Kudos to the Journal for the Aug. 22 front-page news story “City Police Wrestle with Spike in Shootings,” in which reporter Astrid Galvan examined the recent increase in APD-involved shootings. City police have shot 10 people so far this year, and seven have died.

I wrote about the alarming rise in shootings on Journal Watch back in June and expressed my hope that the city’s only daily would continue to look into the circumstances of each incident.

Why? In my mind, police shootings are a critical barometer of the health and safety of a community. In a civilized society, we must depend on the police to protect us, but we must also have constant reassurance that they are not abusing the unique power that we as citizens bestow upon them. That is especially true when we are talking about police actions against the powerless and voiceless among us – who sometimes have no one else to speak for them. But we should also remember that the issue of police shootings of civilians could potentially affect any one of us who lives in Albuquerque.

Traditionally, asking tough questions about police conduct has been and should be a newspaper’s bread and butter. In the absence of strong voices from the community (or in addition to them), it is the media’s duty to ask questions like: Is there a pattern in these most recent police shootings? Was someone killed wrongfully? Could police policy be changed to prevent such shootings?

With Galvan’s story, the paper gets serious about asking these questions. The story contains a breakdown of crucial data about the shootings, including an aggregation of the details behind each, in an effort to elucidate themes or patterns behind them.
It also compares the rates of shootings in Albuquerque with rates regionally and nationally.

Today (Aug. 24), the paper followed up with an editorial calling for an independent party to take another look at the 10 shootings. In “Put Another Set of Eyes on APD Shootings,” the paper’s editors urge Mayor Richard Berry to follow through on his promise to find an independent agency to review the police shootings.

For me, here’s the money paragraph:

The killing of someone by an officer is the ultimate exercise of police power of the state. Its use should be rare; its examination rigorous.

Exactly. Kudos to Mayor Berry for pledging to “put another set of eyes” on these shootings, and kudos to the Journal for promising to hold him to it.

UPDATE:

One question the Journal didn’t ask about the police shootings – or at least didn’t make clear WHETHER it asked it – was whether the officer named Josh Brown who shot and killed Enrique Carrasco on Aug. 17 was the same officer Josh Brown who shot and killed Jay Martin Murphy in 2007.

It doesn’t sound like it’s the same police officer – according to an (unattributed) statement in an Aug. 18 story by Galvan, the Josh Brown involved in the most recent shooting had only been on the force for two years – and this was his first officer-involved shooting.

A quick check of The Albuquerque Tribune’s archives shows that the Josh Brown who shot Jay Martin Murphy in 2007 was a ten-year veteran of the force.

But it’s not like the Journal not to make something like that clear.  Someone else noticed – and asked me about the similar names.

So I put in a call to APD’s Internal Affairs to try to get the answer. If they call me back , I’ll let you know what I find out.

UPDATE II

APD Internal Affairs called back: Not the same guy.

When I saw the compelling video of the relatives of APD shooting victim Chris Hinz asking the city council to look into police actions surrounding his death all over the television news Monday night, I expected to read about it in the next morning’s Journal. (See KOB’s coverage here, and KOAT’s coverage here.)

I didn’t.

What I did find in my Tuesday morning paper, on the editorial page, was an editorial praising Mayor Richard Berry’s administration to the sky for its efficient bureaucracy and skill at saving the taxpayers various small sums of money by fixing a recalcitrant bus, axing a little-used recycling program and cutting city travel. (Read: “A Government That’s Here To Help – Really”)

Okay. But what about the part of the Berry administration that is responsible for some eight people losing their lives at police hands since Jan. 1?

The Journal did, in fact, deal with those grim and alarming numbers in a front page story on June 16. (Read: “APD Shootings Escalate; Eight So Far This Year”). And the paper wrote specifically about the Hinz killing shortly after it happened (Read “Police: Man In Standoff Had Rifle”) and later, with reaction from friends of the family, (Read: “Friends Criticize Police Shooting”) who were quoted calling Hinz a well-rounded and devoted dad who had showed no previous signs of distress.

But the Journal didn’t have anything about Hinz’s friends and family appearing at the city council meeting Monday night – and hasn’t carried anything about police shootings since.

Let me be clear – it is not just Hinz’s death I think readers should see answers about. I think people in Albuquerque deserve to know more about why so many people have died by police hand lately. Maybe it’s a coincidence…but maybe there’s a pattern there – something that needs to be addressed. Sure some of these guys were criminals – but that doesn’t mean the paper shouldn’t ask hard questions about their deaths and the deaths of anyone who dies that way.

That’s the classic role of newspapers – at least that’s what I understood when I was growing up.

The Journal does a great job uncovering waste in government and the bad acts of certain folks. And it started to do some good work on the police shootings – but it needs to follow up.

Maybe the Journal should put one of its investigative reporters on it.

Because it’s a matter of deadly importance to everyone who lives here.

Headlines only seem simple.

In fact, they do a lot – identifying stories and, often, getting to their essence, sometimes persuading us to read, alerting us to the story’s relative importance, conveying excitement and entertaining, too.

Headline writers accomplish all of that with three basic tools words, fonts and letter size – within space restrictions. Writing a good headline one column wide is no snap.

And unlike, say, the writers of advertisements, news editors share the responsibilities of reporters, including accuracy and fairness. (We’ll ignore those British-style tabloids that prize fun and fancy.)

In sum, headline writing is a complex art even before taking into account the temptation to be credulous, which two rubrics gracing the Albuquerque Journal’s “Metro & NM” page (C1) Thursday, May 27 brought to mind.

The first, “LULAC: Montoya Probe is Biased,” ran atop Dan Boyd’s story from the Journal Capital Bureau.

The colon made it clear that the “bias” opinion came from the League of United Latin American Citizens (or, as Boyd specified in his lead, “the New Mexico chapter of a national Latino civil rights group…”). This also established a proper distance between the actor in the story (LULAC) and the newspaper – as in “we didn’t say it, LULAC did.”

The second head, “Berry Has Eye on Efficiency, Transparency,” ran over staff writer Dan McKay’s report on the Albuquerque Mayor’s speech to the Chamber of Commerce a day earlier.

McKay’s lead paragraph did not, in fact, say much about “efficiency” or “transparency,” but the headline did summarize the story, so let that pass.

No, the problem lay in the headline writer’s certainty about Mayor Berry’s peepers.

Oh, I’m pretty certain the Mayor does want efficiency and transparency. But I don’t know that, not beyond a shadow of a doubt.

All I know is what the Mayor is saying. And McKay, who was there, wrote what he heard the Mayor say, not what the Mayor is thinking or eyeing.
So the following would be better headlines:

“Berry: Looking for Efficiency and Transparency” or “Berry Says He’s Seeking Efficiency, Transparency.”

Like the LULAC rubric, they would be accurate and would establish the proper distance between the actor in the story (Mayor Berry) and the newspaper.

It’s possible, of course, that Journal headline writers can see into the souls of the people in its narratives.

In which case, never mind.

I had been wondering when the Albuquerque Journal would offer up the story that appeared on the front page Monday, Feb. 22 about the mayor and the firefighters’ union.

What initially piqued my interest wasn’t the issue itself, but rather a column the Journal ran on its Op-Ed (opposite editorial) page on Feb. 15, entitled “Berry Gives AFD The Cold Shoulder” (subscription required). That particular column caught my eye because it obviously had not been edited.

The piece was written by a firefighter, who can’t be expected to know journalistic writing style, and the column’s blatant non-adherence to basic Journal style would have made it clear enough that no one at the state’s largest newspaper took the time to proofread and edit it.

But as further proof, a written piece with the exact wording by the same firefighter appeared Feb. 11 in the Weekly Alibi, four days earlier, boxed and labeled “Paid Advertisement.”

This post is not meant to pick on the firefighter’s column, but to question the Journal’s willy nilly publishing of columns, with little or no fact-checking or editing, a practice that turns the Op-Ed page into a “he said-she said” smorgasbord of opinions, without benefit of a reporter or staff columnist to sort it all out.

After noticing the firefighter’s column, I wondered whether the Journal would address the allegations it had made. Monday’s front-page story, as it turns out, did not. What it did explain is that union leaders at City Hall draw government salaries while working full time on union duties, a practice a District Judge ruled legal earlier this month. It then collected comments on the issue from city councilors, who predictably were split along party lines.

It did not address or even make reference to the allegations in the firefighter’s column, two of which warranted at least some reportage. These were that:

• In a time of financial hardship the mayor has hired a “well-known union-busting firm” that the firefighter says has a vested interest in “turning labor against the mayor.”
• The mayor’s chief administrative officer has repeatedly canceled meetings on ways the city can make up its budget shortfall.  Firefighter/columnist Mathew D. Blanchfield claims that his union has “ideas that could cut over a million dollars from (Albuquerque Fire Department’s) budget just this year.” What are those ideas?

This column was thrown at the public, with no follow up or indication of whether the firefighter’s allegations have any traction. Furthermore, it’s hard for readers to follow the story when so much time lapses between random “installments.” Monday’s “Union Work on City’s Dime” appeared a full week after the firefighter’s column (understandably because reporters’ attention necessarily was focused on the Legislature), and the firefighter’s Feb. 15 column was taking issue with a Journal story from Jan. 28.

That the Journal ran the firefighter’s column unedited was clear — even before discovering the identical copy in the Alibi ad — because of basic style errors Op-Ed page editors neglected to fix. The first paragraph referred to the union president as “Mr. Diego Arencon,” and the Journal, unlike The New York Times, does not use the term “Mr.” (And even the Times doesn’t use Mr. on first reference). Use of Mr. is not Journal style, which calls for use of full names on first reference, last name only after that.

In this particular column, an even more egregious example of editing neglect was the fact that the “Berry” in the headline was never explained as Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry in the column; any reader from out of town likely would have no clue as to who the “Berry” in the headline might be. While there are references to “the mayor”, the first doesn’t appear until the third paragraph. Berry is mentioned only once, and then only as “Berry” as part of a Journal story quote from Jan. 28.

The Journal has traditionally run guest columns on its Op-Ed pages, and up until 2001 I thought it a universal practice. I learned otherwise at a national seminar for editorial writers and editors that year, during which the Journal’s frequent use of lay columns — especially those by politicians — raised the eyebrows of the four other editors and writers in my seminar work group. Before the seminar, each of us had read a week’s worth of the others’ editorial pages in order to critique them. And all four of my colleagues – the editors of the super conservative Augusta (Georgia) Chronicle, the more liberal Toledo (Ohio) Blade, and Canada’s Calgary Herald, along with a capitol bureau chief whose articles appeared throughout Pennsylvania — expressed surprise that the Journal would readily give up so much space to state politicians.

They also wondered why the Journal had no local columnists on its editorial pages – and there were none in the Journal the week we critiqued, even back in those more robust economic times. In contrast, the other papers predominantly featured news columnists, either staff members or from state news services.

Especially impressive was the Op Ed page at the Calgary Herald, described by its editor at the time as a “small-c conservative newspaper, clearly right-leaning, that supports small government, low taxes, fiscal restraint in government spending, free enterprise, a free market and mostly traditional family values,” serving a booming city nearing a million people, dominated by the oil and natural gas industry, plus high-tech financial services, transportation and retailing. I give this background because it parallels somewhat the demographic here in New Mexico and of the state’s largest newspaper.

Yet, its editorial pages couldn’t have been more different. Its Editorial page contained locally produced editorials and letters, and its Op Ed was completely filled with columns, nearly all by staff columnists. There was never more than one column a day by a non-newspaper person, and then only three the entire week. Most were university or government experts, not politicians. They also tended to eschew “think tank” experts.

Occasionally, a clearly marked “Guest Column” appeared on the page, always accompanied by guidelines stating that “Readers are welcome to submit guest columns for consideration. They should be about 700 words and faxed …”

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a “guidelines” box in the  Journal, which also is far from diligent in noting its guest columnists’ qualifications.

Yet a cacophony of special interest columns run on the Journal’s Op-Ed page virtually every day. Several have appeared in recent weeks related to proposed legislation. Some “guest” writers appear quite often, like Terri L. Cole of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce (whose frequency we’ve written about before). One line in a recent (Feb. 10) column by Cole and Chamber Board Chairman Del Archuleta, “Restaurant Surtax Has Problems,”  illustrates how comfortable and secure she and other groups are in getting their “side of the story” in print. The column self-explains this point:

Several days ago, as part of our advocacy efforts at the Legislature, the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce testified in the House Business and Industry Committee in opposition to HB 189 (a surtax on restaurants that would benefit tourism). This may be construed by some as ‘counter intuitive to our mission.’

So, we wanted to ‘explain our vote’ for the benefit of those who might not fully understand our position.

And the Journal let them explain – over nearly 18 column inches. This column in particular seems a better candidate for publication in the Chamber’s weekly full-page ad in the Journal’s Business Outlook. But that costs money, and I’m sure they’d prefer to get in as many free ads –  I mean columns – as possible.

For the record, a quick call to Laura Marrich, editor of the Alibi, revealed that she “wasn’t approached on an editorial level at all” about the firefighter’s column/ad but first saw it when she opened the paper. (Advertising and news at the Alibi are separate departments, as they are at the Journal).

Running columns by guest writers can be a service to Journal readers, especially when they arrive on the editor’s desk current and complete, with no need for heavy editing. But too often at the Journal, columns are just thrown on the page, pretty much telling the readers, “You sort it all out.” As we’ve noted on this site before, many are run lacking even a clear description as to the qualifications and backgrounds of the writers or the groups the writers represent. The reader might not realize, too, that many are written by public relations firms in service of the person getting the byline.

These columns should at least be edited for clarity, background and style. To run them “as is” without basic editing, let alone a cursory fact check, and with no independent follow-up by a staffer, is the same as running as ad, with no added value to the reader. It’s a further swipe at the Journal’s credibility.

Mayor Martin Chavez is long gone, but the bills from his Mayor’s Charity Ball remain, according to a story today on KOB.com.

From the story:

An Albuquerque caterer says she got stiffed on a $15,000 bill at the annual Mayor’s Ball, which was held at the Albuquerque Rio Grande Zoo last July. And since Martin Chavez is no longer Mayor, the vendor is trying to get Mayor Richard Berry to pay up.
Annie Fedora has been trying to collect the debt for months. Fedora works for Service Systems Associates Inc., the catering service that was hired for last year’s event.
According to an invoice obtained by Eyewitness News 4, Fedora was paid close to $84,000 for the food and drinks at the event, but she says the fifteen grand in labor costs for the 120 workers that night was never paid, and her company had to cover the expense out of pocket.

Why are we writing about this here?

Because we at ABQJournalWatch.com wrote about apparent financial irregularities at the Mayor’s Ball back in October, after a Journal reader wrote a letter to the editor questioning why the city wouldn’t provide a full accounting of hundreds of thousands of dollars raised by several annual balls.

We thought it might be a good idea for the Journal, which is usually right on top of anything with even a whiff of governmental scandal, to follow up with a news story looking into the allegations of financial irregularities raised by the reader.

We thought it was a good idea then – and we think it’s an even better one now.

My colleague Denise and I have written before about some of the more questionable tactics the Journal has taken in their (certainly understandable) quest to stay in business.

Let me say that today’s appearance of the new “advertising” supplement “Most Wanted Property Crime Offenders” falls into that questionable category. In an interview today on KKOB-AM radio, Police Chief Ray Schultz explained that it was one of the new tactics he was employing as police chief under new Mayor Richard Berry.

Journal readers are already treated to regular advertisements from the City of Albuquerque that show the pictures of people convicted of DWI along with their names, ages and blood alcohol content. I guess the city thinks holding people up to public ridicule is a deterrent – and the Journal is only too happy to agree with that argument.

This new section is a different bird. This one shows fugitives wanted on active warrants for things like robbery and aggravated burglary. Are these people dangerous? Could interacting with them in any way be harmful to you? Well, that’s what the notice that runs with the section tells you.

Warrants must be verified before arrest. These fugitives should be considered dangerous and might possibly be armed. Never attempt to detain or apprehend these subjects yourself. Please call Crime Stoppers at 843-STOP with any information you might have as to the whereabouts of these individuals. You could earn up to $1,000. The Albuquerque Publishing Company has no input nor control over this content (emphasis mine).

Hmm…no control.  Except for that fact that APC accepted the money for the hideous-looking section and is distributing it along with the morning paper.

I dunno, I can’t put my finger on it…but it just strikes me as wrong. I guess I just think that the police should do their (very dangerous) jobs and avoid the possibility that someone might try to crowdsource the apprehension of a middle-level criminal.

Also, I can’t help but wonder what’s gonna come next. Hooker and john pictures? Some papers actually do this! Please, Journal, don’t go down that route.

On Monday Dec. 7, by a vote of 8 to 1, the Albuquerque City Council confirmed Darren White as the city’s new Director of Public Safety.

White, who resigned his post as Bernalillo County Sheriff to accept Mayor Richard Berry’s appointment, will report directly to the new mayor and control both his own department and the day-to-day decisions of Albuquerque Police Chief Ray Schultz.

Previous Public Safety Directors reported to the city’s Chief Accounting Officer and did not have veto power over the Police Chief.

It’s a move that gives the new Director of Public Safety unprecedented power. Some people might even call the White a Public Safety Czar.

This new concentration of power in the fledgling Berry administration should be important information for everyone who lives in Albuquerque.

But readers of the Albuquerque Journal wouldn’t know anything about it.

That’s because there was absolutely zero coverage of White’s confirmation Tuesday either in the paper’s print edition or the easily-updatable online version.

Several blogs carried news of White’s confirmation Tuesday, including Duke City Fix, political blogger Joe Monahan and the New Mexico Independent.

But in the Journal? Nada.

Kind of an odd path for the “Paper of Record” to take.

It leaves me wondering when the Journal will see fit to cover this development.

The paper carried a story about the city council’s confirmation of David Campbell as CAO at the very same meeting – it even editorialized in favor of Campbell’s somewhat controversial confirmation the day before.

But I’m quite puzzled about why it had nothing on White’s confirmation, which is arguably just as significant – perhaps even more significant – as Campbell’s.

Guess I’ll have to keep reading.