The Raleigh News & Observer made me an offer

Readers’ Note: What I’m about to say will shock many of you who know I’m often critical of the McClatchy Company’s liberal trending left Raleigh News & Observer.

I’ve been invited to join the N&O’s editorial staff.

The offer came from the N&O’s executive editor for news, Melanie Sill, who wrote:

If you'd like to take part in our front-page meetings, held weekdays at 4:30 p.m., contact Becky Beach at bbeach@newsobserver.com or 829-8949.

Melanie placed her offer at the bottom of her column in Sunday’s paper, so that it could be delivered directly to my driveway.

Although I’m eager to help the N&O and believe improving the paper will be easy, I think I should ask Melanie some questions before accepting her offer.

I’d hate to get a few weeks into the job and find out that my ideas for improving the N&O didn’t fit with what the editors wanted to offer readers.

So I decided to write Melanie a letter, which is below this note. I welcome your comments.

I posted the letter on the thread of a post at the Editor Blog where Melanie also made her offer.

A final item: I’m under the impression that many of you may also have been invited to join the N&O’s editorial staff.

I hope you’ll give your offers some thought and perhaps write your own letters asking Melanie any questions you may have. I’ve put a link to the Editor's Blog post and thread at the end of my letter.

John
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Dear Melanie:

Thank you for your offer of a position on your front-page editorial staff.

Before accepting, I want to ask a few questions:

We’re just a little more than a week away from the five-month anniversaries of the N&O’s publication on Mar. 24 of the story which “broke” what was then called “the Duke lacrosse case” (really an extraordinarily harmful hoax) and your Mar. 25 publication of the interview with the accuser who the N&O said was granted anonymity because that was what the N&O did for “victims of sex crimes.”

Both stories were, as you know, front-pagers.

Would you and the other editors agree if I suggested that on Aug. 24 we run a front-page story explaining why in our Mar. 24 story we seven times referred to the accuser as “victim” or with the possessive “victim’s” never once preceding them with a conditional qualifier such as “alleged?”

I know you’ve told readers what we did was “common practice”, but it's not, as evidence from our own N&O archives and reference to other newspapers make clear.

And while we’re explaining to readers why we cast the accuser as “the victim” and framed the lacrosse players as her victimizers, what would you and the other editors say to a front-page apology to the players, their families, and our readers?

If you can’t say how the other editors would feel about an apology, I can understand that.

But are you OK with making an apology?

I’ll help you write one and we can show it to other editors. If they won’t go along with it, you can always make the apology here at the Editor’s Blog.

What if I suggested that on Aug. 25 we publish the full, unedited transcript of the Mar. 25 interview with only the accuser’s ID material removed? Many readers have said doing that could help with our credibility problems.

You know that Mike Nifong didn’t start speaking publicly about Duke lacrosse until Mar. 27. I'd like to interview Nifong and ask him what he thought of our Mar. 24 and 25 stories?

Nifong was campaigning for office then, and I’m sure he read those stories and gauged their effect on public opinion in Durham.

I could also ask Nifong what he thought of Ruth Sheehan’s “Shut down the team” column. We published Ruth's column on the morning of Mar. 27.

I’ll bet Nifong read it before he gave his first interviews later that day. Political candidates always want to know what's in the morning papers before they meet with media.

I’ll ask Nifong if his ridiculing of the players and calling them hooligans for doing no more than following the advice of their counsels in his Mar. 27 interviews wasn’t influenced by Sheehan’s savaging of them that morning for doing the same thing.

Somehow, Melanie, a lot of the public is getting the idea that Nifong started the witch hunt. We need to let the public know about all the N&O did before Nifong began his part of the witch hunt.

What about a front-page series:"THE N&O LED AND NIFONG FOLLOWED?"

Thank you for your attention to my questions.

John
www.johnincarolina.com
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Editor's Blog post thread.