Under fire for its un-annotated edits to Scott Burgess’s Chrysler 200 Review, the Detroit News has reposted Burgess’s original review even as the departed critic confirmed that those edits were the reason for his departure. The NYT reports
“What we did was wrong because it was done at an advertiser’s request,” said Mr. Burgess, who had been at the paper since 2005. “I was ashamed I made the changes.”
Mr. Burgess said he first tendered his resignation on Monday, but was asked to reconsider. Susan Carney, business editor of The Detroit News, said his resignation was effective on Wednesday.
The episode marked the first time Mr. Burgess had been directed to alter a review due to a negative reaction — from an advertiser or otherwise. “There were plenty of times where I’d written reviews that people were upset about, but we never did what we did on Friday.”
Online changes were made without any notation that the piece was re-edited, which breaches accepted industry practice, said Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute, a journalism training and advocacy center in St. Petersburg, Fla. “What happened gives the impression that content might be for sale, whether that’s real or perceived. And that will cause the erosion of trust in the newsroom.”
DetN business editor Susan Carney admits that the situation was handled “poorly.” Burgess will be appearing on AutoLine After Hours at 7 p.m. ET, and is likely to comment further on the story.
I’m glad they posted the original review, and I think it’s better than the redacted version, at least it gives you an idea of Burgess’ bias. I don’t mind some bias in a reviewer when he’s willing to acknowledge that bias exists. And yes, Chrysler is guilty of multiple sins and possibly overhyping the 200. But that doesn’t make the 200 an inherently bad automobile.
I stand by my original criticism: A review with “falls short of the competition” in the title ought to illustrate just where the car falls short, and it doesn’t. I’m sorry, but “I don’t like the styling” and “the tranny only has 4 gears” (while forgetting to mention it gets almost the same mileage as the 6-speed Camry) doesn’t get the job done.
I read the previous TTAC article and comments on this. I think most posters are missing the point. The issue is that an advertiser was allowed to dictate editorial content. Whether or not you or I feel the review was subjectively “fair”, and whether or not the 200 is a competitive vehicle, are both beside the point.
” an advertiser was allowed to dictate editorial content.”
Maybe I missed it, but I haven’t seen any evidence of that. It’s not an unreasonable assumption, but has anyone actually admitted that’s the case? It’s also a reasonable assumption that someone higher up the food chain saw this article, crapped their pants, and had it edited.
If the publication isn’t willing to back up the article–and given the lousy job Burgess did of supporting his conclusions, I can’t blame them–they had every right to take it down. I won’t defend their decision to edit Burgess’ work without his approval, that’s inexcusable.
“What we did was wrong because it was done at an advertiser’s request,” said Mr. Burgess, who had been at the paper since 2005.
Dang, schooled by Niedermeyer! I’ll just go stand in the corner….
The guy was a hack. He lambasted GM and Chrysler vehicles while singing Ford’s undeserved praises.
DTN is better off. Maybe now they can get a real auto journalist in there.
Maybe Scotty Boy will begin writing for TTAC…
I thought it was a decent enough review, although I agree it is opinionated. Shaped like a tortoise shell it may be – even I agree with a review I read somewhere that it looks like Chrysler raided the Saturn Ion parts bin. Styling is highly subjective and not devoid of emotion, which he could have referred to in a more non-judgmental way. I think all of us here at TTAC realize this is a temporary measure in order to sell more cars and to get some sort of return on Chrysler’s investment until their replacement is available and the improvements certainly do make the car more attractive. Would I buy one? I can’t answer that as I’m not in the market, but as I said in another column, my wife and I were very impressed with the improvements when we looked a couple of them over at our recent auto show. The internet allows for anyone to say anything about anyone and everything without restraint. My wish is that anyone who posts anything on the internet use the old broadcasting rules where people guard their speech and realize what you say can come back and haunt you. The columnist in question may ultimately hurt himself in the end.
Burgess is getting support from people working at carmakers, press fleet managers, and journalists, not to mention the folks who read car reviews. His credibility as a writer and reviewer is now virtually unquestioned. Though I doubt Farago would have, since he considered Burgess to be a Detroit fan boy, but if the corporate overlords gave our esteemed ed Ed the budget for it, I’m sure that he’d give some consideration to offering Scott a spot on the roster here at TTAC.
Yeah, people should never say anything bad about anything or anyone in case it comes back to bite them. All car reviews should be glowing praise puff pieces, you know, to help the economy. Screw that. And shame on you if that’s what you’re suggesting, and it sounds an awful lot like that’s what you’re suggesting. What is even the point of any sort of critical review if everything is given a free pass?
I’m not aiming this at anyone, but merely clarifying my thoughts on the matter. One can be mean-spirited or objective. There is a difference. Personal opinions are like fingerprints – everyone has them and all are different. You can criticize or review a movie, book, car or anything else, but you can do it in a way that doesn’t resort to ignorance. “Adult language”, like it or not, is intelligent speech, NOT filth or profanity, or cater to the lowest-common denominator.
My opinion is that Burgess was correct in stating that the Chrysler 200 is there to mark time in the intermediate segment, while something more competitive is designed. In short, other than the attraction its bargain basement price, this dog won’t hunt in 2011 or 2012.
The truth about the 200 is it shows the rut that the Chrysler brand has gotten into. Once a luxury brand, the 200 competes with the Fusion and Malibu class of buyers. How many 200 buyers cross shop against a Buick LaCrosse or Lincoln MKZ where the Chrysler brand used to be positioned?
Is the Chrysler 200 a dog? The 200 is indeed a revamped, read improved Sebring, but the entire package looks hopelessly dated when compared a very competent Hyundai Sonata. Furthermore, there is the yoke that the four worst ranked brands with regards to reliability by JD Power in 2011 are Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and MINI.
*** improved means a V6 and transmission that looks to be very good on paper and a more polished interior – but time will tell with regards to durability.
Well said. It should be a Plymouth. If it were, the story may well be much different.
The story happens to concern cars and Detroit but at the bottom line it’s really just a newspaper appeasing a big advertiser. Car dealers are about the only big advertisers that local newspapers have. If you look at last Sunday’s Detroit News and see which Chrysler dealers had large ads, you’d probably get an idea of which dealer it might have been.
I just finished watching the Autoline After Hours show with Burgess on the show. He made a point of mentioning that the vast majority of people involved, journalists and PR folks included, are ethical. The head of Event Services International, ESI, one of the two big press fleet management companies that supply cars to publications for review (the other being STI) send in an email highly complimentary of what Scott did and said that that’s the only way the system can work is if writers are honest. Another emailer said that advertisers are served best when readers are served best.
Publishing is a funny business. Unless you have subscribers, your true customers, the people who pay for it all, are your advertisers. Just like eBay’s customers are the sellers, not the folks who buy stuff. Buyers at eBay have to feel safe, so eBay favors them in most disputes. Likewise, publishers have to be accountable to readers more than advertisers. If you don’t trust what I say, I can’t make money selling advertising.
Ronnie: Your insight and showing both sides of the coin is very much appreciated! When articles are written in a thoughtful way, I learn a lot from TTAC. Thanks.
Nice car. I thought Hyundai discontinued that model three years ago…
Personally, I thought the original story was snarky to the point of smugness: a Dan Neil wannabe piece. The edits helped tone down the overt meanness which might have been okay for TTAC or Jalopnik, but inappropriate for the Detroit News. I agree that it is inappropriate to edit car reviews based on the desires of advertisers, but the truth is, in most newspapers, the car reviews are part of the advertising section and not the news section.
It’s ironic that Burgess caught heat for this review after posting fawning (but good) reviews of the new Ford Focus and Chrysler 300. If you are going to hire a guy for his opinions, you need to let him have opinions.
In the end, I’d say 10% of the fault is on Burgess for writing a review that wasn’t his best, and 90% of the blame is due to the sad state of the American newspaper business. I don’t even know why newspapers have editors anymore when nothing seems to get edited before publication.
Have you considered the possibility that piece was overtly “mean” because Burgess honestly disliked the car, and in his role as a CRITIC was conveying that fact to his readers?
Hypothetically speaking, is there any circumstances under which it’d be fair to listen to an advertiser’s complaints? I mean, I get the dangerous precedence that this sets, but I understand why the dealers would be furious – given the level of snark to genuine insight (most of the flaws he managed to list also apply to the Camry he lauded as a class leader, so what’s the real difference?), it’s hard not to see the article as a hatchet job.
Fiat Chrysler has just tarted up a Sebring with with a mild restyling and a few suspension tweaks.
The Sebring had already been rejigged half a dozen times before.
IMO the criticism of the Sebring was overdone. It wasn’t like it caught on fire or lost wheels, but revewers had a clearly nationalistic bent to exaggerate the cars weaknesses.
Now, that “All – American” Chrysler (sorry, Fiat – Chrysler division), has released a warmed up version, all of a sudden it becomes a “fine car”.
Granted that they still working with 2007 body shell, but more could have been done to the exterior to distinguish the Chrysler 200 from the Sebring. I remember a time when Detroit was able to change the stamping dies of out body panels after three or so years to reflect current styling trends.
For example: http://www.autoblog.com/photos/chrysler-200-super-s-detroit-2011/#3773844
If the Chysler 200 had the exterior tweaks shown on the Super S version at the North American cars show across the line up, I’d bet dollars to donuts the revamp would have been received more favorably.
No one will ever really read a DetN review again
Conseding how the city is 90% dead, only out-of-towners can afford to read it now.
Another good example of why the old media in America are dying. Thanks to news outlets like our big papers having degenerated into sewers of plagiarism, political and commercial advocacy and hagiography.
It’s good to see at least one journo with some ethics.
According to his grades, Sanford was an excellent student in grade school. This was an objective evaluation based on Sanford’s test scores, homework and classroom participation.
According to his peers, Sanford was a psychopathic dork supreme. This was a subjective evaluation based on Sanford’s physical stature, dress, social skills, sports acumen, and test scores unrecorded within his peer’s mind.
The Chrysler 200 is a capable vehicle worthy of consideration of purchase. This is an objective evaluation based on the 200’s test scores, marked improvements, and affordability.
According to it’s automotive peers, the 200 is a psychopathic dork supreme. This is a subjective evaluation based on how the 200 measures up in the eyes of an auto journalist whose salary is paid for by a Paper, and whose editor edited out the most eggregious hate-filled graffiti found written on the stall walls in the boy’s room, better known as the Internet.
What makes Sanford and the 200 so miserable? It isn’t because they don’t measure up. It is because both in the world of the grade school classroom and the world of the auto journalist, there reigns tastemakers which can make or break the reputation and acceptance of both Sanford and the 200 in the real world. These tastemakers may be 11 year old tweens wearing AF tops and listening to Bieber on their pink I-pods, or these tastemakers may be 50 year old balding gray goateed-wearing paunchy men listening to Bieber on their pink I-pads. In both cases, the tastemakers use subjective evaluations to determine whether someone or something measures in the pecking order of the competitive world.
Sanford and the 200 are hunchbacks with halitosis, bad teeth, back acne, and body odor, wearing ugly ill-fitting clothing. This is going to turn off the tastemakers like Abby the cheerleading tween in Sanford’s class, and Mr. Burgess.
One day, Abby and Mr. Burgess will discover that they are subjectively out of fashion. For Abby it will be when she wakes up to discover that she has become a 50 year old bald, goatee-wearing, pauchy lady with sagging breasts, and for Mr. Burgess it was this week.
Here in the Wayback Machine, I’ve set the dial to 2005 and where the phone is ringing on the desk of the VP of National Advertising at the LA Times. On the phone is General Motors’ legal counsel, PR director, and the president of the LA Chevrolet Dealer Association.
They are not happy.
Previously in the week, a well-known auto critic named Dan Neil just had a piece published wherein he ripped General Motors management as inept, called for the dismissal of the top leadership at the then-biggest car company in the world, and opined that GM’s continued emphasis on big SUVs and trucks was a fool’s errand, and that more time and energy should be spent on quality compact and midsize vehicles (where the company was sorely lacking, and where the market appeared to be heading).
The conversation on the phone is brief; the Times will not retract the article. GM decides to boycott the paper.
Never mind that Neil (despite the criticism heaped on the critic in other posts on this site) turned out to be mostly right…just as the TTAC GM DeathWatch turned out to be prescient for similar criticism of the General.
The Times weathered the boycott, GM slunk back a few months later.
Today, in the print news business, things are tough. Sure, it wasn’t any good in 2005, but the Tribune Co. had the means to tell a major advertiser they were not going to back down or retract editorial comments made by their industry experts. Let’s just say that if you’re a print news source in Detroit struggling to stay alive today in the worst economy in the most stricken city in the U.S., you have flashbacks of the LA Times/GM boycott, and market realities get the better of you.
I can certainly see how and why DetNews did what they did. From a J-school, theoretical ethics point of view, it was wrong. From a real-world, let’s stay open to write another day perspective, they did what they thought they had to.
In the end, nobody won. Chrysler’s bullying in no way casts them in a favorable light (or their car). And DetNews takes an even bigger hit. Burgess is out of a job.
Now, if they could just figure out how to use the WayBack Machine themselves to do it all over again, I’m sure they would all agree: Good Idea.
I work at a small weekly paper in rural Tennessee. In our town and doubtless thousands of other small towns like it, the papers have to be careful how they present the facts in any story or editorial, else they might anger someone at the local chamber of commerce who could rally chamber members to reduce or eliminate advertising spending for a time.
At a small operation, this kind of pseudo-boycott can have serious effects on the bottom line. While we don’t let advertisers directly dictate what gets published in a story, we are always mindful of how a story or especially an opinion piece may affect our relationship with an advertiser. Those are just the unfortunate realities of operating a small-town paper with a small advertising and readership base. But metropolitan daily papers like the DetNews have both the depth of (readership) coverage and advertisers, not to mention lawyers, to make such huffing and puffing by Chrysler a non-event. Are all the Chrysler dealers going to go to the FreeP en masse just because Corporate got mad about an opinion? I doubt it.
Ethically, what DetNews did was wrong. Perhaps the author’s piece needed some additional substance to back up his criticism, but the bottom line is it was an opinion piece. That’s all any review of anything, be it a restaurant, a movie, a construction firm, or a car, is. An opinion piece shouldn’t be required to back up its assertions to suit an advertiser or anyone else. The opinions are those of the author, who can say the earth is flat for as far as the publisher should be concerned. If it makes the author look like a doofus, it’s his loss. If it angers an advertiser, the paper probably should have considered printing a “the opinions of this author do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper” notice at the beginning or end of the article. Tons of papers do it.
In any event, I know how my editor and publisher have handled it when they felt uncomfortable with an opinion piece I’ve authored in the past, and a similar reaction by DetNews would have probably stopped any of this from happening: They just flatly refused to publish it. As my employer, the publisher reserves that right, if he feels anything I say might endanger his business in any way. Or even if he doesn’t fear for his business…because he’s the boss. But he would never kowtow to an upset advertiser or upset citizen who insisted we run an edited version of a story just to suit their needs. Doing so is unethical, and destroys the trust you have with your readership. And trust me, I’ve written plenty of news stories (not opinion pieces, mind you) that have made people angry, and those people have come to the paper in-person to berate me and let me know they want me to write a follow-up piece that may somehow salvage their reputation. In those situations, I know my publisher will stand behind me because he understands our job is to inform the readers who trust us as their source for local news, not save reputations.
The DetNews should go into damage control mode by running a column from the editor-in-chief, if they haven’t already, explaining why the actions taken in this case were wrong, and how the opinions expressed in reviews published in the paper are solely those of the reviewer and not necessarily those of the DetNews. It’s the only commonsense way to approach the situation, at this point, and it would satisfy the “J-School” types like me while satisfying the readers that there are more ethical people at DetNews than the folks responsible for bending to Chrysler’s pressure on this, a lowly opinion piece.
The DetNews and Free Press (Freep) are both owned by Gannett and operate cooperatively so that both may survive. They’re both in the red to the tune of millions per year, and have employed cost-cutting measures like eliminating weekday subscription deliveries and cancelling Sunday papers.
Last year, according to Crains, DetNews lost 14% in ad revenue and 12% in subscriptions. Last. Year.
As Ronnie Schrieber points out in another post on this topic, far and away, the leading revenue producer for any paper is local dealerships…and it was a leading Chrysler store in the Detroit area which huffed and puffed the loudest, with a chorus of, “Yeah, what he says!” from other area dealers. Chrysler LLC itself wasn’t exactly muzzling their dealerships at the time, either.
Above, I referenced the LA Times/GM boycott, wherein not only GM corporate, but all area GM stores (for awhile) pulled their ads from the offending newspaper. This had to be in the minds of DetNews management as they contemplated their options. And their revenue predicament.
DetNews is hanging on by such a slender thread today that a loss of ad revenue by some or all of the Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep dealers in Detroit (along with a corporate boycott) would create tremendous financial hardship.
I agree, it was wrong of DetNews to do what they did. They should stand by their editorial and probably should have run a comparison-contrast piece on the 200 to even out their stance. But given the market realities in Detroit, I can see why they took what looked like the path of least resistance.
Domestic Hearse: The DetNews and Free Press (Freep) are both owned by Gannett and operate cooperatively so that both may survive.
…or so that both may fail miserably. Didn’t they learn anything from the Nashville Banner–Tennessean “cooperative relationship?” The Rocky Mountain News–Denver Post tie-up? Detroit, now more than ever, is not a town capable of supporting two dailies. Gannett should cut its losses and merge ’em into a single rag.
But financial hardship doesn’t mean the editorial staff of DetNews should just bow to advertisers because of a controversial op-ed piece. Ethics don’t go away just because your corporate overlords can’t realize monopolistic ownership in a two-paper town is not healthy. But in this we are in agreement: They should’ve either run a column explaining the relationship of columnists to the paper (i.e. the views of the columnist are not necessarily those of the paper itself), a contrasting (and more favorable) review about the car from another op-ed writer, even if that other writer were an utter Chrysler shill. But that would have taken much more gumption and effort on the part of DetNews than caving in to advertiser pressure.
College journalism professors across the country are probably using this as an example of what NOT to do in their journalism ethics classes.
In college my media and popular culture class was watching a series of films about the portrayal of the media, from Citizen Kane to Network to Broadcast News, for which we had to write a critical analysis. A few of my buddies and I thought we were being intellectually distinct and a bit rebellious by writing scathing analysis of The Paper, the lone “mainstream” film in the bunch.
We got the worst grade sin the class. Our criticisms weren’t based in comparison of any sort of inherent value the movie might have had, it was all about the marketing and “angle” and general mainstreamedness of the thing. We were supposed to be looking at how the film portrays The Media and the people who constitute it, not compare it to some effete goals of artistic purity or whatever. We were pretentious little shits.
Anyway, my point is that sometimes you just want to lash out and attack things you don’t personally like, especially when you have a forum, without any professional obligation to do so. The Chrysler 200 is an easy target, politically speaking. A lot of the commenters here are right though – the headline and even the article itself references the car’s inability to stand up to the current competition but never describes exactly how that’s so. It reminds me of my juvenile rant about The Paper, when I completely missed the point just so I could make my own political statement and ended up with a C. He got fired.
Getting fired and resigning due to concerns your employer (DetNews, in this case) is unethical are two completely different things, Mr. McKinnon.
Good point, otherwise.
Agreed.
My point wasn’t concerning his moral or ethical issues with the advertiser’s interference with the editorial process, just his reasons for writing the piece in the first place. And here’s the thing. I’ve been a working journalist and I’ve experienced similar situations. There are usually valid reasons for changing content, even though that validity is often subjective. How you respond is usually a result of your investment in the subject matter. Because we have to be honest – journalism is a process that involves multiple individuals, not just the writer. If you’re the kind of person who cannot abide the Red Ink of Judgement, that line of work might not be for you.
I remember covering abortion law, and insisted on calling it “women’s health services” because that was a better descriptor of the range of services at issue. The editor changed every reference to abortion because he felt our readership was more right leaning and would call us out for being “leftist” by using a politically correct term. I got mad because I felt it skewed the story (it wasn’t just about abortion, but PAP smears, pre-natal counseling, birth control, etc) and politicized it. I didn’t quit. I just wrote better stories that did a better job of presenting the facts clearly, regardless of the terminology used. The stories ran, mostly as written.
I just think if Burgess had tempered his comments like “it’s a dog” with some deeper analysis of why that’s the case, then even if the editor had cut that word, the facts (or well-informed opinions) backing it up would have held, and he still would have made his point.
Sorry for rambling…
That’s not rambling, at all. That’s insightful. And you’re right, with more substance behind his assertions, a little red ink and a re-write before it went to press would’ve probably saved DetNews and Burgess from this whole, ugly thing.
I can see Burgess’ reasons for resigning, though. It was an ethical no-no for the paper to re-run his article in an unashamed attempt to save face. They could’ve refused to run it, but they didn’t. So rather than backing their employee’s right to have an opinion, they altered that opinion for him. Flatly unethical. If I were Burgess, I would rather they hung me out to dry on the piece and let me look like a doofus who had an agenda, an axe to grind against Chrysler. That would’ve been best for the paper, and it would’ve been best for Burgess, in the long run, because he’d learn from it. As it is, nobody wins in either the long-term or the short-term on this one.
Well, I read the full, “restored” review, and in my opinion, it was a hit job, substituting malevolence for fact-based opinion. No, the editor shouldn’t have edited it, he should have handed it back and told Burgess to re-write it, or flat-out refused to print it. Burgess should be miffed that it was edited, but he should be ashamed that he wrote it, and be willing to admit that it was not just his opinion, but a biased rant unanchored by any facts or perspective. Anyone can have an uninformed, biased opinion about anything, but those who have a responsibility to their employer and a soapbox to reach the general public have to be held to a higher standard.