January 21, 2003

Reportorial and Editorial Quibblings

Meanwhile, I was a bit confused by the following item from a story in last Friday's Oregonian about both the recent drowning on Mt. Tabor and the fight against the burial:

Friends of the Reservoirs, a group that opposes the city's plan, continued its fight against it Thursday night at a previously scheduled meeting. Eight people attended the meeting.

I naturally assumed that the meeting being referred to was Thursday night's meeting of the Mt. Tabor Public Advisory Committee, which far more than eight people attended. So I emailed one of the reporters responsible for the article about this potential discrepency.

Today I received responses from both reporters. First is the response of the reporter who attended the meeting in question:

Thanks for taking the time to read the article and respond. The eight people referred only to the Friends of the Reservoir who attended the meeting, as counted by Charles Heying, who was quoted in the article. That clarity was, unfortunately, taken out in the editing process.

And then comes the response from the piece's other author:

Our night reporter that night said the eight referred to Friends of the Reservoirs members who went into a separate meeting with staff from Sten and Saltzman's office to discuss the decision to bury the reservoirs. We should have made that clear.

All of which still leaves me somewhat confused. On the one hand, as far as I know, the only "previously scheduled meeting" that Thursday night was of the Mt. Tabor Public Advisory Committee meeting. If the count of eight people was indeed referring only to those present who are members of Friends of the Reservoirs, then this makes sense.

But if the meeting referred to was some smaller meeting with Sten and Saltzman staffers, then this was not a previously scheduled meeting at all, but more likely an impromptu hallway meeting held outside the Mt. Tabor PAC session -- in fact, the very one in which I was challenging the representative of the Bureau of Water Works on his point about burial being a "purely technical" decision.

Or, there was yet another meeting about which I've seen nothing, including on the FoR mailing list. But as near as I can recall, Heying was inside at the PAC meeting the entire time, up until the informal hallway meeting occurred -- leaving no room for some other meeting with staffers.

Okay, I grant that this is, in the grand scheme of things, a minor quibble. But it irks me that there is such sloppiness -- be it on the part of the reporters or their editors -- when it comes to simply getting the story correct, and communicating it clearly.

I suppose the reason why such missteps get under my skin is that I find it hard to believe that the bigger questions are being reflected properly when the process of reporting and editing bungles such a simple story element as this one.

Posted at 01:21 PM | PermalinkComments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
More In Media

« Previous Next »