Politics: Springfield newspaper providing top-notch coverage of Peoria politician
Journal Star readers hungry for coverage of the issues in the 18th District might want to start reading the State Journal Register. Political columnist Bernard Schoenberg tried to get Aaron Schock to name even one of the ‘knowledgeable people” who advised Schock that it was a good idea to advocate selling nuclear weapons to Taiwan. Schoenburg, I gather, strongly suspects that Schock’s only adviser on the matter was his campaign manager, Steve Shearer, who recently worked for 11th District Congressman Jerry Weller. You might recall that Weller was noted for marrying the daughter of genocidal Guatemalan dictator, who also is the leader of a vicious right-wing political party in her own right.
This is Schoenberg’s third column on the Schock/Taiwan story. Springfield isn’t even in the 18th District, although parts of the paper’s circulation are.
Here in Peoria — the largest city in the 18th District and the city in which Schock lives — the Journal Star’s coverage of the issue is meager. The PJS’s lead reporter in the 18th District race is Karen McDonald. To date, her byline has appeared above one single article dealing with the controversy, the one in which Schock admitted to a mistake. McDonald attended the announcement in which he detailed Schock’s Taiwan proposal, but her article didn’t even mention it. She did no reporting on the uproar that followed Schoenberg’s column about it and has done no follow up reporting on what has been the single biggest story coming out of the 18th District race so far. She attended a candidate’s forum at which Schock and his two primary foes appeared, and her only mention of the controversy is that no one brought it up.
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
Parts of the city of Springfield are in the 18th Congressional District — the Republican-voting parts placed there to give Ray LaHood a supposedly safe district to be reelected in.
As for Karen McDonald, you have no idea, and neither do I, how heavily her stories were edited or cut. So stop blaming her. Several editors read every political story before it runs in the JS. Unlike a blog, a daily newspaper is the product of a large group of people, and everyone has some input.
And as you know, reporters at the JS are protected by a union, and reporters can demand that their bylines by taken off articles.
If there are editors at the JS who are taking fair but tough articles on this race and turning them into the sort of mush that is seeing print, then I want to hear the names of those editors.
You recently worked there, Elaine. So you tell me: Who are the editors who are protecting Aaron Schock?
And another thing …
You realize, don’t you, that your argument that reporters cannot be criticized for the failings of the articles with their bylines effectively means that there can be NO fair criticism of newspaper reporters at all? Good Lord, what a crutch that is.
Bill,
The key word here is FAIR. A vast majority of your commentary regarding the PJS and specifically Karen McDonald is UNFAIR, snide and petty.
“Unfair,” “snide” and “petty” are subjective terms. And you are entitled to your opinion.
I have made en effort to point out what i feel is evidence that the Journal Star’s coverage of the Aaron Schock campaign is far less than what it should be. I believe I have done so.
And I have done so under my own name.
Thanks for your input.
Billy is right. Period.
For a blogger to suggest that no reporter can be “blamed” because we don’t know how deeply a story was edited is just plain goofy. If this was an isolated incident, perhaps. But it is an ongoing problem at that paper since Schock first ran for state Rep.
Reporters often turn in their stories which then are not edited until hours or even days later. They usually don’t see the final edit, which might vary according to the edition, space available, etc.
It’s certainly fair to criticize the JS’s coverage, but not to blame it only on one person, because the critic does not know the facts, does not have complete information on what happened, etc.
As for who is to blame for coverage on Schock, I have no idea. The editorial last week was hardly a softball.
Elaine: I have never worked at a newspaper in which reporters routinely turned in their articles, left, only to have the editor mangle them without any input whatsoever, days later.
Oh, I’ve had editors screw things up. But never to the extent that would have had to happen for the JS to turn out the weak reporting I’ve been seeing on Schock. Are you suggesting that Karen McDonald wrote an article that INCLUDED the part about arming Taiwan with nukes only to see some editor take it out? If so:
1. Then the Journal Star needs to fire them some editors, quickly, for being so clueless as to news judgment. Good lord.
2. Then there’s an editor at the Journal who’s a chicken-sh*t coward for letting McDonald take the heat over this in the Blogosphere.
There’s a word that’s in vogue in the media these days. It’s “transparency.” It means that the media lets the public in on how and why editorial decisions are made. Doing so gives the reading public a reason to believe they can trust the media. Because when the public isn’t given an explanation, the public comes to it’s own conclusions about why the editorial decisions are made.
But to suggest, as you have, the lack of transparency on the part of the Journal Star somehow morally requires me to NOT level criticism on the ONE person whose name is on the articles I criticize is incredible to me.
If it’s YOUR name on top of a story, it’s YOUR responsibility. Accept ownership of the problem, and you accept the ability to fix the problem.
When it comes to coverage of Schock, why is it that NO ONE (paper or BLOG) will discuss the elephant in the room???
Not only are parts of Springfield in the 18th, a SIGNIFICANT part of Springfield is in the district. Most- if not all- of Springfields 10th, 9th, and 4th wards as well as a good part of the 8th ward are all in the 18th. Those wards also make up an even larger percentage of the GOP Primary Vote.
Roughly 60% of the 18th vote lies OUTSIDE the Peoria Tri-County area. In case you didn’t know that.
Bill — I personally have had controversial sections of stories I turned in cut out later by editors! It’s not unusual.
The JS operates 18 hrs a day. Reporters who come to work at 9 a.m. can hardly be expected to stick around until 9 p.m. to see the final edit. Or give up a vacation or weekend day to check it. Sometimes reports from 2 or more cities are combined by editors into one story, which may have happened in the Schock story.
Let me say it again: the JS is a “group-think” operation, so individuals should not be singled out except in extraordinary situations, and then only if you know the facts. The same is true of the editorial board — which is why the editorials are not signed. The stand an editorial takes is a group decision. A newspaper is not a blog! That is its strength as well as its weakness, I guess.
That said, I agree with your criticism of the JS for not reporting the Schock comment in a timely manner– just not with your attack on the reporter who may be blameless.
“Let me say it again: the JS is a “group-think†operation … ”
That says a lot.
“The editorial last week was hardly a softball.”
I believe the editorial department is completely separate from the news department, no? That’s what they tell me, anyway.
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I have lived in Springfield for two years and still don’t know the exact boundaries, but based on the location of LaHood’s Springfield office a little east of White Oaks Mall I presume that a lot of the city north and west of there is in the 18th. This includes some of the most sought-after residential areas.
The area down by Lake Springfield and the UIS campus (where I live) is in John Shimkus’ 19th district. Believe it or not there’s even a tiny sliver of the 17th district running through the city… it’s part of the gerrymandering that was done to squeeze heavily Democratic Decatur into that district.
I was actually kind of disappointed to find out, when I registered to vote, that I was not in the 18th. I’m going to miss out on all the fun : (
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I used to be a newspaper reporter (though not at the Journal Star) so I am familiar with the editing process.
It’s true that reporters usually have nothing to do with the headlines that go over their articles — that’s done by copy editors who sometimes don’t interpret the article the way you intended, or choose to highlight something other than your intended lead. This can cause all kinds of embarrassment at times. So, 99 percent of the time, you should NOT blame the reporter for the headline.
As far as actual editing of the story goes, in my experience the editor would normally let me know what he or she was cutting out of the story and explain why. Usually it was dispensable information. Never once did I have really, really important information (something equivalent to Schock’s nukes-in-Taiwan comment) cut over my objections.
However, it could very well be that the PJS editors are more aggressive about cutting stories than others, and more aggressive about promoting an agenda, as evidenced by their coverage of the Kellar Branch Line trail issue.