Controversy In Crime Coverage p. 13

By: MARK FITZGERALD

IN THE PAST year and a half, Minneapolis and St. Paul have suffered a brutal crime wave that has shaken the morale of a once-placid Twin Cities, best known for the whimsical storytelling of Garrison Keillor and the TV newsroom comedy of Mary Tyler Moore.
For the Star Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press, questions of how to respond to crime are becoming increasingly urgent ? and controversial.
On a recent mid-summer Sunday, readers of both papers were offered accounts of how crime coverage issues can split newsrooms.
In the Star Tribune on July 28, reader representative Lou Gelfand took his paper to task for publishing the name of a witness to a gang-related murder.
"Unless this unconscionable practice halts," Gelfand wrote, "an identified witness ultimately will shed blood. Some of that blood, figuratively, will be on the front door of the newspaper."
In the Pioneer Press the same day, the question of whether it is proper for the newspaper to fund $5,000 in rewards for information about gang killings was debated in side-by-side columns by senior vice president and editor Walker Lundy and staff columnist Katherine Lanpher.
Lundy wrote he was moved to suggest the reward fund ? which was quickly approved by publisher Peter Ridder ? by a column Lanpher wrote about the July 20 killing of a 4-year-old St. Paul girl.
"St. Paul also needed more than the public outcry Katherine [Lanpher] was calling for. We needed to do something," Lundy wrote.
"After reading Katherine's column, I urged the publisher to offer $5,000 as a reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer or killers. Among gang members, money often talks," Lundy wrote.
After some discussion, however, the Pioneer Press decided to pledge the $5,000 for police to use as reward money for future gang-related violence. In addition, the paper ran an editorial urging others to contribute to the same cause.
"I was happy," Lundy wrote. "The paper had done something to make things better. We had done first-rate journalism, and we also had been a responsible corporate citizen."
However, Lundy acknowledged the plan was a nonstarter with many reporters.
"Based on the questions I took from staffers, I suspect a majority of them thought it was a bad idea. Katherine did, too," Lundy wrote.
Indeed, in her Sunday column, Lanpher vigorously opposed the reward fund as "the wrong thing for this newspaper to do."
"Even at its best," Lanpher wrote, "the $5,000 presents a conflict of interest. Are we going to report when 'our' money is used to arrest a gang leader? What if 'our' money is used improperly? Who is to say $5,000 is enough? Why did this death prompt it and not others?
"At the worst, the fund gives the appearance of slick marketing: the newspaper that cares enough to put up some dough. It doesn't matter that I know otherwise, that the fund emanated from a sincere resolve to better the place where we live. You could argue that we have exploited the death of a child to show our community involvement."
At the Star Tribune, the issue was identifying witnesses to crimes. Commenting on a complaint from a reader, Lou Gelfand, the paper's reader representative, wrote it was "unconscionable" to identify witnesses.
Balancing his own comments, Gelfand quoted the reporter of one story, Maria Elena Baca, who said the teenage witness gave her permission to use her name. Maria Lettman, who supervises the Star Tribune's crime coverage, argued that identifying story sources adds credibility, though she added: "Crime coverage is one area where we always have to be sensitive, and we're currently reviewing a broad range of issues regarding when we name people ? whether they're victims, witnesses or even suspects."
In an interview, Star Tribune senior vice president and editor Tim McGuire said naming witnesses is "not an absolute policy."
He noted the paper more recently withheld the name of a juvenile witness to a crime.
In many ways, McGuire said, the Twin Cities' sudden crime wave is forcing the paper to make newsroom decisions about unfamiliar circumstances.
"I think we're increasingly facing difficulties we didn't face four or five years ago," McGuire said. "Yes, it would be naive to say [the crime wave] hasn't affected us."