Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Cincy | A story that grows even more incredible

[Restaurant owner Rogers, in the original Feb. 11 Enquirer story]

Here's the headline I wrote in mid-February over my post about a Cincinnati Enquirer puff piece that's now left the Ohio newspaper embarrassed: "An incredible list of professional women."

As in, lacking credibility, because the "20 Professional Women to Watch in 2012" included no less than Carolyn Washburn herself, the Enquirer's top editor. The online story -- in the form of a photo gallery -- didn't say how the women were picked, creating the impression it was an arbitrary list built by a possibly overworked newsroom staffer with a diversity-in-news box that needed to be checkmarked.

Many of you now know this story's latest, miserable twist: The paper has effectively acknowledged that it didn't (apparently) dig very deep into the subjects' backgrounds. No. 14 on the list, restaurateur Liz Rogers, surrendered today to Butler County law enforcement authorities on a year-old arrest warrant for failing to attend a hearing over a $3,000 debt she owed to another business.

The case has brought widespread attention because Rogers, 42, recently got a taxpayer-funded grant and loan totaling $984,000 to open a second restaurant.

The original feature remains online. As I post this, it hasn't been updated to reflect Rogers' recent travails. Perhaps this has already been done: If I were woman No. 20, I'd make sure the rest of the women were run through a deeper background check to avoid any further embarrassment.

Today, the Enquirer illustrated its initial account with the same Rogers photo used for the original Professional Women to Watch story. But it doesn't directly mention her previous appearance in the paper.

However, a careful reading of the accompanying very jumbled cutline -- which has just been removed -- offers a hint:

"Women to Watch Liz Rogers Metro Friday February 3, 2012: Elizabeth Ò Liz Ò Rogers (cq) of West Chester at her MahoganyÕ s Bar and Grill restaurant Friday February 3, 2012 in Hamilton, Ohio. The Enquirer/ Joseph Fuqua II / Joseph Fuqua II/The Cincinnati Enquirer."

Oy. This story is just plain jinxed.

Earlier: A conservative lawmaker, an alleged stripper -- and an Enquirer story that got away.

57 comments:

  1. Alleged felons are people, too, Jim.

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  2. Nice dig at diversity, too, Jim. You can be really ugly sometimes.

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  3. 5:37 I'll be more explicit:

    This Enquirer feature looked like nothing more than a manufactured mainstreaming/diversity entry for the All-American contest -- or whatever the News Department now calls that particular quality control program.

    I speak as someone who was, in fact, very good at pulling together those contest entries -- and knowing the lengths to which papers went to satisfy those demands.

    To this day, I can tell you the difference between diversity and mainstreaming, according to the Gannett standard that I doubt has changed.

    Indeed, I led classes on diversity-in-news when I was a reporter at USA Today, in the paper's offices in New York City, Washington, McLean and San Francisco.

    My pitch was that taking extra steps to find different sources could produce much better news. And I meant it.

    But it needs to be done in thoughtful, professional and substantive ways.

    That's time-consuming. And that doesn't appear to be what was done in this Enquirer case.

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  4. This is an occasion to remind people that you can't go wrong when you say no to quotas. Hire the best people, no matter what, and you can't go wrong. Once you start making diversity the top priority, problems like this one follow.

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  5. These kind of things happen with all kinds of people and demographics, Jim. That she is a minority is not the reason this happened.

    To link the two is unfair and, as the person above said, ugly.

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  6. The feature was an embarrassing debacle from the start.

    From it’s apparent randomness in it’s selections (plenty of women in the Tri-State have far more challenging roles and goals), the inclusion of Washburn on it (which exposed its folly), to the story a local TV station broke just weeks after Rogers selection which the Enquirer ignored until her court appearance today.

    Yet some seek to divert attention to Jim for rightly bringing it to light. What a surprise.

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  7. 6:24 wrote, "That she is a minority is not the reason this happened."

    I hope you are right.

    But this is the problem with diversity/mainstreaming when it's done poorly. Too often, it appears gratuitous. That raises doubts whenever a feature like this appears.

    Rogers might well have been included if she was white. I don't know because the Enquirer never publicly explained how these 20 women were picked in the first place.

    But it would be interesting to see the results of an honest post-mortem of how this feature was put together. I would be very, very surprised if race/ethnicity didn't come into play.

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  8. Sorry, but based on my experience with mainstreaming her selection had more to do with her race. There was an editor behind this. Remember, the brass gets "scored" on their use of minorities in stories. And it is also on everyone's performance reviews. That is the ugly truth about mainstreaming

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  9. Racist crap, jim. My God,,,

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  10. 7 pm Now, you embarrass yourself. Is that really how you engage in an adult conversation?

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  11. Nice post, Jim. Good work. Good lord I hope the state of the cincy paper is not how the rest of us will turn out.

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  12. A lot must have ridden on that Women to Watch feature. I recall the Sunday that paper came out -- it was the day after Whitney Houston died -- her death (a major news event) was not promoted on the front page. Instead, there was a large graphic above the fold promoting Women to Watch. The fact the top editors couldn't/wouldn't make room either for the Houston obituary or at least a prominent promo to the story inside told me a lot about management's priorities.

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  13. A truly insensitive, racist, post Jim. Hard to defend you on this. Another shit at a female executive.

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  15. The Enquirer's failure to vet and report on Professional Woman Contestant No. 14 owes entirely to the fact that the Enquirer's top editor was a fellow contestant in the beauty pageant. The gals huddled together in the dressing room and promised each other that 14's problem would go away and that everything would be fine. 20 even promised to give 14 her claim to the crown to ease her pain.

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  16. As a white male who has been passéd over for years because of diversity (and management bonuses for minority hires and management promotions that date back to the neuharth era) I'm amused that people are playing the race card about Jim's post. The woman was featured in Cinny's concerted effort to mainstream. The fact that she faces charges and Jim is posting that fact in now considered racist? Come now.

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  17. The race card is not only over-played - it's not even just frayed on the edges - it's worn out to the point a whole generation doesn't even recognize it. Stop playing it folks!

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  18. 8:04 - I am a female and I don't think this thread has anything to do with bashing yet another female executive working for Gannett. As a female, I am embarrassed daily by the way my counterparts act and conduct business. Let's use LH, CW, & MB as examples. When you lead by bullying, lying, fear tactics, all the things that give women a bad reputation, you reap what you sow. If you don't like the way you're portrayed, change your ways.

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  19. Sorry folks, but it was Jim who injected race into the discussion by raising the diversity issue. And yes, that diverted attention to the real issue -- the lack of vetting these women and made it instead a tired debate over ravism.

    Jim continually over reaches and steps on his own story lines. This is a perfect example. It does not matter at all that she is African-American. The Inquirer screwed up but Jim made something lse the issue. Needlessly except for some inner race problem he seems to have.

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  20. Jim @ 7:12 says "Now, you embarrass yourself. Is that really how you engage in an adult conversation?" -- You should have looked at yourself in the mirror countless times in the last few years and said those same words.

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  21. Jim is not racist. Comments about how the ideal of inclusion - turned into ridiculous mainstreaming mandates to earn bonuses for editors - are correct.

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  22. According to the 2000 census, Cincinnati is 53% white and 43% black, with no other ethnicity getting 2%. So how many black women were in the 20? If you go by the basic demo, should be eight or nine.

    Jim's point of a token diverse selection is well-taken IF there are only 1 or 2 or 3 non-whites.

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  23. For people who truly don't see race, there'd be no discussion of "how many out of 20 were....." How so many don't see that is beyond me.

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  24. It sounds a lot like the "token female" that would always win a ring amongst the men, to me. That is the joke every year, which woman is gonna win, whether she deserves it or not? It's the Gannett way.

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  25. 10:17 Here are more recent figures from the 2010 Census for all of Hamilton County:
    * White: 68.8%
    * Black: 25.7%
    * American Indian and Alaska Native: 0.2%
    * Asian: 2.0%
    * Two or more races: 2.1%
    * Hispanic or Latino origin: 2.6%

    On a related note, soon after Carolyn Washburn was promoted to the Enquirer from The Des Moines Register, I was asked about my memories of working with her at the Idaho Statesman in Boise. Here's some of what I wrote:

    One day, during a story meeting, one of the editors said that the federal government had changed the boundaries for the local metropolitan statistical area -- the MSA. Under the new boundaries, Boise would be included in an expanded MSA that would include many more minority residents. Almost immediately, Washburn told us that the new MSA's definition would be a further challenge for the paper in [the News Department's] semi-annual All-America diversity contests. This was because the newsroom's minority employment needed to match that of the MSA in order to get a good score.

    At the time, I was struck by how quickly she filtered that information through the Corporate lens. Some time later, Washburn said she wanted to one day be the top editor of her hometown paper, the Cincinnati Enquirer.

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  27. Jim:
    You're right on this point:
    "But it needs to be done in thoughtful, professional and substantive ways. That's time-consuming."

    However, you're misguided in making this a diversity/racial issue. You don't know enough about the behind-the-scene players, selection criteria method or motivation for the story to make that assumption.

    Because you have so much experience with diversity within Gannett, I would expect more caution and less assumption from you. Jumping the gun like this makes you look foolish. You may not diverse all the attacks, but you deserve the criticisms of your motives.
    Maybe you're cynical about diversity because of what YOU experienced while in the company. Fair enough, I'm sure lots of people did not have honest intentions when implementing diversity. BUT, not everyone works from that lazy/dishonest position.

    It's obvious little vetting was done because it's a photo gallery. That is the real issue and should be the focus.
    The reason for doing the assignment can be a number of things -- even as simple as they needed a visual soft piece to fill a newshole spot that day. That may make you cringe. But that reason -- needing a newshole filler -- doesn't mean the person pulled it together for a contest or for the sake of diversity.
    A tip for you Gannett doesn't do as much diversity monitoring as it once did --- making your reason for raising the diversity issue even more questionable.

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  28. I don't think 10:17 is saying anything about how the selections should or should not be made.

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  30. Im not at all sure that race was rhe issue here, but I am starting to see a pattern

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  31. 11:07 I did not intend to turn this into a debate about mainstreaming and diversity.

    If you read my original post, and the earlier one from Feb. 12, you'll see I made brief observations about a diversity mandate possibly being at play.

    But sometimes, readers take comment threads in directions far from where I originally planned. And that's OK.

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  32. You regularly take people to task for their actions and words. You own this one. Let's see how NABJ feels about your "intentions."

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  33. Jim, since you made this all about diversity (reread your 6:00 comment if you forget), let me see if I get your drift. So, absent the diversity requirement, the Enquirer would not have had this problem, because they would not have featured a black woman, and we all know black people go to jail all the time. Instead, they would have picked another white woman, and we all know they are nice. Did I sum up correctly?

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  34. 8:42 nails it.

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  35. Don't make this a racial issue. The Enquirer business editors and reporters failed miserably when it came to due diligence. Journalism 101 is very simple. Check out the people you are writing about so you are not embarrassed when the story hits print. Things like this happen when veteran editors are cut and younger reporters - without the proper training - are given stories with lots of pieces.
    I would suggest that Enquirer courts reporter Kimball Perry run a newsroom seminar on background checks and what is available to the reporting staff so the newspaper doesn't get a dozen eggs all over its face again.
    There is a malaise in the newsroom that was highlighted the night of the recent tornadoes. The only person paying attention to the police scanner was a very competent young photographer. Reports are when she looked around the newsroom she didn't see any reporters or editors. Could explain the weak first-day coverage.
    However, little will change with Washburn piloting this Titanic.

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  36. Talk to Jim about making this a racial issue; that's on him. He did just what you are slamming the Enquirer for: shoot from the hip without doing much research, and hope you hit something. At some point, don't the preachers need to practice what they preach? And please, can we go at least a day without another Titanic reference? Get something original.

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  38. Hey, don't your newsrooms have minority source lists? People you go to for comments based on their ethnicity? Or has that corporate mandate been dropped?
    I recall being told that my minority sources had to be persons of color and we need a head shot so that the public is made aware. If that isn't race-based reporting I don't know what is.

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  39. The selection may have been made simply because CW and her cronies like eating at that restaurant . . .

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  40. CW doesn't have cronies, just synchophants and toadies.

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  41. Rogers speaks…http://cincinnati.com/blogs/politics/2012/03/14/mahoganys-owner-speaks-out/

    The issuance of a warrant suggests her actions were far from proactive.

    Regardless, one wonders if the Enquirer will dig into how one of its “Top 20” picks with a reportedly poor financial history ended up getting any government monies at all, let alone nearly $1 million despite still owing the IRS nearly $50,000 alone.

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  42. Discussing quotas is a perfectly proper debate.

    But that is totally different from implying that a quota was used to pick this woman, and worse, that because of that a felon was chosen!

    Sorry, but that is racism, and sadly it is not the first time Jim has crossed that line.

    He is basically saying, if they had only stuck with white people this wouldn't have happened.

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  43. 8:42 and 1:26 No; you have both summed it up 100% incorrectly. I absolutely reject the sentiment you've expressed. Please re-read my comment at 6:40 to see why.

    There have been two major problems with this story from Day 1, and those have been the substance of my posts yesterday and on Feb. 12:

    1. Washburn was included among these 20 women, exposing a clear conflict of interest that casts doubt on the paper's credibility.

    2. The paper didn't do adequate background checks on the subjects of this story before choosing them.

    Those are not issues of race or ethnicity. Absent those two, we would never be having this discussion.

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  44. Lazy reporting, horrendous research, and unethical editing. It's sickening that Carolyn Washburn was included. A journalist's job is to report the news not make it. The larger problem is many editors take jobs at j-schools when they prove that they are too incompetent to create the daily miracle. They then pass on their poor news judgement onto the unfortunate kids who take their class.

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  45. Yes, Jim, that's what the debate SHOULD be about.

    But YOU, not your critics, brought up the question of including her because she was black.

    Which has nothing to do with what happened. Except YOU implied it did.

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  46. Great post, 2:04. That is a subject of importance -- how do so many of these failed editors manage to land university positions?

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  47. In requards to all the racist chanting being spewd out by some here, I simply say "if the shoe fits"...........Now leave me alone while I watch Cops,Maury,and March Madness

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  48. Fact is, if Gannett didn't have their mainstreaming and diversity agenda, no one would be questioning the placement of the woman in the story. They would figure she was in the story on her own merit.

    The fact that Gannett does have their agenda calls into question their crediblity, which, as they've proven quite often, they don't have.

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  49. Umm. The woman who surrendered on the bench warrant isn't even from Cincinnati. Her restaurant is in Hamilton, a city in the next county over. Cox newspapers owns the two dailies in that county (Butler). And another woman on the Enquirer's Women's List is the general manager of a casino in Indiana -- a casino that is halfway to Louisville. The whole shebang was a scam to make it appear the newspaper knew important women in the community. In truth, it knew diddly.

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  52. 4:22 My thoughts don't immediately gravitate to the gutter, a place where -- fortunately -- only a few of my readers dwell.

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  54. The people who call other people racists are really the true racists.

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  55. Speaking of sycophants and toadies ... has anyone considered that maybe this whole sad project was quickly slapped together just to showcase Washburn?

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  56. GREAT JOB

    Try to sell the public BS, you get BS in return. MSA didn't sell nothing to nobody -- only a D.C. fool would think that.

    For the 1,000,000th time -- head to the exits, people. Carpet-baggers will take you down with them.

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Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."

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