Finding the News
Page 30
We know the right values—speed, accuracy, and fairness—and we know the difference between real news and fake news. Rapidly improving technology allows us to report and distribute real news instantly from anywhere to everyone. Journalists need to embrace the newest technologies, recommit to our highest values, and develop business models that will pay for quality news coverage.
If we play it right, the combination of new digital tools and universal connectivity—powered by old-school news values—could make this the beginning of a real golden age of journalism.
These days I only read newspapers and don’t write for them. Like many of you, I occasionally want to throw the remote control at the TV news or threaten to delete my social media accounts. I’m truly happy to have more time with Maru, and we are proud of the adults our children have become.
But sometimes friends ask me, “Do you miss being a reporter?”
Every single day.
17
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
——— IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE ———
Theo Stamos—My first trainer at City News traded journalism for law and was elected the Commonwealth’s Attorney for Arlington County and the City of Falls Church, Virginia, near Washington, DC. One of her recent summer interns was my son, Lucas, meaning Theo taught journalism to me and law to my son.
City News Bureau of Chicago—The business model failed (but never the journalism), and the office closed. Editor Paul Zimbrakos took his teaching skills to Loyola University Chicago. Alumni include New York Times columnist David Brooks, former digital czar at NPR and the New York Times Kinsey Wilson, and investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. My two City News friends who went out west and helped get me the job in El Paso have a daughter, Kate Linthicum, who is a Los Angeles Times correspondent in Mexico, based just a few blocks from where Maru and I lived.
Lynn Sweet—The courthouse reporter who schooled me by scooping me became the Chicago Sun-Times bureau chief in Washington, a familiar face on TV news and president of the Gridiron Club, the oldest (and most fun) journalism organization in the capital.
Chicago Tribune—I never did get to work for my hometown paper, but when the Trib went through massive cuts and couldn’t afford its rent, I invited the entire Washington bureau to share office space with the Scripps bureau, a mutually beneficial move, even though we were competitors.
David Axelrod—The former Tribune political reporter became chief strategist for a young senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, and helped get him to the White House.
El Paso Herald-Post—My first newspaper closed in 1997. Editors Harry Moskos and Tim Gallagher went on to run bigger papers. Photographer Ruben Ramirez became a TV journalist and then chief photographer at “the other paper.” Reporter Joe Olvera ran for mayor before dying at seventy-one. My friend John Hopper retired after a distinguished career at the Associated Press. John’s daughter, Jessica Hopper, got the journalism gene from her mother and her father and is a respected music writer and editor.
Scripps Howard—The company now called E. W. Scripps spun off the cable networks HGTV, Food Network, and Travel Channel, and then sold all of the newspapers. The news service closed after I retired. The vibrant Scripps Washington bureau is more than one hundred years old, covering news for local television stations and digital news organizations. The managing editor, Dale McFeatters, retired as chief editorial writer, and the former White House reporter, Ann McFeatters, still writes a column.
The Mophead—Several years ago, US criminal charges against Gilberto Ontiveros were dismissed without prejudice, meaning they could be filed again. I never saw him after our jailhouse interview, although I confess I did not look very hard.
Alejandro—My friend and driver in El Salvador was murdered. His brother blamed it on Alejandro’s work with me and other US reporters. I’ve changed his name at the family’s request.
Dan Thomasson—My Scripps Howard mentor and boss wrote a weekly column until he died at eighty-four. Friends often asked, Did Dan ever mellow? No.
Linda Bray—The military police captain’s historic role in the invasion of Panama led to congressional proposals to lift the ban on women in combat, but it took twenty-three years, when most combat jobs were opened to females.
Pete Williams—The Pentagon spokesman, who fixed my passport to let me cover the Gulf War, returned to journalism as an excellent reporter for NBC.
John King—From a Gulf War “pencil,” King got his own show covering politics on CNN.
Adel al-Jubeir—Our young Saudi handler during the first war with Iraq became his country’s ambassador to Washington and then Foreign Minister.
Katie Couric—I failed to convince the talk show host to let me help write her memoir, but she did fine without me. She has been an award-winning reporter and host on all three of the traditional television networks and now runs her own media company.
Rhonda Cornum—The army doctor I worked with on her POW memoir became a brigadier general and a senior medical officer in the army, with a special interest in training soldiers to be mentally resilient to combat stress.
Desert Storm Veterans—I was honored to be invited to the twenty-fifth Gulf War reunion by the VII Corps commander, Gen. (Ret.) Fred Franks. One of the leaders of the vets’ charitable organization was Stan Lenox, who drove me into (and out of) a minefield. Years later, my experience with the artillery brigade would become one of the models for putting reporters with troops in combat, now called embedding.
Red Patchers—“My Marines” of the First Landing Support Battalion built an orphanage in Somalia before returning home to California. Nine months after I left Somalia, eighteen American soldiers were killed and seventy-three were injured in a battle that was portrayed in the book and film Black Hawk Down. The incident led to the US withdrawal from Somalia.
David Bloom—My Somalia friend from NBC died in 2003 while covering the second war with Iraq. He was thirty-nine.
Barton Gellman—After our escape from Somalia, the best-selling author and reporter broke stories and worked on projects that won three Pulitzer Prizes. He helped introduce the world to Edward Snowden, who revealed secret US government surveillance programs.
Maru Montero—The dance company continues to perform beautifully after more than twenty-five years. Maru restored a little house in Mexico City, so our family can be at home in both countries. Our daughter Isabella, twenty-seven, and son Lucas, twenty-four, both graduated from college and are working. Neither has more than a passing interest in journalism or dance.
Julie Morley—My mother says she loves me. (I checked it out.) My stepfather, Robert B. Morley, died in 1999, and my four stepbrothers and I grew into “real” brothers.
After I became bureau chief, I was curious about the journalism careers of my mother’s late parents, Ann and Art Moore. They had died before I became a journalist, but many years later I discovered their story in company records that were in my Washington office all along. Searching through old Scripps magazines, I learned that my grandparents had started together in the 1920s at papers in San Diego and then San Francisco, both owned by Scripps Howard. I could not have felt more proud that we worked for the same outfit.
18
LESSONS
——— ON WHAT I LEARNED ———
Speed-Accuracy-Fairness
Better to be right than first
Better to be fair than right
Honesty above all
Facts first, opinion to follow
Sources are everything
Sources can be wrong
Documents are your friends
There is no news in the office
Break your own stories
Be skeptical but not cynical
Ask, and then really listen to the answer
Stand with your audience
Everybody needs an editor
Master the business of news, not only the craft of journalism
Good values plus smart technology equal great journalism
/> INDEX
accuracy, 8, 27, 41–42, 130–32, 216, 243–44, 252–54, 260
advertising, 48, 57, 123, 250, 254
al-Jubeir, Adel, 157, 258
Angel of Independence monument, 70, 96
Associated Press (AP), 64, 107, 155, 160, 242, 257
Axelrod, David, 22, 257
Baidoa, Somalia, 220, 222–23
Baker, Stephen, 89
Ballet Folklórico de México, 73, 141
Bardera, Somalia, 220, 223–24, 230
Barrio Terrazas, Francisco, 46
Beltway, 111, 118
Bernstein, Carl, 36
Bloom, David, 217–18, 258
Boston Globe, 171
Boyd, Morris J., 147, 191–97, 200–201
Bray, Linda, 127–32, 257
brigade coin, 201
Brooks, David, 256
Burleigh, Bill, 49, 51, 206, 243
bureau chief, 8, 10, 52, 109, 131, 168, 245–46, 256, 259
Bush, George H. W., 115, 122, 152, 155, 169, 190, 200, 210, 230–31
Bush, George W., 245
Byrne, Jane, 23–25, 30, 108, 118
Cain, Bill (“the Deuce”), 192–94, 201
Carlucci, Frank, 113
CBS (network), 159, 174, 177, 206
Central Command (CENTCOM), 154, 171, 238
Chavira, Ricardo, 77
Cheney, Dick, 118
Chicago, 1–21, 22–33, 217, 228, 231, 247; City News Bureau, 1–3, 9, 13–20, 22, 26–33, 133, 256; family, 13, 34, 58; holidays, 120, 123, 165, 210, 232, 237; mayor, see Byrne, Jane; on being from, 35, 41, 87, 108
Chicago Sun-Times, 20–23, 256
Chicago Tribune, 12–14, 20–21, 22–25, 28–32, 34, 52–53, 108, 118, 256–57
Chile, 107
City News Bureau of Chicago, 1, 2, 3, 9, 13–14, 15–18, 20, 22, 26–32, 34–35, 37, 47, 58, 83, 98, 113, 133, 207, 250, 256
Ciudad Juárez, 32, 40, 42–43, 45–50, 55, 88, 96, 135, 139
Clapper, Raymond, x
Clinton, Bill, 251
Clinton, Hillary, 252
CNN (network), 63, 105, 169, 173, 175, 179, 258
Cody, Ed, 65
Cold War, 54, 67, 111, 220
Collie, Tim, 170, 177
Conex container, 215
Cook, Stan, 12–14
Copeland, Isabella, 150, 208–9, 210, 224–29, 237–42, 245, 259
Copeland, Lucas, 150, 241–42, 245, 256, 259
Copley News Service, 217
Cornum, Rhonda, 206–7, 229, 258
Corpus Christi Caller-Times, 53
Costa Rica, 120, 124
Couric, Katie, 159, 258
Cuba, 54, 67
CUCV (Commercial Utility Cargo Vehicle), 185
Davis, Bob, 24
Davis, Jason, 219
de la Madrid, Miguel, 77–78
de Lama, George, 108
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, 155, 178, 180
documents, 39, 41, 58–60, 118, 171, 199, 253, 260
Editor & Publisher, 28, 139, 148
El Paso, 28–33, 34–54, 68, 73, 75–78, 88–89, 135, 138, 139, 142, 143
El Paso Herald-Post, 28, 35, 134, 137, 257
El Paso Times, 35, 47, 49
El Salvador, 54, 57–68, 72, 92–93, 154, 214, 257
errors, 8, 29, 30, 46–47, 56, 110, 114, 129, 132, 154, 156, 205, 239, 242–44, 253
E. W. Scripps Company, 257; see also Scripps Howard
fairness, 7–8, 42 , 82, 117, 120–32, 216, 249, 252–54, 260
fake news, 8, 82, 105, 251, 253–54
First Landing Support Battalion, 213, 258
Flynn, Ken, 47, 106
Franks, Fred, 258
French Foreign Legion, 227
Fritzell, Peter, 10
Galán, Hector, 80
Gallagher, Tim, 28–32, 36, 49, 257
Gellman, Bart, 230, 259
Gentile, Bill, 65
Gilbert, Holley, 6–7, 133
Golden, Harry Jr., 23
Hearst Newspapers, 131, 166, 170
Hedges, Mike, 214
Herrick, Thaddeus, 143
Hersh, Seymour, 256
Hoenecke, Karl, 11–13
Hofuf, Saudi Arabia, 161
Hopper, John, 31, 45–46, 96–97, 102–4, 107, 139, 142, 257
howitzer, 186–87, 190, 198–203
Hussein, Saddam, 152, 154, 245
Humvee, 185–86, 191, 195–97, 199, 201, 220–24, 227–28, 232–34
Icenogle, Larry (“Iceman”), 156, 167–68
investigative journalism, 36–37, 41, 247, 250–51, 256
Jaco, Charles, 175–76
James, Pete, 211–13, 232–33
Jolidon, Larry, 67, 214
Jones, Bob, 128
journalism values, x, 7–8, 48, 87, 123, 173–75, 188, 216, 251–55, 260; see also accuracy; fairness; speed
Jubail, Saudi Arabia, 166
Kane, Lee, 186
Karp, Cindy, 65
Kent, Arthur (“Scud Stud”), 179
Khafji, Saudi Arabia, 178
King Khalid Military City, 176, 181
King, John, 155, 258
Kismayo, Somalia, 149, 215–17
Krauss, Clifford, 65
Kreisher, Otto, 217
Kuwait, 152–82, 185–208
Lawhorn, David, 189–90
Lawrence University, 9
lede, 19–20, 243
Lenox, Stan (“Tex”), 194–95, 258
lie/lying, 39–40, 125, 216–17
Ligon, Betty, 36
Linthicum, Kate, 256
López Portillo, José, 48
Los Angeles Times, 64, 130–31, 256
Lucas, Jim, x
Luke, Charles, 219
Maru Montero Dance Company, 150, 207, 240, 259
McFeatters, Ann, 109, 243, 244, 257
McFeatters, Dale, 108, 109, 112, 114, 120, 123, 130–31, 153, 174, 180, 188, 205, 210, 221, 238, 242, 244, 257
McMullen, Jay, 23–24; see also Byrne, Jane
Meals, Ready-to-Eat (MRE), 176, 184, 198, 215, 227, 234
Meiselas, Susan, 65
Meislin, Rich, 239
Mexico City, 48–54, 55–68, 69–91, 92–106, 111–15, 138, 141–43, 154, 206, 240, 259
Miami Herald, 65, 238
mistakes, see errors
Mogadishu, Somalia, 211, 220, 222, 231
Montero Salud, Maria Eugenia, (Maru Montero), 69–90, 92–106, 108–11, 120, 123, 131, 141, 151–53, 165, 173–89, 207–9, 210, 224–29, 237–244, 245–48, 255, 256, 259
Moore, Ann, 259
Moore, Art, 259
Mophead, the, see Ontiveros, Gilberto
Morley, Julie (my mother), 13, 15, 34, 58, 106, 120, 123, 165, 174, 178–79, 210, 226, 237–38, 259
Morley, Robert B., 259
Moskos, Harry, 31–32, 35–36, 47–54, 257
Moyardo, Ricardo, 187
Nachtwey, Jim, 65
National Media Pool, 151, 153–56, 158–59
Newsweek, 65
news hole, 19
News, The, 86
New York Post, 239
New York Times, 63–64, 74, 99, 116, 118, 133, 207, 216, 238–39, 256
Ninth Psychological Operations Battalion, 220
Nixon, Richard, 251
Noriega, Manuel, 120–23, 126
Oaxaca, 74, 106
Obama, Barack, 257
Offley, Ed, 170
Olvera, Joe, 42–44, 137, 257
101st Airborne Division, 119, 177
Ontiveros, Gilberto (“the Mophead”), 88–91, 257
Operation Desert Shield, 151–65, 169
Operation Desert Storm, 169, 180–81, 187, 258
Palm Beach Post, 239
Panama, 120–32, 153–54, 166, 207, 228
Peneff, Jim, 9
Peterson, John, 218
Pinochet, Augusto, 107
pogey bait, 189
Powell, Stewart, 131, 166–67, 169–70, 172
Preston, J
ulia, 65
Prichard, Matt, 47
Primetime Live, 174
Proceso, 57, 79, 82
Pyle, Ernie, x, 112–13, 144, 168–69, 178, 183, 216–17, 222, 231
Ramirez, Ruben, 42–44, 49–51, 137, 257
Rather, Dan, 159
Raymond, William, 198
Reagan, Ronald, 54, 67, 77–78
Republican Guard, 193
Reuters, 65
Ring, Wilson, 128
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 171, 180
Rochelle, Carl, 175
Rocky Mountain News, 52
Rohter, Larry, 74
Rose, Judd, 170, 174
Saudi Arabia, 145–46, 152–65, 166–71, 176–79, 188, 196, 201–2
Scherer, Julio, 82
Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 50–51
Schwarzkopf, Norman, 154–55, 158, 171, 178
Scripps Howard, x, 31, 49–51, 58, 63, 78, 96, 98, 112–13, 144, 168, 205, 216–17, 222, 257–59; see also E. W. Scripps Company
Scud missile, 168, 172, 175, 179
Second Corps Support Command, 183
Seldes, George, ix
VII Corps, 176, 258
Seventh Engineers, 183
She Went to War, 207
Shrewsberry, Harold, 186
Simon, Bob, 174, 177, 180, 206
situational awareness, 188
Smith, Dayna, 230
Somalia, 210–36, 237–44, 258–59
sources, 21, 23, 36, 38, 47, 69, 68, 77–79, 99, 111, 115–21, 155, 166–82, 250, 260
Soviet Union, 54, 67, 168, 222
speed, 3, 7–8, 20–21, 23, 27, 47–48, 64–65, 99–100, 252, 254, 260
Spielman, Fran, 22
Stamos, Theo, 1, 14, 256
Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale), 238
Sweet, Lynn, 20–21, 256
Tactical Operations Center (TOC), 191–92, 197
Tampa Tribune, 170
Taylor, Jeff, 190, 197
Thomasson, Dan, 52–54, 58, 109, 131, 153, 168, 241, 245, 257
Thunder Brigade, 199
Thurman, Maxwell, 120
Tower, John, 115–18