PressEthic

Some journalists seem to have a hard time admitting it when they can't explain an event.

Today, Amanda Bennett, editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, announced that she would step down at the end of the year. Coming only a day after Dean Baquet of the Los Angeles Times handed in his resignation following Tribune Co.'s proposed staff cuts, the news media have of course jumped all over it. But coverage from some of the most respectable sources doesn’t seem all that clear.

The New York Times’s website published an article by Katharine Q. Seelye under the headline: “Editor of Philadelphia Enquirer Ousted”, with the following lede:

Amanda Bennett, the editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, was ousted today and replaced by Bill Marimow, a former Inquirer reporter and editor who recently lost his job as the top news executive at National Public Radio. He now serves as the radio network’s ombudsman.

It promises a juicy story. But what follows? The reader gets a few quotes from Brian Tierney, the owner of the Inquirer, and from Bennett herself, both praising Marimow and the Inquirer team. There’s some detail about when Bennett will leave, and a few paragraphs covering the paper’s history, and its dire financial situation today, notably that

Mr. Tierney is believed to be considering new layoffs at the Inquirer that could reduce its newsroom staff by 30 percent or more.

And that’s about it.

Nothing about why the word “ousted” was used in both the headline and the lede. No explicit explanation of the significant event stated in the article’s first eleven words.

The Associated Press’s version attempts a little more clarity with the following lede (note the absence of the word “ousted”):

The editor of Philadelphia's largest newspaper will step down at year's end as the company's new owners seek contract concessions, including deep newsroom cuts, in response to falling circulation and advertising revenue.

O.K., so the word “as” implies some causal link between Bennett’s resignation and the proposed job cuts, but here and throughout the article this link remains implicit: the two events are just placed next to each other, without any explicit acknowledgement or explanation of how they are related, making for a wholly unsatisfying read.

I finally found the answer thanks to Reuters’s Robert MacMillan, who clarified the situation in the third paragraph of his article:

Neither the publisher nor Bennett gave a reason for her departure.

Professional journalism is not about implicit speculation. The lesson to be learned: if a fact is unknown, just say it.