For an organization that has been hemorrhaging money for years, has nearly half the workforce it did in 2008 and whose quality continues to decrease on a daily basis, the Arizona Daily Star sure does love to spend money on frivolous litigation.
Last week the Star — and, according to the filing, rumpled environmental reporter Tony Davis — sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in federal court over documents that the Star requested to review regarding the infamous Macho B jaguar story. The suit cites the Freedom of Information Act and that the act was violated when, after requesting the documents nearly two years ago, they were released last year missing some pages and having lots of redactions on others.
For those not keeping up with the Macho B tale (which is impossible if you read the Star; you’d think the animal was Lute Olson’s pet), it entails the capture in 2009 of what was then believed to be the last known jaguar in the U.S. The animal ended up dying, and $3 million (looking for places to slash the federal budget? start here, please) was spent investigating what, if anything, was done wrong.
According to the suit, Davis, a longtime Star reporter known as much for his immensely long stories on local environmental issues as he is his (ahem) eccentric personality, first emailed Fish and Wildlife in May 2011 to request the investigative report. He did so a couple other times, then in February 2012 got more than 3,430 pages of material from the feds.
But, according to the suit, many pages were ‘heavily redacted’ and another 230 were supposedly missing. Appeals were made to get the rest of the report, but when those went answered the Star did what (other than maybe UA basketball and football coverage) it does better than anyone else:
It whipped out the checkbook to hire expensive lawyers to pursue something that’s just not worth spending a lot of money on, especially when your parent company’s stock is barely above $1 a share and your newsroom is collecting dust on all those desks where those laid off in the last four years used to sit.
The sue-no-matter-what-the-cost approach is nothing new for the Star, which in the last few years has done this several times to make mountains out of molehills.
Take, for example:
* The 2009 federal lawsuit against a no-name local punk band, Awful Truth, citing copyright infringement because the band used a Star picture of slain Tucson police officer Erik Hite on the cover of it’s album ‘Kill a Cop for God.’ The use of the photo was certainly in poor taste, and the band should have tried to get permission to use it, but that certainly didn’t warrant a federal suit.
* A failed suit in March 2009 challenging a Pima County Superior Court judge’s ruling that one witness in the death penalty murder trial of Christopher Payne could not be named by local media. The witness was an inconsequential one, but because the prosecution didn’t want the woman — who was in the process of adopting a child of the defendant’s — printed, that sprung the Star’s legal beagle ears up and prompted the paper to swoop in with its own lawyers to say this wasn’t fair. Didn’t matter that the paper had no intention of naming the person to begin with, but the fact it was told it couldn’t meant, well, they just had to fight for the right to do so.
The Star has also thrown lawyers at many other issues, whether it be defending allegations it’s stories were incorrect — a simple ‘we stand by our reporter’ would have sufficed in most cases — or getting snippy because someone created a parody Twitter account so they tried to get the account closed down.
Meanwhile, the everyday product produced by the Star continues to decrease in quality.
Just remember that the next time the subscription price or the cost of a single copy goes up again. Or when the inevitable paywall drops on the Star’s Web site.
This article appears in Feb 7-13, 2013.
If the Star didn’t pay to have these things investigated, who would have?
Why do you say the quality of the paper has gone down? As a new reader of it, I enjoy it everyday.
While you’re on your high horse, complaining about the Star and personally attacking Tony Davis, wouldn’t it be good journalistic practice to disclose to readers that you were fired by the paper in 2010? Ever hear of reporting without an axe to grind? Your totally unsubstantiated premise–that litigation from the Star is raising subscription costs–gave me a good chuckle. The sad fact is that the Star, like most small papers, doesn’t file enough FOIA lawsuits. At least the Star has copy editors who could have saved you from mixing up “its” and “it’s” in the third-to-last paragraph!
J.Q. Please explain the relevance of the firing with reporting what is actually happening at that shithole on the southside of town.
The article clearly states, and correctly, that the Star is sinking like the Titanic when it comes to quality. What does it mean for a paper in a burg this size that it’s Monday and Tuesday editions are about as thick as the Sierra Vista Herald?
The paper sucks. Filled with hashed over AP stories, small blurbs about blizzards in Iowa, and no reporting on important things like how the doings of the legislature will affect us, which is the currently the most dangerous aspect of living in AZ.
This is not a news story, but an editorial opinion based on the unstated assumptioni that a newspaper should make bottom line the priority instead of getting information to its readers. It used to be the other way around, and the alternative newspapers would roundly criticize a newspaper if it put profit over informing the public. So this is a big turnaround, not for the Star, but for the alternative press. The author criticizes the Star for trying to expose a cover up, even if it is not a wise business decision. Sounds like real journalism to me.
@JQPublic: Correct, the writer of the blog was terminated from the Star. But, as @Tonya noted, this isn’t what the piece is about; it’s about the amount of wasteful spending that comes with these kinds of suits (all of them, not just the newest one) from a paper that pays far below the federal mileage reimbursement rate, hasn’t offered raises in years and has made numerous operational cuts … yet still overspends for litigation. The piece also doesn’t point out all of the lawyer usage, such as fighting a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board that Star handbook policies were unfair. Rather than just agree to the ruling, the Star hired lawyers to haggle over a few words. And @El Gato, yes, there is a level of editorialness to the piece, but it’s rooted in fact/news. No one is saying the bottom line comes first, what is being said is put the money toward maintaining or improving quality overall, not just to get a few extra pages of material for one story.
The Star is going down hill there is no question about that. The Arizona Republic is a far better paper and what’s sad is how the Republic continues to beat the Star on stories that effect Tucson. Read the Republic and see a story about Tucson and two days later the same story is in the Star. It’s pretty sad when a paper based a 100 miles away in downtown Phoenix is beating the paper of record in Tucson on local Tucson stories. There are times I just wonder if the wrong paper closed four years ago.
Awful Truth is the SHIZZNIT baby!
Tonya: I didn’t say anything about the quality of the Star, which I totally agree has gone downhill over the past decade due to sharp staff cutbacks, just like every other paper in the country. My point is that no serious or upstanding journalistic outlet would have a disgruntled and bitter ex-employee (who took the Star to the National Labor Relations Board and lost) report on his nemesis. To not disclose that breaks every rule of journalistic ethics and the ad hominem attack on Tony Davis is pathetic. This piece is poorly written, riddled with typos, and makes the specious argument that rising subscription costs and a few lawsuits are somehow connected because they both happened during the same time period. The Weekly could offer Tucson a vibrant alternative to the Star and do some real reporting, but instead it’s an embarrassment for the city and profession.
And just who created that fake AZ Daily Star Twitter account anyway??
@JQPublic – actually the Star’s product is suffering horribly because the last couple of layoffs took out most of the copy desk. Simple stupid mistakes are showing up. I still get the dead-tree version and will continue to get a paper copy of the paper as long as there is someone throwing them in our midtown neighborhoods. So sometimes the errors are fixed online but not in the inky version. Sad.
When any newspaper fails to report community news in an unbiased manner, they have failed to serve the people who depend on them. Being an honest newspaper that investigates and reports, regardless of where the truth of a story leads, is the most priceless possession of any community. Sadly, those papers are few and far between. Huge budgets are not needed, only reporters and editors who have integrity and are committed to reporting ‘the facts’. One only has to think of 2 lowly reporters, on zero budget, who changed history by reporting about a simple little ‘break-in’ in a hotel named The Watergate. All the pressures of many federal agencies were being used against The Washington Post, yet they fought to publish the truth about the corruption and illegal activities that plagued D.C. at the time.
The Arizona Daily Star failed to uphold the lowest level of standards for the newspaper profession in May of 2011. They failed to report accurately, by investigating and questioning, the killing of Jose Guerena. They printed, as truth, the totally inaccurate statements of the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. As Sheriff Dupnik ranted and raved, much like Richard Nixon, the Star failed to ask very simple and basic questions. A question as simple as, “How could you know anything about either the Guerena or the Ortiz families when no surveillance had been done on them during the previous 19 months?” Or perhaps very simple questions like, “Why was it never mentioned in the Affidavit in Support of the Warrant that Jose Guerena was a Marine? Did ‘anyone’ in the Sheriff’s Department even know that information? Why would a SWAT Team be sent to serve Search Warrants when there was absolutely no mention (in the Affidavit) of anyone in either family being dangerous?” The easy questions about this case tumble forth, yet not one article in the Star addressed the validity of reports being pumped out by the Sheriff’s Department. The Star never asked, nor did they address, the startling inaccuracies of the case.
The most egregious act is the State taking the life of a citizen. It is the duty of our free press to report accurately, and thus protect, the rights of all citizens by making sure that “…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…” is never violated. The Arizona Daily Star is a failed newspaper, not because they don’t have enough reporters or capital, but because they have failed to serve their community as the counter balance to corruption.
Tucson could use the professionalism and integrity of the editors and staff of The Washington Post.
There seems to be a misunderstanding going around. Traditional newspapers (that is, hard copy) have very high fixed costs to meet in order to perform adequately for their real customers: advertisers, and eventually Wall Street. Perhaps the end consumer, yes you, Dear Reader, assumed that you are the newspapers’ primary customer. That is an incorrect assumption, always has been. Childlike, sorry. The traditional business model of traditional newspapers has been heavily stressed by the severe Bush war recession, the Bush casino economy, and fast-changing technology. It is a fading business model that had a good long profitable run. It’s essentially done. Paywalls and such are just the last desperate, outmoded gasp.
Getting upset, flailing about, about “bias” (that is to say, the product isn’t biased the way you want it be, let’s face it), Brian Pedersen, Tony Davis, all the others, how they express themselves, is beside the point.
But, apparently, good enough catharsis opportunity for innane commenters. Change is scary for some people.
Maybe Mr. Pedersen would like to compare and contrast the ADS coverage with the AZ Republic’s. http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/201…
I can only say that if this is what is going to be offered under the new editorship of the TW. the ADS may have a new lease on life. This article, editorial, or what ever it is, should never have seen the light of day.
Well said, sir.
Both the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Arizona Game and Fish Dept. are implicated in a pattern of lawbreaking and significant coverup regarding the Macho B fiasco, which amounted to little better than an assassination of Arizona’s last jaguar (at the time). Kudos to any paper that works to reveal this misbehavior. Considering the facts of this case, Mr. Pedersen’s post seems rather foolish. This is investigative journalism–exactly what publications should be doing with their money.
Brian J. Pedersen is ignorant about the importance of Macho B’s demise at the hands of the SECRETIVE, PUBLIC ENTITY — Arizona Game and Fish Department, and their ILLEGAL stonewalling, and hiding the horrible, tragic truth of their apparent indifferent incompetence of the handling of this magnificent being. AZ G & F are entrusted to a fiduciary responsibility of protecting ALL our wildlife in Arizona, and especially ENDANGERED SPECIES, like Macho B.
Instead, they bungled everything, and then tried to hide the facts. Only the one woman, with the least responsibility and authority, was unfairly punished, and not those in charge of this tragedy to Macho B.
What happened to Macho B, should NEVER be allowed to happen to any of our wildlife, especially in the hands of so-called “professionals. They not only were careless and cruel in their handling of Macho B, but then they took steps to hide their incompetence and complete lack of concern for his life and ‘limb.’ They left him in a noose leg trap, cutting off the circulation to his foot AT LEAST OVERNIGHT (12 HRS), AND USED OUT-DATED DRUGS, THAT BIG CATS OFTEN DIE FROM WHEN USED, WHEN THE DRUGS AREN’T OUTDATED. Try cutting off the circulation to your arm for 5 minutes, and see what that feels like. They set a trap, and then didn’t monitor it for hours and hours. NOT ACCEPTABLE BY ANY STANDARDS, WHEN IT COMES TO A LEG SNARE TRAP.
Pity Pedersen cannot follow the dots of this tragic tale Tony Davis aptly presented, and also see the bigger picture. What happened to Macho B was AZ G & F’s usual operating procedures — which amounts to animal cruelty in every sense of the phrase.
No “professional” should be allowed to continue this practice in secrecy — Arizona citizens deserve all the facts, and an open view of AZ G & F daily operations.
Tony Davis, and the AZ D Star, are doing what our founding fathers wanted the ‘press’ to do, to keep ‘we’ citizens informed.
I am disappointed the Tucson Weekly even gave Pedersen’s article the light of day.
I used to write comments in the feedback section for various Star editorials, including the generally stupid Fitz cartoons, however, I soon learned that the Star is usually too biased and irrational to be fair and balanced, and like much of the mainstream media, prefers to act as a water boy for Obama and the Democrats. Whether right or wrong, Obama is their guy and they are either too blind or ignorant to realize how the paper has alienated conservative readers. We do have a choice, and many of us, like myself, have cancelled our subscriptions. I buy it on Sunday, take out the ads for my wife, and use the rest of the paper to line the bottom of the kitchen garbage can.