bio
Eric Starkman is President and founder of New York-based Starkman & Associates.
He worked more than 15 years as a reporter and editor at major newspapers in the U.S. and Canada, including the Wall Street Journal, The Toronto Star, The Montreal Gazette, The Detroit News, as well as American Banker. Prior to launching S&A, he oversaw the corporate communications practices at established agencies in the New York area, including Morgen-Walke Associates. He had worked earlier as a copywriter at W.B. Doner & Co., a Michigan-based advertising agency.
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June 5, 2009 1:15 pm : Comments 026
They say a man never forgets his first time, and that’s certainly true for me. The place was Toronto, the year 1980-something. A fresh-faced reporter not long out of graduate school, I had just sat down at The Library Bar for an interview with a hot-shot investment banker when the waitress came over for our drink orders. The banker asked for a martini and I, wanting to look worldly and sophisticated, ordered the same.
In those days, martinis at The Library Bar were made stirred, not shaken, and generously served in glass pitchers. My martini arrived arctic-cold with no discernible taste save for its slight hint of dryness. It burned soooooo good. I felt like a grown up.
I’ve lived in New York for two decades now and in all that time – and despite the city’s reputation for having the best of everything – I have yet to find a place that serves one that rivals the mastery and flair of The Library Bar. Gotham is sadly lacking on the quality bartender front. You have a better chance of getting hit by lightning than randomly finding a bartender who knows how, or will take the time, to serve a properly dry martini. Even some of the best and most expensive restaurants employ rank amateurs.
Fortunately, there are some notable exceptions. And one of them is Abdul Tabini, a longtime bartender at The Odeon who is beloved by Tribeca locals not only for his significant mixology talents, but also for his warmth, charm, and unbridled discretion. I suspect James Bond, a character known for his impeccable taste for the best of everything, particularly his martinis, would be most appreciative of Tabini’s handiwork with a bottle of gin or vodka, a few olives, and a splash of vermouth (although Bond would no doubt disapprove that Tabini also believes a good martini is stirred, not shaken).
The Odeon is, of course, the landmark New York restaurant that flashes in the opening credits of “Saturday Night Live” and was featured on the cover of Jay McInerney’s novel “Bright Lights, Big City.” From the day it opened nearly 30 years ago, the restaurant has always managed to attract a trendy crowd of artists and bold-faced names without making mere mortals like me feel somehow out of our element. Despite its impressive pedigree, The Odeon lacks pretension, which I suspect is one reason for its continued success. For at least the last 14 years, martini-master Tabini was another.
In the mid-nineties, 22-year-old Tabini left his native Morocco for the States with no more than a few dollars in his pocket and a handful of English phrases in his vocabulary. He quickly found work at The Odeon as a barback (essentially a bartender’s assistant), where he thrived. He kept his eyes and ears open, quickly learning both the language and the art of bartending. Tabini was promoted to bartender within eight months; I am proud to be counted among his first customers.
To describe Tabini as being a bartender would be tantamount to describing Alfred Hitchcock or Steven Spielberg as mere film directors. He does not simply pour drinks by rote following recipes long-ago locked in his head. There is exceptional art and pride to what he does, approaching each empty glass much like a sculptor must approach an unmolded piece of clay – as an opportunity to create a uniquely wonderful “wow” moment.
In addition to his sheer flair for making a great drink, I also very much admire Tabini’s inimitable warmth. He has a remarkable memory for details and always seems genuinely interested in how things are going for me and my friends, especially “Chuck” who was one of the regulars many years ago before work obligations took him out of the neighborhood. Tabini also is incredibly discreet: I’ve yet to hear him say anything about anybody to anyone. Whatever happens in front of Tabini stays with Tabini. The guy is a real class act.
This Saturday night will be Tabini’s last shift at The Odeon, a day that the regulars have looked toward with mixed emotions. While we hate to see him abandon his cocktail shaker and swizzle sticks and wave goodbye, he leaves to start Ward III, a 46-seat restaurant and bar he’s opening with two former colleagues around the corner at the site formerly occupied by QDT at 111 Reade Street.
Although Tabini’s myriad regulars earnestly pledge they will frequent his new joint, many also admit they will miss seeing him at The Odeon. “He’s like family,” confided Tommy, a local producer and director. “It’s devastating,” chimed his friend Patricia (before reminding me again to be sure to mention in this blog post that he makes the best martinis).
It takes real guts to leave a secure job to open a restaurant at the best of times, and even more so in the midst of a major economic downturn. Tabini says he isn’t afraid. “You can’t give up just because it’s a bad economy,” he says. “We believe in ourselves.”
Having enjoyed his company and his drinks for the last innumerable years, I must say I believe in them, too.
Tomorrow we drink to your continued success, Abdul. Bottoms up!
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June 4, 2009 3:33 pm : Comments 000
Ten or so years ago, I discovered gyrotonics, an exercise system that was most commonly used and taught back then by professional dancers. My primary instructor was Jennifer DePalo, an accomplished modern dancer. I’d always been a fitness buff but under her tutelage, I achieved significant improvements in strength, flexibility, and balance. I also found a genuine appreciation for form and movement, as well as the rigors of professional dance training.
I attended several of DePalo’s performances and was always mesmerized by the graceful ease at which she mastered the complexities of her craft, making complicated dance steps and sequences seem effortless. Each performance left me wondering how choreographers do what they do. Where does one even start when conceiving a dance piece? It took nearly a decade but thanks to our newfound friends at modern dance company Jennifer Muller/The Works, I am beginning to find out.
A few months ago, S&A client and friend Gary Hayes asked if we’d consider getting involved with Jennifer Muller/The Works. The company, which he supported on a personal level, was planning a gala to celebrate its 35th anniversary. Like so many other cultural institutions, they were feeling the financial pinch of an economy turned south and were seeking additional patrons.
For the uninitiated, Jennifer Muller is a living legend in the modern dance world. She has created more than 90 dance pieces and created and restaged countless others for more than 20 international repertory companies across nine countries. She has collaborated with prominent artists such as Keith Haring, Sandro Chia, Keith Jarrett, and Yoko Ono. Underscoring her accomplishment, Muller was one of only 30 artists chosen in 2003 as a founding member of the World Arts Council in Valencia, Spain.
Although there are a few New York City dance companies that have been around longer than Muller’s, virtually all of them were founded in the 1960s when grants and corporate funding for the arts were more readily available. Founding a dance company in the mid-seventies was an ambitious and formidable challenge and keeping it alive through multiple recessions is testimony to her business acumen.
Given my personal interest in dance and our team’s collective excitement to provide the dance troupe support, we leapt at the opportunity to get involved. Truth be told, they had me as soon as I learned I’d be able to attend a rehearsal of the works being staged later in the season! Finally, I had my chance to peek behind the curtain and watch a celebrated choreographer at work.
I’m hard-pressed to accurately explain the emotional reaction of watching Muller at the helm of a rehearsal. As a team leader myself, I was impressed with how she can be so remarkably demanding and nurturing at the same time. She has clearly earned the admiration, respect, and loyalty of her dancers, each one delivering the extra something required to meet and then exceed her passionate demands to achieve perfection. In corporate-speak, we’d say that her dancers are fully engaged in the mission. They live for their art, they have great confidence in their leader, they trust in her vision, and execute it brilliantly not for the mere sake of recognition or tangible reward, but rather because not delivering the goods would be too great a personal disappointment.
Most people don’t realize that the life of a modern dancer isn’t easy or glorious, even for those talented and fortunate enough to make it into a top-tier New York City company. Muller’s dancers spend seven hours a day studying and performing, and the majority need to hold secondary jobs to make ends meet (you definitely don’t choose a career in modern dance for the money). In addition to teaching at various gyms around the city, company dancer Rosie Lani Fiedelman, for example, performs at least eight times a week as an ensemble cast member in the acclaimed Broadway play “In the Heights” (for which she received a 2007 Drama Desk Award). Her dance company colleague Elizabeth (Beth) Disharoon is an energy analyst at a Wall Street firm that, fortunately for her, genuinely supports the outside pursuits of its employees. Needless to say, time management is obviously a requisite skill for being a professional modern dancer.
From June 9-14, Jennifer Muller/The Works will be performing at New York’s Joyce Theater, one of the premier dance venues in New York City. Having already seen multiple Muller performances, I can say with considerable authority that this is an event that modern dance enthusiasts will not want to miss. Starkman & Associates is extremely proud to be a corporate sponsor of a talented dance company that reflects our own values, and hopes you’ll join us at the Joyce Theater next week. We’ll be easy to spot – just look for the group standing proud and clapping the loudest.
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May 27, 2009 2:37 pm : Comments 005
A veteran journalist I greatly admire for her professionalism and integrity recently emailed to ask me what career advice I would give to a reporter who had plagiarized some small passages. “I think journalism is out of the question, to be honest, but is this a career killer no matter what he does?” As the PR industry has a well deserved reputation for lying and deception, I suspect the real question she wanted to ask was: “Dishonesty wouldn’t be a barrier to being a flack, would it?”
Far be it for me to defend the wrongdoings of the PR industry, but journalists stand on a rather unsteady soapbox when it comes to passing judgment on the collective ethics of public relations professionals. Plagiarism, fabrication, and other forms of dishonesty are as common in journalism as steroids in professional sports. Janet Cooke, Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, Jack Kelley, Patricia Smith, Mike Barnicle, Mitch Albom – it doesn’t take much thought to quickly recall the names of those who broke the cardinal rules of journalism and helped tarnish the industry’s once well-regarded reputation for fairness and integrity. Sadly, media plagiarism is so rampant that even journalism professors have been caught doing it.
For every reporter who gets caught, there’s no doubt countless others holding their breath hoping their inappropriate editorial shortcuts aren’t in the limelight next. We know of a few journalists who deserve to be worried. In one instance, a well-known reporter at a major magazine a few years ago lifted entire passages from a bylined article written by one of my clients. We chose not to expose the incident for fear there would be a media backlash against our client for bringing down a respected reporter. In another incident, a reporter at a competing magazine lifted wording and misinformation from an obscure publication without citing the source. The magazine in question had to run a lengthy clarification that was, of course, very carefully crafted to obscure any suggestion that plagiarism occurred.
Maureen Dowd, a popular columnist with The New York Times, and Barney Gimbel, a writer at Fortune, are among the most recent journalists caught lifting or citing information without attribution. And their responses, and those of their media brethren, provide considerable insight into the murkiness of mainstream media’s ethics.
Dowd lifted virtually verbatim a passage of more than 40 words from blogger Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo. Dowd claims she never read Marshall’s work, but got the wording from an email exchange with a friend who didn’t identify the source of the information. Dowd cites the fact she credited two other bloggers as evidence she wasn’t attempting to plagiarize. She hasn’t faced any disciplinary action, and as best I can tell, has yet to concede any wrongdoing.
Gimbel, a young and amiable reporter, in February was caught using some passages from a New York Times Magazine article published five years earlier. Although he didn’t reprint the work verbatim like Dowd, Gimbel didn’t seek to defend himself by arguing that lifting passages here and there is a widespread journalism practice. Feeling deeply ashamed and fearing that he had irreparably betrayed the trust of his colleagues and readers, he voluntarily resigned thinking that was the right and honorable thing to do. He was under no pressure to do so. (Full Disclosure: At the request of a friend, I met and offered some advice to Gimbel after he resigned; I didn’t ask for compensation, but Gimbel did insist on taking me to dinner).
The media’s response to the Dowd and Gimbel incidents is quite telling. Gawker maligns Gimbel for putting “very little thought into concealing his apparent crime,” but gives him no credit for acting honorably when his wrongdoing was exposed. As for Dowd, Gawker sniffs that she “will get off penalty-free for (she says) accidentally plagiarizing” which they are fine with providing the Times finally stops weeping and wailing about how undisciplined online news outlets are ripping them off. Media critic Howard Kurtz defends Dowd with the argument that she wouldn’t deliberately plagiarize because the likelihood of getting caught was just too great. If that’s true, then how would Kurtz explain Gimbel’s transgression? Surely The New York Times Magazine is no obscure publication and the risk of getting caught, accordingly, equally strong.
The Internet is generally blamed for the declining influence of mainstream journalism, but that argument is as simplistic as blaming Japanese and German automakers for the declines of GM, Ford, and Chrysler. Foreign automakers taught us that automobiles can be reliable and well-designed; the Big Three automakers never rose to the challenge. Similarly, mainstream journalists simply cannot withstand the real-time scrutiny of bloggers, many of whom are extremely insightful, well-connected and justifiably fed up with “old school” media’s hypocrisy. Even if you buy Dowd’s defense, the fact remains she has been exposed for serving warmed-over thoughts already articulated in cyberspace. Once upon a time, The New York Times op-ed columnists were renowned for the breadth of their experience, the skill of their wordsmithing, and the originality of their commentary.
Most tragic of all is that there isn’t one mainstream media outlet today that can be legitimately cited for impeccable institutional integrity. With regard to The New York Times, I know several reporters whose ethics and professionalism are beyond reproach and whose modus operandi is unfailingly the honest pursuit of truth. But the Times, to its discredit, also publicly countenances the deceptions and misrepresentations of reporters like Alex Berenson and Edmund Andrews, who erroneously believe the ends justify the means and if a little dishonesty will get you there, so be it.
Sadly, there are far too many people in the public relations industry who believe the same thing. Those reporters and PR people are two sides of the same coin – one that’s not worth a dime to either profession’s credibility.
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May 22, 2009 7:40 am : Comments 004
Having covered the banking industry as a journalist for more than a decade, I can say with considerable authority that when it comes to the fundamentals of public relations, most U.S. bank executives have nothing in their tills. Given the choice between squeezing a customer with a dollar service charge or waiving the fee and earning some goodwill, most bankers would pocket the dollar and scoff at you for even thinking there was ever a question. Is it any wonder America’s banks are held in such low regard?
The banking industry’s public response to the current headline-making credit card legislation underscores how far America’s bankers truly are removed from reality. Public loathing of America’s banks has become so profound that even Congress can no longer acquiesce to the industry’s demands – despite the best efforts of a powerful lobby – hence the expected passage of legislation requiring credit card issuers to cease practices that are both unfair and unscrupulous. Rather than take the offensive and ostensibly embrace the inevitable legislation with campaigns touting “We Want to Help Restore America’s Economic Vitality”, the banking industry has effectively responded with “Paybacks are Hell.” Consumers, even those with unblemished credit histories, are told to expect new or higher annual fees, less affinity benefits, and a further tightening of available credit. Bankers just can’t help themselves.
The credit card business doesn’t have to be inherently anti-consumer. Nordstrom Bank, which is wholly owned by the retailer of the same name, is a case in point. I opened a credit card with them last year and have been impressed with how well it maintains Nordstrom’s vaunted reputation for exceptional customer service. Its approach is in stark contrast to those of the major card issuers with which I’d previously dealt.
Let’s start with its call centers. When I first called the 800-number to activate my card, I resigned myself to getting an automated response. Instead, a friendly representative who, it turned out, was incredibly knowledgeable about the card’s benefits, answered my call within 60 seconds and quickly helped me activate my card. Thinking it unlikely Nordstrom had built the call center capability from the ground up, I assumed she worked at an outsourcing company. The woman assured me she was a full-time employee of Nordstrom Bank.
As one who firmly believes that consumer-focused companies that truly care about the customer experience would never outsource the customer service function, I contacted Nordstrom CEO Blake Nordstrom to see if he shared my view. In a reply to my e-mail (how many other Fortune 500 CEOs respond to e-mails from ordinary customers?) he said:
We are one of only three retailers that I know of that still own their credit business. Everyone else has sold it and outsourced it. As merchants, we don’t profess to be bankers. We do feel strongly, though, that we work one on one with our customers and not have a third party in between to potentially jeopardize our relationship. We do have two call centers: one in Denver, the other in Southern California that are staffed 24/7 with Nordstrom employees.
Nordstrom Bank has further earned my admiration for its acts of graciousness. When I called the bank after realizing my first payment would not reach them by its due date, the phone rep waived the accrued late charge and interest penalty without any prompting from me. The bank also did not charge me a fee to make an electronic payment over the phone, an atypical practice that the rest of the industry will now have to adopt, as mandated in the current credit card bill. Since then, I’ve called the bank a number of times, and without exception I was speaking to a customer rep in less than a minute because once you are “in the system” you can simply hit zero and a real person comes on the line. Such respect for customers’ time and connectivity preferences, coupled with an affinity program that is honest and transparent, has earned them my appreciation and loyalty.
Interestingly, Nordstrom doesn’t have a slogan or even a logo, and it doesn’t spend a great deal of money on advertising buys, yet the company is one of the country’s best known retailers. Nordstrom preserves its enviable brand reputation the same way it established it: by giving shoppers impeccable service, great selection, competitive prices, and no-nonsense sales practices. And that’s what consumers want from their banks. Vernon Hill, the banking maverick who turned Commerce Bancorp into a retailing powerhouse in the mid-Atlantic region, was one of the few bankers who understood and embraced this reality.
Banks and the executives who lead them would do well to remember that the responsibility for reputation management does not begin nor end with the folks in the marketing and public relations department. It truly is a shared obligation that touches on every aspect of banking operations. Banks that fail to quickly grasp this fact will continue to find themselves a day late and more than a dollar short. They better heed this reality because they have no more political currency left to support yet another taxpayer-funded bailout.
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December 9, 2008 1:04 pm : Comments 000
There is some truth to short seller David Einhorn’s comments that the political, financial, and media Establishments conspire to quash truth-telling, at least when it comes to Mergers & Acquisitions reporting. Although it’s a given that billion dollar mergers almost always fail to achieve their stated goals, the investment bankers who concoct these ill-fated unions almost never are held accountable. Reporters dutifully note the M&A advisors when a deal is announced, but that is rarely the case when these same deals inevitably sour.
The omission is, regrettably, one of the compromises journalists must make to remain viable in today’s scoop-centric news industry. Given a choice between preserving future access to corporate sources with exclusive information or risk having that spigot turned off as the result of a negative merger-gone-bust story that fingers their sources for the blame, most reporters will opt for the former. By not holding Wall Street accountable for orchestrating mergers that are doomed to failure, the media becomes an unwitting accomplice to the investment bankers who continue to pocket tens of millions of dollars in fees while eroding – and in some cases destroying – healthy corporations. Rare indeed is the reporter who is willing to go out on a limb and say “these are the dealmakers who screwed up.”
That’s why I read with incredible interest Andrew Ross Sorkin’s especially passionate “Dealbook” commentary today in The New York Times. Mr. Sorkin, who to his credit has written more critical articles about the M&A industry than his competitors, is seemingly outraged that Tribune Company has filed for bankruptcy just one year after real estate magnate Sam Zell acquired it for some $8 billion and then saddled it with a staggering $13.2 billion in debt. (As an aside, Aaron Elstein at Crain’s New York Business takes a similarly critical and compelling look this week at Apollo Management and its missteps with soon-to-disappear Linens ‘n Things.)
What sticks most in Mr. Sorkin’s craw is the cast of characters that earned millions in fees for making the Tribune deal happen, and he is not afraid to name names. He reports that Citigroup and Merrill Lynch earned $35.8 million and $37 million, respectfully, for advising the Tribune board and then scooped up millions more on top of that in financing fees. Other companies dining at the trough were Morgan Stanley, which earned $7.5 million writing a “fairness opinion” as well as a $2.5 million “advisory fee”, and Valuation Research Corporation, which was paid $1 million to give a “solvency opinion”.
Some perspective is in order. A failed M&A deal is a dog-bites-man story, and the $8 billion Tribune deal is rather puny by today’s standards. Contrast Mr. Sorkin’s column to the Times‘ and other media outlets’ coverage of the $29.5 billion writedown Sprint Nextel announced earlier this year stemming from the ineffectual post-merger integration of Sprint and Nextel. Despite being significantly larger than the Tribune transaction, there is not even a passing mention in the news coverage of the masterminds behind this M&A debacle who got it so wrong.
The Tribune Company owns various media properties, including the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, and its bankruptcy filing certainly doesn’t auger well for employees at any of them. And while the plight of fellow journalists is seemingly what has Mr. Sorkin most in a dither, the message of today’s column could have easily and more aptly been written months ago – years even – about countless other dealmakers and companies who, at the end of the day, failed shareholders and employees alike by trying to integrate oil and water.
Mr. Sorkin and his colleagues would do readers a great service by continuing today’s naming names approach in their future reporting of M&A dealshitting the skids. Holding investment bankers publicly accountable for their misguided advice and pricey opinions would be a far greater public service than publishing league tables that simply note which ones are involved in the most deals destined to fail.
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August 4, 2008 1:45 pm : Comments 000
Reporters in the U.S. benefit from unparalleled power and constitutional protection, particularly in comparison to journalists working in other countries. The Founding Fathers understood the critical importance of a strong independent press to serve as a watchdog against potential government tyranny. It was this fundamental principle that gave rise to the notion of journalists’ collective role as the Fourth Estate.
But there is a discernible trend suggesting that reporters, perhaps inadvertently, are helping to promulgate government wrongdoing rather than expose it. The latest egregious example is a page-one “exposé” in the (Albany, NY) Times Union last summer alleging that former New York Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno misused state aircraft. According to a report released last week by the Commission on Public Integrity, the story closely tracked – verbatim at points – a memo written by Darren Dopp, who had led former governor Eliot Spitzer’s communications function. Mr. Dopp and four other Spitzer administration officials have been rebuked for orchestrating their “Dirty Tricks” plot to discredit Mr. Bruno.
The Times Union was not, however, the only media outlet to serve as the Spitzer administration’s errant pipeline for pumping dirty water to its constituents. During his days as Attorney General, Mr. Spitzer instigated a malicious campaign to disparage former New York Stock Exchange chairman and CEO Richard Grasso. As Mr. Grasso’s PR advisor following his disgraceful firing from the NYSE, I had a front row seat to what was unquestionably one of the most irresponsible periods in modern business journalism. The biased reporting of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal (news side, not editorial) come most clearly to mind.
Journalists from the Times and the Journal zealously reported a steady stream of misinformation and innuendoes spoon-fed to them by Messrs. Spitzer and Dopp to pressure Mr. Grasso into settling. Much of this misinformation received prominent page-one placement and virtually all of the stories have since been discredited. All the charges Mr. Spitzer filed against Mr. Grasso have been dismissed, which wasn’t a surprise to anyone who understood the facts of the case.
Also of note is USA Today’s reporting concerning what turned out to be a government smear campaign against former Army bioterrorism researcher Steven J. Hatfill. Back in 2002, the newspaper prominently and repeatedly reported that Dr. Hatfill was a suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people. Judge Reggie B. Walton has since ruled “there is not a scintilla of evidence” (emphasis mine) implicating Dr. Hatfill to the anthrax attacks. The Justice department recently agreed to pay $4.6 million to settle Dr. Hatfill’s defamation lawsuit.
Dr. Steven Hatfill was first publicly accused by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, which should have raised eyebrows among responsible reporters since an investigation was still underway and no charges were even close to being filed. Some of the most accusatory stories were written by former USA Today reporter Toni Locy. As she herself reported, there were other government officials who doubted the evidence against Dr. Hatfill yet she wrote the damning stories anyway, seemingly placing a higher value on getting the proverbial scoop than on safeguarding a potentially innocent man’s reputation and career from irreversible damage.
Shockingly, the mainstream media is neither embarrassed nor chastened by the Bruno, Grasso, and Hatfill reporting debacles, just as it wasn’t particularly contrite following the shameful pack-mentality reporting on Richard Jewell, the security guard in Atlanta who years ago was erroneously fingered and subsequently vilified as the Olympic park bomber.
The truth is that reporters today are driven by their editors to deliver tersely written “scoops” usually whispered to them by individuals with political or self-serving agendas who refuse to be identified. Reporters defend this malignant journalism by arguing the leaks are in themselves “news”. Compounding the problem is most newspapers no longer value experience and have forced their older and most knowledgeable reporters to take buyouts. As a result, most newspapers lack editors who can readily identify a bogus story. To wit: a story earlier this year in the Los Angeles Times, a newspaper that has undergone massive layoffs, about associates of Sean Combs attacking rap artist Tupac Shakur with the former’s knowledge was almost instantly debunked by three experienced journalists at The Smoking Gun. Similarly, it took a seasoned reporter at the New York Post to ultimately expose the Spitzer administration’s Bruno smear campaign for what it was.
Those in favor of a Shield Law for reporters argue that protecting the media from revealing their sources is in keeping with the notion of the press as the Fourth Estate, a part of the checks and balances built into our system of government to prevent abuse of power. But the harsh reality is that such a shield will mostly serve to protect political hatchetmen like Darren Dopp and some of the still-unidentified dubious characters who leaked erroneous information about Dr. Hatfill to Ms. Locy. Reporters are rarely sued or pressured to reveal their sources when they get their facts correct.
Today’s media environment is nothing like it was in the late 1700s when the Fourth Estate concept took root. People do not have to rely on pamphleteers and underground newspapers to get an uncensored perspective on notable events in their homeland. This legacy of transparency and a free press is, without question, to America’s great credit and benefit.
But accountability is the price that the media should be required to pay for press freedom. It is the best protection we have against reporters who abandon their professional obligations and ethical responsibilities. Passing a Shield Law will only serve to cripple that defense.
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August 1, 2008 8:33 am : Comments 001
Among the many reasons I think so highly of my colleagues here at S&A is that they have all advanced themselves professionally by the sheer strength of their talent, enthusiasm, and strong work ethic, not by their ability to play the “corporate politics” game. While it is commonly said that 20 percent of employees do 80 percent of the work within any organization, that is most definitely not the case here. Every member of the S&A team is in full swing well before most companies’ employees are just clocking in for the day.
Given the high performance bar that these employees set, S&A can be a rather daunting place to work, especially for a college junior. Our exacting internal standards coupled with the sophisticated client projects we undertake and the mach speed at which we often work can tax the most ambitious college student. Understandably, we don’t expect our interns to keep up with the pace. We simply expect that they truly partner with us to make their internship a meaningful learning experience.
As I’ve written before, we participate in an internship program by Holy Cross that has been an incredible experience for us. We learned of Holy Cross’ internship program through one of their graduates that we had hired. It’s a rather novel approach – we provide the learning opportunity and, as long as there is a Holy Cross grad on staff, the school’s alumni organization takes care of paying the intern’s seasonal stipend. Every Holy Cross student and graduate that has walked through our door has vastly exceeded our expectations. This summer was no exception.
We had the distinct pleasure to work this summer with Kaitlyn Curley, who became a critical member of our team almost from the moment she arrived. Kaitlyn doesn’t just seek to perform tasks – she strives to understand the rationale behind them, to identify trends, to spot parallels. Her analytical skills are quite impressive. As a result, Ms. Curley took on considerably more responsibility than we anticipated with amazingly little direction.
Kaitlyn has a great work ethic. She always arrived on time and often worked well beyond her designated departure time to finish her projects, even when they weren’t due for another day or two. When given assignments, she would take copious notes and ask insightful questions to ensure she had what she needed to complete the task with exceptional speed, accuracy, and proficiency. We never saw Kaitlyn websurfing, talking to friends, or working on personal matters while on “company time.”
To say that Kaitlyn is quiet is an understatement. She is one of those people who you never know quite what they are thinking and, like my colleagues Jackie and Jeff, can keep her opinions and emotions VERY close to the proverbial vest. I also know that she plays lacrosse, as I caught her one night trying to quietly sneak past my door in her field attire. Although Kaitlyn is slight of build, I strongly suspect she is a terror with a lacrosse stick. You know what they say about the quiet ones – they’re always the ones you have to watch out for!
Today is Kaitlyn’s last day with us, and we are all noticeably disappointed for it. We will miss her spirit, her great work, her strong ideas, her fresh enthusiasm, and her company. Good luck in school this year, Kaitlyn, and don’t forget to call us first when looking for your first full-time job. It would be our great honor to have you back on board.
I’ve often wondered if Holy Cross makes its students great or if it simply has a knack for attracting great students. Regardless, I’m impressed how everyone I’ve met from this well-respected institution is intellectually well-rounded and inculcated with enviable values and discipline. If anyone knows of a Holy Cross graduate interested in initiating or continuing their career in public relations, please send them our way.
Let’s just say that résumés with Holy Cross on them tend to move to the top of the pile at S&A.
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April 22, 2008 1:07 pm : Comments 000
I confess to taking a real pleasure in the pounding Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos are getting for their role as moderators in last week’s debate between Senators Obama and Clinton. Even the mainstream media has expressed outrage for the pompous and insubstantial questions posed by Messrs. Gibson and Stephanopoulos, which were clearly intended to provoke rather than elicit intelligent insight. This cartoon best says it all.
So I was understandably taken aback to read Don Hewitt, a veteran broadcaster and the director and producer of the Kennedy-Nixon debate of 1960, actually defending Messrs. Gibson and Stephanopoulos. Mr. Hewitt told The New York Times that a debate entails “a big dose of show biz” and “trying to keep an audience”.
“When you’re in television, that’s your job,” he is quoted as saying.
Fair enough. But given that presidential candidates now make the rounds on entertainment talk shows, appear on “Saturday Night Live”, and even do videos for World-Wide Wrestling Entertainment, why bother with the debates if their sole purpose is to simply create some more “show biz”? We get enough of that from them already.
Alternatively, if the debates are merely entertainment, perhaps the networks should consider asking comedians Jay Leno or Conan O’Brien to serve as moderators. Not only would the ratings go up, my guess is so would the level of discourse.
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April 18, 2008 2:19 pm : Comments 000
When a company is coming under fire from the public and media, you can count on their related official statements sounding anything but meaningful or spontaneous. Such statements are often perfunctory at best and clearly written with kid gloves snuggly fitted on the committee of writers’ hands. As a result, the issued statement is invariably bland, sweepingly broad, and peppered with enough “PR-speak” so that it doesn’t say very much at all. Example:
Reporter: “How can the company justify paying 300 times book value to acquire a failing company owned by the CEO’s son-in-law?”
Spokesperson: “NEWCO is proud of its corporate governance practices and its commitment to increasing shareholder value. We look forward to expanding the NEWCO brand through this merger of equals.”
Ok, so maybe I’ve crafted more than a few statements in PR-speak myself.
That said, how incredibly liberating to come across a corporate comment in the newspaper that not only speaks directly to the issue, but does so with real gusto…a statement that puts the inquiring reporter in his place and publicly questions his news judgment….a statement where the spokesperson stops being a shiny, happy person for a millisecond to say what he or she is really thinking.
Surprisingly, such a statement was issued by none other than CBS News. In response to a question about the embattled Katie Couric possibly – but not definitely – but, let’s face it, increasingly likely – “barring a change” – possibility of quitting as the anchor of “CBS Evening News”, CBS issued the following statement to the New York Post:
“We think readers are extraordinarily bored with this infantile and nasty pilling on… and will continue to focus not on baseless rumor and conjecture, but on the quality and depth of the broadcast – which is second to none.”
Wow – that’s a big change from the more traditional “we’re very proud of…” and “we have no plans for any changes regarding…” statements reportedly issued earlier.
Alas, the Post didn’t report whether a name was attached to the more recent statement, so I don’t know the identity of the verbal sharpshooter. But whoever you are, I applaud your courage and candor. I’d be delighted to buy you a drink.
Something tells me you could use one.
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April 17, 2008 7:45 am : Comments 001
I had lunch this week with a broadcast reporter whose honesty and integrity I truly admire. Having just completed an impressive in-depth feature on a high-profile story, he talked about how dismayed he was about the underwhelming quality of the reporting done elsewhere. It turns out that much of the information that had earlier been put forward as fact proved to be inaccurate and even fabricated. “You know it’s scary just how easy it is to manipulate the media,” he said.
My lunch companion was not the first respected journalist to privately share concerns about the decline of the journalism profession and fellow reporters’ ability to fairly and correctly present facts. Regret the Error, a website that “reports on media corrections, retractions, apologies, clarifications, and trends regarding accuracy and honesty in the press” serves as an ongoing reminder how far journalism standards have plummeted.
More so than ever, the media business has become just that – a business. Daily newspapers have fallen most precipitously – they are now for the most part being run by profit-seeking, non-journalist executives looking to generate profits rather than play the historic noble role of Fourth Estate. While that may not necessarily be a bad thing in theory, it certainly is when the intense bottom line focus leads to the wholesale firings of seasoned reporters and editors with invaluable experience and irreplaceable institutional knowledge. That’s how you wind up with bogus stories like the one The Los Angeles Times had to retract about associates of Sean Combs attacking rap artist Tupac Shakur with the former’s knowledge. Three veteran journalists from The Smoking Gun immediately realized the story “did not pass the smell test” and quickly debunked it. As the saying goes, there is no substitute for experience.
While many seasoned reporters are at least privately acknowledging that the profession needs to collectively run a tighter ship, there are others who suggest that it needs even greater latitude. Among them is Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of The Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press (RCFP), an organization founded in 1970 by the sorts of journalism heavyweights that have no modern day counterparts, including J. Anthony Lukas, Ben Bradlee, Eileen Shanahan, and Tom Wicker. The organization focuses its efforts largely on First Amendment and freedom of information issues.
Ms. Dalglish is the person reporters invariably call when the news-gathering process becomes the news itself. A very recent example would be the shamefully errant reporting in several publications that repeatedly linked Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, a former Army bioterrorism expert, to the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people. However, according to U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, “there’s not a scintilla of evidence to suggest Dr. Hatfill had anything to do” with the anthrax attacks. Click here for an earlier post with the details.
Dr. Hatfill is seeking legal retribution for having his reputation unfairly and probably forever tarnished. He also reasonably wants to know who provided the damaging misinformation about him to Toni Locy, the USA Today reporter who wrote the stories that maligned him. Ms. Locy has so far refused to divulge the information and Judge Walton has not only held her in contempt, he has ordered that she, and not USA Today, be charged hefty punitive fines as a result.
Ms. Dalglish and the RCFP are valiantly trying to leverage Ms. Locy’s plight to pressure Congress to pass a federal shield law that would protect reporters from ever having to disclose their sources. Ms. Dalglish has publicly portrayed Ms. Locy as a First Amendment crusader and her profession’s latest Joan of Arc.
Personally, I view Ms. Locy’s reporting and the subsequent stories that led to her self-created predicament as the best argument against passage of a federal shield law. No matter how I look at it, I cannot see how the public good is best served by giving reporters carte blanche freedom to publish poorly sourced – or worse, wholly unsourced – and inaccurate stories without the possibility of legal ramifications. Journalists are fed false information every day by parties with hidden agendas. This misinformation is often innocuous, but other times the results are far more dire with the reporter serving as a mere pawn in someone’s propaganda game.
Keeping journalists subject to possible court-mandated source disclosures for erroneous stories compels them to be a lot more selective about the sources they rely on and are willing to go to the proverbial mat for. The U.S. press is free to publish anything it wants, but like any other business, it should ultimately be held accountable for acting recklessly and irresponsibly. Rest assured, if Congress doesn’t pass a shield law, Ms. Dalglish will have no shortage of journalists whose erroneous reporting she will be called on to defend.
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