Monday, September 15, 2008

Senior news editor at McClatchy slams blogger in email


Linda Williams, senior news editor at McClatchy's News & Observer in Raleigh, sent a blistering email to blogger G.D. Gearino over a post about Linda Williams that called into question the N&O’s public stance of non-partisanship.

Here is the shocking email McClatchy's Linda Williams sent to Gearino:

What a sanctimonious, phony gasbag you are. Your recent posts are certainly revealing of your own utter lack of integrity. I recall an e-mail I received from you once in which you were praising me for a comment I made which you interpreted as being anti-liberal. I also recall that you sent that message to several people here at the paper.

Now you have seized upon a short commentary I made on how some of readers might discuss stories on our front page because of their own experiences to puff up your skinny little chest in outrage. Your interpretation was wrong then and it’s wrong now. But why the double standard?

I can only conclude that like so many of your ilk who cowardly rail from the safety of your keyboards that you have concluded that perpetuating the big lie is more lucrative.

I have absolutely no doubt that my professional integrity would hold up to any serious scrutiny of how I do my job. You’re shown during a series of inaccurate posts recently that you have no integrity, professional or otherwise.

Whether you choose to share this with your readers in its entirety will also shed light on your character.
Good grief. This diatribe was written by the senior editor at the News & Observer?! The News & Observer needs to give Linda Williams some administrative time off. And anger management classes.
.
Gearino calmly gets to the point about Linda Williams:

Let’s review: I print Williams’ memo, in full and without comment, and I am devoid of integrity. She responds with a semi-coherent, invective-ridden email containing the absurd claim that she was only expressing the thoughts of imaginary readers — and her integrity would “hold up to any serious scrutiny.” That might be the most laughable part of all.

Ladies and gentlemen, the posts on this matter have been your peek into the mind of the N&O’s second-ranking editor. And it comes to you through her own words, in full and verbatim. The real tragedy here is that many highly capable people labor under her supervision.

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18 comments:

Anonymous said...

Someone tell me why she's still employed?

Anonymous said...

Linda Williams is another McClatchy embarassment.

Anonymous said...

Still employed because she's a good journalist and keeps her opinions -- however unfortunately she phrases them -- out of the paper.

The idea of Gearino as some sort of arbiter of quality journalism is pretty funny. He was a do-little business editor who got shuffled over to write poorly reported feature columns.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like Williams is being affected by the McClatchy Syndrome...too much work, not enough people to do it because they were bought out or laid off, and afraid of losing her job too...oh yeah, and STRESS!...surprised I haven't seen this at more McClatchy papers. Check out Mark Vasche's diatribe at the Modesto Bee...
http://localsearch.modbee.com/sp?aff=100&keywords=mark+vasche&submit=+
Sounds like he is experiencing the same thing...any other papers experiencing the McClatchy syndrome?

Anonymous said...

Anybody who thinks Linda Williams is a "good journalist" needs to take a close look at how she handled Crystal Gail Mangum's false rape accusations against the Duke men's lacrosse team.

She may not be bigoted, but she has an agenda, and it bleeds into her work at the N&O.

Anonymous said...

Linda Williams a "good journalist?" Are you her Mommy?


This is the woman who admitted she "shaped" Magnum's interview, removing her lies about the "second dancer" which would have diluted the racial metanarrative. She edited the Samiha Khan propaganda piece wherein Magnum was referred to as "the victim" and described as a "good mother, new to dancing."

Many believe she was the "weekend editor" who ran the "wanted Poster" which made identifying the players so much easier for the racist Hate Group planning to march on campus to "interview them." Sill never denied it was Williams..only that there had not been "the discussion we needed to have."

Williams guided the early horrendous and biased coverage of the Lacrosse team.

She complained in print that, in death, Eve Carson was getting too much attention as the young real "victim" was about to be buried.

She imposes her world-view into the newsroom as evidenced by her memo. Of course, those who work for her will write with the slant that pleases her.

This is not respectable journalism. No wonder McClatchy is tanking. If we cannot trust our newspapers, we simply have no need of them.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, yeah, yeah. She wrote things she probably oughtn't to have. But she's pretty good.

There are plenty of screamers out there who have fixated on her as a result of the Duke case, but most of them don't really understand how newspapers operate. Top editors don't dictate a party line to reporters and editors below them. Can't be done. All the top editors take turns writing daynotes and they are taken by most people with an appropriate grain of salt.

As for the Duke thing, it's really become quite the little narrative of victimization. There really wasn't anyone to like in the whole case. Everyone -- Crystal, the defendants, Nifong -- deserved what they got.

The only big lessons to be learned: Never mock the stripper. Never lie about being raped. Never juice a case.

Thank god I have now ended this boring, boring controversy.

Anonymous said...

It is easier to understand your defense of Williams' and the N&O's early coverage of the Duke case, once we get to the sentence where you say the defendants "deserved what they got."

That you can make light of or rationalize innocent young men having to endure a year of hysteria, threats, and false accusation explains your approval rating of Williams as "pretty good."

She may be seen in the newsroom by her like-minded colleagues that way...but as one who is supposed to oversee a product that one can depend upon to be relatively accurate and unbiased, she is the poster girl for why the MSM is failing.

I doubt if it were you or your child in the "Wanted poster" or on the receiving end of the vitrol generated by the pink fussy Samiha Khan "interview" with Crystal or the exaggerated dirt seeking "Swagger story", that you would see Williams and her ilk as anything other than reckless hacks pushing their worldview into the workplace without regard for consequence or truth.

To others in the general public, Williams locally was at the front of a Media Mob that willingly carried water for a corrupt local politician because the metanarrative was so politically yummy.

When a newspaper like the N&O becomes so blatant and sensational that they function as the propaganda arm of a corrupt prosecutor's office; when their partisan politics are so discernable in their daily reporting that they drive away half their readership; when the newsroom worldview obscures or obstructs the actual facts of the story...that newspaper becomes unreliable. An unreliable newspaper is an unnecessary expense.

There's your trouble.

Anonymous said...

I was an Charlotte Observer staffer for 20 years. Near the end of my tenure I witnessed a nifty column titled " Thats Wassup" Get it anybody? I did not...Wassup is slang, not a part of proper language.

Anonymous said...

The N&O did a decent job on the story.

It was barking up the wrong tree with the swagger story, but the team members did swagger, and get arrested. If they had been reading to the blind it would have been a different headline. As for the Crystal Mangum interview, everyone wishes they had that one back, and this has been said publicly and often. Same with Sheehan's column.

But much of the aggressive reporting that shot the case down came from the N&O, and Linda Williams helped produce it. It started pretty quickly after a few early missteps.

The kids got railroaded, no doubt. But if they had been in the library instead of a beery party where people encouraged a stripper to stick things up herself, and where Duke kids shouted about cotton-picking, I don't think there ever would have been a story.

Two adages come to mind:

1.) Lie down with pigs, wake up in the muck.

2.) If you don't want it in the paper, don't let it happen.

Anonymous said...

Two of the three accused... as well as many of the other underclassmen... had no idea there would be strippers at the party. Your casual dismissal of what they and their families endured is truly offensive. You must be a journalist..you have the easy entitled detachment from the damage you freely inflict.

The arrogance of your reply indicates that you believe you have never yourself done anything stupid, like driving when you've had a little too much, returning an insult with an insult, giving into peer pressure, insulting the boss to other co-workers, telling an insensitive joke, staying at a lame party.Nothing . Never. Not one time. What a strange perfected life you must lead.

Any small moment like that, in the hands of a malevolent media and rogue prosecutor might turn your innocent but foolish moment into months of turmoil. It happened here. Don;t be so small minded to think it could never happen to you or yours. Nifong and the N&O showed us differently.

Are you saying because you have never had a small foolish mistake reverberate against YOU, even at 19 or 20 years old...that you need have no pity for others who DO fall into a vortex of fate like these Lacrosse players?

What arrogance!

You could get into an elevator with the wrong woman today, and your life could become a nightmare!

Williams made the decision to distort the original interview with Mangum. She removed Mangum's accusations against the second dancer to maintain the racial metanarrative. It would not do to have one Sister Survivor accusing another. Think how it might have mitagated the building racial animus against the Players if Mangum's lies about Kim had balanced the story. It would not have been just Black vs, White. And Kim might not have been so easy for Nifong to "flip."

At a time when the national media was looking to the local paper for some leadership on the story...how hard would it have been to uncover, in a city the size of Durham, that Mangum was an experienced prostitute that pole danced for over a year at a local club? New to dancing? A good mother? A crock! A lie pushed by the N&O under Williams direction. Sister Survivor left her kids and trolled regularly at motels. The cops KNEW her; they asked after her children.

The neighbors KNEW her too; they gave the truth to the reporter from NCCU, but in racial solidarity, she did not print it, though she voiced her concerns. How hard would it have been for the N&O to have looked into Mangum's life with the fervor they put into the "Swagger" story. Why was it NOT done EARLY ENOUGH to stop the madness?

No,instead Williams help prop up Mangum at every opportunity. Her criminal record was buried in the first story it graced.No effort was made to balance the Girl Scout image the N&O had concocted for MONTHS.

Stories about the Accused living in "big houses with wide lawns" stirred further class envy. the N&O was relentless!

While Mangum's troubled, seamy lifestyle was ignored by the N&O, Williams et al worked overtime to build hatred toward innocent kids...before the facts of the case were known. Who could ever justify the decision to run the "Wanted Poster" at a time when Black Militants were coming to town ARMED to "interview" the kids during EXAM WEEK when they could not leave. So the N&O provides a photo worksheet to find them! Who authorized THAT?" Williams again?

In truth, the N&O should be sued out of existance. Williams did her share to build a legacy of distrust and disgrace. That you would defend Williams and the N&O and smear their victims is telling of your common journalistic arrogance.

Anonymous said...

As for the Duke thing, it's really become quite the little narrative of victimization. There really wasn't anyone to like in the whole case. Everyone -- Crystal, the defendants, Nifong -- deserved what they got.

Excuse me. You are saying that Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty, and David Evans and their families got what they deserved? By what standard? Because of their home addresses, by their race, by where they went to school?

Crystal Mangum broke the law. She received no punishment. Michael Nifong committed felonies. He got a day in jail. The police committed felonies. The "rape" nurse Tara Levicy fabricated reports, which is a felony.

None of those people had a second of punishment. They did not get what they deserved, and, in fact, the only people who really received harsh punishments by having to endure the hell of this false prosecution were the only people in this sorry affair who told the truth: the lacrosse players.

Anonymous said...

I will add that Nifong, Mark Gottlieb, Ben Himan, and others committed perjury during the Bar hearings. Were any of them prosecuted?

Himan wanted to have Reade Seligmann charged with obstruction of justice because his attorney, Kirk Osborn, put Reade's alibi on his firm's website. Remember that the police and Nifong REFUSED even to look at Seligmann's alibi and would not permit it to be in their files.

But, you still are insisting that Reade got "what he deserved"? Unbelievable. I am sure that if you had been in Reade's shoes, you would be howling right now about how you were treated unjustly.

Anonymous said...

Dear god, it's all so dull.

Anonymous said...

Dear god, it's all so dull.

September 17, 2008 10:36 AM


Spoken with the moral detachment that is accelerating the end of your industry. And the vacuousness of one who has nothing with which to defend his inane argument.

We find our own delight in how irrelevant your mindset has made your own livelihood.

Anonymous said...

Sooooo dull.

Can't you people get some cats or something? Take up scrapbooking?

Anonymous said...

In a way, we are scrap-booking. We are gathering all the "mementoes" of the bias, sloppiness, false information, and unreliable swill that passes for "journalism" these days. The Duke Hoax is just one excellent example. We have pages and pages adorned with journalist's "work product" that demonstrates all of the above. But of course, there is so much more. You are too generous.

You are in the information business. When, time and again, the information you provide to your readers is unreliable or skewed by the "agendas" of individual reporters and writers, you are no longer necessary. We pay you, by buying the newspaper, to get FACTS.

Readers can get half-baked gossip at the front of the grocery check-out line. They can get opinion at the Barber shop or hair dresser. Simply put, newspapers like the N&O cannot be relied on anymore. You got almost all your early reporting on the Duke Case wrong. Why pay for a poor product? Unless of course, one DOES have a cat, and a litter box.

Posts from journalists with your mindset are a great addition to our scrapbook too. We could ask for no better example than you yourself have provided here with your attitude about the N&O and their journalistic responsibilities to their paid readership.

Professionally (and I would guess personally), you are "detached" from the N&O's responsibility to bring FACT to their reader...as if accuracy was too high a bar. In fact, Drescher has made statements that indicate getting the story RIGHT is secondary to getting it out before the competition. Your posts indicate how easily you shrug off inaccuracy..when accuracy is really all we need any newspapers for!

You also demonstrate another quality we believe rampant in your industry...your moral detachment to the responsibility you have as a supposed "professional" to the very real people whose lives are forever smeared by the sloppiness, sensationalism, and slanted reporting you call "your job." You are the surgeon who just cuts the patient anywhere and then shrugs as he leaves the OR. Hey, that's showbiz!

We GET that. But, thank you for exposing the callous attitude behind the keyboard that sets out junk and juiced up metanarrative without regard to damage it causes.

Journalists like you are killing what is left of your industry. The public won't pay for unreliable product anymore. The peak behind the curtain at editors like Williams and so-called "professionals" like you are the finishing touches on the "Scrapbook" of your own industry's demise. We are overwhelmed with "mementoes" that you have so willingly provided, year after year.

But we still have room for all the pretty pink slips that are coming...

Anonymous said...

Who's we, Mr. Anonymous?