Letters   

More on Kovach
To the editor:
By any journalistic standard and all contemporaneous accounts, the Bill Kovach era (1986-1988) in Atlanta was two back-to-back years when he coached the Journal-Constitution to journalism's equivalent of the Super Bowl.
After a quarter-century during which the newspaper was virtually moribund, the brief Kovach years produced two Pulitzer Prizes, seven Pulitzer finalists, two Robert Kennedys, a National Headliner, a George Polk, an Overseas Press Club and more than 100 other major awards for excellence in all areas of the newsroom. In addition, it is widely conceded that his operation set the standard, likely never to be matched, in coverage of a national political convention and campaign.
I can understand your reluctance to compare in any meaningful way the quality of the newspaper in Atlanta today with the one Kovach put out. But your September article about the Journal-Constitution's "Life After Kovach," by Richard Shumate, makes me wonder what your purpose is. How could you not insist on accurate reporting and fair writing in a so-called journalism review?
Specifically:
•You mentioned three examples of "significant, hard-hitting stories" under Kovach's successor, Ron Martin, but failed to report that two of the three series (not stories) were initiated during Kovach's tenure, directed by Kovach's staff and virtually completed before Martin was even hired. The third was little more than disclosure of publicly available court documents and a far cry from "hard-hitting."
•You credited the new editor with several post-Kovach innovations, such as a traffic column. But you failed to disclose that the column was actually begun in January 1988, almost a year before Kovach left.
•You didn't include among Martin's innovations the new design of page one — not designed to help the reader sort out the news or give it some perspective — but so that it can be used to decorate T-shirts, sweatshirts and coffee mugs for sale the next day, as has happened several times after Atlanta was awarded the 1996 Olympic games and the Braves won two National League pennants. One supposes a newspaper shouldn't let journalistic objectivity interfere with making an extra buck.
•In your efforts to paint Kovach as old-fashioned or unprogressive you stated that "to involve readers, the paper now uses surveys..." But you failed to report that it was Kovach who introduced scientific polling and surveying to the papers and instituted computer-assisted reporting, which was used to examine more than 6 million pieces of information in the study of redlining of black mortgage loan applicants by Atlanta banks, leading to the formation of a $100 million minority loan pool by a banking consortium and to the recent indictment (which you also failed to mention) of one banking institution as part of the subsequent Justice Department investigation.
You also did not mention that the newspaper leadership that forced out Kovach to the delight of the banking community then ordered a second, much more shallow look at mortgage loan practices in Atlanta and — surprise, surprise — found the banks to be far less guilty of discrimination than the newspaper's first investigation (and those of the Federal Reserve, the FDIC and the Justice Department) had found.
If Shumate had even read the local media (Atlanta Business Chronicle) he could have reported an innovation for which Martin is responsible: killing political stories unfavorable to incumbent Sen. Wyche Fowler, a former longtime associate of Martin's new wife, who was a $500 contributor to Fowler's campaign. Certainly Kovach would not have been associated with anything like that. His philosophy was that journalists should be in the business of putting news in the newspaper, not keeping it out.
Another Kovach philosophy was that newspapers could never compete successfully with television by providing readers with less information than TV provided them, or even the same. Newspapers needed to provide more. On the other hand, while I remained at the newspaper after Kovach's departure, Martin watched CNN all day, even during one-on-one meetings with staff, then tailored the newspaper's content and play accordingly.
•You credited the Martin regime with increasing the newspaper's morning circulation by about 15,000 a day since Kovach left four years ago. That equates to an average daily increase of slightly less than 4,000 each year, or less than half the increase when Kovach was editor, even though management laid off some 30 people in the circulation department's phone bank operation. And you don't mention that afternoon circulation is off some 25,000 a day since Kovach left.
You also didn't mention that much of the relatively meager gain in the past four years came through aggressive promotions where one could subscribe to seven days of home delivery for as low as $1.13 a week for a year ($1.19 the next year), a price that meant receiving the Sunday paper at a substantial discount and the other six days free. In other words, the new regime should be praised for turning a prestigious publication into a Sunday discount and a six-day shopper?
•You allowed Publisher Jay Smith to describe Kovach's tenure as a "miserable failure," but you didn't describe the night at the end of the 1988 Democratic National Convention (just three months before Kovach resigned) when Smith stood atop a desk in the newsroom effusively heaping praise on Kovach and his staff and going so far as to say, "This is no longer the newspaper of [legendary editor] Ralph McGill. This is now Bill Kovach's newspaper."
Of course, you also failed to mention that this is the same Jay Smith who, during budget talks six weeks after the convention, promised Kovach that he would take "no significant action" while Kovach was vacationing in Italy. Then two days after Kovach left town on vacation, Smith killed the Sunday magazine and cut the news hole, the newsroom budget, the travel budget and 17 newsroom staff positions.
•On a final point, Kovach has had a longstanding rule that his newspaper would not publish a pejorative quote about an individual from an unidentified source. The rule establishes a standard of fairness and responsible reporting. You, on the other hand, allowed Shumate to use just such a blind quote describing Kovach as "an irascible, barbed-wire kind of guy," while describing Martin (on your own courageous hook) only as "a soft-spoken Midwesterner."
While Shumate seems to have had considerable difficulty finding solid information or insightful conclusions, he apparently had no trouble finding people to bash Kovach, most of whom I know from first-hand experience could not perform work up to Kovach's standards.
Shumate obviously didn't try to interview any Kovach supporters at all, and you let him get away with what even a fledgling editor on a bad weekly would not have allowed.
If you can be considered a journalism review at all, you certainly are one lacking the high standards of quality our profession needs. And to the extent that you are setting standards for others in journalism, you should recognize that it doesn't take much to meet yours.
You should be ashamed.

Richard Shumate responds:

Hacks on Film
To the editor;
Many films about journalists are poor because they fail to express an awareness of journalists' grave responsibility and power or believably dramatize the constitutional and moral decisions and choices journalists make.
Frankly it has been easier for Hollywood to accurately recreate a sense of what deadlines are like or what newsrooms look, sound and feel like. But these workplace characteristics are superficial. They don't convey what it means to be a journalist hot on the trail of a great story, or caught in dramatic confrontations and historic events.
I enjoyed the WJR piece on journalists in movies ["Hacks on Film," November] and its sidebar list of "bests." Just for fun, I've taken the liberty of suggesting a few more films that make my own A list:
"Reds" (1981), "Between the Lines" (1975), "The Sweet Smell of Success" (1956), "Blood on the Sun" (1945), "The Philadelphia Story" (1940), "Foreign Correspondent" (1940), and "Dispatch From Reuters" (1940), which dramatized my own company's early days.