2008 Payne Awards for Ethics in Journalism
The Phoenix New-Times and The (Spokane) Spokesman-Review will both receive Payne Awards for Ethics in Journalism in the News Organization Category, while an editor of a budding community college newspaper in Western Massachusetts who challenged her college president will receive the award in the Collegiate Media category.
The Phoenix New Times, an alternative newsweekly, will receive the Payne Award for standing up to a grand jury request for detailed information about visitors to the paper's website-an action for which they were arrested and faced jail. This was a culminating event in the paper's aggressive long-term coverage of controversial Phoenix sheriff Joe Arpaio and of a history of politically motivated prosecution and investigation in county law enforcement. The paper published a cover story that exposed efforts to seize notes, tapes, and sources from New Times journalists who had covered the issue and revealed the grand jury request; charges were dropped in light of public reaction to the resulting arrest.
The Payne Award Judges cited the paper's founders' courage in their willingness to risk jail in order to serve the greater public interest. Earlier this year the ACLU Foundation of Arizona gave the founders-Jim Larkin, CEO and Mike Lacey, executive editor-the group's highest accolade, the Civil Libertarian of the Year Award.
"The certain outcome was the threat of going to jail, yet in the face of that they went forward," the Payne Award Judges noted, adding that while most of the coverage to that. point had been done by reporters, when they made the decision to publish the story about the subpoena, Lacey and Larkin co-wrote the cover story explaining the rationale for doing so to their readers.
The Spokesman-Review will receive the Payne Award for initiating and publishing an independent audit by the Washington News Council often years of the paper's coverage and role in a controversial local redevelopment project described by some as "a long-running civic nightmare." The paper's publisher and president had major financial interest in the development; the stories the paper had published created what the News Council described as a "cloud of public distrust that the paper could not seem to shake." In addition to the report, published May 6, 2007 in its entirety in the paper's print and online versions, the paper published follow-up columns on May 13. Editor Steve Smith also invited comments from readers on his blog. Finally, the Spokesman-Review drafted a new ethics code and invited readers to comment on it.
The judges applauded The Spokesman-Review's conduct "as it related to the coverage of the publisher's other interests."
"A newspaper publisher is a major institution in a community-sometimes having other interests. To open up the paper to an objective analysis of that coverage and to publish without fear or favor what they found is courageous; the level of independence and control they were willing to give up is significant; and having an organization such as a news council investigate is unprecedented."
This is the second time The Spokesman-Review has earned a Payne Award. The first award was in 2005.
Ashley Gough, editor of The Mount Observer at Mount Wachusett Community College in Gardner, Mass., will be recognized for her "courageous, responsible, and thorough" investigation of the disappearance of newspapers containing an unflattering editorial about the president of the college when the president was implicated in the disappearance. Gough interviewed the president as well as the chief of police in the process of producing both an article and an editorial on the subject. Later, she convened a panel on campus to discuss the issue and organized a First Amendment forum at her school.
The Payne Award judges applauded Gough's courage in "standing up to the person who controls her education, as well as her role in helping to restore the credibility of the school newspaper. Her actions were entirely professional, and she was willing to do the right thing at potentially a great cost."
Tim Gleason, Edwin L. Artzt Dean of the School of Journalism and Communication, said that, while there were a number of entries, the judges' choices were clear: "The criteria for a Payne Award isn't simply about doing good journalism or even making the right ethical decision. It's about doing good journalism and making the right decision in the face of extreme pressure."
