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Did Plain Dealer betray its reporter?

By Mark Obbie

An unhappy ending to a series I praised last fall: As reported by Columbia Journalism Review in its January/February issue (no link yet available), the Cleveland Plain Dealer earned a CJR dart for "failure to aggressively back its reporter," Bob Paynter. After Paynter's powerful series on racial disparities in drug sentencings, Prosecutor Bill Mason fought back hard enough to prompt the skittish paper to run stories and an op-ed attacking Paynter's work -- without giving Paynter an opportunity to reply. The Pulitzer-winning writer took a buyout. I don't know anything about this other than what CJR reports. But, having been wowed by the meticulously documented project, I am inclined to believe CJR -- and condemn the Plain Dealer. The paper, of course, has every right to reply to that -- and to CJR. (Thanks to Criminal Justice Journalists for prompting me to crack open my copy of CJR.)

Full post as published by Lawbeat on January 19, 2009 (boomark / email).