bury the lede

Coffey, Patterson Lose Lawsuit Against Star

Former Indy Star employees Lisa Coffey and James Patterson lose their discrimination lawsuit against the newspaper on a summary judgment ruling.

Read the whole decision here: StarSuit.pdf

Correcting The Record

Indy Star executive editor Dennis Ryerson pens his Sunday column about last weekend's front-page correction on a story that included a major jury verdict mistake. Ryerson explains:

Aweek ago a headline at the top of our front page was clear and to the ipoint: "Physicians lose child abuse suit." A secondary headline added that: "Plaintiff awarded $400,000 in case alleging doctors didn't report abuse."

Unfortunately, the main headline, as was the story under it, was as inaccurate as it was clear. A jury held Methodist Hospital responsible for not identifying and reporting suspected abuse of an 11-month-old child who was returned to his mother and later beaten to death by the mother's boyfriend. The jury ruled that the two physicians involved in the case, Dr. Gary Thompson and Dr. Michael Turner, were not liable. No question, it was a very bad error.

Our newsgathering and editing processes include several steps to prevent mistakes. Reporters are expected to check and recheck the information in their stories. Stories go through multiple layers of editing before they are printed.

When we become aware of errors we correct them on Page 2 of our first, or "A," news section. We also append the correction to our archived stories and rewrite those stories to correct the error, to ensure that an error isn't repeated.

Some situations require more action on our part, however, and this was one of them.

No Feed For You

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE, AND THEN NO MORE UPDATES: Yeah, there's something wrong with the Star feed, but who knows what the problem is. Whatever. Hopefully they'll have the whole thing uploaded later.

UPDATE: The Star's feed is coming through clearly on Ustream.tv, the live-streaming host website. It must be the redirect through IndyStar.com that's slowing down the process.

Here's a bit of a gripe directed toward the two television stations in town (you know who you are) that live-streamed Barack Obama's town hall meeting in Plainfield today: Why you gotta hate the Mac users of the world? At least set up your stream to support those of us who have installed Flip4Mac.

Presumably PC users were able to log on and watch the live coverage, which is more than the blogmistress can say for the Star's direct feed. Yes, it supported Macs, but the feed itself disappeared about three minutes into the event.

Clearly, our media market has a long way to go in the realm of online communications.

Preview The Star's New Website

The Indy Star will formally launch its new website design next week.

If you'd like to catch a sneak peek, click here.

Hat tip, friend o' the blog.

Star Deploys Writer, Photographer To Iraq

Indy Star reporter Will Higgins and photographer Bob Scheer shipped off to Iraq today.

The blogmistress wishes them safe travels as they cover an Indiana National Guard unit for the Star's special "Spirit of the 76th" section.

Hello, Glaring Error

UPDATE: Several sources have called to tell the rest of the story behind this gaffe. It was in no way, shape or form the fault of the bylined reporter or the person working the desk that night. Rather, the taglined reporter who was assigned to nab the verdict and ship it back to the mother ship on deadline didn't get his facts straight. He assumed that because a verdict had been handed down against the hospital that it also applied to the doctors. And we all know what happens when you assume.

The Indianapolis Star carried this above-the-fold correction alongside this story on the front page today:

A story on Page A1 in some editions Saturday incorrectly reported that a jury found against Dr. Gary Thompson and Dr. Michael Turner in connection with a 1998 child abuse case. The jury actually found in favor of both doctors. The story to the right reports the correct information. The Star apologizes for the error.

Can someone explain how in the world this happened?

The original story, which has been updated, now carries this correction:

Some editions of The Indianapolis Star Saturday incorrectly reported that a jury found against Dr. Gary Thompson and Dr. Michael Turner. The jury actually found in favor of both doctors. The story above reports the correct information. The Star apologizes for the error.

Pam Fine Leaving The Star

This just in:

Dennis Ryerson/INI
Sent by: Heidi Sims
03/05/2008 02:34 PM
To
StarNewsroom
cc
DIRECTORS AT INI
Subject: announcement

To the staff:

Pam Fine, in a message below, has some great news for her but not so great news for us.  As Pam explains, she is leaving The Star to assume the Knight Chair at the University of Kansas.  It's a great job for a person who, as we all know, is a teacher at heart who has vast knowledge to share about what we do.

We'll miss Pam's incredibly hard work, her passion, and her quest every day for improving the quality of what we do.  She has accomplished wonderful things at The Star.

Listing Pam's accomplishments isn't easy; there are so many of them.  She lead efforts to help us focus our work more effectively so we could better impact the lives of our readers. She established new standards and procedures that improved accountability as well as quality.  She was instrumental in our push to provide a livelier, more interesting front page every day.  She conceived the well-received IndySunday section.  She led great coverage of everything from elections to horrific murders.  There's nothing in the paper, apart from our editorial pages, that she didn't touch in a positive way. in the digital world, Pam has been critical to our many improvements in what we are offering on-line.

Of course, no description of Pam would be complete without noting her fine sense of humor, which lightened the heavy load and added to the solid teamwork that exists here.

Pam's last day here will be April 4. I know you will join me in wishing her the very best.

Dennis

An Open Letter To The Indy Star's New Print Format

Dear Indy Star's New Print Format:

Where did the news go?

Signed,
The Blogmistress

Thou Shalt Not Steal?

While not directly tied to the local market, this is quite the big media story with Hoosier roots:

A White House official who served as President Bush's middleman with conservatives and Christian groups resigned Friday after admitting to plagiarism. Twenty columns he wrote for an Indiana newspaper were determined to have material copied from other sources without attribution.

Timothy Goeglein, who has worked for Bush since 2001, acknowledged that he lifted material from a Dartmouth College publication and presented it as his own work in a column about education for The News-Sentinel in Fort Wayne. The newspaper took a closer look at his other columns and found many more instances of plagiarism.

"The president was disappointed to learn of the matter and he was saddened for Tim and his family," White House press secretary Dana Perino said in a statement.

She said Goeglein had accepted responsibility and "has apologized for not upholding the standards expected by the president."

The White House sought deal with the embarrassing situation quickly, the same day the plagiarism was reported by a blogger, Nancy Nall, a former News-Sentinel columnist.

Word on the street is that Goeglein had been told by someone close to him that he needed to stop coping other people's work. He paid no heed to the warning.

Scott Miley Returns To Anderson

Ruth Holladay catches this announcement about former Star reporter Scott Miley:

Miley is returning to the Anderson area where he first began his career in daily newspapers.

He was a reporter for the former Anderson Daily Bulletin leaving in 1980 for The Indianapolis Star where he was a general assignment reporter for 22 years.

He recently returned to journalism serving as editor of The Southside Times, a weekly newspaper based in Beech Grove in southern Marion County.