Open mouth, insert foot

You probably didn’t even notice it, in fact, most of us had to look pretty hard to find it. In today’s 7 section, on page 25, there’s a tongue-in-cheek list of “warning signs” that “your daughter may be having an affair with a fireman,” explicitly in reference to the case of a Spokane firefighter who had sex with a 16-year-old girl at a fire station in February.

The piece didn’t exactly recieve a warm reception in the newsroom.

“I am appalled at the top ten list in 7 today,” senior editor Carla Savalli said at this morning’s meeting. The list plays into the stereotyped of blaming victims of sex crimes, she said.

Savalli noted that we published plenty of satire during the Jim West controversy, but that we always targeted West’s behavior, and never poked fun at the victims. “Just because we can write something doesn’t mean we should,” she said.

Others took issue with the “From staff reports” byline. Reporter Karen Dorn Steele was concerned that the anonymous byline might reflect poorly on the newsroom as a whole and compromise her own investigative work. Features editor Pia Hansen took a different stand:

“If you’re going to poke fun at people, put your name on it.”

Editor Steve Smith, himself not entirely pleased with the list, characterized it as an inevitable misstep as we try to push writers to “think outside the box.”

“If we’re going to be edgy,” Smith said, “we’re going to make mistakes.”

“This is a case where our intention trumped good taste and appropriateness.”

Others weren’t entirely comfortable with that evaluation. I argued that one can be edgy and push the boundaries of good taste but still be guided by a moral compass that says you don’t make fun of teenage girls.

For the record, we haven’t heard any complaints from readers, and Smith anticipated the reaction outside the newsroom would be minimal. Smith cautioned that we’re all capable of similar slips and that this shouldn’t become a witch hunt against the writer of the list.

Incidentally, we were joined this morning by several staffers from Sandpoint High School’s newspaper, the Cedar Post. The students didn’t have much a reaction to the piece one way or the other - one thought it was kind of funny, but the paper’s editor (also a student) said that she probably wouldn’t have run the list.

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