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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (32094)	2/28/2004 3:01:00 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793592

The Washingtonian - Breaking News: LA Times Bids to Be Nation’s Best Investigative Paper After his first week as California investigative editor at the Los Angeles Times, Vernon Loeb was hard at work Friday afternoon editing an in-depth piece on police shooting into cars. “One hundred car shootings in LA since 1985,” Loeb says. Loeb’s move from the Washington Post to start the investigative reporting team in California says much about the LA Times’s devotion to investigative reporting. It’s also a sign that investigative reporting at big newspapers is making a strong comeback. Loeb was hired away from the Post by LA Times editor John Carroll and managing editor Dean Baquet. Both came up through the ranks of investigative reporters and are running the West Coast daily with a mission. “My goal is to make the LA Times into a great investigative paper,“ says Baquet. “It’s something John and I care about. It’s one of the most important things a paper can do.” Small, medium, and large newspapers across the country publish important investigative stories all the time. Which papers do the best job of it is hard to judge. But among the major papers, it appears the scale is tipping westward given the strong history of investigative reporting at the Seattle Times and the new surge at the LA Times. “The LA Times’s work over the last few years has been very good,” says Shawn McIntosh, deputy managing editor at the Atlanta-Journal Constitution and president of the board of Investigative Reporters and Editors. It’s so good that the IRE has asked John Carroll to be keynote speaker at its June convention. Carroll’s investigative work started with the Philadelphia Inquirer in the 1970s and continued at papers in Lexington and Baltimore. Baquet won a Pulitzer investigating city-council corruption for the Chicago Tribune. “John had a dream of setting a small army of investigative reporters on Washington,“ says Deborah Nelson, Washington investigative editor for the LA Times. Nelson was hired from the Washington Post in 2001 and asked to double the staff of investigative reporters in the DC bureau from four to eight. She’s added Kevin Sack from the New York Times, Chuck Neubauer from the Chicago Sun-Times, and former freelancer Ken Silverstein. With their work, and that of veterans like Alan Miller and David Willman, the Times has been winning Pulitzers and other awards. Willman’s exposés of unsafe prescription drugs won the 2001 Pulitzer, and he’s now churning out high-impact stories on relationships between NIH scientists and drug companies. Carroll’s “small army” has exposed profitable if not improper relationships in the offices of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens and Pennsylvania Congressman Curt Weldon. The LA Times also has dispatched former New York Times reporter Doug Frantz to investigate nuclear weaponry and proliferation around the world. “We already are the best investigative paper,” says Nelson. “I hope other papers don’t wake up and try to overtake us.” The Washington Post’s Jeff Leen begs to differ. “We’re ahead of anybody in the last five years,” says Leen, assistant managing editor for investigative reporting. “The record speaks for itself.” The Post has won Pulitzers for investigations into local police shootings and foster-care problems as well as its stories on the 9/11 attacks, which included reporting by Bob Woodward. Leen says the Post has “more than 20 reporters” doing investigative work, either on teams or as lone wolves like city reporter Serge Kovaleski, who investigates DC police and criminal justice. The New York Times also might disagree. It won last year’s Pulitzer for investigative reporting. Veteran reporter Matthew Purdy recently was put in charge of its investigative unit. The rise of John Carroll and Dean Baquet to top editors is part of a trend that is making investigative reporting a priority at many papers. David Boardman was for years head of the Seattle Times investigative shop, where Duff Wilson is the veteran. Now Boardman has moved up to managing editor. Anne Marie Lipinsky long was the Chicago Tribune’s chief investigative reporter. She’s been promoted to managing editor. “All of these investigative journalists have moved up where they can make even more of a difference,“ says Deborah Nelson. A good case can be made that they already have had an impact. IRE’s Shawn McIntosh just finished reviewing 96 entries for the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting. “The work was much better this year,” she says.

To: LindyBill who wrote (32094)	2/28/2004 7:23:58 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 793592

My take: Even the members of Fatah, certainly all of the 'young guard', know that Arafat's decisions have been disastrous, but they have no way to deal with Arafat. They have no institutions of power. It's all about one man's power, and the only way to dislodge him is through a coup, and they dare not do it, because Arafat holds the strings, keeps the money, is Mr-Palestinian-Flag, you can list the reasons. So Arafat promises to reform one more time. The promises he makes to Fatah are worth exactly as much as the promises he makes to everybody else, that is, nothing.