Smith didn’t dance

As may be expected the first part of the morning meeting revolved around last night’s airing of the PBS show Frontline .
Earlier this morning Steve Smith posted a response to the show on News is a Conversation .
The conversation at the table today focused on several issues of accuracy but there was a general consensus the show was not as scathing as early reviews had made it out to be.
The morning conversation can be seen here .

Many issues related to accuracy and creative editing came up in the conversation leading the sports department’s Gil Hulse to comment that it reminded him of a reader’s forum that we might have about our own newspaper.

Jim Camden noted that the story count that was used in the piece reflected the recall coverage as well as the West coverage.

Ken Paulman talked about how the show’s producers seemed to bring a healthy dose of skepticism to the Spokesman-Review’s role but did not seem to do the same thing with West’s side of things.

Steve summed the conversation up saying, “they produced the story they wanted to produce.”

Looking ahead:
Spokane’s own Timothy Egan and Jess Walter are waiting to hear about the National Book Awards and we’ll let you know about that either way when we get word.
Be well.
Joe