Ryan Bird wasn’t impressed.
After being featured in The Herald Journal about his involvement in Herm’s Inn, a new restaurant in a recently restored historic building in Logan, Bird felt that he was inaccurately portrayed.
“They didn’t even ask what my role is,” Bird said. “They said I was the manager when I am actually one of the five owners.”
Bird didn’t feel as though the Logan-based newspaper’s reporter adequately prepared for the interview — and he isn’t alone in feeling misrepresented. The Herald Journal — Cache County’s primary professional news-gathering organization — often finds itself on the wrong side of public opinion.
Doug Snow, an assistant principal at Logan High School, said The Journal wrote an article about the new truancy policy at Logan High School that led readers astray.
“The reporter came and got the entire story from me and then omitted much of the information,” Snow said. “The Herald Journal made it sound like a strictly negative thing and it’s not.”
The Herald Journal didn’t include the positive reinforcement the school uses to reward good attendance, according to Snow. This was apparent to Herald Journal readers as well.
“I found Sunday’s article (“LHS to fine hall loiterers”) light on supporting information,” said Ed Rogers, a Herald Journal subscriber, in a letter to the editor on Feb. 21.
“I had so many phone calls from parents after the story came out,” said Andrea Connor, the attendance secretary at LHS.
Many readers are disenchanted with the local paper — and letters to the editor often reflect a frustrated tone.
“Shame on you for not upholding your own rules and regulation and letting political bias guide your selection of the letters to the editor to be printed,” said Ashley D’Antonio, a Cache Valley citizen, in a letter to the editor on Feb. 14.
“Strangely, though, a couple of weeks ago in this paper when information was given about each of the final six candidates, did you notice, as I did, that he (Doug Thompson) was the only one about whom no information was given? I trust this was just an oversight on the part of The Herald Journal and not a deliberate omission, because the many contributions made by him during his time as mayor ought to be well known by the people of Logan,” said Ross Allen, a Cache Valley citizen, in a letter to the editor on Nov. 1, 2011.
Managing editor Charles McCollum said negative feedback is common for community newspapers.
“We get a lot of complaints — usually about the play of stories, some are about the errors,” McCollum said. “If someone points out an error we correct it.”
McCollum said the newspaper rarely fact checks its reporters’ work — and some believe that practice could run contrary to the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics.
The code calls on journalists to “test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error.”
But Christopher Harper, associate professor of journalism at Temple University, said most newspapers depend on reporters to do their own fact checking.
Ana Daraban, who works in the breaking news and data center at The Salt Lake Tribune, said that’s similar to policies at the state’s largest newspaper.
“Nearly all of the fact-checking is done by the reporter. Then the section editors and copy desk personnel get into the scene and they double check items,” she said.
Even with the best of reporters, producing a daily newspaper that meets the standards and expectations of all of its readers is a difficult task.
The Herald Journal produces its news product with the support of reporters who don’t have college degrees, McCollum said.
“We have had tons of journalism students over the years,” he said. “They work part-time and not many people with a degree in journalism want to work part-time.”
Journalists don’t need degrees, necessarily, according to Harper. There is no license given to a journalist. Reporters are simply expected to adhere to the SPJ Code of Ethics.
Brooks Jackson, director of Factcheck.org concurs.
“It's just a matter of sensible quality control,” Jackson said. “It's a bad thing to the extent that incorrect information gets passed along. When there's too much, it's just bad journalism.”
Jill Dean, Kyndall Peterson, Paige Sjoblom, Aaron Griffiths, Cambria VandeMerwe, Heather Foster and Lauren Handy contributed to this story.
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