Knocking the wrong Knoxville

By: Allan Wolper Speaker misspeaks, recants

Pulitzer Prize-winning media critic Alex S. Jones called a Knoxville, Tenn., daily's coverage a four-letter word during a wide-ranging attack on the state of business journalism in American newspapers.
"The business section of The Knoxville Journal is a piece of s---," Jones told 250 or more journalists and public officials in New York at a Sept. 28 conference called "Reinventing Journalism: What It Is and What It Can Be." His remark drew a roar from the audience.
"You look at the business sections of newspapers like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and then you look at papers like the Journal, and you can see the disparity there," said Jones, who in 1987 won a Pulitzer Prize for his New York Times articles on the travails of the Bingham newspaper family in Louisville, Ky. "People who work at papers like the Journal don't get the kind of training that they need."
The conference was sponsored by the Pew Center for Civic Journalism and produced by the International Advisory Group.
Jones told E&P after his speech in several interviews that he did not realize that someone in the audience might quote him, that his criticism was aimed at The Knoxville News-Sentinel, not The Knoxville Journal, a weekly newspaper, and that he retroactively recanted his remarks.
"I was trying to make a point about the lack of training at the business sections of newspapers," said Jones, the Eugene C. Patterson professor of the practice of journalism at Duke University and the host and executive editor of "Media Matters," a Public Broadcasting System tv series on media criticism. "I lived in Greeneville, Tenn., and The Knoxville News-Sentinel was my hometown newspaper. I don't live there anymore. It was not a fair judgment."
The Knoxville Journal, a daily newspaper founded in 1839, ended its publication run on Dec. 31, 1991. The name resurfaced on the flag of a weekly in 1995 after Phil Hamby, the publisher of the People's Press, an alternative weekly, purchased the name of the defunct daily.
Frank Cagle, associate editor of the News-Sentinel, was taken aback when he first learned of Jones' remarks.
"I don't know what set him off," said Cagle. "I have a lot of respect for Alex and a lot of respect for his family. We are going to run a profile on his father, John M. Jones Sr., because of the contributions that he has made to journalism in Tennessee. I am pretty well perplexed."
The Jones family owns The Greeneville Sun, a 15,000-circulation daily in eastern Tennessee, as well as several weeklies.
"We have a seven-day stand-alone business section," Cagle continued. "We devote so much space to local business stories because it is important to the people who read our newspaper. But if Alex is going to criticize us, he ought to get our name right."
Jones, after he was interviewed, telephoned a statement to E&P, and asked that it be included in this article.
"In a stupid moment, I cast vulgar aspersions on the business section of the Knoxville Sentinel that I do not feel. I was trying to make a point about the proliferation of business sections in newspapers and how their staffs are sometimes not trained in business. I unfairly used Knoxville as an example based on impressions more than a decade old. It was wrong of me, and I apologize for my foolish words."
Harry Moskos, editor of the News-Sentinel, gently chided Jones after he informed of Jones' statement. "Alex has been living in New York City for a long time," said Moskos. "Now he is saying in hindsight that he should not have said it. I am surprised that he made his comments without knowing what kind of newspaper we have here today."
Moskos said that Alex Jones' remarks would have no bearing on the planned publication of the profile of John M. Jones Sr., publisher of The Greeneville Sun.
"John Sr. is a key figure in journalism," said Moskos. "We have a good relationship with the Jones family. Alex is a great journalist."
Jan Schaffer, executive director of the Pew Center, said Alex Jones was obviously exasperated by the lack of quality pages in American newspapers.
"I can understand how he feels," said Schaffer.

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