Orlando Sentinel pulls an old media maneuver on a new media journalist

UPDATE 9-8-2007: The Orlando Sentinel published a correction Sept. 1, in connection with the issues discussed in this entry, the full-text of which is posted in a comment below.

One of the key complaints against "the mainstream media" is that it sees a deep divide between itself and its audience. Critics say reporters, editors and others staffing major newsrooms believe they alone know what is newsworthy and that they alone have been entrusted with a sacred obligation to report the truth. They see journalism as a one-way street.

The internet has changed a lot of this, allowing for citizen media and crowdsourced news (see NowPublic and other efforts). Major newspapers are much more accessible to their audience today than they were five years ago. Readers can comment on stories or send an e-mail directly to reporters who write pieces they like. Wonderful progress has been made on opening up the news gathering process.

But the news reporting process is still as closed and one-sided as ever. I learned this firsthand yesterday, when reporting I offered to the Orlando Sentinel was used without credit by their business desk.

This past summer I worked as a reporter for News 21, the Carnegie Knight Initiative on Journalism (you can read my bio here). As a Carnegie-Knight fellow, I, along with 12 others, was tasked with digging up and reporting on displays of religious faith that occured in the public sphere. We finished our work last Friday. You can see it here.

One of my projects was a 2,000-word story about a Christian theme park in Orlando called the Holy Land Experience. In early June, the financially troubled attraction merged with the Trinity Broadcasting Network, the world's largest religious television network and the target of several investigative reports. I traveled to Orlando, interviewed employees and the park's president, Tom Powell and wrote about the first two months under the partnership. My story went live on the News 21 site on Friday. You can read it here.

Four days later, someone posted a comment on the story, asserting that major changes had swept the park after my reporting, including the departure of the park's president. I called the park and a spokesperson confirmed most (but not all) of the commenter's claims. A quick LexisNexis search showed that no one had reported any of this yet.

So I made more calls, spent the afternoon on the phone with a TBN representative and wrote up the breaking news. The TBN had not even announced Powell's departure yet. I was the only reporter with this story. Needless to say, as a pretty green journalist, this was quite exciting.

Wanting to put this story in front of as many people as possible, I called the most relevant newspaper, the Orlando Sentinel. I initially spoke with an editor at their city desk. I introduced myself as a freelance writer and told him I had a breaking news story about shakeups at the Holy Land Experience. He asked to see the top of my story. I e-mailed it to him, mentioning that it came from Carnegie-Knight reporting.

He passed it on to the Sentinel's associate managing editor for business, Lisa Cianci, as it seemed more relevant there. She read my story top and sent me this message:

Brad,

Thanks for you interest in writing this story for the Sentinel. Unfortunately, we won't use a news story from a free-lancer on deadline -- especially one we haven't worked with before. We are happy to give you a $75 kill fee for your exclusive story tip, but we will have to do the reporting and writing ourselves to verify it.

My editor, an experienced reporter with credits at several major national newspapers, called Cianci. He explained my credits with Carnegie-Knight and asked if I could receive credit for my reporting. Cianci said this was not possible as there was no time to "vet" me. She did say I was welcome to the $75 kill fee, and that she was assigning a reporter to write his own version of this story now that she'd seen this. This doesn't seem right to me. I trusted the editors at the Sentinel with something and they broke that trust. The editor has since said that circumstances put her in an untenable situation. I understand and sympathize, but it still doesn't seem right.

My story pitch hijacked, I spent the rest of the night calling other Florida papers and a few national sources, pitching my story to them. Every one said they wouldn't use something from a stringer (though at least the LA Times religion editor was friendly about it). When I mentioned the Orlando Sentinel was covering this, they asked why they should use my story when they could just run a "pickup" from the Sentinel's coverage the next day.

So at the end of the night, I posted my story on the News 21 site and timestamped it to let people know it was published long before the Sentinel hit the doorsteps in Orlando. You can read it here.

The Sentinel did in fact run its own story. You can read it here. I left a comment beneath it, but I doubt many will see it. Their site keeps reader comments on a separate page from the stories they pertain to. But it matters little, because they have since taken down what I wrote, saying it was not factual.

There is a lesson here. For all the talk about "opening up newsrooms," it's still a closed shop when it comes to making the news. My reporting has appeared in magazines and a number of Chicago area papers. I'm far from a grizzled veteran, but I think my record shows I'm reliable. This could have been verified in 60 seconds. But why spend the time to "vet" me when you can just borrow my story and offer $75 for the tip?

I've told this story to several colleagues, some of whom have considerable daily newspaper experience, others who are just starting out, like me. Apparently, this happens a lot.

Several people have told me to "let it slide" and "get over it." "That's the way the industry works," I've been told. That may be the case, but should it be how it works? Should ease trump ethics in the newsroom?

There's plenty written these days about how "newspapers are dying." As someone who quite likes reading newspapers, this has always seemed like a bad thing. But if behavior like that demonstrated at the Sentinel is a core part of "newspapers," then I feel fairly confident that I won't be shedding any tears at their funeral.

Were the Sentinel editor's actions unethical? Have you ever had a story pitch hijacked? If this practice is as common as it sounds like it is, does that make it ok?

I share this to contribute to the discusson about "old media," newsroom ethics and collaborative journalism. And for those wondering, I declined the fee.