The New York Times created a storm on the campaign trail and in the journalism community with its front-page report on Sen. John McCain’s ties to lobbyists.

McCain denied the main points of the story, including the part where the Times reported that during his 2000 campaign for president, his aides suspected he was having an affair with a female lobbyist and took extreme measures to keep lobbyist from coming anywhere close to the candidate. You can link to the Times story here.

The Advertiser does not subscribe to the New York Times News Service (the Star-Bulletin has exclusive rights in this town). But The Washington Post was apparently working on a similar story and ran theirs when the Times posted its version online. The Post, however, stayed away from the illicit romance angle and strictly looked at McCain’s ties to lobbyists, including people who help run his current campaign.

We ran the Post’s story on Thursday’s A2 along with other campaign stories. Both Editor Mark Platte and I were comfortable with the Post’s version. We felt that the issue was fair game because McCain and his campaign staff have created the image of a candidate who has maintained his independence from special interests and the Washington loybbists who work for them.

The internal debate at the New York Times over how to handle the story is covered by The New Republic. You can link to that story here. Scroll down to the stories for Thursday, Feb. 21.

The furor over the Times story is summed up well by the Los Angeles Times media reporter James Rainey. His story should be posted on the L.A. Times site by early Friday morning.

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I missed this next item when it first happened, but a colleague sent it to me. It reminds me of my biggest goof in the news business. I was working for the Star-Bulletin at the time, about 10 years ago, when both it and The Advertiser shared the same building.

It was in the pre-digital days when pages for the newspaper were pasted together from stories printed on a form of developed film paper. Because the page came out in pieces, the page designer would often leave a placeholder: “Headline goes here.”

As usual, we were running close to deadline as the paste-up team assembled the pieces of Page One and other pages. One story would get pasted on one page, and then another on another page. A picture here and there.

Usually, there were several editors in the backshop overseeing the paste-up, but on that edition I was alone. I hurried from page to page as the clock ticked down and then passed our deadline.

Finally, Page One was ready. Everything was on it. Since we were already late, I gave it one last glance and told the Page One paste-up man to send it. Then I walked back to my desk.

About an hour and a half later I got a call from my boss. The circulation department was calling the delivery trucks back. Several thousand copies of the paper had been printed before someone noticed the main headline on Page One. In letters more than an inch high it said: “Headline goes here.”

Amazingly, I was not fired, though I was the target of many jokes, especially from the Advertiser side of the building. I got my revenge, however. Not much more than a week later, “headline goes here” appeared on A3 of The Advertiser. And all of those copies were delivered to their customers.

Anyway, here is the story that prompted that recollection:

NEW YORK (AP) — NBC News said Tuesday it has reprimanded the employee responsible for mistakenly flashing a picture of Osama bin Laden on MSNBC as Chris Matthews talked about Barack Obama.
“This mistake was inexcusable,” MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines said.
It happened during the opening of “Hardball” Monday evening. Matthews was previewing a story on the controversy over Obama’s use of another politician’s words, and a picture of bin Laden briefly flashed on the screen beside him with the headline “Words About Words.”

The Obama campaign immediately called NBC to complain, and Matthews apologized on the air a few minutes later. When “Hardball” was rerun later that night, a picture of Obama replaced the picture of the terrorist leader.
The mistake was made by someone in the network’s graphics department whom MSNBC would not identify. The network did not explain exactly how the mistake was made nor detail the punishment for the employee.
Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor noted the apology and said the campaign had no other comment.
It’s hardly the first time the presidential candidate and terrorist leader have been confused in the media. CNN apologized last year for promoting a story on the search for bin Laden with the headline, “Where’s Obama?”
One other time, CNN’s Alina Cho reported that “Barack Obama’s campaign has been dogged by false rumors, among them that Osama is a Muslim, Obama rather.”

Even former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney misspoke on the campaign trail last October when talking about terrorism. “Actually, just look at what Osam, uh, Barack Obama said just yesterday …”
As long as it’s a slip of the tongue, people should just get over it, said Barbara Wallraff, who writes a syndicated column on language.
“Don’t we have other things to complain about?” she said.
Wallraff noted how changing one letter can also transform “Bush” to “bust” or “lush.” She said the spell-check on one of her computer programs always suggests “Osama” as a substitute when she types “Obama.”

It’s far different if something like this is done intentionally, she said.
This has been a rough month of apologies at MSNBC. Reporter David Shuster was suspended for two weeks for saying that Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign had “pimped out” daughter Chelsea by having her make political phone calls. And Matthews apologized last month after suggesting that Clinton’s political prominence was due to her husband’s infidelities.

Newsrooms are especially exciting places during big news events, including Tuesday night’s Democratic Party caucuses. And because we planned our coverage in advance, we avoided much of the chaos that happens when big but unexpected news breaks.

Reporters and photographers were prepositioned statewide at what we decided would be busy caucus sites. Reports were phoned into rewrite men like reporter Dan Nakaso and City Editor Fernando Pizarro, who compiled roundup stories. Seth Jones moved his photographers when he got word that crowds were especially big at other sites.

The Democratic Party gave the media the full vote count at 12:50 a.m. Wednesday, long past our usually deadline, but we held the Home edition late so that just about everyone on O’ahu got that final count in their Wednesday morning paper. (Neighbor Island copies had to go earlier in order to catch the last flights to each island out of Honolulu International.)

I have been in the newsroom on many election nights and getting full results before 1 a.m. was an unexpected but delightful treat.

Sometimes things don’t go as planned: A quarter page graphic that would have shown vote totals for the candidates from all 51 state House districts could not be used in Wednesday’s paper because the Democrats did not break down the vote totals by state district. We got those numbers Wednesday and that chart appears in Thursday’s paper and online edition.

And while some people were focused on getting the paper out, others were feeding the Web site with up-to-the minute stories, pictures and results. Many people in the newsroom toggled back and forth between the two media, feeding both beasts.

Our Web site got an enormous number of hits during a time of the day when traffic is usually relatively slow. Many people logged on after voting to check the results and then added their comments to our online forum or sent e-mails that appear on Thursday’s letters to the editor page.

Big news is always stressful because you push to get as much in as possible online as quickly as you can. And when the news is not fully resolved, you are trying to get the latest possible news in the paper before sending it to the pressroom. And when it goes well, as it did Tuesday night, you go home feeling great.

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You may have noticed that lately the bylines on most of our local stories simply say “Advertiser Staff.” That’s because the majority of our reporters and photographers have asked that their names not be used in bylines and photo credits in the paper or online on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

The “byline strike” is designed to focus attention on a contract dispute between unions representing Advertiser workers and The Advertiser’s management. Byline strikes have occurred during past labor disputes and in other circumstances.

I think that everyone in the newsroom hopes that the contract differences can be resolved soon and as amiably as possible.

Four of the country’s biggest newspaper companies are banding together to sell ads on their Web pages nationally, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The companies forming an alliance are Gannett Co. Inc., owner of The Honolulu Advertiser and the nation’s largest newspaper chain, Hearst Corp., New York Times Co. and Tribune Co.
Hearst properties includes the San Francisco Chronicle and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Tribune owns the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.
The effort, entitled quadrantONE, is an acknowledgement that, while newspapers still make money, their Web sites rarely do. But as more and more people get information strictly online, newspapers are going to have to figure how to make profit digitally.
The Los Angeles Times story said one study last year projected that Internet advertising would grow by an average of 21 percent annually by 2011, overtaking print-only newspaper ad revenue in 2010.

I hope quadrantONE succeeds because my paycheck depends on it. You should hope so, too, if you value the news you read, especially local news. Google, Yahoo and other Web portals are getting rich off Internet advertising, but they are not providing news to their readers — they are simply aggregating news from other sources. If newspapers go out of business or diminish their reporting substantially, it is not evident that anything as good will take their place.
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Defiant freedom of speech
At least 17 Danish newspapers published a cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb as a turban, a day after three men were arrested as part of alleged plot to kill the cartoonist.
Kurt Westergaard’s drawing was one of 12 depicting the prophet that enraged Muslims when they appeared in a Danish paper in 2005. The newspapers said they had republished the cartoon to show their commitment to freedom of speech.
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What we didn’t have room for in the paper …

CORSICANA, Texas (AP) — A driver who apparently took her work rules very seriously abandoned a bus full of former prisoners along a highway because her hours for the day were over, police said.
The 40 passengers had been paroled or released from the state prison in Huntsville. Some wore ankle bracelet monitors.
They were aboard a charter bus that was headed Thursday to a terminal in Dallas but wound up 60 miles short.
“In 31 years in law enforcement I’ve never seen anything like this,” Corsicana Police Sgt. Lamoin Lawhon said.
Police said the bus was chartered from Greyhound Bus Lines Inc. The driver pulled over in front of a convenience store around 4 p.m. and told the passengers her allotted driving time was up and another driver was on the way.
A clerk in the convenience store called police. Officers arrived to find the former prisoners milling around the bus. Dispatchers exchanged several phone calls with Greyhound and prison officials while Lawhon and two other officers stayed with the bus and the passengers.

Just before 7 p.m., a second bus arrived with three drivers — including the one who had abandoned her passengers in the first place, Lawhon said.
Greyhound spokesman Dustin Clark said company officials were investigating the incident. “It is a very serious matter,” he said.
Clark said drivers have to follow strict guidelines on consecutive working hours and rest periods.
Police said there were no incidents involving the passengers while they were stranded.
“Their behavior was exemplary,” Officer Travis Wallace said.

Need a Valentine’s Day gift for the political junkie you love, but you gave almost all your cash to your favorite presidential candidate?

Take heart: The Borders store at the Ward Centre is selling Rudy Giuliani Countdown to Victory 2008 calendars for just a buck. Imagine, $1 buys 11 months in which you and your lover can be reminded of what could have been.

I also saw on sale John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton Countdown to Victory calendars.

When I spoke to UH students last week, one of the warnings I gave them was: When you read, watch or listen to news, know your gatekeepers.

The Honolulu Advertiser is a news gatekeeper, the New York Times is a gatekeeper, so are Rush Limbaugh and National Public Radio, CNN and Fox News, the Vanity Fair and Matt Drudge.

A gatekeeper is a person or organization that chooses what news you will read and what you will not. That’s not necessarily censorship, that’s just reality. There is no way any news organization can run all the news. It wouldn’t fit.

And no one has the resources to cover every story they consider worthwhile, including big organizations such as The Associated Press and The New York Times. So we all pick and choose, looking for worthwhile stories and stories than can be done effectively and efficiently, and affect a substantial number of people. Not every story can be an earth-shattering investigative piece that takes months to report and assemble, so we pick those investigative reports carefully and look for subjects that could have high impact.

How do you pick a gatekeeper that is worth of your time and attention? Here are some criteria:

Does your gatekeeper have a code of ethics? (And does it follow that code?)

Does your gatekeeper run corrections? (Every news organization is made up of people, ipso facto there will be mistakes.)

Does your gatekeeper run critical letters and e-mails from its readers or viewers? (Letters expressing an opinion about someone other than the gatekeeper have their place, but the real test is will your gatekeeper run a letter saying it screwed up.)

Does your gatekeeper often take you out of your comfort zone? (Why bother with a gatekeeper that tells you what you already know or simply reinforces your opinions?)

The Advertiser, and most daily newspapers in the country, can answer yes to all of those questions. The Advertiser is owned by Gannett Co., Inc. and follows Gannett’s code of ethics. Every year or two, each employee in the newsroom is required to reread that code; all the company’s managers are also required read and take a quiz on Gannett’s corporate ethics, which cover far more territory than just the news.

Here is the first section of our newsroom code:

Seeking and reporting the truth in a truthful way

* We will dedicate ourselves to reporting the news accurately, thoroughly and in context.
* We will be honest in the way we gather, report and present news.
* We will be persistent in the pursuit of the whole story.
* We will keep our word.

* We will hold factual information in opinion columns and editorials to the same standards of accuracy as news stories.
* We will seek to gain sufficient understanding of the communities, individuals and stories we cover to provide an informed account of activities.

You can read the full code of ethics at the Gannett Newspaper Division’s Web site and click on the link that says Principles of Ethical Conduct.

The American Society of Newspaper Editors maintains a Web page with links to the ethics codes of many news organizations, including Gannett. Check out some of the codes listed under news organizations, including ASNE itself and the Society of Professional Journalists. Does your gatekeeper try to follow these principles?

We run our corrections on A4. It can be embarrassing at times, but “the straights” as we call them are a necessary part of maintaining our credibility. With the corrections runs this note about contacting one of our two managing editors: If you have a question or concern about the accuracy, fairness or thoroughness of an item in The Honolulu Advertiser, please call Marsha McFadden at 535-2426.

The Advertiser’s letters to the editor run daily in the paper and on the Web site. One thing we require is that letter writers identify themselves and provide information that allows us to confirm their identity. On the Web, we provide a forum for feedback to some stories. We plan in the future to allow our readers to add their comments to any story on the Web site.

Finally, I think it is important that a gatekeeper challenges your beliefs. Look for gatekeepers that quote a variety of sources in their news stories and that reflect a range of opinions in their commentaries. One of the most disturbing reports I have ever read was one that found that the more educated people were, the more likely they were to hold rigid political beliefs. Furthermore, those rigid beliefs were likely set in stone before college graduation. That’s scary.