by Gary Gilson
Newsworthy 1995

This could be a fairy tale, but it's not. It's a true story, and it's one reason I love the work the News Council does.

Last summer a teen-age boy was bothering people on a beach in Chaska, among them a woman and her children. Later in the day her husband arrived, heard about the trouble and confronted the boy. The lifeguard separated them; the police came and the man was charged with assault. His case went to court in October. He was angry, especially at the young woman who was working as a lifeguard that summer day, and he alerted the Chaska Herald to cover the case. He wanted to show everyone how poorly he thought she had handled the trouble and how it had escalated into his confrontation with the boy.

The paper covered the trial on Page One. The defendant was acquitted of assault and convicted of disorderly conduct. After court he offered the reporter this opinion of the lifeguard: "What scares me is she's a beach manager. When someone overreacts in that way, I would hate to see what she would do if someone's drowning. I don't think by any means that all the lifeguards are incompetent. That day and in court she showed how incompetent she was."

The target of his anger was Stephanie Schollman, now in her senior year at St. Cloud State University. She did not get an opportunity to respond to the criticism, even though a week passed between the trial and the publication of the story. The head of the city parks department, her boss, was quoted, and he praised her work in controlling the beach incident. But Schollman felt damaged and concerned about the possible impact of the story on her future. She wants to teach school in Chaska, and she doesn't want a charge of incompetence floating around unanswered.

She complained to the paper in a letter to the editor, which the Herald published verbatim. Still, she wasn't satisfied. She wanted the paper to take responsibility and apologize. So she complained to the News Council.

I called the editor, LaVonne Barac, and asked whether she thought that, in a face-to-face meeting with Schollman, she might find some way to resolve the matter.

"Suppose we meet at your office," Barac suggested to me, "and you facilitate the conversation. I'll assign a reporter who had nothing to do with the original story to interview you, me and Stephanie Schollman, and we'll run a story on the mediation."

Schollman agreed and we met in mid-January. She had accused the paper of biased coverage; the editor denied it, but conceded that the account of trial testimony was incomplete and that the paper should have given Schollman a chance to speak for herself in response to the criticism of her competence. Schollman then stated exactly what she wanted from the Herald: "I want a Page One apology and I want to read the story your reporter writes about this meeting before you run it in the paper."

Barac flatly refused to show her the story, saying that if she did it for Schollman she'd have to do it for everyone, and that would soon make news-gathering impossible. I told Schollman that most editors would say the same thing and that it did not seem unreasonable. She accepted that. Then I asked Barac if, in her remarks to the reporter doing the new story, she would find some way to say the paper was sorry that it had not given Schollman a chance to respond in the first story. She said she would. The meeting ended.

Two weeks later the Chaska Herald ran its story, which read in part:

"While we got (her boss) to speak on her behalf, what she wanted and what we should have given her was the chance to speak on her own behalf," Barac said.

Schollman said (the man's) quote shouldn't have been printed.

"I testified against that man in court, so of course he's not going to like me very much," she said.

Schollman said she believes members of the media have the responsibility to report on public employees who are incompetent. But before they print such findings, they should do their homework.

"If [the reporter] wanted to prove me incompetent as a lifeguard and manager, he should have tried. He would have found otherwise," Schollman said.

The story about the mediation ran on page 3. What did Stephanie Schollman think of it? "I'm very pleased," she said. "I think she did a good job."

My opinion? The Herald did itself and its readers a great service. The paper took responsibility and admitted its shortcomings, and it came across to Schollman and the public as human. That counts for a lot.

Postscript

At the Minnesota Newspaper Association's annual convention a week after the mediation meeting and a week before the Herald's follow-up story appeared, I facilitated an ethics workshop and told the group how gratifying that process had been. One person asked whether the Herald had bothered to interview the reporter who wrote the story that provoked the complaint. I said no, and that wasn't unusual, because his editor, who had approved his story, had taken responsibility and that was what Schollman was after.

But, the questioner persisted, was that fair to the reporter?

Just then, a young man in the back of the room stood up and said, "My name is Joel Schettler, and I'm the reporter who wrote the original story." He said he thought Schollman deserved an apology. The crowd applauded him. You might have thought all those publishers, editors and reporters in the room were members of the News Council. Or members of the public. It was a wonderful moment.

When the crowd grew quiet again, I asked Schettler if he'd happened to bring any resumes. They laughed. He said yes, he had. They laughed louder.

By the way, if anyone in the news business is interested in recruiting an extremely bright, self-possessed and assertive individual as a new reporter, I'd suggest you raid the education establishment and steal away a young woman named Stephanie Schollman. She seems to understand the mission of journalism, and she knows how to go after what she wants.