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Thursday, April 14, 2005
TERM LIMITS. Globe
ombudsman Christine Chinlund has finished her tour of duty, and will
become co-editor of the suburban Globe South supplement. Question:
will the ombudsman slot be filled? Before Chinlund got the post,
editor Marty Baron and publisher Richard Gilman briefly considered
doing away with it. (See this
Phoenix story from
August 23, 2001.)
My guess is that the post will be
retained. Three years and a half years ago, the last time there was a
vacancy, the Globe's corporate parent, the New York Times
Company, was well-known for its aversion to ombudsmen. But following
the Jayson Blair scandal and the resignation of top editors Howell
Raines and Gerald Boyd in the spring of 2003, the Times went
the other way, creating a "public editor" position and handing it to
a reasonably high-profile outsider, Daniel
Okrent. I thought Okrent
did a splendid job, and now he is due to be replaced by
Byron
Calame, a retired deputy
managing editor at the Wall Street Journal.
(An aside to a few concerned Media
Log readers: Calame is from the WSJ's news side, which has a
reputation for being unusually segregated from the paper's
ultraconservative editorial pages. Forget the traditional
"church-state" separation; this is more like India and
Pakistan.)
The Globe would do well to
follow the Times model: a respected outsider who will serve
for a limited time, and who will then leave the paper entirely. I
would imagine that being the ombudsman is miserable enough without
having to wonder about how your colleagues will receive you after
your ombudding days are through.
Chinlund's new job was announced in
an internal memo sent out by regional editor David Beard, and sent
along to Media Log by an in-house source. The full text
follows.
All,
She talked the talk; now she'll
walk the walk. Again.
Christine Chinlund is heading to
Globe South as the regional edition's new co-editor, replacing the
Business-bound Mark Pothier.
New arrivals know Chris as the
paper's ombudsman, a tough task in which she has prevailed over
the past three years. Chris was also the Globe's foreign editor
during Sept. 11, as well as a former national editor and head of
the paper's Focus section. Before that, Chris covered the 1988
presidential campaign and was a member of the Spotlight
investigative team (which anyone who has read Gerry O'Neill and
Dick Lehr's "Black Mass" soon would recognize). She began at the
paper as a reporter in Metro's [as the City & Region
section used to be known; this is not a reference to the free
commuter tab] then-Suburban SWAT team. Like Pothier, she was a
Nieman Fellow (note: not a requirement for the job).
After listening to readers and
judging the paper for the past three years, Chris, with co-editor
Kim Tan, has a new chance to make a difference. At Globe South's
launch party 3 1/2 years ago, David McCullough said the section
had a responsibility to a region that he claimed was the root to
half of America's history. McCullough also said the Globe had a
responsibility to place in context the local news that
cost-cutting competitors in the region had been increasingly
unable to do.
The regional editions are
fortunate to have Chris aboard. She begins April 25. Please join
me in welcoming her.
Dave
BOOBY PRIZE. The annual
Jefferson Muzzles have
been announced, and among
the winners - given for doing the most to suppress freedom of speech
- is the US Marshals Service, for going above and beyond the call of
duty in protecting Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia from the
media.
The Jefferson Muzzles, awarded
every year since 1992 by the Thomas Jefferson Center for the
Protection of Free Expression, are the inspiration for the
Phoenix's regional Muzzle
Awards, begun in
1998.
NEW IN THIS WEEK'S
PHOENIX. While television network news flounders
toward the future, the
present belongs to NPR.
posted at 9:12 AM |
3 comments
|
link
3 Comments:
It would be interesting to analyze the methodology of ratings used by Entercom, et al. NPR is an increasing part of a rotating playlist on the car radios of people brought up on multitasking, (curse you Bill Gates!)Once satellite radio becomes more common (as unequipped cars go to the junkyard)and someone figures out a way for interfacing the mobile web with new streaming-audio options, (web numbers for BZ and RKO streaming are through the roof, I'm told), you will see those on the NPR bandwagon jump off as fast as they jumped on. Like 300 channels on digital cable, people will gravitate more to narrowcasting. Right now, NPR is benefitting from FM's current signal advantage, (e.g. 96.9 FM Talk). They would be well advised to not get too used to it.
Nice to see someone take NASCAR to task.
Good riddance to Chris Chinlund, a poser in the P.E's role if ever there was one.
I corresponded with Chinlund by email and phone on perhaps four to five issues during her tenure. Usually these issues related to comprehending data and polling methodology. Many reporters for the Globe do not understand math or basic statistics; e.g., the difference between percent and percentage points, or on sample bias and error. Early on it became clear to me that she is among the paper's "math illiterati," and despite my repeated urgings never followed up with some of the local experts available who could have set her -- and the paper -- straight.
Finally, her overall approach was an affront. Most columns simply presented readers' views and the paper's generally unenlightened and predictable response. Given ample opportunity to score on behalf of the readers or herself, she punted time and again. Given her new job, it's easy to see why she was so risk-averse.
Mike B.
MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
