DetNews Reposts Original 200 Review, Burgess Speaks Out

by Edward Niedermeyer

Published: March 17th, 2011

detnews reposts original 200 review burgess speaks out

Under fire for its un-annotated edits to Scott Burgess’s Chrysler 200 Review, the Detroit News has reposted Burgess’s original review even as the departed critic confirmed that those edits were the reason for his departure. The NYT reports

“What we did was wrong because it was done at an advertiser’s request,” said Mr. Burgess, who had been at the paper since 2005. “I was ashamed I made the changes.”

Mr. Burgess said he first tendered his resignation on Monday, but was asked to reconsider. Susan Carney, business editor of The Detroit News, said his resignation was effective on Wednesday.

The episode marked the first time Mr. Burgess had been directed to alter a review due to a negative reaction — from an advertiser or otherwise. “There were plenty of times where I’d written reviews that people were upset about, but we never did what we did on Friday.”

Online changes were made without any notation that the piece was re-edited, which breaches accepted industry practice, said Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute, a journalism training and advocacy center in St. Petersburg, Fla. “What happened gives the impression that content might be for sale, whether that’s real or perceived. And that will cause the erosion of trust in the newsroom.”

DetN business editor Susan Carney admits that the situation was handled “poorly.” Burgess will be appearing on AutoLine After Hours at 7 p.m. ET, and is likely to comment further on the story.

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VanillaDude on Mar 18, 2011

According to his grades, Sanford was an excellent student in grade school. This was an objective evaluation based on Sanford's test scores, homework and classroom participation. According to his peers, Sanford was a psychopathic dork supreme. This was a subjective evaluation based on Sanford's physical stature, dress, social skills, sports acumen, and test scores unrecorded within his peer's mind. The Chrysler 200 is a capable vehicle worthy of consideration of purchase. This is an objective evaluation based on the 200's test scores, marked improvements, and affordability. According to it's automotive peers, the 200 is a psychopathic dork supreme. This is a subjective evaluation based on how the 200 measures up in the eyes of an auto journalist whose salary is paid for by a Paper, and whose editor edited out the most eggregious hate-filled graffiti found written on the stall walls in the boy's room, better known as the Internet. What makes Sanford and the 200 so miserable? It isn't because they don't measure up. It is because both in the world of the grade school classroom and the world of the auto journalist, there reigns tastemakers which can make or break the reputation and acceptance of both Sanford and the 200 in the real world. These tastemakers may be 11 year old tweens wearing AF tops and listening to Bieber on their pink I-pods, or these tastemakers may be 50 year old balding gray goateed-wearing paunchy men listening to Bieber on their pink I-pads. In both cases, the tastemakers use subjective evaluations to determine whether someone or something measures in the pecking order of the competitive world. Sanford and the 200 are hunchbacks with halitosis, bad teeth, back acne, and body odor, wearing ugly ill-fitting clothing. This is going to turn off the tastemakers like Abby the cheerleading tween in Sanford's class, and Mr. Burgess. One day, Abby and Mr. Burgess will discover that they are subjectively out of fashion. For Abby it will be when she wakes up to discover that she has become a 50 year old bald, goatee-wearing, pauchy lady with sagging breasts, and for Mr. Burgess it was this week.

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Domestic Hearse on Mar 18, 2011

Here in the Wayback Machine, I've set the dial to 2005 and where the phone is ringing on the desk of the VP of National Advertising at the LA Times. On the phone is General Motors' legal counsel, PR director, and the president of the LA Chevrolet Dealer Association. They are not happy. Previously in the week, a well-known auto critic named Dan Neil just had a piece published wherein he ripped General Motors management as inept, called for the dismissal of the top leadership at the then-biggest car company in the world, and opined that GM's continued emphasis on big SUVs and trucks was a fool's errand, and that more time and energy should be spent on quality compact and midsize vehicles (where the company was sorely lacking, and where the market appeared to be heading). The conversation on the phone is brief; the Times will not retract the article. GM decides to boycott the paper. Never mind that Neil (despite the criticism heaped on the critic in other posts on this site) turned out to be mostly right...just as the TTAC GM DeathWatch turned out to be prescient for similar criticism of the General. The Times weathered the boycott, GM slunk back a few months later. Today, in the print news business, things are tough. Sure, it wasn't any good in 2005, but the Tribune Co. had the means to tell a major advertiser they were not going to back down or retract editorial comments made by their industry experts. Let's just say that if you're a print news source in Detroit struggling to stay alive today in the worst economy in the most stricken city in the U.S., you have flashbacks of the LA Times/GM boycott, and market realities get the better of you. I can certainly see how and why DetNews did what they did. From a J-school, theoretical ethics point of view, it was wrong. From a real-world, let's stay open to write another day perspective, they did what they thought they had to. In the end, nobody won. Chrysler's bullying in no way casts them in a favorable light (or their car). And DetNews takes an even bigger hit. Burgess is out of a job. Now, if they could just figure out how to use the WayBack Machine themselves to do it all over again, I'm sure they would all agree: Good Idea.

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- Banger on Mar 18, 2011
  
  I work at a small weekly paper in rural Tennessee. In our town and doubtless thousands of other small towns like it, the papers have to be careful how they present the facts in any story or editorial, else they might anger someone at the local chamber of commerce who could rally chamber members to reduce or eliminate advertising spending for a time. At a small operation, this kind of pseudo-boycott can have serious effects on the bottom line. While we don't let advertisers directly dictate what gets published in a story, we are always mindful of how a story or especially an opinion piece may affect our relationship with an advertiser. Those are just the unfortunate realities of operating a small-town paper with a small advertising and readership base. But metropolitan daily papers like the DetNews have both the depth of (readership) coverage and advertisers, not to mention lawyers, to make such huffing and puffing by Chrysler a non-event. Are all the Chrysler dealers going to go to the FreeP en masse just because Corporate got mad about an opinion? I doubt it. Ethically, what DetNews did was wrong. Perhaps the author's piece needed some additional substance to back up his criticism, but the bottom line is it was an opinion piece. That's all any review of anything, be it a restaurant, a movie, a construction firm, or a car, is. An opinion piece shouldn't be required to back up its assertions to suit an advertiser or anyone else. The opinions are those of the author, who can say the earth is flat for as far as the publisher should be concerned. If it makes the author look like a doofus, it's his loss. If it angers an advertiser, the paper probably should have considered printing a "the opinions of this author do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper" notice at the beginning or end of the article. Tons of papers do it. In any event, I know how my editor and publisher have handled it when they felt uncomfortable with an opinion piece I've authored in the past, and a similar reaction by DetNews would have probably stopped any of this from happening: They just flatly refused to publish it. As my employer, the publisher reserves that right, if he feels anything I say might endanger his business in any way. Or even if he doesn't fear for his business...because he's the boss. But he would never kowtow to an upset advertiser or upset citizen who insisted we run an edited version of a story just to suit their needs. Doing so is unethical, and destroys the trust you have with your readership. And trust me, I've written plenty of news stories (not opinion pieces, mind you) that have made people angry, and those people have come to the paper in-person to berate me and let me know they want me to write a follow-up piece that may somehow salvage their reputation. In those situations, I know my publisher will stand behind me because he understands our job is to inform the readers who trust us as their source for local news, not save reputations. The DetNews should go into damage control mode by running a column from the editor-in-chief, if they haven't already, explaining why the actions taken in this case were wrong, and how the opinions expressed in reviews published in the paper are solely those of the reviewer and not necessarily those of the DetNews. It's the only commonsense way to approach the situation, at this point, and it would satisfy the "J-School" types like me while satisfying the readers that there are more ethical people at DetNews than the folks responsible for bending to Chrysler's pressure on this, a lowly opinion piece.
  
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- Domestic Hearse on Mar 18, 2011
  
  The DetNews and Free Press (Freep) are both owned by Gannett and operate cooperatively so that both may survive. They're both in the red to the tune of millions per year, and have employed cost-cutting measures like eliminating weekday subscription deliveries and cancelling Sunday papers. Last year, according to Crains, DetNews lost 14% in ad revenue and 12% in subscriptions. Last. Year. As Ronnie Schrieber points out in another post on this topic, far and away, the leading revenue producer for any paper is local dealerships...and it was a leading Chrysler store in the Detroit area which huffed and puffed the loudest, with a chorus of, "Yeah, what he says!" from other area dealers. Chrysler LLC itself wasn't exactly muzzling their dealerships at the time, either. Above, I referenced the LA Times/GM boycott, wherein not only GM corporate, but all area GM stores (for awhile) pulled their ads from the offending newspaper. This had to be in the minds of DetNews management as they contemplated their options. And their revenue predicament. DetNews is hanging on by such a slender thread today that a loss of ad revenue by some or all of the Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep dealers in Detroit (along with a corporate boycott) would create tremendous financial hardship. I agree, it was wrong of DetNews to do what they did. They should stand by their editorial and probably should have run a comparison-contrast piece on the 200 to even out their stance. But given the market realities in Detroit, I can see why they took what looked like the path of least resistance.
  
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- Banger on Mar 18, 2011
  Domestic Hearse: The DetNews and Free Press (Freep) are both owned by Gannett and operate cooperatively so that both may survive. ...or so that both may fail miserably. Didn't they learn anything from the Nashville Banner-Tennessean "cooperative relationship?" The Rocky Mountain News-Denver Post tie-up? Detroit, now more than ever, is not a town capable of supporting two dailies. Gannett should cut its losses and merge 'em into a single rag. But financial hardship doesn't mean the editorial staff of DetNews should just bow to advertisers because of a controversial op-ed piece. Ethics don't go away just because your corporate overlords can't realize monopolistic ownership in a two-paper town is not healthy. But in this we are in agreement: They should've either run a column explaining the relationship of columnists to the paper (i.e. the views of the columnist are not necessarily those of the paper itself), a contrasting (and more favorable) review about the car from another op-ed writer, even if that other writer were an utter Chrysler shill. But that would have taken much more gumption and effort on the part of DetNews than caving in to advertiser pressure. College journalism professors across the country are probably using this as an example of what NOT to do in their journalism ethics classes.
  
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Mike McKinnon on Mar 18, 2011

In college my media and popular culture class was watching a series of films about the portrayal of the media, from Citizen Kane to Network to Broadcast News, for which we had to write a critical analysis. A few of my buddies and I thought we were being intellectually distinct and a bit rebellious by writing scathing analysis of The Paper, the lone "mainstream" film in the bunch. We got the worst grade sin the class. Our criticisms weren't based in comparison of any sort of inherent value the movie might have had, it was all about the marketing and "angle" and general mainstreamedness of the thing. We were supposed to be looking at how the film portrays The Media and the people who constitute it, not compare it to some effete goals of artistic purity or whatever. We were pretentious little shits. Anyway, my point is that sometimes you just want to lash out and attack things you don't personally like, especially when you have a forum, without any professional obligation to do so. The Chrysler 200 is an easy target, politically speaking. A lot of the commenters here are right though - the headline and even the article itself references the car's inability to stand up to the current competition but never describes exactly how that's so. It reminds me of my juvenile rant about The Paper, when I completely missed the point just so I could make my own political statement and ended up with a C. He got fired.

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- Banger on Mar 18, 2011
  
  Getting fired and resigning due to concerns your employer (DetNews, in this case) is unethical are two completely different things, Mr. McKinnon. Good point, otherwise.
  
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- Mike McKinnon on Mar 18, 2011
  
  Agreed. My point wasn't concerning his moral or ethical issues with the advertiser's interference with the editorial process, just his reasons for writing the piece in the first place. And here's the thing. I've been a working journalist and I've experienced similar situations. There are usually valid reasons for changing content, even though that validity is often subjective. How you respond is usually a result of your investment in the subject matter. Because we have to be honest - journalism is a process that involves multiple individuals, not just the writer. If you're the kind of person who cannot abide the Red Ink of Judgement, that line of work might not be for you. I remember covering abortion law, and insisted on calling it "women's health services" because that was a better descriptor of the range of services at issue. The editor changed every reference to abortion because he felt our readership was more right leaning and would call us out for being "leftist" by using a politically correct term. I got mad because I felt it skewed the story (it wasn't just about abortion, but PAP smears, pre-natal counseling, birth control, etc) and politicized it. I didn't quit. I just wrote better stories that did a better job of presenting the facts clearly, regardless of the terminology used. The stories ran, mostly as written. I just think if Burgess had tempered his comments like "it's a dog" with some deeper analysis of why that's the case, then even if the editor had cut that word, the facts (or well-informed opinions) backing it up would have held, and he still would have made his point. Sorry for rambling...
  
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- Banger on Mar 18, 2011
  
  That's not rambling, at all. That's insightful. And you're right, with more substance behind his assertions, a little red ink and a re-write before it went to press would've probably saved DetNews and Burgess from this whole, ugly thing. I can see Burgess' reasons for resigning, though. It was an ethical no-no for the paper to re-run his article in an unashamed attempt to save face. They could've refused to run it, but they didn't. So rather than backing their employee's right to have an opinion, they altered that opinion for him. Flatly unethical. If I were Burgess, I would rather they hung me out to dry on the piece and let me look like a doofus who had an agenda, an axe to grind against Chrysler. That would've been best for the paper, and it would've been best for Burgess, in the long run, because he'd learn from it. As it is, nobody wins in either the long-term or the short-term on this one.
  
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Lorenzo on Mar 18, 2011

Well, I read the full, "restored" review, and in my opinion, it was a hit job, substituting malevolence for fact-based opinion. No, the editor shouldn't have edited it, he should have handed it back and told Burgess to re-write it, or flat-out refused to print it. Burgess should be miffed that it was edited, but he should be ashamed that he wrote it, and be willing to admit that it was not just his opinion, but a biased rant unanchored by any facts or perspective. Anyone can have an uninformed, biased opinion about anything, but those who have a responsibility to their employer and a soapbox to reach the general public have to be held to a higher standard.

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