Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Indy Star sued by editor.
This Volokh story was the first I'd heard.
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_06_19-2005_06_25.shtml#1119394238
Indystar article here.
Editor and Publisher story. Followup story. Richard Prince column. The lawsuit.
I no longer subscribe to the star - I can just click on the link there to the left,
and the dead tree versions were piling up on the porch. But it's my current hometown newspaper, and James Patterson was a valuable asset to its editorial page. The paper was swallowed up a few years ago by Gannettcorp, aka McPaper. This is 4th town I've lived in where McPaper has come in, bought up, and dumbed down. More colored pie charts, fewer local features, fewer editorial voices that are not the product of j-school PC-ness. The paper, which had been owned by the Pulliam family most known for Dan Quayle, had been explicitly Christian and fairly conservative.
Patterson wasn't afraid to go get a prisoner's side of a story, where most papers just reprint press releases from the government and big businesses. He's been around and knows the score. His perspective, as a black mainstream/conservative christian, wasn't always one I agreed with, but always respected. He's been fired, and has sued. He's alleging the new McManagement is hostile to him both as a black man and as a christian.
Pundits are concerned that this raises free speech issues.
Patterson's personal philosophy is a job-related criteria for an editorial page writer. I don't think there's any contention the paper discriminates in its delivery or printing or advertizing staff.
Maybe I should take him to lunch some day. I have a story for him, and he's the kind of guy who would have the guts to print it. I think he'll find work somewhere.
I just think I might end up having something to say here, as somebody who is a Patterson reader who also follows Volokh.
Patterson's lawyer is John Price. I haven't met Price, but he does fun stuff.
He's best-known around here for running for the GOP senate nomination, and his anti-seat-belt lawsuit. Given Price's style, this could just be a gimmick, a publicity stunt without much substance. He and Patterson may even be playing a devious game here, making fun of the anti-discrimination statutes by using them.
Now that I've read the complaint, I would say there might be something to the retaliation claim.
Let's look at that from the newspaper's perspective. Hypothetical: A coworker libels you by filing false and frivolous allegations of racial, religious and age discrimination. His silly charges are dismissed as unfounded. He has an attitude about it, and is hard to work with. Eventually, you fire him, just so things can get back to normal and people can get some work done. Now you've broken the law, by retaliation.
As a legal claim for damages, the lawsuit mostly looks pretty weak. As a chance to tell his story to the world, and expose crass behavior by the big corporation destroying a hometown newspaper, the lawsuit is a powerful and compelling bit of journalism. I can relate to that. I'm a failed journalist and failed lawyer.
The two professions have a lot of overlap. Www.ij.org is an example of a group that does a good job of using lawsuit to tell stories, and by getting the stories heard, to right injustice.
Sometimes the strategy of a lawsuit gets in the way of the litigants' desire to tell their stories. In "the good mother" Liam Neeson, the first thing I saw him in, played a boyfriend who takes a shower with the girlfriend's young daughter.
In the context of a nasty divorce proceeding, this gets turned into an allegation of sexual misconduct. Neeson's character wants to take the stand to explain what happened, but doesn't get to. This, I think, drives the drama of the movie. It's more of a 'chick flick' than most of Neeson's work, but it really made me notice him as an actor.
Here, it doesn't much matter is Patterson wins or loses. He's a powerful story teller, and has used the lawsuit to tell his story. Indy is a one-newspaper town, and this won't kill Gannett. But it'll be the hot topic at next year's Indianapolis conference of the Society for Black Journalists. It'll raise the price Gannett has to pay next time they move in, buy out, and dumb down a local paper. I'm going to be moving to Milwaukee soon, where the lead paper of several is the Sentinal. If the pattern holds, it'll be a Gannett publication by 2010.
This isn't really a story about discrimination against christians. It is a story about diversity in the journalism ecosystem. Gannett is like the zebra mussell, muscling in and replacing local ecosystems in the great lakes. The starling is replacing hundreds of kinds of songbirds that have lost their central american wintering habitat. McDonalds replaced the local diner.
These days, journalism has moved to the blogosphere, an untamed tropical rainforest of flourishing ecological diversity. Freedom of the press is a wonderful thing, for the man who owns one.
This Volokh story was the first I'd heard.
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_06_19-2005_06_25.shtml#1119394238
Indystar article here.
Editor and Publisher story. Followup story. Richard Prince column. The lawsuit.
I no longer subscribe to the star - I can just click on the link there to the left,
and the dead tree versions were piling up on the porch. But it's my current hometown newspaper, and James Patterson was a valuable asset to its editorial page. The paper was swallowed up a few years ago by Gannettcorp, aka McPaper. This is 4th town I've lived in where McPaper has come in, bought up, and dumbed down. More colored pie charts, fewer local features, fewer editorial voices that are not the product of j-school PC-ness. The paper, which had been owned by the Pulliam family most known for Dan Quayle, had been explicitly Christian and fairly conservative.
Patterson wasn't afraid to go get a prisoner's side of a story, where most papers just reprint press releases from the government and big businesses. He's been around and knows the score. His perspective, as a black mainstream/conservative christian, wasn't always one I agreed with, but always respected. He's been fired, and has sued. He's alleging the new McManagement is hostile to him both as a black man and as a christian.
Pundits are concerned that this raises free speech issues.
Patterson's personal philosophy is a job-related criteria for an editorial page writer. I don't think there's any contention the paper discriminates in its delivery or printing or advertizing staff.
Maybe I should take him to lunch some day. I have a story for him, and he's the kind of guy who would have the guts to print it. I think he'll find work somewhere.
I just think I might end up having something to say here, as somebody who is a Patterson reader who also follows Volokh.
Patterson's lawyer is John Price. I haven't met Price, but he does fun stuff.
He's best-known around here for running for the GOP senate nomination, and his anti-seat-belt lawsuit. Given Price's style, this could just be a gimmick, a publicity stunt without much substance. He and Patterson may even be playing a devious game here, making fun of the anti-discrimination statutes by using them.
Now that I've read the complaint, I would say there might be something to the retaliation claim.
Let's look at that from the newspaper's perspective. Hypothetical: A coworker libels you by filing false and frivolous allegations of racial, religious and age discrimination. His silly charges are dismissed as unfounded. He has an attitude about it, and is hard to work with. Eventually, you fire him, just so things can get back to normal and people can get some work done. Now you've broken the law, by retaliation.
As a legal claim for damages, the lawsuit mostly looks pretty weak. As a chance to tell his story to the world, and expose crass behavior by the big corporation destroying a hometown newspaper, the lawsuit is a powerful and compelling bit of journalism. I can relate to that. I'm a failed journalist and failed lawyer.
The two professions have a lot of overlap. Www.ij.org is an example of a group that does a good job of using lawsuit to tell stories, and by getting the stories heard, to right injustice.
Sometimes the strategy of a lawsuit gets in the way of the litigants' desire to tell their stories. In "the good mother" Liam Neeson, the first thing I saw him in, played a boyfriend who takes a shower with the girlfriend's young daughter.
In the context of a nasty divorce proceeding, this gets turned into an allegation of sexual misconduct. Neeson's character wants to take the stand to explain what happened, but doesn't get to. This, I think, drives the drama of the movie. It's more of a 'chick flick' than most of Neeson's work, but it really made me notice him as an actor.
Here, it doesn't much matter is Patterson wins or loses. He's a powerful story teller, and has used the lawsuit to tell his story. Indy is a one-newspaper town, and this won't kill Gannett. But it'll be the hot topic at next year's Indianapolis conference of the Society for Black Journalists. It'll raise the price Gannett has to pay next time they move in, buy out, and dumb down a local paper. I'm going to be moving to Milwaukee soon, where the lead paper of several is the Sentinal. If the pattern holds, it'll be a Gannett publication by 2010.
This isn't really a story about discrimination against christians. It is a story about diversity in the journalism ecosystem. Gannett is like the zebra mussell, muscling in and replacing local ecosystems in the great lakes. The starling is replacing hundreds of kinds of songbirds that have lost their central american wintering habitat. McDonalds replaced the local diner.
These days, journalism has moved to the blogosphere, an untamed tropical rainforest of flourishing ecological diversity. Freedom of the press is a wonderful thing, for the man who owns one.
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