| President’s
Letter
Why Judy Miller matters
by Roy Harris, National
President; Senior Editor, CFO
 So Judy Miller was released from jail
after months of refusing to reveal a source
to investigators. Then The
New York Times, and newspapers in general, fumed about
how little control editors had over her
work. And even now, the general-circulation
press remains abuzz, debating how to use
confidential sources, how much liberty
reporters should be given, and whether
a federal shield law is needed.
What does all this mean for B2B magazine
editors and writers, who have narrower
professional audiences, and who sometimes
see their main challenge as simply getting
a periodical out the door?
Plenty.
While few of us
tangle with White House leakers and questions
of global political intrigue — and our own newsroom debates
likely won’t make the pages of Columbia
Journalism Review or Larry King’s
studio — we deal with many of the
same issues that faced the Times this summer
and fall. The consequences can be the same,
too: deterioration of reader confidence,
and a loss of respect among our media peers.
In our own defense
We all must have
strong standards for checking facts and
dealing with writers, whether they are
our own staffers or freelancers. And
we need to take special care if writers
are less than eager to share their sources
in the editing process, or have trouble
defending the reasoning that underlies
what is in a draft. We must prepare our
own defense, after all, for once the material
is in the book it becomes ours — warts
and all. Magazine standards serve to guide
writers, and also reassure readers that
the product they are holding is prepared
with the reader’s interest in mind.
But in the end, achieving both those results
is our responsibility as editors.
ASBPE has long
supported magazines’ efforts
to heighten and tighten their standards.
Our Awards of Excellence program is designed
to give editors examples of ethics at work — cases
in which publications deal with real-world
quandaries and still turn out a quality
product. Our local chapters often tackle
ethical debates in meetings, and a national
conference never goes by without major
programs on standards. Take a look at our
Web site’s discussion forum page
to see how important ethical matters are
to your fellow members. And if there was
any doubt about it, our recent survey erases
it (see page
1).
Lessons from inside and outside
As readers of Editor’s
Notes know,
ASBPE’s officers are now tailoring
the organization’s ethics code to
offer clearer, up-to-date guidelines that
will be useful in the daily challenge of
weighing reader interests and advertiser
desires, for example. Editors develop their
concerns about ethics on the basis of their
newsroom experiences. And the awareness
of conflicts around the publishing universe
only makes us wiser to the possibilities
for future ethical snarls.
Whatever form the new ASBPE code takes,
it will recognize that serving the reader
is our first responsibility as journalists.
To that end, it will encourage transparency,
so that readers know the principles on
which our publications stand.
It is important
to remember that B2B magazines don’t stand alone. Our editors represent
a large and important corner of a noble
American journalism profession — a
profession we share with the national and
local newspapers, consumer magazines, and
broadcasters. By keeping up with the journalism
issues of the day on the wider stage, and
encouraging the whole staff to do the same,
magazines and their readers both benefit.
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