Article published November 22, 2009
Dog warden coverage is public service journalism
So … was The Blade fair and balanced in its coverage of the controversy involving the Lucas County dog warden?
Or has the newspaper, as one critic wrote, “gone to the dogs?”
First of all, you can’t really answer that question without first deciding what the proper role of a newspaper should be.
Some people would prefer a form of stenography to journalism. In other words, they think a newspaper should write down what a public official says, then get a quote from another official, or maybe an opposing view, print the “story” and then forget about it.
That’s not my idea of journalism. There is no doubt that the editors of The Blade decided that the issue of how the Lucas County dog warden did his job was of major importance to this community.
They made it a top priority and gave a lot of scrutiny to the practices of the county dog pound and the performance of Tom Skeldon, the Lucas County dog warden. On Thursday, the warden announced his decision to resign.
Lots of people, in Toledo and elsewhere, think shining a light on questionable practices isn’t a newspaper’s role.
“This is unfair. Politically motivated. A personal vendetta,” readers wrote to me, criticizing The Blade’s coverage of the dog warden story. But I had read letters like that before.
I did so when I was studying how another newspaper covered another highly controversial story. Day after day, the paper wrote about alleged abuses in government, stories that were being ignored by most other media. Readers complained for months that the stories were unfair, in virtually the same way they did the dog story.
Eventually, most of them changed their minds. In that case, the newspaper was the Washington Post, and the stories were about a pattern of government abuse called Watergate.
Without any doubt, the thrust of the dog warden coverage was aimed at abuses and questionable practices at the pound, and by the man who ran it. That’s what investigative reporting is all about.
It is worth mentioning that controversy over the dog warden didn’t start yesterday. Citizens’ groups have been calling for his ouster at least since last year. The Blade has been calling for his resignation since last March, after his department showed scant remorse after killing a tiny Pomeranian mix with a tranquilizer dart.
Your ombudsman should say that I am not unbiased when it comes to dogs in general. I have had dogs — purebred collies, mostly — my entire life and cannot imagine being without at least one.
Their species and ours have developed in a symbiotic relationship since the dawn of civilization.
Was the newspaper’s coverage fair? At times, I think it may have focused a little too much on the personality of Mr. Skeldon and not on the practices of the dog pound, which clearly were appalling.
On Oct. 29, a front-page story said, “Outspoken Lucas County Dog Warden yesterday vowed to ‘redouble’ his efforts to boost adoptions.” I don’t think “outspoken” was appropriate there, and I don’t think redouble should have been put in quotes.
That implied that we were accusing him of insincerity. The record speaks for itself. The Blade’s coverage — I think — also tended to give the overall impression that there is no “pit bull” problem.
That is misleading. To the newspaper’s credit, they did publish last year a strongly worded essay by attorney Dale Emch about what he sees as the danger of “pit bulls.” However, what seems to have been the case in Lucas County was that a “pit bull” was whatever Mr. Skeldon said it was, without any agreed-upon definition.
Possibly a term like “dog of a variety that is often bred to be highly aggressive” would be better for all concerned.
While it was a public service to focus on the fact that the pounds’s kill rate was abnormally high, the paper might have examined a bit more how much this was affected by the economy.
Yet overall, the newspaper’s examination of the pound was in keeping with public service journalism. The test will be, however, if The Blade keeps up its scrutiny of the pound and its practices once a new dog warden takes over and has a chance to reform the system.
Anyone who has a concern about fairness or accuracy in The Blade is invited to write me, c/o The Blade, 541 N. Superior St., Toledo, OH 43660, or at my Detroit office, 563 Manoogian Hall, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202; call me at 1-888-746-8610, or e-mail me at OMBLADE@aol.com. I cannot promise to address every question in the newspaper, but I do promise that everyone who contacts me with a serious question will get a personal reply. Reminder, however: If you don’t leave me an e-mail address or a phone number, I have no way to get in touch with you.
Jack Lessenberry is a member of the journalism faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit and a former national editor of The Blade.
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