NBC’s Brian
Williams needed an Englehart
Former BJ reporter
Bill Hershey, who once had a gun pulled on him while phoning in a story, wrote a
fabulous article that captures Pat Englehart perfectly. Pat was the best editor
I ever had. A lot of others who went on to other newspapers would say an
“Amen!” to that, unless they talk like a man with a paper asshole.
COLUMBUS: NBC’s Brian Williams, as far as I know, never met
the Mad Man.
That’s too bad for Brian who, when not discussing his
reporting achievements, is said to be a good fellow and great storyteller.
The Mad Man was the name we gave the late Patrick T.
Englehart, state desk editor for the Beacon Journal, who died at age 70 in
1995.
 |
Pat Englehart
crazy like a fox |
For many of us who
started our reporting careers in the 1970s, Englehart was the first real editor
we had and, on the surface at least, a throwback to a more rough and tumble era
in journalism.
In the days since Williams has admitted that he lied about
riding in a military helicopter that was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade
during the Iraq War, my thoughts often have turned to Englehart and the lessons
he passed on to those of us who got our start in reporting at meetings of the
Mogadore Village Council or other venues far removed from the excitement and
danger of a shooting war.
While the state desk’s first priority was local government
and schools, Pat expanded his portfolio whenever he got the chance and led the
paper’s effort in winning a Pulitzer Prize for the coverage of the 1970
shootings at Kent State University in which four students were killed by
members of the Ohio National Guard.
His reporters also covered the environmental damage caused
by strip mining, substandard housing for migrant workers and poverty and its
causes.
Pat even sent me to Kent State in the early 1970s to report
on the emerging Gay Liberation Front, only to have the resulting story spiked
by editors worried that the community wasn’t “ready.”
Pat was definitely from the “old school.” He smoked and
chewed awful smelling Denobil cigars, had a Rolling Rock drink or two at lunch and
never stopped tapping — pounding really — one foot on the floor while carrying
on multiple conversations.
Sometimes he didn’t pay close attention to what he was
doing, like when the telephone at his desk caught fire from ashes he flicked
from his odoriferous cigar.
But in one respect he was far ahead of what’s become known
today as “branding,” the concept Williams’ apologists offer for the mess he’s
made of his career.
Pat and other editors of the Beacon Journal in those days
“branded” the paper by making it a comprehensive and truthful digest of what
was happening at local governments, schools, the tire companies and everything
else of interest in Akron and the surrounding communities.
The paper had star reporters and columnists, but the
emphasis was on the news, not the news gatherer.
Pat loved controversy in stories, but it had to be backed
up by facts. The reporter gathered the news. Only in very rare circumstances
did he or she become part of the story.
No story was ever good enough.
Pat constantly questioned the facts and demanded that they
be checked, rechecked and then checked for a third time. If something sounded
too bad or too good to be true, it often was and got edited out of the story.
Or sometimes the story got better because the third or fourth phone call turned
up previously unknown facts.
I hate to think what Pat would have done if one of us told
him our facts were wrong because we “conflated” two events, as Williams said he
did.
Today the emphasis has shifted to “branding” individuals
like Williams, rather than newspapers, television networks or other media
outlets. With this shift comes the temptation to make the individual’s brand
more exciting and compelling than those offered by competitors.
There was nothing new about the temptations faced by
Williams in covering the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina — for which his accounts
also have been questioned — or other big stories.
Every reporter — print, television or online — wants to
make his or her story stand out from other accounts, but facts must support it.
Nobody at NBC was willing to question Williams’
exaggerations that provided good “stories” on late night television or before
fawning audiences. He was the most-watched anchor and, seemingly, above
oversight.
He needed a “Mad Man,” somebody scowling and blowing cigar
smoke in his face and questioning tales that sounded too good or too bad to be
true.
It turns out that too often they were and for that Williams
and NBC and their brand should pay the high price they are paying in lost
credibility, the only real currency any reporter has.
Hershey is a former
Washington correspondent and Columbus bureau chief for the Beacon Journal. He
also was the Columbus bureau chief of the Dayton Daily News. He can be reached
at hershey_william@hotmail.com.
