UPDATE AT BOTTOM
H/T Jim Romanesko for this tidbit.
Oregonian editor Kathleen Glanville has been fired for covering up the details of the death of Bob Caldwell, editorial page editor. See my previous posts here and here. Glanville made the announcement on her facebook page.
Glanville is friends with the Caldwells and wanted to spare his widow public humiliation. Caldwell died in the bed of a 23 year old prostitute.
The Oregonian’s initial story reported Caldwell was found dead on Saturday alone in his car. That story was far from the truth. In fact, Caldwell was in the bed of a 23 year old woman with whom he’d been having sex according to later stories.
The word is that a local TV station discovered the real story on Caldwell and told folks at the Zero they were going with it and would give them about two seconds to change it. That doesn’t pass the smell test. The Oregonian denies it. However, what does make sense is that the TV station called for a comment and the Zero went into emergency mode and came clean on the story.
Glanville says she understands why she was fired. Now if only someone had been fired on the Goldschmidt and Wu stories…
**UPDATED WITH REPLY FROM VICE PRESIDENT AND EDITOR OF THE OREGONIAN, PETER BHATIA:
The “misinformation” came from editor who was fired. Read about that here.
The erroneous report, as we said at the time, did come from a family friend, one of more than 30 years with the Caldwells, but one who was also a staff member.
There was no reason or sign that Caldwell’s death was anything other than routine. He had a DUII in his past (which we didn’t report at the time — true, also my call), but nothing else. And, even though journalists are trained skeptics always ready to ask the next question, none of us could have imagined a fellow journalist not telling us the truth.
Frankly, this was a no-win choice. If we went with the story, we would be criticized for besmirching a good man and further hurting his family. If we held the details back, we would be accused of a cover-up.
The notion of a cover-up is ridiculous, since we broke the news that was in the police report in the first place.
