Last Thursday, the Columbia Journalism Review’s Observatory ran a cheery, and disturbingly off-center, story on the new science section in the McClatchy papers in North Carolina, including the Raleigh News & Observer and the Charlotte Observer.
In a brilliant instance of being unable to see the forest for the trees, the article breezily noted the good news (we all love science sections, don’t we?), and recapped a few recent stories. Rick Thames, the editor of the Charlotte paper, went on about how happy he was to use all the freelance writing talent available to him (he didn’t say what he was paying). The science section’s editor, Ann Allen, emphasized that she was featuring fresh and local coverage. The only hint that something more was going on came in the deck at the top of the post. Mysteriously, it referred to the science section as a “community journalism project.”
Editor Thames said it was a “head turn” that in these difficult times for print, he “was able to grow our newspaper.” (Important safety note: Never trust an editor who uses “grow” as a transitive verb.)
The piece was off-center because the news–and it was big news–came at the end. After all this making nice, Thomas K. Zellers, who wrote the CJR Observatory piece, finally got to the disturbing part: Thames, after deliberating over how he could fund a science section, came across a podcast of NPR’s Science Friday. “If NPR can find a way to support a weekly feature on science,” he remembered thinking, “why can’t a newspaper?”
Thames said he began a search for “someone in the local community” who would underwrite a science section. That helpful community resident turned out to be Duke Energy, one of the largest energy companies in the nation. What a nice story: An energy company helps support a local science section, enriching the community. Thames didn’t mention some of Duke Energy’s other contributions to science, such as doubling its spending to more than $10 million in 2008 and 2009 to fight legislation to cap emissions of carbon dioxide. That tidbit comes from the Charlotte Observer itself, Thames’s paper, in an article last October–before he started the Duke Energy science section.
Thames told CJR that when he presented the idea of science-section sponsorship to Duke, “Duke understood the concept immediately.” I’ll bet it did.
I’ll leave it to readers to scan back through the science section’s coverage of global warming since Duke took over the funding.
I’m deliberately being provocative here, because I think these kinds of arrangements deserve serious scrutiny. I don’t know whether this is right or wrong. Maybe this is a good thing. Politico.com and ProPublica.com are among new websites that have a single underwriter. So does the Tracker. That’s not necessarily bad.
But transparency is important. And so is the choice of underwriter.
CJR says that the McClatchy science sections run a disclaimer “informing readers that Duke plays no role in the editorial process.” That’s good. But I’m not in North Carolina, and when I looked at the science sections on the web, I didn’t see the disclaimer.
I’m not swearing it’s not there–I might have missed it. But if the idea is to be transparent, I shouldn’t be able to miss it. The Charlotte Observer has a sci-tech fan page on Facebook; I didn’t see the disclaimer there, either.
The Raleigh online version of the science section does include a little box entitled “Print Ads” which helpfully points to ads for Duke Energy. I didn’t see any disclaimer there, either.
I’m curious about the details of the relationship between Duke and McClatchy. If Duke has agreed to put down money to support the section for a year or two, we might argue that editors have some independence. If Duke is paying a monthly advertising bill, it could cancel at any time, such as when the section reports on global warming in a way that undermines Duke’s lobbying effort.
If Thames thought about any of this, he didn’t say so in a column he wrote announcing the section.
And where was CJR in all of this? Our leading press critic has a nice, meaty journalism story in its paws, and it delivers a fluffy bit of science cheerleading.
– Paul Raeburn
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