When Will We Ever Learn?

Again, someone plagiarizes in a newspaper column.
Again, the person is not a journalist.
Again, the newspaper is embarrassed.

Newspaper staffs are smaller, but do standards have to be reduced?

Full disclosure: I’m being self-serving. And a bit peeved, because there is so much better material available to newspaper editors. The Writers Group columns are, arguably, the most heavily edited and researched in the business. With three editors involved, sometimes columns are sent an hour or three later than normal (we get plenty of calls when this happens), but we take the time to get everything right. We’re not perfect – my life is made shorter one mistake at a time -- but we’re damn close.

Wouldn’t you feel better knowing that material you publish is going through such rigorous editing and fact-checking? And if you are publishing something freelance or from a less-vigorous source, wouldn’t you handle it as if it were a contagion – placed in quarantine until you and your staff check everything? Have you ever Googled key phrases, a 30-second exercise? That’s how we sometimes catch people who lift from George Will and others.

You could avoid an embarrassment similar to the plagiarism committed by White House aide Timothy Goeglein. The Fort Wayne News-Sentinel says an internal investigation found that 27 of Goeglein’s columns contained material lifted from other sources, dating back to 1995. The News-Sentinel says Goeglein has apologized in “multiple e-mails”: “Inexcusable,” “wrong,” “deeply sorry,” “pride,” “vanity.”

But at the time he submitted each column, did he think he was doing something wrong? And if someone is not, nor ever has been, a journalist, does this person know what the rules are?

Over time, we’ve seen examples not only of plagiarism but of columns written by industry flacks with professors’ bylines; of a columnist taking money from lobbyist Jack Abramoff to write certain topics; of form letters presented as genuine letters-to-the-editor.

When we publish such things, our integrity is at stake. And that’s too important to risk.

Alan Shearer is editorial director of The Washington Post Writers Group.

Over Till It’s Over?

One thing is pretty clear at this point in Campaign 2008: The country is richer politically.

If you look at how far the candidates have already traveled – and it’s been a pretty long road, dating back to late 2006 – we’ve already settled a number of issues, the most impressive being that yes, voters think that having a young African-American, a baby boomer former first lady and a Vietnam-era war hero as the top-tier candidates is just fine with them.

And if the general election candidacies are set after Tuesday, I think it’s also safe to say that we’ll be richer for the long period of inspection that will follow all the way to November. Certainly, the level of political commentary is rapidly rising to new heights, and I think that reflects the interest that is out there that this election might be the mother of all “change” elections.

E.J. Dionne Jr. sees something already that baffled most commentators in a previous “change” election, the battle of 1980. He writes: “You can almost hear the Republican crowd shouting, “Yes, we can!’ (Ronald) Reagan offered, well, change we could believe in.

“Still, Democrats kept telling themselves, right to November, that voters wouldn’t fall for this. Charisma, eloquence, idealism and hope were no match for experience, realism, prudence and predictability.”

Dionne’s point: That political observers who sell Obama, a candidate with the win-over-the-people skills he likens to Reagan, short have short memories.

Michael Gerson, meanwhile, adds his two cents for rhetoric, specifically Obama’s rhetoric. “The triumph of shoddy, thoughtless spontaneity is the death of rhetorical ambition,” this former White House speechwriter notes. “A memorable, well-crafted speech includes historical references that cultivate national memory and unity – ‘Four score and seven years ago.’ It makes use of rhythm and repetition to build enthusiasm and commitment – ‘I have a dream.’ And a great speech finds some way to rephrase the American creed, describing an absolute human equality not always evident to the human eye.

“Civil rights leaders possessed few weapons but eloquence -- and their words hardly came cheap. Every president eventually needs the tools of rhetoric, to stiffen national resolve in difficult times or to honor the dead unfairly taken.”

Eugene Robinson puts it in a personality perspective: “On the Democratic side, the question is who would be more likely to achieve the party's ambitious agenda. To make the choice, Democrats have to decide who is more likely to beat McCain. They also have to decide whose approach is more likely to succeed -- Clinton's ground-level diligence in Washington or Obama's attempt to forge popular consensus beyond the Beltway.

“To determine any of this, voters need to know who the candidates are, where they came from, what they believe, how they react under pressure. They need to know, to the extent possible, what makes the candidates tick. Exposing as many facets as possible of the personalities of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain is about the most important thing the media could be doing.”

As a racing fan who likes to read the Daily Racing Form, I might as well note that Robinson has a good thing to say about the media covering Campaign 2008 so far as a horse race:

“… As for allegedly paying too much attention to the horse race, come on,” Robinson writes. “Who could pretend to ignore a race like this one? Why would anyone want to feign inattention? I can't see how anyone could be remotely interested in the campaign for the presidency without also being curious as to who, at any given time, might be winning. “

Ruben Navarrette Jr. looks at the dust-up over some comments made by Michelle Obama and sees an all-too-familiar reaction: “Conservative commentators – including some white men who don't have a clue what it is like to walk in Michelle Obama's shoes – couldn't wait to pounce on the remarks, as if their suspicions had been confirmed. Suddenly, the graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School was transformed into the female equivalent of Eldridge Cleaver.

“But what gives the commentators the right to lecture someone else – let alone someone with a different life experience – about how she should feel about her country? Few things are more personal.”

David Ignatius, however, thinks the issue should be Obama’s record, and what the columnist found is enough to give him pause: “Obama's argument is that he can mobilize a new coalition that will embrace his proclamation that ‘yes, we can’ break out of the straitjacket. But for voters to feel confident that he can achieve this transformation should he become president, they would need evidence that he has fought and won similar battles. The record here, to put it mildly, is thin.”

David S. Broder has been covering politics long enough to know that it’s never over till it’s over. But just in case it is over after primaries in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont, he has these thoughts about Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.

“It has been a strange and remarkable journey, from her early status as the favorite for the prize to this moment of desperate necessity,” Broder writes “But as I look back on it, Hillary Clinton has performed impressively. She has nothing to apologize for in her own campaigning and has much of which she can be proud. “

Looking at the presumptive GOP nominee, Charles Krauthammer and George F. Will both have some thoughts on lobbying, John McCain, and a New York Times story that titillated but hardly enlightened:

“Ostentatious self-righteousness may be a sin, but it is not a scandal,” says Krauthammer. “Nor is it a crime or a form of corruption. The Times' story is a classic example of sloppy gotcha journalism. But it is also an example of how the demagoguery about lobbying has so penetrated the popular consciousness that the mere mention of it next to a prominent senator is thought to be enough to sustain an otherwise vaporous hit piece. “

Will, ahem, is a bit more pointed: “Although his (McCain’s) campaign is run by lobbyists; and although his dealings with lobbyists have generated what he, when judging the behavior of others, calls corrupt appearances; and although he has profited from his manipulation of the taxpayer-funding system that is celebrated by reformers -- still, he probably is innocent of insincerity. Such is his towering moral vanity, he seems sincerely to consider it theoretically impossible for him to commit the offenses of appearances that he incessantly ascribes to others.

“Such certitude is, however, not merely an unattractive trait. It is disturbing righteousness in someone grasping for presidential powers.”

Yes, folks, it might be a long general election campaign, or perhaps for the Democrats, the primary season will go on a little longer. One thing is for certain, it’s definitely not over until it’s over.

And to get a generational feel for how this election is shaping up, don’t miss these columns from National Journal’s William Powers and The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait.

William F. Buckley RIP

Bill Buckley’s legacy will always be the writers who followed. Two of the great ones, Kathleen Parker and George F. Will, pay their tributes here and here.

James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group

'But Is It Racist?'

That was the pointed question that came to me in the middle of an interview with CBS Evening News this week about the Cartoonists of Color Sit-In on Feb. 10. Correspondent Joie Chen and I were on camera discussing the low number of strips with minority characters appearing in U.S. newspapers and she wanted to know if the decisions editors were making were "racist."

My answer to that is, I don't believe so. However, when we look at the numbers it's obvious that there are many, many newspapers in which the faces that appear on the comics pages are overwhelmingly white. The reasons are complex.

I know many editors personally and I realize how hard they work to make their newspapers the best they can -- at a time of tight budgets, smaller staffs and a readership that editors believe is resistant to change. But I also know that too many editors don't take comics pages as seriously as their readers do, relegating them to the bottom of their to-do list because they don’t rise to the "important issues of the day" or because changes would light up their phone lines. This, to me, is one of the biggest failures of American newspaper editors. Lack of attention and lack of understanding result in a bias that keeps many strips out of consideration for comics pages.

Let me be clear. When I say "bias" I'm not talking about race. Bias comes in when an editor sees a syndicate kit and makes decisions based on the most cursory of reviews. It's seeing Peanuts, Pooch Café and Little Dog Lost as "dog strips". It's seeing Luann, Cathy and Six Chix as "women strips." It's seeing Candorville, Watch Your Head and Herb and Jamaal as "black strips." And it's this last pigeonholing that has some cartoonists takin' it to the funny pages.

Using a professional clipping service, we surveyed 1,413 daily newspapers by collecting comics pages on a day in June 2007 to determine the play of 238 comics. The results are as striking as they are disappointing.

The numbers show that newspapers aren't likely to run strips with minority characters and are even less likely to run more than one strip if they do. In looking at strips that have minority characters or are drawn by minority cartoonists at the time (we surveyed Baldo, Candorville, Café con Leche, Clear Blue Water, Condorito, Curtis, Herb and Jamaal, Housebroken, Jump Start, La Cucaracha, Maintaining, Mama's Boyz, Raising Hector, The K Chronicles, Watch Your Head, Wee Pals and Working It Out) we found:

* Only 330 (24 percent) newspapers run at least one strip with minority characters/by a cartoonist of color. In other words, 76 percent of newspapers in this country do not have one of the 16 strips we searched for.

* Only 90 (6 percent) newspapers run two or more of these strips. And these 90 were spread over just 26 states.

* In seven states we did not find any of these strips: Arkansas, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and West Virginia. Also interesting to note: Only one paper in Oklahoma, two in Kansas and three in Minnesota run such strips.

* Only two papers published four: the Chicago Sun-Times and my own paper, The Washington Post.

I keep going back to the lack of attention and lack of understanding. Our industry has worked diligently to make our newspapers and staffs more diverse. But these numbers are a strong indication that those efforts have not reached comics pages.

Editors' attitudes have to change. If they see "black" as the first and primary feature of a comic strip, rather than seeing it as a "family," "college" or "animal" strip, it's unlikely to be added to their comics pages if the pages already have a strip with minority characters. They also need to embrace comics for what they are: the place in the paper that perhaps stirs the most passion among readers. Why try to ignore what readers love most?

When we were first selling Candorville, we repeatedly heard, "We already have The Boondocks," as a reason not to add the strip. We almost never heard, "We already have Doonesbury," which would be a more apt comparison. Was the skin color of the main character, Lemont Brown, the first thing editors saw? Did they then stop reading further because they felt they'd already "covered" that demographic? We have no way of knowing without directly challenging editors about how they make their decisions. But when we look at the numbers and see that 76 percent of the daily newspapers in the United States don't run ANY strips that have minority characters, it's something that we feel compelled to call to editors' -- and readers' -- attention.

"But is it racist?"

I and all the cartoonists participating in the Cartoonists of Color Sit-In this Sunday hope to start a discussion to prove it's not.

Update (2/11/08) : In our original posting, "Raising Hector" was inadvertently left out of the list of comics we surveyed. It was included in the numbers we cite and those remain accurate. However, we have now included it in the list of 17 strips we surveyed. Additionally, the comics we surveyed are those with predominently minority characters, drawn by cartoonists of color or are those strips that we believe editors identify as "minority" comics -- based on comments we have heard directly from editors.

Karisue Wyson is the manager of marketing, licensing and sales at The Washington Post Writers Group.

They Never Said It

Among the challenges to our quest for accuracy are the thousands of words that famous people never said.

Every writer likes the pithy quote that makes the perfect point. You may have heard and read that Mark Twain said this of Richard Wagner's music: It's "better than it sounds." Google delivers plenty of citations, but Twain never said it. He quoted it frequently but credited Bill Nye, a humor writer and lecturer in the late 19th century.

A column recently left here with a famous quote that has been frequently attributed to Twain: “A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on." Except in our copy, we properly attributed these words to an English Baptist preacher (named Charles Haddon Spurgeon) whose exact words, according to Twain experts, were "A lie travels round the world, while Truth is putting on her boots."

Oh yes, and Twain never said "Giving up smoking is easy. I've done it hundreds of times."

Nor did he say "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics." Twain, in his autobiography, credited this to Benjamin Disraeli.

Nor did Twain say "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it," a quote that also has been attributed to Will Rogers. We can verify Twain's own remark about the weather: "If you don't like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes."

Many of these nuggets come from a delightful little book given to me before I came to The Washington Post 17 years ago. "They Never Said It," was written by two professors -- Paul F. Boller Jr. and John George -- who were aiming to set the record straight.

The book is humbling. Here are a few more examples:

-- Abraham Lincoln never said, "God must have loved the common people; he made so many of them." This appeared in a 1928 biography of Lincoln that the writer apparently made up out of whole cloth.

-- Thomas Jefferson never said, "the government is best which governs least." This appears in Henry David Thoreau's famous essay in 1849 on civil disobedience -- in quotes but without attribution, as if it were a well-known saying at the time.

-- Voltaire never said, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." This appears in a 1906 book called "The Friends of Voltaire," in which the author summarized what she believed were Voltaire's thoughts. Questioned nearly 30 years later, the author said she never meant that these were Voltaire's actual words.

Meanwhile, Writers Group columnist Robert Samuelson and I share a fondness for a favorite quote that, alas, Lincoln never said: "Better to be silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and to remove all doubt."

At Samuelson’s suggestion, we e-mailed the curator of the Lincoln Collection at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill. He responded the same day, telling us that these words, and several variations thereof, do not appear in the collected works. The next day, he e-mailed again and said that this quote would soon be put on the museum’s list of “Things Lincoln Never Said.”

I'll continue to use this quote verbally -- but never in print -- and always with this caveat: Lincoln never said this, but he should have.

And, in a fascinating and recent revelation, the greatest epitaph in American history may be in question. New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik discusses recent scholarship that tends to the view that the words from Edwin Stanton at Lincoln's death bed were: "He belongs to the angels."

He belongs to what! Wait a minute! He belongs to the AGES. I heard this from my own mother when I was young. I've heard it all my life. But Gopnik's piece casts some doubt. A contemporaneous account written by Union Cpl. James Tanner, who lived next door to the boarding house where Lincoln died and was pressed into service as Stanton's secretary that awful night, said "angels." But 25 years later, Lincoln's two secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, wrote what Gopnik says was to become regarded as the standard biography of Lincoln for nearly 100 years. Their account has Stanton saying "ages." And Hay most certainly had been in the room at the time of Lincoln's death, Gopnik writes.

If you've ever visited the old boarding house across from Ford's Theatre in Washington, you notice that Lincoln died in a very small room. Anyone speaking should have been heard clearly. Perhaps Stanton changed it later, perhaps someone else did, or maybe Stanton didn't correct the record after "ages" was repeated by others. However it happened, Stanton became known as the originator of America's greatest epitaph.

Researching the words of contemporary public figures is easy these days, because everything is recorded in some way and posted for all to read. But can we be sure of any quote from history? All we can do continue to consult the reliable reference works -- Bartlett's, Oxford and such -- until new scholarship calls something into question. At that point, we'll look for a different quote, one we can verify, and come to terms once again with the realization that something we believed all our lives may not be true.

Alan Shearer is editorial director of The Washington Post Writers Group.

Judgment Calls

How long is a syndicated column in a newspaper? Can you even tell?

Some readers sure can. When they're perusing one of their favorite columnists in their local daily and they suspect that the column is a bit short, they often go to the Web to confirm their suspicions. Then they'll e-mail the writer, The Writers Group or the editor of the offending paper to voice their protest.

Venting is good for the soul, but it often doesn't solve the reader's complaint. For as long as there have been newspapers, editors have been forced to cut stories and columns to make them fit on a page. Ideally, a layout editor will determine how much space to give a story, and the writer will then craft to fit. Notice I said "ideally."

In the manufactured chaos that is a newspaper on deadline, decisions must be made by the minute. A story slotted (newspaperese for placement) for, say, Page A3 might be in need of more facts or balance. As that story grows, another story also slotted for A3 might have to shrink. The editor has to make a quick decision. It's a judgment call.

So too on opinion pages. Although most of these pages go to bed long before the news pages, opinion page editors feel the same pressures of space limitations while striving to get the right mix of columns, political cartoons, pictures or graphics. If the page design calls for a column to be about 700 words, and the column the editor wants to run is 750, then something's got to give. Again, a judgment call.

Such calls come with the territory, but in newspapers today, the territory is rapidly changing. To save on expensive newsprint, many publications are going to even narrower widths in page size, necessitating decisions by editors that will have long-term effects on their products and how readers react to them. Do you continue to run syndicated columns at the length they are delivered? If so, do you reduce the number of columns that you purchase because you don't have space for all? Or do you trim the columns in order to maintain the quantity of your offerings, even though the quality may suffer? Again, a judgment call.

But many editors are already weighing in. In listserv discussions and in conversations with our marketing representatives, many have asked the essential question: Can't you, the syndicate, offer shorter columns?

Truth is, we already do. The length for most columns is 750 words (which, with a headline, would fill one column of a newspaper, hence the name "column.") But many go out even shorter. In the editing process, we always look for ways to tighten copy and save words. We're aware the pressures many of our clients are under.

Still, there are a couple of things you should keep in mind when asking why columns can't be shorter. One, the bulk of our writers appear in The Washington Post, so when you purchase a column through The Writers Group, you are getting the same column that runs in our newspaper -- not a condensed version -- and you can also have it on your page the same day as The Post.

And two, a good column is not just an opinion, it's a carefully crafted argument supported with facts. If the argument or the facts are sacrificed for the opinion, at some point you lose context. And if context is gone, you might start hearing from the readers like the ones I described above who feel they've been shortchanged and want you to know it. Worse, you might just lose them altogether.

Our policy at The Writers Group is that we work with our writers to produce columns that make a point, not pitch a fit. We understand that editors need the option to make a cut here or a cut there for the purpose of getting columns on their pages. But ruler-chopping won't work. If anything more extensive is required, we'd appreciate if they would run it by The Writers Group first. That's a judgment call too.

James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.