Shoplifting teacher story: Thoughts?

The lede is so bad it's funny. The Trentonian should let Fortenbaugh do end of season awards for all sports.

 

I'd just be so curious to have been a fly on the wall when decisions were made about how to handle this story. Or maybe it's a reflection of journalism today -- writer slaps it online without any direction.

I hope they get sacked for the libelous elements of this presentation, if only because they overwrote the story so viciously.

 

I'd guess there was some level of decision. I've slapped a few things up in my time, and lord knows, someone would've seen and taken out that lede and the weird, weird Facebook thing if that was an issue. It's still there, so I assume someone wanted it that way.

That kid is doing dumb things, and his editor is doing him no favors.

 

Boy that's just bad. Sometimes, AP style: Who, what, when, where, and how is all you really need.

 

It bothers me when newspapers go the public records route on stories when the info isn't known to have any relevance to the story. Yes, they are facts, but by including those facts in the story you are implying they are relevant. If you uncovered a recent bankruptcy filing? Previous police reports showing a history of bad behavior? Sure. But you could also throw in political party registration as well.
Too often I see new orgs invest the time and energy in a public records search or a FOIA because of a news tip or something - and they print a story about it and it is clear they didn't find what they thought they were going to find, but figure they have to justify the expense anyway and show they are "watchdogs" with an A1 spread. So you get stories about a retired librarian bringing home a $50k pension, or a firefighter making three times their salary in OT due to staffing shortages.

 

Good fucking christ. Is nobody supervising this publication?

 

I'm pretty outraged by this. How lazy can this publication be? Don't tell me there's nothing more interesting going on in Trenton to report on than shoplifing. This really necessitates two reporters?

My publication has its issues, but I'm fairly proud of the stories we get off our asses and find. A shoplifting story wouldn't even be a brief, and we're not a huge market.

This is nothing more than someone not getting off their ass and an editor needing a story to fill space so that he/she can get their holiday started. It's pure crap. Gives all reporters everywhere a bad name.

 

The shoplifting story was from 2 months ago, so it didn't have anything to do with the holiday.

As bad as that was, the story that led to this thread being brought back to lime is 1,000 times worse, IMO.

It shows more than having no leadership or supervision. It shows this writer is an immature hack with no sense of decency or moral compass.

 

My last year, we had an incident at a Saturday afternoon girls' basketball game where a fan "allegedly" attacked the school's athletic director.

I saw the story online around 6 p.m. It was five paragraphs long. We counted six libelous elements.

Somebody slept through a lot of journalism classes, didn't they.

 

It happens. Yes.

 

This is dead on correct. It happens at my shop all the time. Lazy reporters, lazy editors. Drives me batshit crazy. One of the things I won't miss when I'm out.

 

Looks like the Trentonian has toned down the Page 6 Girl.