Only the black Ag Dept. official who talked to an NAACP group last March and the white farmers she really did help emerged with “grace and dignity intact” from the recent brouhaha, says Chi Trib’s Clarence Page. 

The culprits included the Obama White House, Ag Secy. Vilsack, NAACP’s Jealous, and Fox host O’Reilly, who at least draws a major media pay check.  But the one Page concentrates on is the “blogger . . . defiant dope,” shame-lacking, guilty-hand-washing Andrew Breitbart, who ran a video clip out of context and set off a panic among Obama aides, the Ag Secy, and the NAACP leadership, all of whom responded like scared kittens and ultimately blamed other people.  “We now live in this media culture where something goes up on YouTube or a blog and everybody scrambles,” said President Obama, for instance.

Naturally, Page concentrates on Breitbart.  Besides nailing ACORN some months back, he “was [this time] after the NAACP,” because of its “recent call for the tea party movement to rid itself of ‘racist elements.’”  Breitbart said running the Sherrod clip was “about tarring . . . the tea party movement with the false charge of racism,” to which Page, in full sardonic mode: “Right.”  Moreover, Breitbart runs “willfully conservative Web sites” — the worst kind, we might add. 

“Bring it on,” says Page.  “There’s plenty of room on the Web,” adding, as if we were not in at least the second decade of Internet warfare: “Let the consumers decide whose version of journalism is worth their time.”  You’d think he’d go light with that sort of talk.

For consumers he had straight-from-the-shoulder advice: “Keep a healthy skepticism.”  For practitioners of “citizen journalism,” he had “Remember the old school lesson . . .: Getting the story right is better than getting it first.”  That old-school wisdom, from a seasoned practitioner.

And then another nostrum that an old-school practitioner might just hesitate to pronounce in a time of widespread plunging mainstream circulation and plummeting reader and viewer confidence: “Bad journalism eventually produces its own punishment.”  Bankruptcy, for instance.

In any case, readers can now (at last) view Breitbart’s work “with [again] the healthy skepticism that it deserves.”  Thank heaven.

As for the other culprits, “the folks in the White House and the NAACP,” he has this: “Don’t let fear of a charge of racism from the right impair your common sense.  . . .  Don’t take the bait.”  Thing never to forget is you’re not the racists.  It’s the other guys.

Buried-lede alert, buried-lede alert . . . Why would Manya Brachear focus on the issue behind the story rather than the hard news, as in her Sunday Chi Trib story, “U. of I.’s teaching partnership with Catholic Church draws scrutiny”? 

She leads:

The flap over a University of Illinois adjunct instructor dismissed after making controversial remarks about homosexuality arises from an unusual partnership between the state university and the Roman Catholic Church.

But the hard news, that a second U. of Illinois faculty investigation is under way, in addition to one about why the teacher, Kenneth Howell, was fired and how, is way down:

Faculty and administrators now will review that policy [the “unusual partnership”] to determine if it violates the separation of church and state or threatens academic integrity. They hope to conclude their investigation before the fall semester begins.

I’m assuming the first investigation has been reported.  Such a partnership is not new, by the way: my cousin, the late David Bowman, S.J., taught Catholicism at the U. of Iowa in the late ’50s under much the same rubric. 

But by Sunday’s big paper, the first investigation had become an afterthought for Brachear and her editors, for whom the church-state issue, rather than academic freedom, was the really interesting thing.

But hard news comes first.  Fran Spielman of the Sun-Times comes to mind.  Columnist Mike Royko was always after news, as opinionated as he was: it was what he was raised on, starting, I presume, at City News Bureau.  Columnist Robert Novak sought never to write a column without something new that he’d uncovered. 

Moreover, why the absence of interest in the freedom issue, in this case to what extent the protected species that is the gay and lesbian community got such prompt, thorough response from university authorities?

Nothing wrong with a trend story, of course.  Slow news days depend on them.  But this spotting an issue and selling the story with it has an eagerness factor that damages credibility.  Detachment, please, and a bit more reporting, as of similar situations if there are any, and if there are none, then it’s an even bigger story, rather than a mildly irritating one.

Same day, same trial, two newspapers, two hard-copy home-delivery headlines:

* Chi Trib: “Brother sticks by ex-governor, Ousted leader was misunderstood on some issues, older sibling says,” all under under “Blagojevich on trial.”  Nice story, will neither disturb one over morning coffee nor unduly tax the mind.  Go Trib.

* Sun-Times: “BLAGO’S BROTHER TESTIFIES: JESSE JR.’S GUY OFFERED $6 MIL FOR SENATE SEAT.”  Capsule summary underneath and to the right: “Robert Blagojevich testifies that Raghu Nayak — who authorities say was an emissary for Jesse Jackson Jr. — offered to raise $1 million for ex-governor Rod Blagojevich.  Nayak then said Blagojevich would get $5 million more once Jackson was appointed senator.”  Lots of info, non-generic, for newspaper reader with better things to do than decipher things.  Go Sun-Times.

————

FYI: Online Trib story here, discoverable amidst online chaos, neither Drudge nor Newsalert, two that know how to reach online reader. 

Sun-Times here, also not easy to find.  Behold the noosepaper dilemma.  But at least save the hard copy with punchy hard-news stuff!  Nod goes as ever to S-T, Trib never was very good at it.

Remember McLuhan’s “People don’t actually read newspapers. They step into them every morning like a hot bath.”  It’s here, but scroll down.