don’t quote me

Further (and second) thoughts on the coverage of the Dartmouth College murders

In cold type II

BY DAN KENNEDY

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23 -- Let me start with the obvious: working as a media critic can be a dangerously head-swelling proposition. Though my job description is pretty loose, bullet point number one has always been to keep an eye on Boston’s two big dailies, the Globe and the Herald. For the past six-plus years, I’ve sat in judgment of some of the best reporters and editors in the city, praising them when I thought they deserved it and, more often (because everyone knows that good news isn’t usually news), whacking them when I thought they strayed. I’m someone who tends to be sanctimonious and self-righteous in real life, so getting paid to practice sanctimony and self-righteousness can be intoxicating. And that’s not always a good thing.

I didn’t sleep much Wednesday night. Earlier that day I had researched, reported, and written a 1750-word column (http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/other_stories/documents/00637273.htm) on the Globe’s extraordinary page-one statement in that morning’s editions regarding a story it had published on February 16. That front-page exclusive, reporting that investigators believed the murders of Dartmouth College professors Half and Susanne Zantop were connected to an extramarital affair involving Half Zantop, had fallen apart within hours of publication. On February 20, two teenagers from Chelsea, Vermont — James Parker and Robert Tulloch — were arrested at an Indiana truck stop and charged with first-degree murder.

In my column, I blasted the Globe for running the story in the first place, while giving a full airing to the views of editor Matt Storin, deputy managing editor Ben Bradlee Jr., and staff writer Mitch Zuckoff, who was the lead reporter on the piece. And, believing the Herald had gotten away with its own overzealous reporting, I took the paper to task for pursuing Stanley Williams, an Arizona State University professor and acquaintance of the Zantops whose car had been impounded in New Hampshire and who had been questioned by authorities, but who had never been identified as a suspect.

By mid-afternoon, my column was linked from Jim Romenesko’s MediaNews.org Web site, the go-to spot for media junkies across the country. By the end of the day, the printed version arrived in the Phoenix newsroom. The headline: in cold type, with a subhead of behind the globe’s mea culpa; the herald overhypes a theory. A job well done? I thought so. I hoped so.

Within a few hours, I learned otherwise. In talking with colleagues and sources, and in continuing to think through the rather astounding events of the previous week, I concluded that I had misunderstood the chain of events at the Globe; that, in some respects, I had been too easy on the Globe, especially regarding the defensive tone of Storin’s statement; and that I had unintentionally left the impression that I considered the Herald’s misstep equal to the Globe’s, which I certainly do not. Worst of all, I used an unattributed comment from a background conversation with Herald staffer Tom Mashberg without getting clearance from him first. I protect my sources; the only reason I'm mentioning this is that Mashberg has already posted a letter about it on MediaNews.org. (His letter will also appear in next week's Phoenix.)

On a minor note, I wish I’d pointed out what a landmark the Globe’s front-page statement/apology/correction/what-have-you really was. It turns out that the last time the Globe ran a page-one correction was in 1987, when it had to retract a story claiming that George Keverian, then the Speaker of the Massachusetts House, was aware of accusations that some of his male staff members were harassing female aides. Thus, Wednesday’s statement was even bigger news than many readers might have realized.

Much of my column holds up. Some of it doesn’t. But I didn’t get the context and nuance right, and in a case where the facts were already known (that is, the facts about what’s been reported and by whom; the really important facts about this case remain a mystery), context and nuance were everything.

Who watches the watchdog? Though someone may take me to task publicly, there is no one in Boston whose job it is to keep the same sort of eye on me that I try to keep on the Globe and the Herald. Rather than an exercise in self-flagellation, I would prefer to think of this as self-ombudsmanship. So here it goes.

• The Globe. On Wednesday evening’s Greater Boston (Channel 2), Emily Rooney hosted three commentators — Bob Zelnick, a Boston University journalism professor and former network-news reporter; Jerry Lanson, an Emerson College journalism professor; and Marshall Ingwerson, managing editor of the Christian Science Monitor.

To my surprise, none of them — nor Rooney, a former television news director — seemed any more than mildly troubled by the Globe’s decision to run the love-affair story. (Disclosure: I’m a semi-regular paid guest on Greater Boston.) Rather, they were upset that the Globe waited until February 21 to issue its page-one statement, even though it was perfectly clear by the afternoon of February 16 that its story had fallen apart. I disagree with them about the Globe’s original decision to publish, but they make a good point about the statement’s late arrival.

Rooney, in a reported segment that preceded the discussion, also asked Storin a question I wish I’d asked him: were the three anonymous law-enforcement officials the Globe had cited truly independent, or was one feeding information to the other two? Storin answered that two of the sources may have been connected, but that the third was not. Well, that’s approximately one short of three independent sources.

There is also the whole matter of the tone of Storin’s page-one statement, headlined to our readers. Though he was forthright in admitting that “the extramarital affair theory is not correct,” and in expressing “regret for the pain our story undoubtedly caused,” he never came out and said what I think he should have said: that the original story should not have asserted so boldly — right in the lead — that the killings “were crimes of passion, most likely resulting from an adulterous love affair involving Half Zantop, according to authorities close to the case.” At the very least, the story shouldn’t have led the paper. And, in my view, it shouldn’t have run at all.

Yes, Storin, Bradlee, and Zuckoff insist that if only they could reveal their sources and what information they provided, we would all agree that the article was solid, and that the Globe was simply the victim of a rapidly shifting investigation. And yes, Zuckoff and Shelley Murphy, whose byline also appeared on the story, are veteran reporters, highly respected by their peers. But strictly from a reader’s point of view, the piece looks to be highly speculative. In any murder of this nature, a love triangle is one of the first theories investigators consider. The Globe would like us to believe that the information it had added up to a lot more than mere speculation, but the paper, understandably, can’t reveal its sources — and, thus, can’t convince us. Storin, in his statement, should have explained under what circumstances he thinks it’s proper to go with what was never more than speculation — well-informed speculation though it may have been. In the end, it comes down to standards, and we still don’t know what the standards are.

Finally, I reported that Bradlee had told me the story was originally supposed to run on Sunday, February 18, but was moved up two days because of fear that the Globe might get beaten. What I meant to write was that the Globe had been working on an in-depth profile of the Zantops for the Sunday paper, but when the love-affair angle emerged, that story and the profile were moved up two days. A small point, perhaps, but the way I had originally worded it made it look as if the Globe’s editors had considered sitting on the story of the alleged love affair. They should have; but they didn’t.

The Herald. Early in the investigation, the New Hampshire attorney general’s office announced that it was questioning an Arizona man who had some connection to the Zantops. It soon emerged that the man was Stanley Williams, an Arizona State University volcano expert who knew the Zantops and who was an occasional visitor at their home. In a case in which authorities were leaking very little, and in which there appeared to be no leads, the Williams angle was intriguing. He was visiting Dartmouth around the time of the murders, and his car was impounded at the Manchester Airport and examined by investigators (a fact I should have noted in my column). Authorities also traveled to Arizona to question him. But he was never at any time identified as a suspect.

The Herald pursued the Williams angle hard — too hard, in my view. The most egregious example was a February 14 piece by Herald staffer Franci Richardson, revealing that a forthcoming book claimed that Williams, in 1993, had “allegedly failed to heed scientific data that warned of the January 1993 eruption of the Galera Volcano in Colombia,” which resulted in the deaths of six people who were with him, “and then falsely claimed to be the only survivor.” Even though the story ran on page 16, to me — and to other people whom I asked to read the article — the clear impression was that Williams was being portrayed as a very odd character who still might make it onto the list of suspects. Having been identified by law enforcement, Williams was then victimized by the press. Williams’s wife, Lynda Williams, is circulating a letter alleging harassment by the media, including the Globe but especially the Herald. It’s not fair, but it’s hardly unusual; just ask Richard Jewell.

Trouble is, I failed to put the Williams angle in the proper context — something the Herald’s managing editor for news, Andrew Gully, expressed to me with, uh, great force and conviction on Wednesday night. On reflection, I think he’s right, at least on that point. There is no question that New Hampshire authorities, in their dealings with Williams, gave all the appearance of having a lead, and they spoke publicly about it. That’s a very different situation from that of the Globe story. Richardson’s story shouldn’t have run, but it was a lapse; the Globe’s, by contrast, was a huge mistake. If I had summarized the Herald’s Williams coverage in a paragraph or two to illustrate the competitive pressures all news organizations were under, I would have made my point. Instead, I made it look as if the Globe’s and the Herald’s misjudgments were somehow equivalent — something I never believed and did not intend to do.

For me, the clincher came on Thursday morning, in Felicity Barringer’s report in the New York Times on the Globe’s page-one statement. (Especially interesting, given that the Globe is owned by the New York Times Company; even more interesting, her piece uses the word “apology” in the headline and the lead — a word that is absent from the Globe’s own statement, although it does express “regret.” Storin also told me, “And we also have to apologize to the family.”) I learned that Barringer had called the Herald, following up on the Stanley Williams angle and looking for a comment. Yet she didn’t even mention it in her article.

She came closer to getting it right than I did.

The competitive chase. The final bit of context, which I barely touched on in my original column, was a reference to how much more aggressively the Herald has been working the story than the Globe. That was true before the “love triangle” story, but it’s been even more obvious since. Simply put, the Globe, reeling from its discredited exclusive, seems unable to keep up.

Nearly every day, the Herald offers more detail, more color, and more insight into the lives of the victims and the suspects — not to mention more stories, sidebars, and columns, while the Globe has on some days been content to run just one piece.

My objection to her Stanley Williams story aside, Franci Richardson and her colleagues have been producing a prodigious quantity of first-rate reporting. Perhaps the most striking example was in Monday’s papers. On the same day the Globe was reporting that authorities still hadn’t found the murder weapon, the Herald — in a five-reporter effort — revealed that the suspects had allegedly purchased the knife on the Internet, that the sheath was found on the scene, and that fingerprints on the sheath matched those of Tulloch and Parker. The Herald even had a sidebar on how easy it is to buy knives online.

It’s not that the Globe’s coverage has been uniformly awful. There have been a few high points, such as Tuesday’s feature, with a striking page-one photo, of the truck driver who gave Tulloch and Parker a ride to Indiana and was fired for his kindness. But on more days than not, the first read is the Herald, not the Globe.

Pointing this out wouldn’t have changed the overall thrust of my first column; it would, however, have established the backdrop against which the events of the past week have played out.

One point I did make in my first column, and which bears repeating, is the unusual nature of the investigation. New Hampshire law-enforcement officials are doing something that most reporters find rare: they’re not talking much, and they’re leaking even less. Hanover isn’t Greater Boston; it’s a small-town environment where everyone knows everyone else, and reporters are seen as outsiders not to be trusted. Authorities must also take care not to release information that would bias the jury pool, which is also a harder trick in New Hampshire. Grafton County, where the trial would presumably take place, has a population of just 78,570, according to Census figures. By contrast, in Greater Boston, Suffolk County’s population is 641,695; Middlesex County’s, 1.43 million. In other words, it’s a lot easier to find suitably unprejudiced jurors in Massachusetts than in New Hampshire. In covering the Zantop murders, the media have been operating in an information vacuum. That vacuum has led, inevitably, to missteps.

They say confession is good for the soul. I don’t know. I do know that I believe this column will hold up better than the first one. I think of it as a combination of the second draft I never got to write and an assessment of what I should have done differently.

Perhaps what I find most frustrating is that, in the course of criticizing the Globe (and, yes, to a lesser extent the Herald) for making misjudgments in the face of deadline pressure and competitive worries, I ended up doing the same thing myself. I think the way I closed my earlier column works just fine for this one, too: it’s not pretty. It never is.

Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com.