What would Diane Swonk think?

jjmoney62 · **Posted:** Tue Oct 29, 2002 7:15 pm

***From Slate today, echoing some things said here recently:***Every day, thousands of reporters pad their stories to fit the stock news formula. Like casting agents, they phone around looking for the precise quotation their story needs to appear "balanced." They lead their witnesses with language such as, "So would you say ...?" or asking the question five different ways until they get the right quotation to fit their predetermined thesis and complete the formula. If it's a journalistic crime for Christopher Newton to invent characters who mouth empty but passable clichÃ©s, what's the name of the offense when respectable reporters deliberately harvest the same worthless clichÃ©s from bona fide sources?Was Newton's greatest offense one of banality? AP's spokeswoman Kelley Smith Tunney told the New York Times as much when she said the quotations went unnoticed because they were "innocuous" and "tangential." The sound bites "didn't raise any flags," AP Senior Vice President Jonathan Wolman told the Washington Post, because none of them were "very snappy or snazzy." In other words, nobody thought to dispute the AP quotations because there was no "there there" to dispute. But if the quotations were so empty, why didn't AP's editors strike them in the first place?The Newton affair indicates that nobody out in newspaperland reads AP copy very carefully. Newton cited nonexistent academic sources at Harvard, Princeton, Penn, Vanderbilt, Chicago, Cal, Texas, Texas Tech, New Mexico, Colorado, and George Washington before a reference to a phantom Stanford source finally exposed him.

Guest · **Posted:** Tue Oct 29, 2002 9:06 pm

I hereby suggest that some prestigious journalism school create and endow the Christopher Newton Foundation for the Study and Research of Alternatives to Journalistic Excellence. Annual awards could be given to journalists meeting the Newtonian standard, called, of course, "Fib Newtons" ....

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Tue Oct 29, 2002 9:31 pm

Jack Shafer also wrote in his Slate article:Newspapers dump AP not because AP copy isn't good but because AP's masters, the 1,550 U.S. daily newspaper members who run it as a not-for-profit cooperative, designed it primarily to produce hard news, not beautiful news. The AP is supposed to deliver just the facts, ma'am.***No, Jack, newspapers dump AP mainly for one or both of two reasons: a) it isn't good; and b) newspapers think it matters that a local byline is on a news story.
AP might have been "designed" to "deliver just the facts," but any thinking editor who deals with AP copy would be delighted if that's what came across.***[ October 29, 2002: Message edited by: blanp ]

Rio · **Posted:** Wed Oct 30, 2002 4:20 am

OK, here's the link of that article:
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2073304Also, I have a real problem with most of this piece. The author thinks that quoting a real person who gives a banal response is as bad as making up a quote from someone who doesn't exist? Hello? Here's one difference: The latter will get you fired, and earn you the well-deserved contempt of your peers.I'm also troubled by Jack's pooh-poohing of opposing views; he seems to be saying that if the quotes aren't catchy sound bites, they're not worth running, and AP shouldn't have let them run in the first place! Yeah, that makes a hell of a lot of sense.Further, like blanp, I too question this lauding of AP as some sort of standard-bearer for hard news. Is this a joke? Is Slate in the business of Onion-like parody? Or is Jack Shafer as big an ignoramous as he sounds?

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Wed Oct 30, 2002 1:20 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Gary Kirchherr:
I'm also troubled by Jack's pooh-poohing of opposing views; he seems to be saying that if the quotes aren't catchy sound bites, they're not worth running, and AP shouldn't have let them run in the first place! Yeah, that makes a hell of a lot of sense.<hr></blockquote>I have waged a decades-long, and losing, battle against pointless quotes tossed in for the sake of "balance" or to represent the rabble. It's not necessary to quote the NRA flak every time the subject of gun control comes up. No need to call NARAL every time someone mentions abortion.

Guest · **Posted:** Thu Oct 31, 2002 10:46 pm

Actually, I think the problem of "banal quotes" comes from the quality of the source we turn to, rather than the idea of getting a balancing quote itself. Reporters tend to get the quick-and-easy quote, rather than the most credible one. Rather than turning to a random person on the street or a paid flack, reporters should find people directly affected by the issue at hand, or true experts to offer insightful analysis (not their PR gatekeepers, but the true members of the intelligentisia themselves). Also, the quotes should not be of the sort that can just be superficially grafted onto a story, but ones that lend depth and perspective and help shape the story -- rather than just fitting into a predetermined path set out by the lede from the writer (one of the deadliest sins in journalism, as I see it).Getting quotes, in my opinion, is not the problem. We just need to hold writers to a higher standard for quote-gathering.

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