Bylines   

Repeat Performance

Television columnist Bob Wisehart

of the Sacramento Bee resigns after he is accused of plagiarizing an Orlando Sentinel column suggesting ways to improve local television. In an apology to readers, Executive Editor Gregory Favre said that "a critical ethical mistake" had been made. Favre was saying much the same thing in 1987 after Wisehart was suspended for five months following accusations that he lifted material from a collection of essays by horror writer tephen King . (Wisehart did not return a phone message seeking comment.) This time around, fellow Bee columnist Pete Dexter lambasts KCRA-TV for its coverage of Wisehart's departure, "as if ethically they held the higher ground, those whores who steal every idea they have." News Director Bill Bauman of KCRA responds that the station's coverage was reserved and that Dexter is an "idiot."

Mommy Discrimination?

Patti Paniccia sues CNN , alleging "mommy bias." In describing her lawsuit, the former Los Angeles-based weekend correspondent says that shortly after returning from maternity leave, she was told that since she "had the baby and all" she wouldn't mind fewer hours. Two months later, she was fired. Paniccia has been distributing a memo sent to her by Executive Vice President Ed Turner during her first maternity leave three years ago in which he wrote that she might be considered for full time work "assuming you have not gone all goo-goo on us. Meantime, quit thinking CNN and start considering mommydom." Paniccia, who says the memo and other comments made her so paranoid that she feared bringing photos of her daughter to work, dismisses a suggestion that the note had been written tongue-in-cheek. Taken in context, she says, "it was not a joke." Turner did not return phone messages, and CNN declined comment.

UPI Editor Ousted

United Press International dismisses Executive Editor Steve Geimann , 41, who had strapped himself to the mast as the wire service pitched through four different owners and bankruptcy proceedings. "He and everybody else realized eventually the new owners would be looking for someone to replace him," says Bob Kieckhefer , the acting executive editor while UPI looks for a replacement. Geimann, whose dismissal was part of a larger management shakeup, says there were suggestions he would be reassigned as deputy editor after his successor was named. "I thought that in whatever format UPI chose to go forward," he says, "there would be some value in a guy with 11 years of experience there."

Community Journalism

Ralph Jennings , 25, loses his job at California's 7,000-circulation Manteca Bulletin , alleging he was a victim of a policy of "community journalism" that is long on community and short on journalism. General Manager Laurie Lusk says she fired Jennings in part because he wrote an "inaccurate" story about a bridal fair sponsored by the paper. In it, Jennings quoted several participants who had not been impressed. "He wrote negative things about something that was not a negative event," Lusk said, before abruptly referring questions to Publisher arell Phillips , who denied the Morris Newspaper -owned daily emphasizes only positive news. But another former Bulletin reporter, Les Mahler , 44, who left the paper last fall, says he was told by Editor Karen

opecki-Hodges that with the exception of crime coverage, "if you can't write anything nice, don't write anything at all." (Kopecki-Hodges denies she ever gave such an order.) Mahler recalls that writing perpetually upbeat restaurant reviews was a particular challenge because "some of the food around here is just terrible."

Columnist Charges Racism

Earl Caldwell departs from the New York Daily News and becomes at least the third black columnist at a major daily in as many years to leave his or her job after a dispute with a white editor. (The others: Curtis Adams , who left the Dallas Morning News , and Lisa Baird , formerly with Bergen County's Record. ) Caldwell says he was fired because he publicly accused owner Mort Zuckerman and Editorial Page Editor Arthur Browne of censorship motivated by racism after Browne spiked a column about a white policeman accused of raping black men. Browne says Caldwell had "all but convicted the cop" and insists that "if Earl had engaged in a discussion rather than hanging up, his work could have been edited into an acceptable [form] in a half-hour's time." The columnist, speaking with great passion as he complained that the New York press isn't giving the alleged rapes enough ink, calls Browne's explanation "a bald-faced lie" and says he "hedged [the column's wording] in every goddamned way." Dorothy Butler Gilliam , a Washington Post columnist who met with Daily News officials as president of the National Association of Black Journalists, says Zuckerman seemed "unyielding" but mentioned in passing that Caldwell would be among the candidates for his old job; when asked about this by AJR, the mogul would only say that he's begun the search for a "distinct voice." Caldwell, for the record, says Zuckerman couldn't pay him enough to return.

Inside Newspapers

The daily Bond Buyer fires Editor Joe Mysak , who leaves amid speculation that his investigative fury had finally become too much for the bond industry's powerful banks, which complained to Canadian parent Thomson Newspapers . Mysak, who this month launches a newsletter about the municipal bond market for another publisher, Grant's, says he simply had a "difference of opinion" with his superiors and that the scuttlebutt followed because "people look for reasons for the inexplicable." Mysak had been at the New York-based Bond Buyer for 13 years... The Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale taps Earl Maucker to succeed retiring Editor Gene Cryer (see Bylines, April). Maucker, 46, had been the paper's managing editor since 1980. Meanwhile, athy Hensley Trumbull , who spent the last two years as a Washington correspondent, returns to Florida to oversee the 40-member Palm Beach County bureau... Editorial Page Editor Dennis Ryerson leaves the Des Moines Register to take over as executive editor at Montana's Great Falls Tribune . Despite growing up in Iowa (or perhaps because of it), Ryerson says he hasn't been able to get the Pacific Northwest out of his mind since his 10-year stint at the olumbian ´in Vancouver, Washington. "It was like getting an extra paycheck," he says. "If you had a bad week at the office, you could go up to the mountains and forget all your troubles."

Changes in Baltimore

Editor John Carroll of Baltimore's Sun reassigns reader advocate Ernie Imhoff as acting head of the photo and graphics department to free John Goecke for other projects. Carroll's administrative assistant, d Hewitt , will field reader comments part time but will not write a column, as Imhoff had done. While some staffers see the change as a sign that the daily can't take scrutiny, Carroll points out that Imhoff is on the Sun payroll and couldn't claim to be an independent critic anyway. "Can you imagine what we'd say if the mayor appointed an ombudsman and portrayed him as an independent authority?" Carroll asks. "We wouldn't take it seriously."

Inside Magazines

Andrzej Krajewski , most recently Washington reporter for Polish Radio and TV , takes over as the Warsaw-based editor of Reader's Digest 's latest foreign edition. The monthly is now published in 18 languages... Civilization ` a bimonthly scheduled to debut in November with the support of the Library of Congress, names Stephen Smith as editor. Smith, 45, was most recently Washington news editor for Knight-Ridder Newspapers and is a former executive editor at Newsweek and national editor at Time ... Owen Lipstein , editorial director of the publishing company responsible for the return of Psychology Today and Mother Earth News , says his firm plans to revive Spy this summer... John Wolfe , the former New York bureau chief for Advertising Age who was dismissed last fall as part of what he calls a surprise editorial purge, becomes managing editor at Arts & Antiques. Wolfe lost his job in October along with Executive Editor Dennis Chase , who died in February in a skiing accident, and Editor at Large Joseph Winski , who is now working on two books.

New Director at SPJ

Gregory Christopher , 28, takes over as director of the Society of Professional Journalists, replacing Ernie Ford , who resigned in January. Christopher, who had been SPJ's marketing director and then acting director, beat out some 100 applicants.

Chip Rowe

Editorial staff changes may be sent to AJR, 8701 Adelphi Rd., Adelphi, MD 20783, faxed to (301) 431-0097, or sent by E-mail to CompuServe (75250,1311) or America Online (AmerJourRv).