"We Mean Business" continued   

When USA Today released its 28-page report explaining how Jack Kelley deceived his newsroom and his readers for years, the authors, veteran editors John Seigenthaler, Bill Kovach and Bill Hilliard, levied particularly harsh criticism on newsroom personnel who ignored or brushed off complaints about the reporter and criticisms of his work. According to the report: "One formal, written complaint received from a foreign source, bluntly and specifically challenging the accuracy of Kelley's work, was not responded to by anyone at USA Today for more than two years. We were told that the letter, "somehow had been lost.'" The report lists time after time that editors did nothing when confronted with issues about their ace correspondent.

To make sure that bosses at the Charlotte Observer hear all concerns that need to be aired about the paper, they've laid down a little law. "Our main rule here," says Deputy Managing Editor Cheryl Carpenter, "is the only sure way to get yourself in real trouble is to blow off a reader or blow off a colleague that has a concern about your story." Some Observer reporters have even been disciplined for ignoring a reader. "We were trying to show the staff that not having a conversation about a reader's concern is a higher sin than publishing a correction," she says.

Globe Editor Baron told his staff after Blair that they should not only feel comfortable bringing editors suspicions that something is off-kilter about another staff member's work--they should feel obligated. "We depend on our staff to alert us to unethical behavior," he says.

At the Sun, McIntyre says he's never taken an issue to a ranking editor without getting a serious hearing. "A paper that doesn't take copy editors' questions seriously," he says, "is like checking out of a hospital against medical advice?. You might be OK."

McIntyre says the Sun has caught sneaky reporters more than once because of calls from outside the paper. Once, he says, a veteran reporter was fired after inventing a bereaved person for an obituary. "It was ingenious," McIntyre says. "Who is going to call up to complain about a favorable quote in an obituary?" But a family member of a deceased surgeon did--she wanted to get in touch with this stranger who had all the nice things to say. Alas, not possible.

Once the editor of another paper called the Sun to say that although one of the Sun's suburban reporters quoted an official, that paper's reporter was present when the official made the remark and the Sun's wasn't. Questioned about it, the Sun reporter claimed he caught the official at home later. When the Sun asked said official, he said there had been no call.

Some papers aren't just listening harder for complaints, they're actively encouraging readers to bring them on.

The Boston Globe invites--and actually uses the word "welcomes"--readers to comment by fax, by e-mail or by ordinary phone call. They've got special numbers and addresses for these comment outlets and someone monitors them daily, looking for concerns that might lead to corrections. The box listing the numbers is on Page 2A, which is also home to the corrections themselves.

The move to the prominent 2A location was yet another action taken in the aftermath of Jayson Blair. No New York Times readers had called in, even when Blair, writing about places he never visited, got scenes and events completely wrong. Baron says the relocated box has sparked a "sharp increase" in public response. "We get a lot of calls--some readers seem to have an avocation of letting us know mistakes," he says. "We've been alerted to many errors in the paper that we wouldn't have known about previously."

The Globe then monitors the corrections, keeping an eye on the nature of the errors and who's making them. In April, the paper began auditing reporters making more than their share of mistakes. An audit means that sources in those reporters' stories will be asked, after publication, to verify information.

That might not be the most popular move in the newsroom, but Baron really doesn't care. "I don't think reporters involved will be that pleased, but that's too bad," he says. "The accuracy of the newspaper is critical to the credibility of the paper."

For years, newspapers wanting to toughen their corrections policies turned to the Chicago Tribune as a model. They still do. In the '90s, the Tribune was among the first to realize that a correction isn't necessarily an isolated mistake--it could be part of a pattern, so a paper that tracked and analyzed its corrections could illuminate systemic deficiencies. And, by requiring that reporters fill out a form after each error, the unspoken message is that accuracy and credibility are paramount, says Don Wycliff, the Tribune's public editor. "To be sure, if there is a perpetual, helpless, relentless maker of errors, that person will be gotten rid of," Wycliff explains. "But the main point of this is that it allows us to identify where errors are being made and what circumstances lead to them."

At the Charlotte Observer, where the motto is ignoring a complaint is worse than admitting an error, management also requires reporters to fill out a form each time they incur a correction, forcing them to think about how they could have prevented the mistake. Like the Globe, the Observer moved its corrections box to 2A and then had a special staff meeting to explain why--a grab at the elusive brass ring of credibility.

"The pain at the New York Times and USA Today have given us all reasons to talk about [these problems] more and think about it more," Carpenter says. "It's a constant conversation that has gotten louder."

Pamela Luecke was editor of Kentucky's Lexington Herald-Leader in 1998 when the Cincinnati Enquirer ran a front-page correction that essentially retracted its damning investigation of Chiquita Brands International, not because the story was wrong but because the reporter used unethical means to get his information (see "Bitter Fruit," September 1998). "It really shook me to the core," says Luecke, now a business journalism professor at Virginia's Washington and Lee University. "It made me realize you could not assume every reporter working for you shared your values."

She went to work on a statement of ethics, not another dusty irrelevancy for the back shelf, but something in black and white that her staff would discuss, know and use. "It's something you need to infuse through the culture," she says. "What is our expectation? What is our standard? These are not simple conversations. But it creates a sense of shared values in a newsroom. And it sends a message that newsroom leaders are committed to a high standard."

After reading the New York Times' report last year about how it was deceived and USA Today's version this spring, the Sun's McIntyre understands that the right message must emanate from the corner office, then settle into the minds and practices of everyone from the investigative gurus to the editorial assistants. "If the top-level editors aren't serious about this and don't push for accuracy and integrity," he says, "there's not much a copy editor can do."

But even as editors realize that something of a crackdown is needed, they dread even using a word like that. Karen Brown Dunlap, president of the Poynter Institute, as strong a believer in the need for more robust editing as anyone, cringes a bit when she hears colleagues talking about "prosecutorial editing."

"Prosecution comes to bear when there is a crime, and I don't think an editor should proceed as if a crime has been committed," Dunlap says. She also doesn't like the image of the nation's editors as a panicky SWAT team, searching for the bomb as it ticks away at their paper. "I don't buy that," she says, adding that though some newsrooms are "disasters waiting to happen," having a newsroom philosophy of "which one is the nut?" will only make things worse.

Baron, who will put mistake-ridden reporters on an audit track and encourage colleagues to reveal errant peers, tightens the reins very aware that going too far is possible. "We're doing what we need without turning our reporters into suspects, which I don't want to do."

While editors puzzle through this problem, weighing their possible courses of action, the one ignored option is doing nothing. Most editors agree that the ethics crisis is real. Even if there isn't another Jayson Blair or Jack Kelley, odds seem huge that less spectacular perpetrators are out there with the ability to do a paper's credibility great harm.

It's now a matter of figuring out how much good cop to mix with the bad, thinking about how people operate in a given newsroom, and maybe turning some conventional wisdom upside-down. Like, is trusting reporters really the soul of journalism? Maybe skeptical editors should be the soul.

At a burned paper in Fort Worth, Reader Advocate David House is willing to do anything to keep it from happening again. He talks about "avoiding" and he talks about "fixing." Whatever it takes. Magic markers and movie tickets.

And as for trusting reporters, House puts it like this: "You have to trust your folks and you have to know some will abuse that trust."

These days, when he considers the Star-Telegram's newsroom, House sees a "splendid" staff. He says he'd be "shocked" if there was another Khalil Abdullah lurking in the mix. "I just don't believe it would happen," he says. But then, a beat later, he adds with a little ironic chuckle, "But see? There's that vulnerability coming out."