We received a perceptive comment from a reader noting that we might be missing the point of this blog if we don’t comment on the process of developing our stories and describe how the big decisions are made. I think the note was right on. The design of this blog was to take last year’s news editor’s blog (almost solely dedicated to posts about process, and pretty successful in that regard) and expand that model with a broader scope (journalism in general) with more contributors (the entire managing board). So far we haven’t come through with enough posts on how we arrive at our final product. This is something we’ve already been discussing lately - blogging is a difficult endeavor, even Josh’s popular attempt became tedious once the semester spiraled into “Ahmadineamania” - but we will definitely try harder. Thanks for the feedback! (incidentally, check out this NYTimes piece featuring a Wal-Mart blog…it speaks to both an interesting media project by an American corporation and the difficulties of blogging authentically without sounding like pr)
On that note, I’ve been meaning to write about how we covered the plagiarism at Teachers College. Notice the title of this post uses specific language - “TC Plagiarism,” as opposed to “Constantine,” “Noose Victim,” or anything else that may get bandied about in other media outlets or almost certainly the blogosphere. As we saw it, the story here was that a Teachers College professor had allegedly committed plagiarism, copying without accreditation the work of a fellow faculty member and two students. Many newspapers and blogs played up the noose incident of October (it catches their readers’ eye, I guess), some even throwing in loose allusions to the possibility that Prof. Constantine placed the noose on her own door. When we first got wind of the story, we knew we had to be very careful about the information we received, where we got it, and how we reported on it.
We received a tip late Tuesday afternoon. Soon, a member of Teachers College handed us the memo that was distributed earlier that day. From that, we were 90% sure we had a story. The questions we ended up asking ourselves: first, where are we getting this information? Second, if we don’t confirm this from an independent source, should we print the news? Other questions included whether we should mention the noose incident at all, and how we should run a story if we didn’t succeed at speaking to Prof. Constantine. Responsible journalism, we are learning, often comes with asking questions in an article’s earliest stages. Such questions, we and (imho) every other newspaper that takes itself seriously, still could be posing more frequently.
To answer our questions, then. The memo was printed on TC stationery, but we still had qualms about running the story without an independent confirmation. Teachers College has existed in a period of flux, as its previous dean and president both left within the last two years. The investigation into Prof. Constantine began under a different administration. That just adds to the confusion, particularly late at night when many have left their offices for the day. Finally, the question of verifiability became a moot point when Teachers College issued a statement confirming the memo was legitimate. We’re still not sure why they distributed a hard-copy memo in the first place, but then again we suppose e-mail is far from trustworthy. Questions still remained, though, since we could not reach Prof. Constantine for comment. Conversations our reporters had helped alleviate our initial concerns about printing the piece, but we knew we had to report more the next day and get the full story. We always want to give sources a chance to respond to criticism, but since this situation involved the institution’s 18-month investigation, we opted to run it and do our best the next day. It turned out we were lucky and soon spoke with Constantine’s lawyer, a few supporters, and a few of the people who claimed to have been plagiarized.
One final question we faced: do we refer to the incident as “alleged” plagiarism? Or just plagiarism? There is an ethical statement there. By using simply “plagiarism,” our readers may believe we are refuting or downplaying Constantine’s statements in her defense. Early on in the news cycle, we leaned toward using “alleged,” since TC had been rather hushed up about what exactly had happened. But as the story played out, and we spoke to more major players and learned more about TC’s investigation, we opted for language that confirmed, at least, that TC had found the professor indeed committed plagiarism. We also gave Prof. Constantine room to have her say in the news articles. She is always welcome to submit to the Opinion section, too. She and a few supporters have said she is innocent, blaming the series of events on a tradition of institutional racism. Her lawyer also stated that it was Prof. Constantine who’d been plagiarized. We have not yet heard more on this or Prof. Constantine’s eventual punishment (granted the appeal does not go her way). We did run a news analysis on Teachers College and the recent (and less recent) criticism the school has received for lacking representative diversity and a curriculum that challenges students on issues of race and the classroom. In the end, we deferred to a more knowledgeable authority - as we try to do in many matters of attribution, description, and such, in trying to reach the closes approximation possible to the truth - but the jury’s still out on what exactly happened. You can be sure our News reporters are still digging.
On the question of mentioning the noose incident. While we chose not to run with the noose crime high up in the story, we felt the issue had entered the public consciousness to such an extent that omitting the incident entirely would simply lend confusion to the story. In the following days, we realized we’d probably done the right thing, when we learned it was possible that the noose incident was distantly - even, perhaps, more directly - related (although it seemed a stretch, at the time).
Indeed, in our reporting we also spoke to Professor Suniya Luthar, whom we believe we’d been very careful not to drag through the mud in the noose incident’s fallout (unlike the tabloids). Her name had been thrown around as part of the NYPD’s investigation into the hate crime - rumors, including some posted in readers’ comments to our stories, circulated that a purported rival professor was a key suspect. We ended up first reporting her name in connection with the incident well after those hearsay reports - when TC cleared her name. Prof. Luthar spoke to us and revealed that she had first raised the issue with Dean Darlene Bailey in October 2006. Her account of the ensuing summons from Prof. Constantine threatening legal action for defamation, slander, and libel - withdrawn after the noose episode - provided more food for thought.
This was one of our biggest stories of this young semester - along with the nomination of Debora Spar as Barnard’s next president, these articles lead to the largest spike in our Online readership. It also pleased the staff and board to be given credit by the Times for breaking the news. The nod from the Grey Lady was an added bonus to the thrill of reporting on a story in which few would talk (even less so on the record) and in which we were intruding into the life of a respected, tenured professor. Ultimately, while we still don’t know the full story, we felt we’d gone about informing the public of this important news in a respectful and correct way.
Phew. Apologies for the length of this post. Please send more questions and comments! In the future, the section editors and I will try to explain our process more frequently - and, I promise, in fewer words. I am verbose despite my sad sleep schedule…