Hey Network Newspeople, America Doesn’t Really Want To Reach Out That Way

On The Media spoke last week with Don Corrigan, editor of The Webster-Kirkwood Times, a small community paper published weekly. Two years ago in his Missouri town, reporters at that paper found themselves covering — and in one instance witnessing — the murders of some friends and neighbors:

Probably the low point for me was a call about 1:30, 2 in the morning after this had happened, and The CBS Morning Show wanted an interview with our reporter who witnessed this firsthand. And I said, I’ll call her in the morning, she’s in no state to talk with anybody at this point, but I’ll let her decide whether she wants to talk to you. And I don’t want to really get down on the network in this case, ‘cause it may have just been an intern calling, but whoever it was just said, well, you have to understand that America wants to reach out to your reporter who went through this.

I said, well, you’re going to have to wait ‘til the morning ‘til I have a chance to talk to her and see if she wants to do this. And they said, well, you don’t understand, we go on the air in about three hours. We have to start arranging this now. And I said, well, that’s not my problem. And then it was sort of like they were upping the ante and saying, well, Katie Couric wants to reach out to your reporter. And I just said, look, I know you’re trying to do your job. I’ve sort of been there myself.

Finally, this comes out: If I don’t get this interview, my boss is going to kill me. I thought to myself, well, if your boss kills you, The Webster-Kirkwood Times will reach out to you.

In my twenty-plus years in television, I was only a party to something like this twice. I well remember sitting in meetings, pumped and telling each other how vital what we were doing was. My career focus was more advocacy than journalism, but those couple instances expedited my departure from the field.

Corrigan was a guest for his piece in the Winter 2009 issue of Nieman Reports which is all about the aftermath of tragedy and violence. “Journalists are joined by trauma researchers and survivors themselves in telling their stories in their own voices. We invite you to listen in.”

Corrigan shares some lessons learned that all media outlets could benefit from:

I’d argue that some longlasting personality changes have taken place—with or without drugs—on the news-editorial side of our weekly operation since February 7, 2008. At the Webster-Kirkwood Times, we are kinder and gentler with each other. In our news and editorial department, there is less excitement over “big stories” breaking or at criticism from readers directed our way. Perhaps we are shell-shocked. Perhaps we presume we have been through the biggest and ugliest story of our journalism careers.

I felt just a twinge of regret for bashing Jon Stewart over not bringing a bloviating Brian Williams down a peg in last week’s interview. But I have some real reason to have serious doubts that the guys and gals at Williams’ level have even the slightest real sense of what the people they “cover” are about. I hope I live to see the day that the television news formats — cable, the evening news, local TV, morning shows — that now dominate are either radically reformed or long dead and gone.

The photo above, by Diana Linsley of the Webster-Kirkwood Times, accompanies Corrigan’s story.