A Little Snag in Those Frivolous Suits
U.S. News's Examples Were 'Myths'
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 23, 2003; Page C01
In a U.S. News & World Report column about frivolous lawsuits, owner Mort Zuckerman serves up a couple of doozies:
"A woman throws a soft drink at her boyfriend at a restaurant, then slips on the floor she wet and breaks her tailbone. She sues. Bingo -- a jury says the restaurant owes her $100,000! A woman tries to sneak through a restroom window at a nightclub to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She falls, knocks out two front teeth, and sues. A jury awards her $12,000 for dental expenses."
Great stuff -- and, unfortunately for Zuckerman, totally bogus. Two Web sites -- StellaAwards.com and Snopes.com -- say the cases of the soda-slipping Pennsylvania woman and the window-wriggling Delaware woman are fabricated, and no public records could be found for them.
Zuckerman has plenty of company. A number of newspapers and columnists have touted the phantom cases since they surfaced in 2001 in a Canadian newspaper.
Ken Frydman, Zuckerman's spokesman, did not dispute that the pair of cases in the column two weeks ago were imaginary, but would not address whether the magazine will publish a retraction.
"These cases were reported in a variety of other reputable publications, such as the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the London Telegraph, and Mr. Zuckerman could have cited dozens of other cases," Frydman says. "Few Americans would disagree with the proposition that there are far too many frivolous lawsuits filed."
In a letter to the magazine, Mary Alexander, president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, chides Zuckerman for using "phony, nonexistent lawsuits that have been widely exposed as 'urban myths' to justify his assault on our legal system."
Peachy Journalism
When Peter Kaplan learned that the New York Observer's Web site had been crashing all day, he knew he had a hit on his hands.
No sooner had he posted an incendiary interview with Jayson Blair for the May 21 issue than journalists everywhere were buzzing about the peach-colored weekly's scoop. Which was fitting, because the Observer blankets the Manhattan media world with the incestuous intensity of a Hollywood rag chasing Gwyneth, Nicole and Demi.
"We are the paper of record for the power elite," says Kaplan, the Observer's editor for nine years, during which it has served as a farm team that produced 14 reporters later hired by the New York Times. "We are covering one small town within New York -- people in the media, real estate, politics, high society and the art and culture world."
If there is one thing that denizens of the Observer's town are sensitive about -- they keep bringing it up, unprompted -- it's "the word I hate most," Kaplan says, the charge "that we're snarky." So perhaps it wouldn't be too snarky to observe that the paper revels in juicy gossip about the high and mighty, but gives its targets a chance to respond.
"For all the back-and-forth about the Observer's alleged mean streak, fundamentally we're about doing intelligent journalism," says television writer Jason Gay, who just quit to join GQ.
The Observer's circulation of 55,000 is centered mainly in Manhattan. Its 15 reporters and a handful of editors, operating out of an Upper East Side townhouse, are mostly twentysomethings toiling for modest pay.
"It's covering people like you and me," Vanity Fair spokeswoman Beth Kseniak tells a reporter, "and we all want to read about ourselves and the industries we care about. And they discover new talent."
"We haven't been happy with everything they've written," says Fox News spokesman Brian Lewis. But, he says, "it's the first thing I go to every Wednesday morning. They serve a certain clientele. They serve the media. It's a very inside paper." Lewis calls the coverage, yes, "snarky," which "I mean as a compliment," he adds.
And there's always the chance of hitting it big. Kaplan helped launch Candace Bushnell in the early '90s with a column christened Sex and the City, which became a monster hit for Sarah Jessica Parker and HBO.
Michael Powell, now The Washington Post's New York bureau chief, spent a year at the Observer. During an earlier stint at New York Newsday, "I would call and call Felix Rohatyn and could never get him on the phone," he says of the Manhattan financier. "I went to the Observer and all of a sudden Rohatyn would call me back in an instant -- because it was his class and his group that read it."
The paper's two biggest quarries are Conde Nast, which Kaplan likens to "a big old Hollywood studio," and the Times, which is "like reporting on the Kremlin." So Blair was a huge "get" for the Observer.
Media writer Sridhar Pappu says he and a colleague thought they had lined up an interview but then couldn't get hold of the fallen Timesman. "I just kept calling him and calling him and calling him," Pappu says. A couple of weeks later, he scored an extensive discussion with Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.
The 15-year-old Observer, which features columnists such as Joe Conason, Rex Reed, Hilton Kramer and Ron Rosenbaum and cartoonist Robert Grossman, also throws its weight around in New York politics. The paper trumpeted a front-page editorial calling for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to resign during the flap over whether she and her husband improperly took gifts from the White House. It also runs such features as a spread on "Superdames" -- the "professionally accomplished, middle-aged sex bombs who can do a balance sheet and set a lovely dinner table."
Staffers credit the magazine-quality writing to Kaplan, who briefly wrote for The Post's Style section in the early 1980s and later co-founded manhattan inc., a brilliant but short-lived city magazine. "Peter is as perfection-driven as anyone I've ever met in journalism," Gay says.
Kaplan insists the Observer, which is overseen and subsidized by publisher Arthur Carter, is not far from turning a profit, although it dropped from three to two sections after the post-9/11 downturn. The paper attracts 20,000 to 30,000 daily readers online, drawn by the media-savvy tone.
"We tell the reporters to talk to the reader like they were talking to another reporter," Kaplan says.
Guilt by Association
New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau says he was "kind of floored" to learn that Sen. Orrin Hatch had ripped into him while chairing a Judiciary Committee hearing.
Upset about a Lichtblau story in May that raised questions about a judicial nominee, the Utah Republican played the Jayson Blair card, saying that Lichtblau "shared bylines with the infamous Mr. Blair." Asked about the incident, first reported by Roll Call, Lichtblau says that the slam was "unfair" and that the three stories on which he collaborated with Blair were never challenged. In fact, Lichtblau was one of the reporters who questioned Blair's work on the Washington sniper story.
"I was way out of line," says Hatch , who later called to tell Lichtblau he was sorry. "It wasn't right. He was very gracious and accepted my apology immediately. . . . I couldn't live with myself and let that go without an apology."
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