Mid-level muckety-mucks

Since the beginning of my career, I've made it a point to avoid top managers and editors as much as possible. While some of them are sharp, most of them are company men (or women) and would have no problem hanging a peon reporter or copy editor out to dry to cover their own butt. But the worst I've encountered so far have been mid-level managers, especially when they are intent are someday being top level at The Company.

This story from Angry Journalist #2266 sums it up nicely.

So I write a school board story for my state capital newspaper and file it. The next day, I come in to work and the phone rings almost before I sit down. It is the school board president, upset about the story. I don’t know what she’s talking about, but open the paper and say, OMG. Whoever edited the story had changed the lede paragraph and it was wrong as wrong can be. And the headline, based on the lede, was just as incorrect.

I apologize to her and promise that a correction will run the next day. I go looking for the city editor, who asks me to send him a copy of my original story and a correction. It starts out, “Because of an editing error…” The next day I come in and see the correction. “Because of an editing error” has been removed, so it looks like I was the one at fault.

It turns out the assistant city editor who edited the mistake into my lede and gotten hold of the correction and edited that, too. By this time, I’m being portrayed as an idiot on the comments section of the newspaper website and the superintendent of the district has called me to voice her anger. The ACE confesses to me that he changed my lede and then edited the correction to “make it read better,” insisting it was not to make himself look better. I tell him this has had a devastating effect on my reputation and could hurt my ability to cover the school district going forward (people on the website forum were asking for the reporter who previously covered the district to be brought back).

I ask for a re-correction that explains that the error was caused by an editor and was in no way the reporter’s fault. He refuses, saying “readers don’t care” who was responsible for the error. The correction he edited gave them all the facts they needed. He says the assistant managing editor for news backs him up. So I’m hung out dry, left looking like an idiot so an editor can be protected. Fuck that.