A Kick-Butt Reliable Source
Press Action
Sunday, January 25, 2004
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/hand01262004/
Battle-Tested Richard Leiby Takes Turn as Washington Gossip
By Mark Hand
If the Washington Post’s new gossip columnist can survive a 25-year war with the Church of Scientology, he probably has the backbone to handle the invective that’ll fly his way when his Reliable Source column strikes a raw nerve of a thin-skinned muckety-muck in the nation’s capital.
Since he started covering them as a 22-year-old reporter in Clearwater, Fla., in 1979, Richard Leiby has had a running battle with Scientologists, whose leaders are notoriously intolerant of unflattering portraits in the press. Leiby has faced lawsuits from the church and charges by Scientologists that his reporting has shown a blind hatred toward them.
Any reputable reporter is going to make enemies based on the inherent conflicts that crop up in the newsgathering process. Most people do not like to have their affairs chronicled, especially in a negative light. But only a select few have the means to fight back against a snooping reporter. Wealthy groups and individuals — government officials, too — can use the resources at their disposal to launch legal action or harassment campaigns at the first hint of negative press.
In a recent interview on PBS’ Now with Bill Moyers, long-time White House correspondent Helen Thomas was asked whether she ever feels the Bush administration would like to “chloroform” her or “shoot a blow dart” her way. Thomas gave the quintessential reporter’s response: “Oh, sure. Sure. If you don’t feel that way you haven’t done your job.”
If the level of harassment from the people one covers is the measure of a good journalist, then most reporters in Washington aren’t doing their job. Too many are stenographers for the political establishment. Too many are unwilling to dig far enough into the bureaucracy to find the story behind the cabinet secretary’s pronouncements. Too many are unwilling to write the story that might anger the people they are covering.
In taking over Lloyd Grove’s post as the Style section’s nosy-Nellie, Leiby (pronounced “lie-bee") may find his columns producing more cold-shoulders from local celebrities than the “chloroform” or “blow dart” treatment he could get if he wrote hard-hitting exposés of Washington’s corporate and political establishment for the Post’s front-page section.
During his tenure at the Post, especially his time spent writing for Style, Leiby has had more freedom to express his opinion than if he had worked a defined news beat the entire time. This leeway to expound has led to some run-ins with his subject matter, besides his confrontations with Scientologists.
The response to a piece that Leiby wrote for the Style section almost 10 years ago — or, to be more precise, the reaction to Leiby’s newsgathering methods for that story — may foreshadow the nature of feedback that’s in store during his stint as the Post’s Reliable Source. Leiby’s work on this particular story, in fact, led to a “hit” being put out on him. Luckily for Leiby, it was a call for someone to kick him in the butt and not an order for a Russian mafia-style attack.
What kind of sniffing around was Leiby doing to make him a target? As Leiby explained in his July 16, 1994, piece, Michael Lacey, head honcho of the New Times chain of alternative newsweeklies, “had heard that I’d tried to recruit one of his writers to The Post’s Style section.”
While attending the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies‘ annual confab in Boston in 1994, Leiby, according to his account in the Post, was there “enjoying my first free beer of the conference when a shoe was suddenly lodged into my backside and I turned to face the spewing rage of one Michael Lacey, a titan of the altie press…”
In the same piece, though, Leiby didn’t tell readers that Lacey had offered $100 to anyone else who would kick Leiby in the butt and that Jack Shafer, who was editor of the Washington City Paper at the time, took Lacey up on the offer.
A week later, in the July 22, 1994, issue of the City Paper, Shafer explained that about two hours after Lacey made the public offer, “I unexpectedly found myself in the hotel lobby bar standing next to the deceitful shit. He presented his derriere to me — almost puckering for the punch — and I planted one on the Postie that was strong enough to gain his attention, but not hard enough to break the skin.”
Ever the intrepid reporter, Leiby didn’t show any humiliation from getting kicked. Instead, Leiby used the unique encounter as an opportunity to ask Shafer if he could interview him for his Style story. Shafer obliged. Shafer, who left the City Paper in 1995 to edit the New Times-owned SF Weekly, said Leiby, during their conversation at the AAN convention, “confirmed that he was in charge of recruiting writers and editors from the alternatives and that he was spearheading an in-house study of weeklies such as City Paper.”
Shafer argued that the real reason Leiby got kicked in the butt was not, as Leiby wrote in the Post, that Lacey had heard about him trying to recruit a New Times writer for the Style section. “The real reason Lacey kicked Leiby is that it’s inappropriate to pose as a reporter when your intention is to recruit and to gather trade information for your company.”
In his Style article, Leiby also told a story about how Lacey had offered him a hit of a lit marijuana joint after Lacey had interviewed him for a job at the New Times in 1990. Shafer wrote that Lacey denied the marijuana incident ever took place. “Leiby needn’t worry about me toeing him again, but he should watch out for Lacey, who is furious about a drug accusation made by Leiby in the final two grafs of the piece,” Shafer said.
Today, Shafer, who works as media critic and editor-at-large for Slate, tells Press Action he has no hard feelings about Leiby and that there was “something cathartic” about giving Leiby a kick in the rear-end. Lacey was true to his word and wrote Shafer a check for $100 on the spot after learning that someone had taken him up on his offer. “I still have that check. I never cashed it,” Shafer says.
Leiby’s reporting on the Scientologists and other quality work at the Post “trumps” what he did at the AAN conference 10 years ago, Shafer explains. “I really don’t think Leiby is a shit, he just did two shitty things and I feel as though I got justice.”
Leiby tells Press Action there are “no hard feelings either on this end, so to speak.”
The AAN confab was “one of the least boring journalistic conventions I’ve ever been to,” Leiby says. “I’d love to attend another. I like Jack and I have only fond recollections of Mike Lacey — I think we’re still friends. But I’ll be sure to pack my ass armor if I get to another alt-weekly conference, just in case.”
Mark Hand is editor of Press Action.