Assignment America: A vanishing columnist

NEW YORK, Sept. 25 (UPI) -- One day Bob Greene was here and the next day he was gone. What was weird about it was the way it happened.

After 24 years the Chicago Tribune columnist got hustled out of the building like a card-counter at a Las Vegas blackjack table. Caught! Shamed! Booted! (OK, he resigned, but no one was really buying that.)

Then the Tribune virtually dared us to play Sherlock Holmes and figure out what was going on, because the newspaper released almost no information.

In their news columns, their opinion columns, interviews with other journalists, their editorial page and even interviews with themselves (!), the Tribune dropped one factoid at a time, after being so proud of themselves for initially issuing a front-page statement saying, essentially, we respect the privacy of all parties and we're not going to talk about it.

Man, did they talk! If nothing else, it made the gray sober pages of the Tribune fun to read for at least a week. But it didn't do much for their reputation for clarity or consistency.

Let's go over the developments. First the Tribune editor, Ann Marie Lipinski, puts a short note on the front page of the Sunday paper (Sept. 15) saying that Greene had resigned from the paper, that his resignation had been "sought by the paper," that there had been an "investigation," and that there had been "sexual misconduct."

If you've been paying close attention, you'll see that we already have three codes to figure out. What's the difference between resigning and having your resignation sought? What kind of investigation? That word can mean anything from finding porno on his hard drive to hiring private eyes to tail him through the streets of Thailand. And "sexual misconduct," as we all know, is such a can of worms that even judges can't define it.

Then she added that the sexual misconduct involved a "girl in her late teens whom he met in connection with his column."

More code words. Not a woman -- a girl. In her late teens -- what are they trying to tell us? Met in connection with his column -- he probably meets virtually everyone he knows in connection with his column.

And the editor made a further point of wanting to protect the privacy of all involved.

So, if they wanted to protect the privacy of all involved, why did they then run a front-page story the following day (Monday, Sept. 16) headlined "Breach of trust ends Greene's career at Tribune," and why did editor Lipinski give an interview to her own reporters after she told a wire agency that the paper would have no further comment?

It makes you wonder what's going on here?

I read this article, written by staff reporters Jim Kirk and Monica Davey, and I still didn't know what the term "breach of trust" means. Breach of the paper's trust? Of the woman's trust? Of the readers' trust? Of God's trust? Of his wife's trust?

Are they saying Greene committed a specific act that resulted in the breach of trust, or was he just, in general, a trust-breaching sort of guy?

It's impossible to tell. Nevertheless, here's Lipinski again, giving quotes to the two reporters who kind of, uh, work for her. Here's what she said: "Journalists have a special obligation to avoid personal conflicts that undermine their professional standing and their trust with readers, sources or news subjects. We concluded that trust had been violated. It is a very painful day for the paper, for Bob and for the readers."

Does she really talk like this in an interview? Do these classically constructed sentences just fall out of her mouth in perfect King's English? If you want us to TRUST you, you could probably do something other than give a canned statement to reporters whose jobs you control. (There's nothing in the story to indicate how well the reporters know Lipinski or Greene.)

Anyway, there's that "trust" word again. She talks about "personal conflicts," as opposed to professional ones? No, she uses "professional standing" as well, so it's personal things that impinge on professional things. And all of those things involve issues of trust with readers, sources and news subjects -- which are, of course, three entirely different groups of people, and so you have to wonder how many categories of trust Bob Greene has breached in the 24 hours since the original breach.

"We concluded that trust had been violated."

Which trust? Readers', sources' or news subjects'? Personal or professional? Which one of the 37 different areas of "trust" is he being indicted and convicted for? What is this "special obligation" she speaks of? Is it written down? What makes it special? Normally no one would care -- writers get fired every day -- but with this many self-righteous pronouncements, they're asking us, the sainted readers, to get involved.

Now, here's the interesting thing. Even though the paper says it's refusing to elaborate on further details of the case, the article by Kirk and Davey does just that! Is this some sort of alternate-universe Chicago Tribune that's not edited by the same person? Is this some kind of game with the reader, with the editor telling the reporters, "Well, I'm not going to tell you anything, but if you manage to find it out another way, then THAT'S FINE, I'll print it"?

So what else do we learn?

We learn -- from Lipinski -- that the incident happened "some time ago." It was old news that they just found out about, so if Greene had been an employee 24 years, it had to be pretty heavy to outweigh all that seniority, right? It had to be something with no in-house statute of limitations.

We learn from Greene himself, in an e-mail written to the Associated Press, that there were "indiscretions in my life that I am not proud of. I don't have the words to express the sadness I feel. I am very sorry for anyone I have let down, including the readers who have for so long meant so much to me." (Tellingly, he refused comment to his own paper.)

We learn that Greene was negotiating a new contract at the time of his departure. (Lipinski once again broke her vow of no-further-comment to say that contract negotiations had nothing to do with it.)

And we learn that there were "five days of high-level meetings and an internal investigation" before Greene's resignation was accepted.

To save time, I'm going to sum up the only cold hard facts in the article:

On the Monday before the resignation was announced, the paper received an anonymous e-mail, 1 1/2 pages in length, that did not mention Greene by name. It was sent to the paper's Internet news tip line and on Tuesday it was given to Lipinski.

The essence of it was that, more than a decade ago, the "girl" met with Greene in his office as part of a high-school project. Later she was the subject of one of Greene's columns. After that the two of them went to dinner. (I'm jumping ahead here. Another later article says several dinners.) And then they went to a hotel and had some kind of "sexual encounter." (A later article adds that it was "short of intercourse.")

The article adds, "At the time, the woman was of the age of legal consent, sources said."

Begging the question: Why does the Tribune keep mentioning her age? Is there some kind of company policy against May-December romances, affairs or flings? They mention the woman's age so many times that you eventually think Greene's being hounded because, in their opinion, she was just too young, in spite of whatever the Illinois Code of Criminal Statutes might have to say about it.

But the story continues.

On the Wednesday after receiving the anonymous e-mail, Tribune executives contacted the woman. On Thursday they confronted Greene and he acknowledged that some things she said were true. He was suspended. He offered to resign.

The execs held his offer in abeyance until Saturday, when the mystery woman was interviewed by Lipinski and Managing Editor James O'Shea. After that, they met with Greene twice the same day. At the second meeting they accepted his resignation.

Then, strangely, the article compares Greene to Mike Barnicle, the Boston Globe columnist forced to resign after being accused of fabricating a story in 1995. As far as I know, there is nothing in any report anywhere indicating that Greene fabricated a story, so I have no idea where THAT came from. Talk about comparing apples to kumquats.

Then the article characterizes the woman as a "source," so that they can include a quote from the chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists about fraternizing with sources. I think this is another red herring. She was not a source in any conventional meaning of the term. She was a woman Greene wrote an article about. After the article was published, they struck up a friendship. There was no way in hell she was ever going to be used again as a source, or ever appear in another Bob Greene column. Reporters form friendships all the time with people they originally meet in the course of business.

Just two more observations from the end of the article that might lend clues to the mystery. Kirk and Davey write, "Greene was unusual for how he moved, long before most others in his profession, from newspaper writing into wide syndication, magazines, television, books and public speaking."

Obviously they had never heard of Ed Sullivan, Walter Winchell, or, before that, H.L. Mencken and Lincoln Steffens, or, before that, Ambrose Bierce, or, before that, Mark Twain.

And then they add this strange observation, "Greene was the Tribune's most popular and best-read columnist, even if his public bent for nostalgia and small-town Midwestern values were derided as syrupy and sappy by some critics and younger readers."

Since both observations come out of nowhere -- that he was the "first" newspaper guy to work in other areas, and that he was thought of as "syrupy and sappy" -- we have to entertain at least the possibility that professional jealousy figures somewhere into this picture. (Hey, they dare us to speculate. I'm speculating.)

A day later, though, the Trib turned nasty. John Kass, a lesser-known Tribune columnist, used his Tuesday column to say that he doesn't really want to write about Bob Greene, and he doesn't really want to jump on him when he's down -- which is setting us up, of course, for jumping all over him while he's down. Once again, the now canonical term "trust" is used in the headline, "Contract of trust binds journalists and our readers."

First he waxes philosophical:

"... how (the sex scandal) was handled speaks to something between us, between you, the reader, and my colleagues.

"It's a contract.

"It's unwritten. No lawyers have signed it. But it's there, between us at all times.

"And without it, we're done with each other. . . .

"It's part habit and part miracle, this thing between us.

"It's bound by trust.

"You have to trust us to read us. And without that trust and without that respect, there's nothing really between us except newsprint and ink.

"That's where Bob Greene comes in."

OK, aside from the annoying staccato short-paragraph style, which announces "I'm a straight-shooter kinda guy," Kass seems to be saying that Greene's offense was against the reader, not the woman. But then all he talks about is the woman:

"It's quite simple.

"She was in high school, brought to this newspaper by her parents. (First time this fact has been reported in the Tribune. An opinion column is where they choose to reveal this?) They trusted and respected him. They were in awe of him. (First time reported.)

"And he did what he did with their daughter.

(What did he do? We still don't know.)

"... Technically, she was of legal age. And at that age, and just before, young women begin to learn of the power their bodies have over men. (Is this code to mean she came on to him?)

"But she was a kid, and he wasn't a kid."

OK, so increasingly the crime seems to be the fact that he had some kind of unsatisfying sex with a woman who was too young for him -- in the Tribune's opinion. They're essentially alleging de facto statutory rape in a sort of "Maybe it's not a crime, but it should be" way.

But the paper is still not finished. In a follow-up piece in the business section -- why it was there, I don't know -- Kirk and Davey record additional Lipinski remarks (what is this? the third or fourth statement?) spoken at a "meeting Monday with Tribune staff members."

"This was not a judgment about a personal choice that somebody makes," she says. (OK, so does that mean Kass was wrong?) Rather, she says, it was an example of Greene using his "status and position at the paper in a way that causes conflict."

Conflict? As in conflict of interest? Just so we'll know what they're talking about -- we've moved from "trust" to "conflict" -- they quote Rich Oppel, editor of the Austin American-Statesman, who says, "It's a conflict of interest when you have a close personal relationship with the subject of an article. It's the same as if you were to have a financial relationship with the subject of a story or some other close relationship."

Once again, they don't really deal with the timing of the article. From what we know, the illicit lovers got tangled up together AFTER the one and only article Greene was ever going to write about her.

Apparently someone on the Trib staff asked if Greene was perhaps being punished for OTHER things he'd done. No, said Lipinski, "We were dealing with one specific allegation, and that's what we addressed."

The reporters also put in a call to Gene Roberts, former editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. I would speculate that the reason they did this is that Roberts is associated with one of the most famous sexual incidents in recent journalism history. He once fired a female reporter for sleeping with a man she was writing about and then stated his oft-quoted principle: "I don't care if my reporters sleep with elephants, as long as they're not covering the circus."

In this case, though, Roberts said it's a "complicated call" and "not so much a professional conflict." In other words, he refused to say it was similar to the Inquirer case.

The Trib continued its piecemeal coverage with an official editorial ("Newspapers, readers -- and trust") that talked vaguely about the "special protections" newspapers enjoy- - "from the letter of the Constitution to the non-legalistic spirit of their place in American society" -- concluding that those protections create "responsibilities."

To illustrate the point, they gave further quasi-legal justification for the ousting of Greene:

"That is why Tribune journalists must, under possible penalty of dismissal, abide by 12 pages of polices on ethics and business conduct. One crucial rule: Staff members are forbidden to use their position at the newspaper to gain advantage in personal activities."

They don't really say what the specific language is, but they imply Greene deliberately violated a 12-page ethics policy, and that he "gained advantage" (although we're not actually sure he gained sex). Did the woman not WANT to sleep with him? Is that what they're saying? Did she not WANT to go to dinner with him? What about the previous article that talks about her knowing the power of her body over men? Should Greene refuse to have dinner with a woman who is star-struck? Assuming she WAS star-struck. Is that what makes it bad?

On that same day the Trib devoted its letters-to-the-editor column to l'affaire Greene, but they led with a long letter expressing resounding support of the paper, then apportioned the space 50/50 pro and con, even though they had already reported that public sentiment was running strongly in Greene's favor.

Almost a week later they were still running self-serving letters, with only the occasional pro-Greene missive, and those not very intelligently argued.

Finally, there was a little sideshow toward the end of the week when reporters Jim Kirk and Crystal Yednak (what? a new partner already? what happened to Monica?) looked into the mystery woman's allegation that she had tried to contact Greene twice within the past year, and the second time he had reported her to the FBI because he considered her a threat. The FBI confirmed that Greene had filed a complaint and that they had interviewed the girl, admonished her against extortion, then closed the inquiry. Conclusion: either she was angry, or Greene thought she was angry.

This brings up the question: was she still calling him because she loved him, or because she hated him? (Not that it can't be the same thing.) Was Greene trying to get rid of her because he feared her, or because he feared what she knew? As with all relationships gone sour, there's no way to know.

But just when I thought the scandal had started to settle at the Trib -- Greene is being silent throughout all this -- Lipinski gave another interview! To the New York Times!

"He (Greene) took advantage of his Tribune position for personal gain," said Lipinski, who had now had eight days to refine her rationale to a fine point. "Just because it was sexual contact with a teenager he'd met on the job, rather than financial gain, makes it no less a dagger to the heart of the paper's credibility and his."

OK. Finally. Thank you. That was clear. It was "sexual contact with a teenager." That was the offense.

The Times, by the way, further refined the story with some pertinent information. The teenager met Greene in the spring of 1988, while she was a journalism student at a Catholic high school. They didn't go to dinner until after he'd written the column. The woman is now 31, meaning she was 17 at the time, while Greene was either 40 or 41. In Spain those would be the average ages of a couple marrying for the first time.

At some point, other Tribune spokesmen started defending the paper's decision as well. Publisher Scott Smith gave a prepared statement to his own reporters on Friday. James Warren, deputy managing editor for features, told the Times that Greene "exploited his position of trust with her and her parents" -- and then gratuitously added that Greene never wrote any columns about the sexual indiscretions of powerful men. The New York Times ran with this, executing a Nexis search to prove that Greene hadn't written about abusive Catholic priests any time in the past year.

For the record, I've never written about transvestite pedophiles. Please don't reveal my secret!

So what is this about really?

It's not about journalism, that's for sure. I don't see anything in what HAS been revealed that indicates a single word of what Greene wrote was infected by bias caused by secret motives. He was punished for his sex life. If he had divorced his wife and married the younger woman, would he have been fired for that?

The man wrote for the "Tempo" section. He wasn't a crime reporter sleeping with a mobster's girlfriend. And he had been there for 24 of his 33 years on the job. That's a lot of capital in my book. It took exactly five days to wipe that from the newspaper's memory? What was the rush?

Greene says he's ashamed of himself, but you can't help thinking that, if he'd had a month to get over the sheer emotional whiplash something like this causes, he would have at least been able to stabilize himself and make a bit more of a stand. His willingness to instantly resign indicates to me that maybe he was guilty of something, or maybe he just wanted to limit the damage to his family. Maybe he's silent because he's too busy explaining it to his wife and kids.

Regardless, the newspaper should have been more of a family to him as well. A family doesn't cut you loose because you embarrass them. They use this word "trust." They trusted every word he wrote for 24 years. Then the only person they trusted was a 31-year-old "girl" with a long memory. I wouldn't be surprised if the other reporters at the Trib no longer trust their own paper.

(John Bloom writes a number of columns for UPI and may be contacted at [email protected] or through his Web site at joebobbriggs.com. Snail mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, Texas 75221.)