Panel Says Poor Standards Allowed Deception at USA Today
By JACQUES STEINBERG
Published: April 23, 2004
WASHINGTON, April 22 - A panel of independent journalists retained by USA Today has concluded that shoddy editing standards, fissures in newsroom communication and a "corrosive" atmosphere of fear allowed Jack Kelley, the newspaper's former star foreign correspondent, to fabricate and plagiarize articles for more than a decade.
USA Today, the nation's largest-circulation newspaper, reported the panel's major findings on Thursday, two days after Karen Jurgensen, its top editor since 1999, resigned over what she characterized as her failure to catch Mr. Kelley's deceptions sooner. At a hastily arranged gathering on Thursday night in the newspaper's headquarters in McLean, Va., two other senior editors - Brian Gallagher, Ms. Jurgensen's second in command, and Hal Ritter, the managing editor for news - announced that they, too, were resigning.
Mr. Gallagher, executive editor since 2002, said he would remain at the newspaper but had yet to resolve with the publisher "what comes next." Mr. Ritter, who joined the newspaper three months before it began publishing in 1982 and had been in his current post since 1995, said he was leaving USA Today.
The announcements came as the newspaper's staff was still coming to grips with the panel's finding that "the malfeasance of Jack Kelley" was far more extensive - and had been conducted over a longer period of time - than was previously known.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/23/business/media/23PAPE.html
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