Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown's Spouse Writes Glowingly About Michelle Obama: Did Democratic Politics Trump Journalism Ethics?

CLEVELAND (TDB) -- Cleveland newspaper columnist Connie Schultz writes glowingly about Michelle Obama, another Democratic U.S. senator's wife whom she landed for a major interview. Schultz seems to be dabbling in politics, a subject that former Cleveland Plain Dealer editor Doug Clifton -- who retired last year -- intended to keep out of her column. He was concerned about the potential for conflict, that conservative and Republican readers might see the paper as taking sides. In December 2006, Clifton told Cleveland Scene: "It's a very tough line to walk between being a journalist and being politicized. She'll have to be above reproach in matters concerning her husband. For my money, it would be best that she never even mentions that she had a husband. If I were looking for an ideal situation, I'd want a reader a year from now to be shocked an amazed that she was married to a U.S. Senator."

Michelle's husband is the Democratic presidential candidate; Cleveland newspaper columnist Connie's husband is Ohio's Democratic U.S. Senator. Connie's husband is doing all he can to help Michelle's husband move into the White House. Thus, the column by Connie could raise suspicion that she is doing the same, along with chatter that Ohio's largest newspaper also has shed any semblance of sitting on the sidelines during this presidential campaign season. Connie writes that the chief reason she wanted to interview Michelle -- and write a column -- is because "Michelle Obama is, indeed, auditioning for first lady and a lot of voters don't know much about her beyond media controversies."

So she sets about painting Michelle as a regular mom who shops at Target, and adds "Like most mothers, Michelle Obama relishes the daily mess of life as a parent. She also struggles with the maternal guilt so typical of working mothers." Connie explains she wanted to track down Michelle because they shared something in common -- husbands in the Senate:

"There's another reason I wanted to talk to Michelle Obama and it's personal. Like her, I am the wife of a U.S. senator. In many ways, she and I head dramatically different lives, but both of us are mothers and career women who know what it feels like to put our own lives on hold to support politically ambitious husbands. We've lost count of the times we've been introduced as 'the lovely wife' and we know there are always some campaign veterans who consider women like us either a prop or a problems in their husbands' races. So we had plenty to talk about."

Connie said she's waiting to hear from Cindy McCain, the wife of Arizona U.S. Senator John McCain. He's the Republican presidential candidate, the guy Sherrod Brown wants to Obama to defeat.

Cleveland Plain Dealer Internal Memo: Connie Schultz Writes At 5th Grade Level

CLEVELAND (TDB) -- Newspaper editors are worried about how to grab readers. And a Cleveland Plain Dealer internal memo from last week urges reporters to keep things simple. Plain English and short, uncomplicated sentences are best. It notes that Sen. Sherrod Brown's spouse, columnist Connie Schultz, has written at a level appropriate for fifth graders. Meanwhile, Washington bureau reporter Sabrina Eaton seems to be rebuked. The memo says she wrote about Dennis Kucinich at a level appropriate for high school seniors, or subscribers to The New York Times. Her "reading ease" score was low.

Here's the complete text of the memo:

The Writer's Group has been discussing Jack Hart's book, A Writer's Coach. This week we talked about the chapter on clarity. Hart points out that we can test the readability of our stories with the Fesch-Kincaid test, which is available in all Word programs. To get the Fesch-Kincaid test, click on tools, then spelling and grammar, then click on options and check "show readability scores". The Flesch-Kincaid test expresses scores in grade levels, based on sentence lengths, word lengths and active voice.

"Most writers with Flesch-Kincaid scores of 10 or less can engage a large, diverse audience," Hart writes. He says Pulitzer Prize winner Tom Hallman usually averages about grade 7. "Clear direct writing produces the lowest scorers," Hart writes.

With that in mind, I tested some of our best work and compared it to the New York Times. I picked three New York Times page 1 stories from this week, all 2,000 words or more. They averaged 12th-grade level, from 20-24 words per sentence, more than 5 characters per word, and 18-20 percent passive sentences.

The computer also gives an ease of reading score. Readers Digest averages a 65 score, Time magazine about 52 and the Harvard Law Review low 30s. All of the New York Times stories scored below 45.

John Mangels' Plagued by Fear (Day 1) was an extremely complex story about plague research, science and academics. Yet it came in at a 10th grade level, with 17.8 words per sentence, 4.9 characters per word and only 4 percent passive voice. It's ease of reading score was 53.

Rachel Dissell's Johanna series (Day 1) scored at the 6th grade level. It also had only 6 percent passive sentences, 12.1 words per sentence (wps), 4.6 characters per word (cpw) and a reading ease score of 72.1.

Connie Schultz's Pulitzer finalist, Burden of Innocence, scored at the FIFTH-grade level. Burden had 4 percent passive sentences, 11.8 wps, 4.2 cpw and a reading ease score of 78, the highest of any I tested.

Andy's Last Secret, a national award winner from Joanna Connors, also scored at the 6th-grade level with only 1 percent passive sentences. Karen Long's Penny-Missouri winner, In Balraj's Realm, a complex story than (sic) delved into science, political, gender and ethnic issues, came in at grade level 7.7.

I also checked this year's New York Times' Pulitzer winner for feature writing and it scored much higher on the readability scale than the typical Times story. The first day of the series about an imam scored at the eighth-grade level with 13.7 wps and a 60 reading ease score.

Then I scored the three front-page stories from Monday's Plain
Dealer. The results:

Dennis Kucinich:
Grade level: 12.0.
Words per sentence: 22.
Characters per word: 4.9.
Passive sentences: 7 percent.
Reading ease: 39.

Tribe Time:
Grade level: 8.0.
Wps: 14.3 .
Cpw: 4.8 .
Passive: 7 percent.
Reading ease: 62.5.

Burke airport:
Grade level: 10.8.
Wps: 17.8.
Cpw: 5.1.
Passive: 4 percent.
Reading ease: 48.

The moral, I suppose, is that you don't have to write long sentences and use difficult words to write complicated stories. In fact, excellent writing is often concise writing. I also think it's worth noting that it's also more difficult to hone writing into that high ease of reading range. But it can be done with a little editing. My first draft of this memo came in at the 10th-grade level. I did a little editing and it is now at grade 7.1.

As a final note, years ago, when John Carroll was editor in Lexington, he refused to publish a series, Cheating Our Children, about the poor education in Kentucky until the writers got it down to grade level THREE. You can't write respectable journalism at the third-grade level, can you? The series was a Pulitzer finalist, won several major awards and, most importantly, led to a revolution in the Kentucky educational system.

I would be glad to show anyone how to use the Flesch test.

Ohio Editor Quits To Teach Ethics At Kent State: Here's A Question, Prof

CLEVELAND (TDB) -- Tom O'Hara steps down today as managing editor of The Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper, and is headed to academia where he'll teach ethics and open government at the Kent State University journalism school. O'Hara starts in January, and The Daily Bellwether is presenting a question he can wrestle with. Is it proper for an MSM journalist to become so involved in a statewide political campaign that she recruits and participates in the hiring of the campaign manager?

There's more (yes, it's a long question) -- the MSM news outlet has publicly declared its policy is neutrality.

This isn't a hypothetical. Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Connie Schultz did become involved in a campaign while she was picking up a weekly paycheck from a certain large metropolitan newspaper in this state. Guess who was the managing editor at the time? Schultz is the spouse of U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio. Brown ran and defeated two-term Republican incumbent Mike DeWine in 2006, and Schultz has described how she helped put that campaign on track. Up until she helped land the campaign manager in mid-January 2006, she says, "Our campaign was a mess."

Shultz's choice for campaign manager: John Ryan, then president of the Cleveland AFL-CIO. Not everybody, of course, would agree that journalists should keep themselves out of an active role in politics. But it was enough of an issue in December 2005 that the newspaper's former editor, Doug Clifton, wrote na explanatory note to readers:

"She has a keen understanding of the delicate position she -- and our paper -- are in. She understands that she can't both campaign for her husband and write a column. And I understand that she is a supportive spouse who will be at her candidate husband's side from time to time."

Turns out, the understanding apparently was designed for public events, not behind-the-scenes campaigning. Here's what Connie writes in her book . . . and His Lovely Wife about her involvement in the selection process of Brown's campaign manager. The account is on pages 44 and 45:

'John Ryan believes in you,' I said.
'John Ryan believes in the work,' Sherrod said.
'You can trust him.'
Sherrod nodded. 'Nobody works harder than John Ryan.'
Sherrod walked upstairs to his office and made the call.
He came downstairs, his face clouded.
'He's thinking about it,' he said. 'He's not sure he's up to it.'

Connie says that Ryan remembers that she called him immediately. She does not remember the call, but adds that if Ryan says it happened it did.

According to John Ryan, I picked up the phone and dialed his cell number.
'John Ryan?'
'Hey, Connie. Hi.'
'I know Sherrod just called you, and I know what he wants you to do.'
'Okay. Well, I'm going to give it a lot of thought --'
'Look, John Ryan. If this is about your family, then I understand why you can't do this. But otherwise I don't want to hear it. We need you.'
And then John Ryan says I hung up on him.

Ryan took the job. Connie was still working at her newspaper.

Here's some bio and background information about Tom O'Hara that was in a memo to The Plain Dealer's staff. H/T Jim Romenesko who publishes a journalism blog for the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank.

Again, the question raised by Connie's report of her involvement in recruiting and selecting Sherrod Brown's campaign manager goes to whether a journalist owes allegiance to journalism, or to partisan politics. By day, can one be an MSM journalist working for an ostensibly neutral news gathering organization, and by night be an insider hiring the people who run a U.S. Senate campaign? Are the dual roles inherently conflicted? What has first allegiance; journalism or the campaign?

Ohiosphere Tale Of The Day (IV): RAB's Naugle Delivers A Hornswoggle

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Self-assured, fiercely partisan and way too interested in Connie Schultz's armpits. That's one way of reading the RightAngleBlog's agitated write-up about former Cleveland Plain Dealer Columbus Bureau reporter Ted Wendling. RAB has produced a duplicitous online screed whose tenor is meant to demonize a truly excellent person.

Wendling, with whom I worked for nearly 20 years at the PeeDee, is dedicated, honest, polite, intelligent and a superb human being. Every resident of this state should sleep better at night upon learning that Ted Wendling has been hired as a deputy inspector general to monitor the Ohio Department of Transportation for fraud, waste and abuse of public funds.

Wendling is a dogged investigator. He and his former partner, Dave Davis, were finalists for a Pulitzer in the mid-1990s for a series of stories that exposed covered up medical errors with radiological equipment. It was a seminal event that changed policies across the nation.

Matt Naugle, the RightAngleBlog's editor, writes posts that are interesting, engaging and occasionally enraging. (I am a fan, though I sometimes flinch over things I see there. But it is fun, and I love free speech.) Now he is labeling Wendling a hack, a Democratic hack:

"But on the bright side, at least Ted Wendling won't be a spokesman for a Democratic office holder -- I guess he was tired of being a Democrat spokesmouth via his job at the Plain Dealer, and wanted to try something new. Ted, you are a partisan hack, and I wish you much failure with your new gig."

RAB is wrong. Ted has unrivalled experience. He has character. He will serve the state well.

RAB's rap against him comes out of the last election, when Ken Blackwell, the rock upon which Matt Naugle had sought to build his hopes, was crushed. By firing unscrupulous and uninformed salvos at good people intent on public service, Naugle is still trying to salvage something from that sad wreck. Naugle is a voice who wants to show that Republicans can produce superior statecraft. But habitually engaging in duplicity won't make that case.

Did This Huddle At The PeeDee Cost GOP A U.S. Senate Seat?

CLEVELAND (TDB) -- Connie Schultz's recollection of a conversation with an editor at The Plain Dealer clearly demonstrates there are shoals under the surface when politics and journalism are mixed in the workplace with partisan ideology. It turns out that Connie, a Pulitzer-winning feature section columnist, was advised by her boss -- during a private workday meeting -- to urge that her husband, Sherrod Brown, enter the 2006 U.S. Senate race in Ohio. She quotes the editor saying of Brown, "this country needs him to run."

Brown is a Democrat. The Senate seat was held by two-term Republican Mike DeWine, who lost last November. Some could say the workplace conversation was a meeting that helped alter the state and nation's political course, a course that has tacked away from the GOP.

Connie recounts her talk with Stuart Warner, the editor who handled her columns, in her new book "...and His Lovely Wife," and describes how she was reluctant about having Brown run statewide. In effect, she portrayed herself as the main roadblock to her husband's candidacy.

She said she told Warner, a former Beacon Journal columnist who wrote "Warner's Corner" for years, that Sherrod was thinking about running. The editor then motioned to move the conversation to a more private setting, an empty meeting room. She quotes Warner:

"Sherrod should run. This country needs him to run, and he needs you by his side to do it. You'll be a tremendous asset. Look at what you believe in. Look who you've been fighting for your entire career. That's who he'll be running for, and they will vote for him and he can win. You can always come back to work if you want. Or you can move on to something bigger. You have nothing but options, but this is the right time, maybe the only time, for him to run."

Warner had endorsed a Brown candidacy, and Connie wrote in the book, "I was stunned, but I was also listening."

Doug Clifton, the paper's editor at the time, was worried about Connie's relationship with a statewide candidate. In December 2005 he wrote a column reassuring readers her marriage to Brown "will have no influence -- for or against -- our coverage of his campaign."

Of course, Clifton probably didn't know that the campaign had been partially fanned into life by a conversation in his own newsroom.

To Sen. Sherrod's Brown's Spouse: Here's The Story's Other Side

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- The Cleveland Plain Dealer's feature section columnist Connie Schultz sounds cranked off in this item published by the alt/weekly Cleveland Scene. Three journalists on the PeeDee's staff in 2006, including the author of this blog, are scored for "breaking the basic rules of journalism."

What pap. In my case, I sent an e-mail from the Plain Dealer's bureau in Cincinnati -- where I was based before retiring last December -- to then editor Doug Clifton. The e-mail went out in January or February 2006. I cc'ed Connie and noted that newspaper stories appearing in Southern Ohio in early 2006 were pointing out she was the wife of Sherrod Brown, who was on a trip around the state announcing his candidacy for the U.S. Senate. Some of those stories identified her as a journalist employed by the Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper.

Now, I was not aware of her marriage. I live in Cincinnati and learned of it around the time the campaigning started. Downstate, Sherrod and Connie were not widely known. I also heard suspicions/complaints/snark from Dems in the Paul Hackett camp, and from some Repubs who liked then-incumbent Sen. Mike DeWine, that the PD's coverage would be biased for Brown. After all, they said, his wife worked in the newsroom. She was a columnist. She had recently won a Pulitzer. And she could influence how the campaign was covered.

Hackett was still in the primary and things were growing bitter on the Democratic side. The Republicans expected a tough fight ahead for DeWine. And, the PD was in the bag.

I composed the e-mail to Clifton, the gist of it saying that things were tough for reporters in the field. They should not have to be under a cloud. Connie probably should get out of the way. She should be at her husband's side for the race. My view expressed in the note: Her activity as a columnist/candidate's wife looked like a conflict. I did not want to have to defend myself or any stories I wrote against allegations they were crafted to carry water for Sherrod Brown.

Connie reportedly met with Clifton as a result of my e-mail. She implies that I should have known about her marriage because it was reported in the paper. "Does he not read the paper he writes for?" she says she asked Clifton.

Yes, I read the paper. Somehow I missed her marriage announcement. Perhaps I was in West Virginia covering a flood that day. Or I was in court, or out trailing a candidate around, or wandering around Appalachian Ohio. Perhaps I was drilling down into the baseball box scores. Or reading Phillip Morris. I missed the announcement.

I must add that I was never an avid reader of the features section where Connie toils, a part of the paper that grizzled old newsroom hands like myself called the "toy department." That's a journo term predating myself or Connie, and comes from the era when the City Room was the heart of a newspaper and the "toy department" produced mostly fluff.

So, the "basic rule of journalism" that I broke was to express concern in writing to the editor in chief that the Plain Dealer's coverage of the Senate campaign was being perceived as less than even-handed, to contend that there should be no possible way for Brown's opponents to assert an insider controlled coverage and tilted it toward the insider's husband. To this day, I am convinced I did the right thing to urge that she be eased aside while the campaign unfolded.

That said, I will add this: She probably ought to find a job outside Ohio journalism now that Sherrod is a Senator. I think active newspapering and a political marriage don't mix, and there is an inference that no bright line exists to stop Connie from promoting her husband's agenda. She may not be doing any promotion -- but too many people will always think she is. And it damages the journalists who are dedicated to playing things straight.

Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown: Veep Cheney's Pic On Web Site

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Ohio's new Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown 's official Web site is now up and running. And guess whose photo graces the front page? Vice President Dick Cheney. CLICK HERE and see for yourself. Do it fast, because that scene probably won't be around for long.

While it's up, I can see Democrats horrified and Republicans hysterical with laughter.

Cheney, who is the Senate's presiding officer, appears to be administering the oath of office to Brown, presumably an action that fulfills one of the few constitutional functions of the vice presidency.

Brown must have selected the photo to prove to the folks back home he's really in office. O.K, Sen. Brown, you are sworn in. But did you have to prove it by regaling Ohioans with a picture of a Republican with a reputation for extreme partisanship, a man who has implied that Democrats like yourself would let terrorists attack our homeland with impunity?

For those who don't know, the woman standing between the veep and the senator is Connie Schultz, the Pulitizer-winning Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist who is married to the senator.

The vice president is a symbol of just about everything that Brown campaigned against. Cheney says the Iraq War is a success, and he advocated the invasion. He said the insurgents would be gone by now. He's been a pit bull attacking Democrats as weak, liberal and somewhat less that patriotic. Now he's got prime real estate on the online portal of Ohio's new Democratic senator. Got a give it to Dick Cheney -- he's always popping up from that undisclosed location.

Ohio Media: Sen. Sherrod Brown's Spouse Resumes Column

CLEVELAND (TDB) -- Connie Schultz, the Pulitizer-winning newspaper columnist who is married to Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, was back in print today at The Plain Dealer. She delivered an emotionally moving yarn about her late father and the Big Snows that regularly hit Ashtabula on Lake Erie. No hint of a political tint in any of her words.

Schultz returned to writing after taking a leave-of-absence for the U.S. Senate campaign that put her husband in office. She also is working on a book about the Senate race that ended Republican Mike DeWine's run as an elected official.

Sooner or later, Schultz and Ohio's largest daily newspaper are going to run into flak from the right over one of her columns, which are a popular fixture in the feature section. Here is the comeback column and it is a gem. Schultz is the only spouse of a U.S. Senator who writes for a major American newspaper.

A Typo & Sen. Sherrod Brown's Pulitzer-Winning Spouse

CLEVELAND (TDB) -- Newspaper columnist Connie Schultz, whose husband Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown is just settling into his new gig at the Capital, is supposed to return to work at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland next week. And now the senator's wife knows how it feels to have her name incorrectly spelled in the press -- in this case The Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper with about 436,000 subscribers.

It came out "Shultz" not "Schultz" in an ad her newspaper printed about the imminent homecoming. Here's the tale by Michael K. McIntyre, who writes the weekly Tipoff column, about an alert reader who spotted the mistake: "She called Tipoff back after The Plain Dealer ran an ad Thursday trumpeting next week's return of columnist Connie Schultz. The ad used 'it's,' the contraction for 'it is' when it should have been 'its,' the possessive with no apostrophe, she said. She got us there. But even the teacher didn't catch the ad's most glaring error: 'Connie Shultz returns.' It's Schultz."

There is a link to Connie at the paper HERE, and an article in a journalism trade industry publication about what she's been up to recently HERE.

Connie and I exchanged e-mail this week and she said she was finishing her book about the campaign. She wanted permission to use a note I sent her and Plain Dealer editor Doug Clifton in December 2005, when Brown was running against Iraq War veteran Paul Hackett in the Demo Senate primary. Hackett eventually dropped out. But there was a lot of angst about bias by PD'ers before he quit. I was still with the Plain Dealer and upset that she was campaigning while working as a columnist. I thought there was a potential conflict of interest that opened myself and other PD reporters covering the race to the complaints of bias. I wondered if she, as a journalist, should mix politics and family.

Connie eventually left her job, taking a sabbatical for the election. A classy move on her part. But I wonder how The Plain Dealer will handle her role as a Democratic senator's wife and columnist in the future? To me, it looks like a minefield. Republicans will always be watching for signs of favoritism. Even the shortest sentences will be scrutinized and probably found to be full of Demo dogma. Maybe the paper should hire LYNNE CHENEY, the wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, to write a column from the other side. She's an author married to a politician.