Chronically Inept
Last week, Rob Booth caught the Comical's Lucas Wall using old quotes from a Texans press release in his transportation column, which was noted here.
This week, Rich Connelly follows up with Mr. Wall:
The front of the local news section that day featured a story by transportation writer Lucas Wall saying that Metro was dumping its Park & Ride bus service to Houston Texans games; instead, everyone without a stadium parking pass would have to take the light rail and hunt for a parking space along the line. Which was kind of similar to a Hair Balls item that had been published five days earlier, but that's beside the point.
Wall's story looked like a press release, not because of its pollyannaish jump headline -- "Rail Can Save On Parking" -- but because...a lot of it came directly from a Texans press release. (A press release that by August 10 was two weeks old, but again, that's beside the point.)
The story highlighted two long -- and glowingly positive -- quotes from Texans executive Jamey Rootes and someone called Barry Mendel, the executive director of something called the Houston Downtown Alliance. Quotes that were taken directly from the Texans July 26 press release.
Wall said the "story had to be written in a very tight time frame" (guys, don't wait five days to pick up your copy of the Press) and the release "provided the information I needed from the team and the downtown alliance."
He said the story he filed included a reference to the press release, but the reference apparently was taken out for space reasons.
"I did not make a stink about the reference not appearing [in] the Texans rail story," he said by e-mail, "because I have a lot more important things to be concerned about."
Wall's claim that editors killed a reference to the press release isn't very convincing, because that would mean his columns are actually EDITED, and that's very difficult to believe.
Basically, that response to the best media critic in town amounts to, "I'm very important, Connelly, and you can just go eff yourself."
Nice.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 08/18/04 21:27 | Houston | Technorati
Previous Entry | Home | Next Entry
Comments
College newspapers and college student journalists are better than the Chronicle and Lucas Wall.
Posted by Anne @ 06:43 on 08/19/04
Chronicle editors remove references to press releases because they like their reporters to get information first hand. That's a laudable goal, but information contained in press releases have their place in the media maelstrom. It's silly to deny that by deleting the fact that a press release provided said information.
Posted by Jack Douglas @ 11:02 on 08/20/04
Add Comments
While it is not required, creating an account for commenting provides a number of benefits (such as comment editing and bypassing the captcha challenge). You may log in to your account here.
No flames or impolite behavior. Any questions, see the site policies. Older posts are moderated (because of spammers), so if your post does not appear immediately, that could be why.
HTML will be stripped. URLs will be transformed into hyperlinks.
[b]text[/b] will produce bold text. [i]text[/i] will produce italicized text.
Comments for this post must be approved before being published. Thank you!
BLOG
» Create Account
» Log In
DISCLAIMER
Content and design copyright © 1997-2008, Kevin Whited.
Posts represent the views of Kevin Whited (and occasional guest bloggers) only, and do not necessarily reflect the views of employers, family, friends, or significant others.