No one said anything. Janet was looking at him with a half-smile, as if she was amused at what he’d pulled together. He ignored her and went on.
“If Steve becomes city editor, Janet’s without a job because assistant would be a demotion for her. Steve, I’m told, is negotiating for the right to pick his assistant editors if he’s selected. And the talk says it won’t be Janet. It will probably be some of his current staff — which are all white men, I might point out.
And Janet won’t want to bump out someone in the D.C. bureau where she used to be when the cuts are going to be so deep there. So, she’d be out.”
“So, it behooves Steve to discredit her to make it easier for his promotion and her dismissal,” Mac said. “In fact, it makes it imperative.”
“The newsroom has to be led by someone the news staff can trust,” the ME said.
“And it is,” Mac said. “Janet has the confidence of her reporters. But back to where was the leak to the extremists? I’m sure Steve doesn’t consider his church extreme. But Steve, you confided in your men’s prayer group that you were struggling with the ramifications of this story, and you discussed it at length, and you mentioned Becky in particular.”
He looked at Steve Whitaker. “Maybe you didn’t know, or maybe you didn’t care, but one of those in that prayer group is on the board of directors of one of the Pregnancy Care Centers you were investigating. And the word was out. And I don’t know how exactly you knew what Janet’s maiden name was, but I suspect that link was made in the same prayer group.
“What I don’t get is why you took on this story in the first place? And how did you think you could look at it objectively when you have grave doubts about abortion rights and belong to a church that actively crusades against abortion from the pulpit?”
“It wasn’t Steve’s story idea,” the ME said. “It was mine. I’d been wondering for some time about the money behind it all. And the investigative team needed a good project. They haven’t been as productive as I had hoped. But I had no idea about Steve’s personal views or his connections.”
“They aren’t relevant,” Steve snapped. “What’s relevant is we’re listening to a reporter who seems to think good journalism involves blowing things up. And that’s not the kind of reportage we need at this paper. We need solid, data-based, reporting. Not the messy feelings crap that passes for news these days.”
“We need both,” Janet said, speaking for the first time. “And that’s exactly what these comments from the Pulitzer judges says. Why weren’t they shared with the rest of the editorial leadership until now?”
Steve didn’t answer her.
“Current thought in the investigative journalism world is that the best pieces come out of beat reporting,” Janet continued. “A beat reporter knows his sources, knows his topic and sees something to delve more deeply into. We would have had a stronger entry if we’d included some of the aftermath reportage, but you didn’t want to because the aftermath was so big of a thing it would have taken preeminence over your carefully crafted package.”
“None of which would have happened if it wasn’t for your personal background getting injected into news coverage,” Steve snapped.
“No,” Mac said. “None of it would have happened if your personal background hadn’t interfered with your news judgment. You were biased from the beginning, and then you outed and set up your reporters. I’ll even admit that it may not have been intentional, but who talks to a prayer group about a major investigation into a church-related organization? You set them up to fail. And I for one won’t work for an editor I can’t trust to back me up. At least twice you’ve called me into your office to question Janet’s objectivity and news judgment. I know she’s got my back. You won’t.”
“And the newspaper would be better off if it didn’t have your gonzo style of reportage,” Steve Whitaker barked. He stood up, and looked at the trinity. “You’ve got to decide what direction you want the newspaper to go: objective, data-driven reporting like it’s been known for? Or some kind of human interest, gonzo-style sensationalism? And that will determine who the newspaper hires — and fires.”
He stalked out of the room with one last glare at Mac.
The Exec sighed. “When we started the whole investigative reporter movement we didn’t see it as something separate from beat reportage, and most of it was driven by human sources. But Investigative Reporters and Editors as an organization realized that number literacy is a problem for most journalists, and so we designed a lot of training around that. And somehow the two components separated.”
“I’d be delighted to take their training camp next fall,” Mac said. “It’s in Vegas.”
Everyone grinned.
“Truth is, Mac, your blow everything up style of reporting makes me tired,” the Exec said. “But I’m an old man now. When I went down to Arizona to finish Bolles’ story? I was a young journalist, and I was blowing
