Bureau Chief Runs Column by Democrat, Gets Fired by AP

[Coexist]

This great diary on Kos caught my eye this morning.

Unreal. Partisanship taken to new heights. Even more frustrating is that part of the reason was this silly journalist didn't hop on the 'fluff' bus:

But this story is more complicated than just a straight case of "media being terrified of looking liberal" or "media suppresses Democratic voice," whichever your preference may be. But the deeper story shows even more clearly the danger to our civic culture from the print media.

I've dug around, asking some other members of the Vermont media to find out more to the story. They mostly confirm the story above, saying that from what they know that was the immediate cause of the firing. But they also point to a previous paragraph in the Freyne story as equally important.


First, since former USA Today president and publisher Tom Curley took over the reins at AP in 2003, things have taken a turn for the worse. Graff isn't the first veteran AP bureau chief to get axed recently. Curley's new Gannett-style policies and guidelines are being imposed with an iron fist by his new team of managers. There are complaints the news is being dumbed down by corporate, and the AP gold standard is being turned into cow flop.

Basically, according to my sources in the VT media, the AP has been making a real effort to fluff out their news, doing more stories on entertainment and celebrity journalism. The hard news that the AP provided local papers for years was being replaced by, for lack of a better term, more easily-digested news. Chris Graff wasn't on board, wasn't a "team player" in this new reality. He continued to focus on hard news, legislative stories, issue packages, that sort of thing, and the corporate hierarchy didn't like it. So there was tension, and then, when the Leahy column was spiked, it was either the straw that broke the camel's back, or the excuse they needed, depending on whom you ask.

[w4rma]

1. Don't trust the editors at the Associated Press. (nt)

[TechBear_Seattle]

3. I remember when the AP tagline meant "journalism"

How sad that it now means "Fox." The last US source of reasonably balanced news has been eliminated.

[Coexist]

4. the sale of Knight Ridder sounded a death knell to me.

They were/are great journalists.

[napi21]

2. The print mdeia keeps crying about losing readers.

They blame it on cable, and the internet, but I think they need to take a hard look at themselves. For some foolish reason, they seem to think they're supposed to be entertainers instead of news instruments. Someday, when there are no more newspapers, maybe some of the old editors will recognize it was THEIR FAULT for pushing a product nobody wanted!

[Coexist]

5. Friday UPDATE for those interested - O'Reilly feud mentioned:

http://www.reformer.com/editorials/ci_3634369

Censure in Vermont
Reformer.com

Two recent incidents involving Graff come to mind.

In January, right-wing talk show host Bill O'Reilly launched an attack against Chittenden Superior Court Judge Edward Cashman for being too lenient in sentencing a child molester.

Graff wrote a pair of stories that debunked O'Reilly's central argument, that Cashman is a crazy liberal judge who said that he "does not believe in punishment." While WCAX-TV misreported what Cashman said and sparked O'Reilly's jihad against Vermont, Graff got the court transcript and reported Cashman's actual words.

As a result, Graff, along with this newspaper, the Bennington Banner and the Rutland Herald, were singled out for weeks of abuse by O'Reilly for being insufficiently anti-Cashman for his taste.

<snip>
The AP didn't see it that way. They removed Leahy's column from the Vermont Sunshine Week package. Apparently, they believed that running a opinion piece -- clearly marked as such -- by a politician without a rebuttal from someone with an opposing viewpoint was wrong.