Ethics News
A stickler for seemliness, Bingham made some changes. Pierce, whom he describes as “sort of an old-time newsman” who couldn’t see what the problem was, became a Sunday feature writer and actually took to milking the shift in after-dinner speeches. “It made his career,” says Bingham. “He has the most recognizable byline of any reporter who works for the Courier-Journal.”
Publishers often call city desks, but not to order their own embarrassment. “I’ve got to say, the editors were somewhat surprised. Nobody else caught hunting over a baited field got their name in the paper. I did. I think people feel cynical about the press. If the publisher gets in a crack, you have to treat yourself the way you’d treat anybody else in a somewhat prominent position.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
“I was never a party to that and never wanted to be a party to it,” he said. “I’m a First Amendment man.”
To Bingham, FineLine is an emblem of the future of journalism, which lies in filling “smaller and smaller niches of information. . . . In ten years, this information will be available to computer data bases. An editor with a problem–say, moonlighting–can access our data base for anything we’ve published on the subject.
John Malone! We told Bingham that Malone has been trying to launch a new afternoon paper since the Daily News went under in ’78. He’s journalism’s Don Quixote.
