(no subject)
Sent to Richard Turner, the editor/boss of the guy who wrote the article.
Dear Mr. Turner:
My name is Mark Israel. I'm a professor of Business Strategy at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management.
In this capacity, I have long relied heavily on the Wall Street Journal for day-to-day reading, professional use in research, and classroom use. I recommend the Journal to roughly 200 MBA students each year as an important part of their business education. To be clear, I'm writing this as an individual, and I am in no way attempting to reflect the views of Kellogg as an institution or anyone else here.
Over the past year or so, I have been disturbed on several occasions by inaccuracies in Journal articles on topics I know well. To the point where I have actively considered switching my personal use, clasroom use, and recommendations for student use to the Financial Times, or another such publication. However, until recently, my concerns have been mitigated by the fact that, on each occasion, the Journal soon printed a follow-up, correction, or retraction.
Now, I fear the situation is growing worse. As a side project, I have been deeply involved with a well-organized group of fans of the television show Veronica Mars, working to attract more viewers to the show. The group's primary mission is to donate DVD sets to libraries across the country, an effort that has been received enthusiastically by librarians. To generate publicity for these grass roots efforts -- in hopes that the new CW network would pick up Veronica Mars for a third season (which it has since done) -- the group took a small portion of the funds it raised from fans around the world (with full knowledge and support from the contributors) to hire a plane to fly between the UPN (where the first 2 seasons aired) and the new CW offices pulling a banner reading "Renew Veronica Mars! CW 2006!"
These efforts were referred to in Brooks Barnes' May 13 Wall Street Journal article on fan efforts to support show renewals. However, that article was rather startling in its inaccuracy. It referred to the efforts of a group of fans in Los Angeles, when the plane was organized by a worldwide group of fans. It massively overstaed the amount spent on the plane. But worst of all, it claimed the plane flew to CW president Dawn Ostroff's home carrying the fairly offensive message "DON'T BE A DOPE: RENEW VERONICA MARS!!!" The net effect of this string of innacuracies was to take a carefully-planned, tasteful event designed to attract attention to the group's broader renewal efforts, and make it sound like the work of obsessed stalkers who, in the derisive words in the article's header, were "begging and bribing" for a spot on the network. These inaccuracies certainly left the impression that facts were being twisted to suit the author's message, since a simple Google search would have turned up dozens of references in other publications with the correct information.
Needless to say, this article was very upsetting to the group, since the primary purpose of the plane had been to generate press coverage. Many contributors chose to write letters to the Journal expressing their concenrs. I reassured them that, based on my experience, the Journal would quickly act to correct this error, and that I was sure there had been no malicious intent.
It now seems that I unintentionally misled these fans. The Journal has printed no correction, despite my personal knowledge of numerous complaints that have been sent. In fact, I have heard from multiple sources that responses have been sent to them suggesting that there were multiple groups flying multiple planes, and that the article was referring to a different plane. This is completely non-credible on its face. We have been in close, personal contact with officials from the show, studio, and network, who have all indicated that they were thrilled and amazed by our truly unique appproach in hiring a plane. It was clear from them that there was no other plane. The WB studio was excited enough to work closely with us to photograph the plane at the UPN offices (not Ms. Ostroff's house). Ms. Ostroff showed that photograph in her recent CW Upfront presentation as the most extreme example of fan dedication to Veronica Mars. That photo was referred to in AP press wire releases on the CW presentation, and dozens of publications have now referenced our efforts. NONE has mentioned any additional planes.
This leaves me with the strong impression that the Journal has committed three consecutive, highly-troubling errors -- printing an article with gross and easily checked inaccuracies, failing to print a correction when those inaccuracies were pointed out, and then making further false claims in response to concerned subscibers. Given my knowledge that other articles with inaccuracies have been corrected, I am forced to conclude that the Journal does not take the efforts of organized fan groups like ours seriously enough to warrant attention. And that leads me to question nearly everything I read or ask my students to read.
So, I'd ask for one of the following responses. If you can provide some evidence to convince me that the Journal was accurate in its article and response, and that there were other planes flown by other groups of Veronica Mars fans, carrying the banner with the text referred to in the article past Ms. Ostroff's house, I'll once again be convinced of the Journal's accuracy and integrity. If such evidence can not be provided, I'd ask for a well-researched, clear, courteous, prompt, and prominent correction and apology for the inaccuracies in the last article.
If neither of these steps can be taken then, when combined with the other inaccuracies I have read over the last couple years, I'll have no choice but to believe I can not trust the content of the Journal sufficently to rely on it myself or recommend it to students, and I'll switch to the Financial Times or another such publication for all personal and professional use.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Mark Israel
Kellogg Management and Strategy Department