Deluged with requests from outside media for clips, p. 12

By: Gary Boulard

the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette seals off its library;
some local observers say coverage has an anti-Clinton slant sp.

THE DECISION TO close off the library of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette to outside reporters and newspapers would under normal circumstances be a point of interest to few beyond the paper's four-person library staff.
But in the competitively-charged environment of Little Rock journalism today, an environment in which dozens of reporters from newspapers and news services across the country have descended upon Arkansas' capital city in hopes of cracking the nut known as Whitewater, everything is suspect.
Some journalists complain that sealing off the library to outsiders is a vindictive move, an attempt by the Democrat-Gazette to deny to competing papers the voluminous Whitewater clip files the paper has accumulated through the years.
"I saw an internal memo at the paper and they said as much," said one reporter in Little Rock who works for a national publication.
"They said the outside papers were killing them on what should be their own beat, so they were no longer to make their back files available."
Bob Lutgen, the managing editor of the Democrat-Gazette, admitted that Whitewater queries contributed to the paper's decision regarding access to its library. But only because outside requests numbering into the hundreds were proving too burdensome for the library staff.
"Basically, we had one person, 25% of our library workforce, dealing day in, day out, full-time, faxing material to other papers," he said. "There were probably up to 15 news organizations regularly asking for clips. It was getting to be too much."
Although Whitewater stories from the Democrat-Gazette can still be found the old way ? by thumbing through the bound index volumes at the local library and copying them from microfilm ? the library closing is seen by many as only the latest controversy in the manner and style in which Arkansas' largest daily has covered the most persistent and politically damaging scandel in the presidency of Arkansas' favorite son Bill Clinton.
"When it comes to Clinton, there is just no way you could call their coverage balanced," said Ernest Dumas, a professor of journalsm at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. "There is no doubt editorially that they almost completely disapprove of Clinton. Unfortunately, I think that attitude has affected their judgment as well."
As evidence, Dumas pointed to a routine wire story during the Christmas season that said the president and first lady would spend Dec. 25 with family members and long-time friends. "But when that story appered in the the Democrat-Gazette, it appeared under a headline that read, 'Clinton Relatives, Cronies Party At The White House,' " Dumas said. "They do underhanded things like that."
The enmity between the Democrat-Gazette and Clinton goes back to his days as Arkansas governor. Then, beginning in the late 1970s, the old Arkansas Democrat presented itself as Clinton's most consistent critic, an editorial line that continued after the Democrat merged with the more liberal Gazette in the fall of 1991. It was, in fact, a Democrat-Gazette editor named Paul Greenberg who first called Clinton "Slick Willie."
"They've made some big mistakes in their Clinton coverage," said Robert Douglas, a former reporter for the Gazette and professor emeritus of journalism at the University of Arkansas.
"They don't pay much attention to anything good that happens to Clinton. When his polls show his poularity increasing, they may not run anything on it at all. But if he's in trouble over something, then that's big news. If I were running an anti-Clinton publication editorially, I would make an extra effort to make sure that any story favorable to Clinton got on page one."
Founded in 1871, the Arkansas Democrat not only became the state's most prominent conservative voice during Clinton's years in Arkansas, but was also one of the most financially-aggressive papers around through its practice of drastically slashing advertising prices in order to compete with the larger Gazette, a practice that eventually precipitated the Gazette's long-time owners, the Patterson family, to sell the paper to the Gannett Co. in 1986.
Five years later, Gannett, which purchased the Gazette for $51 million in cash and $9 million in assumed debts, sold the paper to Democrat owner Walter Hussman Jr. for $69 million.
Meanwhile, the Democrat's circulation steadily increased. Daily readership has jumped from about 50,000 in the mid-1970s.
"We're at about 190,000 daily with just under 300,000 on Sunday," Lutgen said.
"It took us a while to get all of our circulation problems straightened out. A lot of people took both the Gazette and the Democrat. Then, after the merger, some were getting two Democrats at their door. But most of our circulaton problems are over now."
A problem remaining, is in the Democrat-Gazette's increased competition from outside publications in the wake of new charges concerning real estate transactions and general wheeling and dealing in Arkansas during the late 1970s and '80s.
As the Whitewater scandal moved from a story reported principally by conservative publications such as the National Review and American Spectator ? the latter of which raised many new questions concerning Clinton's role in the affair in their December issue ? to one followed by the national press, pressure on the Democrat-Gazette to beef up its reporting on the story increased as well.
One indication of the paper's response comes in the number of Whitewater stories it has published. From the end of December to early April, more than 300 Whitewater-related articles have appeared in the Democrat-Gazette, although of that figure only 139 were staff-written, while 164 came from the various wire services.
Beginning in February, the paper
signed on three new reporters with the specific assignment of investigating and reporting on Whitewater.
"We also have a three-man Washington bureau that has spent an awful lot of time on Whitewater, and three other reporters here in Little Rock who have worked on it before," Lutgen said. "So, we've done a substantial amount of legwork on it already."
But even with such a dedication of resources, the paper has often followed up on, rather than broken its own, new twists and turns in the Whitewater story. "From our perspective one of the problems we've had for some time has been covering Washington, where a good deal of the Whitewater leads start," Lutgen said.
"We used to have a one-man bureau up there and our coverage was generally devoted to our congressional delegation and what they're doing. When Clinton won the election, we tripled our staff there and expanded our national coverage. But we still don't have the really solid sources for a major national story that the New York Times or Washington Post might have within all of the different federal agencies from the Justice Department to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation."
Despite these shortcomings, Lutgen said the Democrat-Gazette has been competitive on Whitewater.
"There is a lot of material in Little Rock, and much of it we went through several years ago before any of the national press knew about it," he said. "In fact, on some stories such as the Small Business Administration loans and the David Hale material, I think we've done a better job than any outside paper."
Lutgen added that he views the national press coverage of Whitewater as an asset. "It's actually very helpful when the national press is asking for documents at the same time we are," he said. "The information then becomes much more widely available."
Retired professor Douglas, who worked for the Gazette in the fall of 1957 when angry local reaction to the racial integration of Central High School in Little Rock became an international story, sees parallels between the Gazette's school integration coverage and the Democrat-Gazette's reporting on Whitewater.
"All kinds of reporters from all over the country came in to write about it," Douglas remembered. "But we had our own work to do and we really didn't have time to think about what the New York Times or Washington Post were doing. I think that's the attitude the Democrat-Gazette should adopt with their Whitewater report."
Lutgen, who noted that local interest in Whitewater stories is high, said the Democrat-Gazette will continue to cover the scandal until there is nothing left to cover.
He said, "I don't think Whitewater is Watergate, but I do think the Clinton administration has handled it disastrously.