story ever written in the history of the universe.
But that’s a tall order. The universe is something like 4 billion years old, and in those 4 billion years many an execrable news story has been written.
But bad enough to be called to account, especially in its context. So we will briefly delay describing how and why the story was so appalling to describe the context.
On New Year’s Day, Free Press publisher Jim Fogler took up half of page 12B to enlighten readers about the paper’s new rented office space on Bank Street. After describing its new “state-of-the-art media facility,” its high-tech capabilities and its stirring view of Lake Champlain, Fogler turned to “the content front.”
In the new pseudo-journalistic world in which news is written and edited in “media facilities,” “content” is what used to be called “news,” or to be more inclusive, “news, analysis and opinion.” For the nonce, let’s ignore the conviction of some of us that anyone who purports to be a journalist who substitutes the generic “content” for those other, real, words deserves summary execution without being granted the right to confront accusers or cross-examine witnesses. Instead, let’s just consider what Fogler said about the changes coming to the Free Press.
There would be more news, analysis and opinion, he said, though of course he called it “content.” But this additional stuff would not be prepared by the Freep’s dwindling supply of reporters and editors. It would come from elsewhere in the empire of the Gannett Co., which owns the paper. The Free Press, Fogler said, would “leverage” (prepare the guillotine) material from the Gannett flagship USA Today and the 30 other company-owned newspapers.
The story on page seven was one of those. It was written by a reporter named Gina Columbus of the Gannett-owned Asbury Park (N.J.) Press. Its headline in the Free Press was “Big Predictions: Cancer vaccine, Obama scandal.”
Wow! Those are bold predictions. But there they are, boldly predicted by Barbara Mackey.
And how does Barbara Mackey know that cancer-fighting progress will come (perhaps from Canada, she explains later in the story), and that the president will be “in jeopardy” because of scandal?
Because she’s a psychic.
No, you did not misread that. Barbara Mackey of Toms River, N.J., “has done psychic readings and paranormal investigations for 25 years,” according to the story.
Or to put matters into English, she’s a fraud. Quite possibly a sincere fraud who really thinks she has “an ability to perceive information hidden from the normal senses,” as Wikipedia defines “psychic.”
She does not. Nobody does.
But there she is, the leading source for a story on what is likely to happen in 2014. For those who don’t want to plow through the whole story, a Free Press editor kindly inserted a photo of Obama in Hawaii and wrote a caption saying, “Psychic Barbara Mackey predicts a scandal will surround the president in 2014.”
Thus does Vermont’s leading newspaper endorse fraud.
But as a famous cat once said, “That is not all, no that is not all.” Just consider reporter Columbus’ second source: Flo Higgins of Eatontown, N.J.
No psychic she, Higgins is a — is a — (it is really painful to type these words) she’s an astrologer. A practitioner of a pseudo-science, one whose predictions, whenever falsifiable, have been falsified.
Another fraud, brought to you in all seriousness by the Gannett Co.
OK, reporters and editors can have fun. This is less a news story than a news feature, and it’s fine to write a light-hearted story now and then about these weird folks and the crazy things they say.
But that wasn’t the case here. Both the story’s tone and its placement (at least in the Free Press) signal that it is not for chuckles.
Otherwise, the reporter would not also have interviewed two sources who actually have credentials. One was an economist named Joel Naroff who predicted the economy would improve. The other, business professor Michael Zey of Montclair State University, was less optimistic, pointing out that “80 percent of the new jobs (created in 2013) were part-time.”
There’s no reason to think Columbus did not quote Zey accurately. But getting the quote right isn’t journalism. It’s stenography. Transforming it into journalism requires applying the rule of Chicago’s old City News Bureau: If your mother says she loves you, check it out.
Checking out that 80 percent figure raises questions, some about accuracy (definitions of “part-time” differ; reconciling the two separate employment surveys can be difficult), but more about relevance. There are always lots of new part-time jobs, largely because many people want them. Meanwhile, part-time work declined in 2013 as a percentage of all jobs, and the workweek grew slightly.
Not checking a source’s statistical claim is a less glaring error than taking charlatans seriously. But it is more common, and almost a hallmark of Gannett’s reporting. Someone called it “opinions over the shape of the earth differ” journalism.
Last week the Free Press told us to expect more such stories in the new year.
Happy new year.
