by Tony Palmeri
December 11, 2001
It's no secret that the Oshkosh Northwestern and Oshkosh Area School District Superintendent Ron Heilmann do not have a friendly relationship. Like Winnebago County Executive Jane Van De Hey, County Board Chair Joe Maehl, and former School Board President LuAnn Bird, everything Heilmann does is held up to scrutiny by the editorial board. Heilmann in turn has little regard for the paper. On September 9th of this year, Commentary reporter Dan Rylance wrote a letter to Northwestern Executive Editor Stew Rieckman that got to the crux of the matter:
In Oshkosh, school officials don't trust the Oshkosh Northwestern because the newspaper's treatment of them is decidedly one-sided. Your editorial policy is "out to get" them. Past examples include fruit baskets, credit card uses, etc. Your newspaper portrays the public school administrators negatively . . . There is more to the school board claim. When former School Board president, LuAnn Bird, appeared on Commentary, she offered other criticisms. She found you school news reporter, Eric Bradley, untrustworthy. She stated what most serious readers of you newspaper agree with -- that your attack on her conflict of interest with CQI for personal gain was blown way out of proportion. Little or no evidence supported your headline. To many readers, it illustrated another failed, but familiar tactic of the Northwestern "to get" an Oshkosh School official.
In his December 9th column, Mr. Rieckman added further support to Rylance's argument that the newspaper is "out to get" the school district. In that column, Rieckman construes as "sour grapes" efforts by Heilmann and Board member Mike Stratz to reveal the inaccuracies in the paper's coverage of the recent referendum. Rieckman even suggested in his column that the Northwestern's referendum editorials should be held to a different standard than referendum reporting. Such arguments make one wonder if Rieckman is sincerely committed to upholding Gannett's Principles of Ethical Conduct for Newsrooms. Two of those principles are:
Apparently, Mr. Rieckman would like to add another principle to the Gannett list: "We will criticize and characterize as sour grapes attempts by some people to demonstrate that we have not reported news accurately or have used different standards of accuracy in our editorials."
Let's assume that Rieckman is correct: Stratz and Heilmann are so upset about the referendum results that they are now engaged in a sour grapes battle to "get" the Northwestern. Even if that were so, it's irrelevant. If the Gannett principles are anything more than public relations, Rieckman should welcome any and all attempts to demonstrate that the newspaper has been inaccurate or unfair.
Examining newspaper coverage of a failed fall referendum and working on a new referendum question for spring do not have to be mutually exclusive activities. Indeed, it is in the School District's best interest to do a complete and thorough analysis of the newspaper's fall referendum coverage and editorializing so as to know what they will be "up against" in the spring (or whenever the next referendum question appears).
Most newspapers don't mind having it pointed out that they misspelled a name, got a meeting date wrong, or printed some other trivial inaccuracy. However, when it comes to accusations of inaccuracy about something major like a $12.8 million referendum, newspapers are not as willing to admit mistakes. The problem for the Northwestern is that it claims to be operating under a set of principles that require them to report and correct all inaccuracies, whether dealing with matters worth $12 million or 12 cents.
In his Sunday column Rieckman mentioned a memo written by Heilmann that supposedly exposes the paper's inaccuracies regarding the referendum. In the interests of fairness and upholding the Gannett principles, the Northwestern should publish that memo. If they won't, I would be happy to place it on the Commentary web site.