USA Today Founder Blasts Paper's Editors

USA Today's recent ethical troubles with its former reporter Jack Kelley are the fault of the newspaper – and its determination to expand coverage beyond the United States and make it more "upscale." So claims the paper's founding publisher, Al Neuharth.

"When big-time blunders occur in any workplace, the boss or bosses usually are at fault, not clerks or secretaries or salespeople," Neuharth wrote in his weekly USA Today column, a copy of which Editor & Publisher obtained Thursday.

The column appears just days after USA Today publisher Craig Moon received a long-awaited confidential report from three veteran journalists – Bill Kovach, William Hilliard and John Seigenthaler – who, according to E&P, spent weeks interviewing dozens of people both within and outside the paper about Kelley's actions.

Kelley resigned from the national daily in February.

In a report published by USA Today on March 19, the paper revealed that the team of journalists found strong evidence that Kelley had fabricated substantial portions of at least eight major stories, lifted nearly two dozen quotes or other material from competing publications, lied in speeches he gave for the newspaper and conspired to mislead those investigating his work.

The paper reported that Kelley’s "most egregious misdeed occurred in 2000, when he used a snapshot he took of a Cuban hotel worker to authenticate a story he made up about a woman who died fleeing Cuba by boat. The woman in the photo neither fled by boat nor died, and a USA Today reporter located her this month. If Cuban authorities had learned she was the woman in the picture, she says, she could have lost her job and her chance to emigrate."

Kelley, 43, resigned from the newspaper in January after he admitted conspiring with a translator to mislead editors overseeing an inquiry into his work. At the time, newspaper editors said they could not determine whether Kelley had embellished or fabricated stories.

In his column, Neuharth charged that USA Today's problems with Kelley can be linked to the paper's decision years ago to beef up international coverage.

"In the beginning, USA Today had a nationally oriented but down-home style," the column says. "A decade or so later, new bosses with more Tiffany-like tastes went upscale and global."

Neuharth added that this hurt the core audience and pressured editors to demand more from reporters such as Kelley.

"Real or self-imposed pressure grew to grab new readers and prizes," the column claims. "Kelley's deceptions from faraway places followed, spanning more than 10 years."

Although Neuharth, the former publisher, stopped short of demanding the resignation of Moon or editor Karen Jurgenson, he makes clear his belief that the paper needs changes.

"Moon has promised a new environment to guarantee that things won't go haywire again," the column states. "USA Today's journalists deserve that."

Editor's note: