Newspaper Columnist Resigns After Inquiry(drama queen alert)

LATIMES ^ | 05/13/05 | James Rainey

[Pikamax]

Newspaper Columnist Resigns After Inquiry The Sacramento Bee says Diana Griego Erwin could not confirm the identities of her sources. The writer says she did nothing wrong. By James Rainey Times Staff Writer

May 13, 2005

The Sacramento Bee announced Thursday the resignation of an award-winning columnist, the latest in a series of cases across the nation in which journalists had been forced from their jobs because of questions about the veracity of their reporting.

In an explanation to readers, Bee Executive Editor Rick Rodriguez wrote that Diana Griego Erwin could not adequately answer questions that first arose last month about whether "people mentioned in several recent columns actually existed."

Griego Erwin, who shared a Pulitzer Prize in 1986 while at the Denver Post and who was a columnist for the Orange County Register, said in a statement to the Bee that she had done "nothing wrong."

"This inquiry came at the end of a six-month string of personal crises in my life," Griego Erwin told The Times in an e-mail, "and, frankly, I didn't have the emotional reserve to answer The Bee's questions quickly enough."

The departure of Griego Erwin, who wrote three columns a week, continues the run of recent embarrassments for newspapers, many of which have cost writers their jobs.

[SittinYonder]

Newspapers, which are unlike any other industry anywhere in terms of management and operations, make room for lazy and unaccountable people. It should come as no surprise when this sort of thing happens.

[ClearCase_guy]

"This inquiry came at the end of a six-month string of personal crises in my life," Griego Erwin told The Times in an e-mail, "and, frankly, I didn't have the emotional reserve to answer The Bee's questions quickly enough."

I'm a victim. Have pity on me. I can't be held to normal standards.

[txroadhawg]

"This inquiry came at the end of a six-month string of personal crises in my life," Griego Erwin told The Times in an e-mail, "and, frankly, I didn't have the emotional reserve to answer The Bee's questions quickly enough."

Oh BOO HOO, everybody please feel sorry for me...

[Rodney King]

The things is, what percentage of these people are actually caughts? The newspapers all act like these are one-off cases. More likely these people learned from their colleagues and predecessors who to right a good story in a short period of time without working to hard i.e. making stuff up.

[sergeantdave]

The stable of so-called journalists writing in major city dailies has been infested by fiction writers for years.

Instead of newspapers naming themselves the Daily News, the Enquirer, etc., names better reflecting what they are would be: The Philadelphia Grapes of Wrath. Or the Chicago It Takes a Village. And the New York Das Kapital & Jonathan Seagull.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

To paraphrase yesterday's nonsense, "if she worked at a major American corporation, she'd be fired."

[WL-law]

Those familiar with the situation said Griego Erwin could not provide more details to confirm the identities of an unnamed bar and a bartender who she had quoted in the man-on-the-street-style column. The piece was held from its normal spot on the front of the newspaper's Metro section on Sunday, April 24. It ran two days later — rewritten and with the suspect elements removed, two people familiar with the process said. They spoke on condition of anonymity. Bee editors reviewed several other recent Griego Erwin columns, and said that in ab

It sounds EXACTLY like the type of fake "color" quotes that got Mike Barnacle fired from the Boston Globe, years ago.

The savvy, ironic, local insight quotes that were the staple of Barnacle's stories were just made-up whole cloth by Barnacle, it turned out, as many readers had suspected for a long time.

[churchillbuff]

The savvy, ironic, local insight quotes that were the staple of Barnacle's stories were just made-up whole cloth by Barnacle"""

But of course. But in a sense, you have to kind of feel sorry for the columnists who are charged with finding such "man on the street" wisdom. Very few "men on the street" = or "women on the street" - have anything interesting to say, or the ability to say anything in an interesting way. How many bartenders are "savvy, ironic" offering "insight"? If a columnist's job is to fill his or her column with such men on the street insights, the temptation to make them up is going to be pretty strong.

[Fog Nozzle]

Her method of reporting must be one of the requirements to win a Pulitzer.

[WL-law]

But in a sense, you have to kind of feel sorry for the columnists who are charged with finding such "man on the street" wisdom.

Well, I don't, and I'm very familiar with Barbacle's writing from that period.

The 'lie' is a damnable lie because it is offered to give authority (therefore, false authority) based on the special knowledge and exposure of the speaker.

So it's a form of rhetorical 'cheating'.

[bandleader]

"Because of Questions About The Veracity of Their Reporting"?If this were true,they would be AWASH in "Pink Slips"!

[churchillbuff]

If you read fully through the posted article, you'll see that the columnist was using the questionable quotes to cluck about "male testosterone", in a column on a road rage incident. An anti-man column? Ho hum.

[lowbridge]

bump

[F16Fighter]

Was there no Opus? ;-)

[river rat]

Didn't I read somewhere that the average GPA of students admitted to "Journalism Schools" was lower as a group than those admitted to "Teaching Schools"....

What would you expect?

Semper Fi