Chicago Tribune suspends use of Journatic content

The production manager and head of editorial at Chicago-based Journatic LLC announced his resignation on his blog Saturday, a day after the Chicago Tribune suspended its use of the local content provider following allegations of plagiarism and fabrication.

But according to a Journatic spokesperson, the resignation occurred before a decision to fire him could be implemented.

In April, the Tribune announced a three-month rolling transition from the use of local reporters to Journatic-provided content in its TribLocal publications and websites. The paper said it would eliminate about 20 staff jobs in the transition.

But Journatic’s business practices fell under greater scrutiny earlier this month following a report on the National Public Radio show “This American Life” that the company was outsourcing some of its information gathering to low-paid workers in the Philippines who sometimes used fake bylines.

In his online statement Saturday, former Journatic production manager Mike Foucher said his resignation stemmed from fundamental disagreements with the company’s founders over ethical and management issues.

Foucher wrote that he was excited to join the company 10 weeks ago and that he still believes in its core premise of managing raw data outside a traditional newsroom. But his efforts to correct perceived shortfalls in company policy went unheeded, he added.

“The company’s model falters ... when it attempts to treat community news reporting the same way as data reporting,” Foucher wrote. “Inevitably, as you distribute reporting work to an increasingly remote team, you break traditional bonds of trust between writers and editors until they are implicitly discouraged from doing high quality work for the sake of increasing production efficiency and making more money.”

Journatic officials released a written statement several hours later that said, “When we discovered that plagiarism had occurred this week under Mike’s watch we made a decision to terminate him. He resigned before we could do so. His characterization of his departure is entirely inaccurate.”

In a statement posted late Friday and published Saturday, Chicago Tribune President Vince Casanova explained that one quote in a TribLocal story by freelance writer Luke Campbell was found to have come from a June 7 Deerfield Review story by Bill McLean, while a second quote in the TribLocal story was fabricated and based on information in a March 29 story by Steve Sadin on deerfield.patch.com.

“The Chicago Tribune’s journalists are held to the highest standards, and those standards must apply to all Chicago Tribune Media Group publications and their content suppliers,” Casanova wrote. “The TribLocal story fell far short.”

Casanova added that the Tribune had already been investigating Journatic’s editorial practices, including the use of false bylines, but that a review of Campbell’s previous stories for TribLocal had found no other plagiarized or fabricated work.

At least one journalism ethics expert Saturday felt the incident would carry greater resonance within the journalism industry than with the general public.

“Unfortunately, I’m not convinced the general public understands the difference between responsible journalism and this kind of thing,” said Fred Brown, vice chairman of the Society of Professional Journalists ethics committee. “To a professional journalist, it’s abhorrent.”

He cited as an example how long disgraced journalist Jayson Blair had gotten away with fabricating stories for The New York Times without any public complaint.

Brown said more such incidents may occur as companies search for ways to provide news more cheaply. While such content as school lunch menus and high school football scores can be provided cheaply and anonymously, Brown said he hoped the Journatic incident would inspire serious news providers to be leery of using such a model for true journalism.

“I think maybe the providers of the information will take it to heart and clean up their act,” Brown said. “As we used to say on the editorial page, ‘It remains to be seen.’”