Hey, there! Log in / Register
Longtime Globe reporter no longer at the Globe; editor works to find out what went wrong with her story about long-distance T managers
By adamg on Thu, 05/04/2023 - 10:38am
Dan Kennedy reports that Andrea Estes now has "former reporter" on her Globe bio page and that Globe Editor Nancy Barnes has told the newsroom that she is looking at what went wrong with Estes's story about nine T managers working from hundreds of miles away when three of them were actually in Boston the whole time.
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
A fair result.
If you are going to come for people’s jobs by printing false information, you should be prepared to face the consequences. Defamation suit against the globe perhaps?
Oh, Nancy Barnes...
Please head down to the restroom and look into the mirror.
The Globe's junior writing staff has become a joke lately. Fact checking, a basic understanding of some areas of Boston and some recent history has been looked over in the face of truthiness.
Editing has become sloppy in both factual manners and with grammar. A throw away story on local college graduations had the link for Wheaton College linked to the Handmaid's Tail institution with the same name in Wheaton Illinois, not Norton MA.
It is a minor story, but at least get it right.
PS - Estes might have been on the chopping block with the Arroyo story from a newsroom politics point. The clearly messing up the T story gave them a valid excuse to let her go.
News for clicks, likes and revenue
The reporters of yore did far more grunt work to get a story than the reporters of today; instead of going to their sources and getting a story, many rely on the internet, hearsay, or their own sets of beliefs ("the narrative") to color their own version of what happened.
Modern reporters also mistake public relations/activist efforts to prop what they support and condemn what they don't for good reporting. Editors back then (the ones who believed in good reporting, not in ginning up stories to boost circulation) would give the reporter a dressing down or firing if they knew the story didn't match the facts. Now, printing out advertorials, political propaganda and fan-fiction (i.e. lies and fables) in the guise of reporting, and getting rewarded for it, is not only the norm, it's a badge of honor.
Sounds like some powerful
Sounds like some powerful people got upset about being exposed.
Or the story was 33% wrong with some bold accusations
In the big people world - you mess up that bad, you lose your job.
"bold accusations " lol Get a
"bold accusations " lol Get a grip.
It's not like she accused them of working remotely from Epstein's Island.
There's still the issue of the article being 66% correct but people seem intent on squashing that under that chorus of disingenuous outrage of "How dare she!"s. Clearly Ms. Estes has been Tucker Carlsoned. RIP The Truth.
Serious unsubstantiated allegations went to print
People were accused of things that they did not do.
That warrants consequences up to and including dismissal.
Tucker should have been shown the freezer full of frozen dinners ten years ago.
So it was 67% accurate
Great information exposed, but when naming individuals it has to be 100%.
Editing and fact-checking matters
It's certainly on the reporter to report the story correctly, but there's also a reason there are editors and fact-checkers. In this case, it seemed like the reporter smelled blood (and for good reason, there was blood to be smelled) but then went overboard trying to make the story as big as possible. They could have just made the story about the guy who has houses in Wisconsin, Delaware and Hawaii, and maybe explored how a dedicated public servant has all of this money to buy four houses and jet between them. But now, the Globe has egg on its face, and might be less likely to pursue such investigations which would be interesting given how the T spent all this money in the past few years and fixed exactly nothing so, uh, where did that money go anyway?
Are there?
There are? I thought all such workers were let go long ago.
Making people uncomfortable
You know you are doing something right when you are making those in power uncomfortable, that's why I recommend taking a crap on the floor whenever you are in a room with them.
The original story was interesting
But the aftermath, which for me was reading a correction to the story almost daily on page 2, was painful. Estes is/was a great reporter, but those were some key facts to get wrong.
At one time, newspaper reporters needed to clear things with editors. Alas, the days of editors appears to be over.
Facts matter.
I don’t know what standard
I don’t know what standard procedure is at the Globe, but when I worked in magazine publishing it wasn’t uncommon to have counsel review certain stories to make sure we weren’t saying anything that couldn’t be substantiated by fact. An expose story like this, where someone could potentially claim that their professional reputation was harmed by publication of incorrect information, would absolutely be something where there would be review to make sure the facts corroborated the story. I wouldn’t be surprised if these three people end up suing the Globe. Estes is the public face of this, as the reporter, but others may also have been disciplined/fired.
Working from home, perhaps?
This sounds like an error that could be more easily made if you don’t have editors and co-workers nearby to bounce ideas off of and perhaps challenge your conclusions.
I have no idea if WFH was the practice here, but I’m not a fan.
No excuse, but ...
Unlike one-person outfits sitting at their dining-room table, the Globe still has editors (and Globe reporters and editors are now required to spend some period of their weeks in the actual newsroom).
Assuming the T story was what led to her separation from the Globe, you have to ask who read and approved the story before it did go online and into print. Especially given the blockbuster story that was.
Do they still have editors?
There was a story a while back with a basic factual error that was corrected with another factual error. I don't think there's much oversight at the Boring Broadsheet.
WFH
Doesn't prevent having an editor or co-worker from reviewing your work. On a big story like this it would have been easy to get some feedback.