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.