By Michael Miner
It was no big deal. Bey’s story was better. When he realized he’d lost his exclusive he’d gone back to work and come up with a new paragraph in which the mayor reminisced about growing up in a bungalow. Besides, the Tribune had none of the Sun-Times’s illustrations. What’s more, stories about bungalows aren’t how the dailies keep score. But because the next lost exclusive might be catastrophic, the Sun-Times immediately reformed its procedures. The Web-site editors were ordered to call the news editor every night at ten and go over the list of stories scheduled for print. Reporters called it the paper’s “fail-safe” system.
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There was one problem. Investigative reporters Abdon Pallasch and Chuck Neubauer were all set to go with a big story on how state supreme court justices from Cook County–principally Justice Charles Freeman–rewarded friends and political cronies by appointing them to the bench. The story was scheduled to run on Monday and it was too good to be anywhere but on page one. But Jackson’s photograph couldn’t wait. Even a front-page box alerting readers to Pallasch and Neubauer’s story inside the paper would spoil the visual effect of that sea of marathoners.
“On the bright side,” says Pallasch, “this gave us a situation where we were able to provide the main subject of the story with a copy of the story 24 hours in advance of publication–and he didn’t find any errors.” Justice Freeman read the story on-line Monday morning, and someone who called the paper on his behalf to complain about its “snotty tone” didn’t accuse it of any factual errors. That could only have been good news for the paper’s libel attorneys.
Fluff With a Cherie on Top
“Can you find me a Susie?” Cooke asked Tetzlaff.
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