The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

One of the mustier traditions of newspaper writing is the amount of group-think involved in crafting the first paragraph of a story -- in journalism jargon known as "the lede". Tradition says that the first paragraph should contain the essence of all the information to follow. Tradition also implies that that first paragraph represent the newspaper's institutional attitude toward the story.

Despite abundant evidence that modern readers value a little punch and style as much as a, uh, "fair and balanced" recitation of facts, when you read a story like this morning's Star Tribune piece titled, "Concerns over Heffelfinger reportedly raised at Justice", you can smell the hands of nervous, second-guessing, group-thinking editors all over it.

As I and many others having been saying for weeks now -- including the Strib's editorial page and, most prominently, columnist Nick Coleman -- the Strib, there's no kind way to put this, has flat-out failed to properly (i.e. adequately) explore the high likelihood that the abrupt departure of US Attorney Tom Heffelfinger may in some way be related to the rather large, politically and ethically significant firing of eight other US Attorneys that erupted into a national scandal five months ago and is still building.

A group-think lede, with handful of editors re-re-re-re-crafting that all-important first paragraph to properly assert the paper's institutional thinking/position on a given story gives you a contrast like we see today between the original reporting from D.C. and the Strib's massaging for local consumption.

Here, first, is the lede paragraph in the latest story from the Strib's former D.C. bureau, McClatchy Newspapers.
.
.
.
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration considered firing the former U.S. attorney in Minnesota, but he left his job voluntarily before the list of attorneys to be ousted was completed, two congressional aides said Thursday.
.
(The entire piece is here).

Not a lot of style. But punchy and direct to the key point ... that thanks to new testimony by a former Justice Department official with knowledge of the whole affair -- Kyle Sampson -- the story has now taken a leap well beyond "presumption" vis a vis Mr. Heffelfinger.

Cut now to the Strib's "crafting" of the same news:
.
.

WASHINGTON - Senior Justice Department officials raised concerns about then-U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger sometime after October 2005, according to a congressional aide familiar with what a former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told House and Senate staff members last week.
.
.
Never mind the complete absence of style and the convoluted splatter of dulling bureaucratic verbiage like "senior", "aides","officials" and "staff members", how about the complete avoidance of the rather essential and connective word, "fire"? Note also how the McClatchy report -- the latest in a series of precisely the sort of professional, skeptical reporting newspapers normally expect of their DC bureaus and that the Strib has declined to re-print -- distills the essence of the whole business into THE FIRST SENTENCE.

Namely, "The Bush administration considered firing the former U.S. Attorney in Minnesota ... ," while the Strib committee prefers instead, "Senior Justice Department officials raised concerns ... " yadda yadda. (Other recent MCClatchy reports here, here and here.

Can we agree that by now all arrows are pointing well past and beyond the hapless Alberto Gonzales and directly at, "The Bush administration"? Note to Strib political editor group: I think it is now ... safe ... to say that the "Bush administration" had something to do with this.

Also note that despite the appearance of a long-awaited link -- courtesy of "a congressional aide familiar with ... [zzzzz]", the Strib plays the revelation inside on A4. (On the front page -- breaking news on eating disorders). As I say, Strib group-thinkers have consistently decided against re-printing their former colleagues' work on this story, preferring instead to either ignore McClatchy reports entirely or re-craft them into something more, shall we say, "appropriate" for their institutional voice. (Shades of punching up those New York Times pieces they run every so often.)

At this point in the US Attorneys-Heffelfinger-Paulose story, with Monica Goodling, Paulose's close-personal friend, having been granted immunity in exchange for her testimony on the matter, with Gonzales being asked to prepare, you know, actual answers to all the questions he could not "recall" last week and with subpoenas approved for Karl Rove and Harriet Miers, I'm guessing the Strib's group-thinkers are praying for an asteroid impact to distract public attention from the bizzare lack of editorial judgment they've displayed in this significant, substantive matter.

And while I'm at it, yes, if it weren't for Nick Coleman pushing and prodding and writing on this story, the Strib would have as much relevance on the Heffelfinger angle as the Excelsior-Shorewood Sun Sailor. Coleman hit it again this morning with a "lede" that plays like this:

"Minnesota's U.S. attorney, Rachel K. Paulose, has waged a public relations campaign to salvage her position since allegations were raised that her appointment was part of the Bush administration's efforts to place political loyalists in U.S. attorney offices, especially in states expected to be "battlegrounds" in the 2008 election." The whole column is here.

I've read more style out of the boy, but that lede gets directly to the heart of the story -- a significant local angle on a major national scandal -- that the Strib's group-thinkers have chosen instead to minimize/suppress/downplay/ignore/hope will go away ... take your pick.