Almost Famous

So here's the question: If you're a journalist, how much of a public figure are you?

It came up because a local journalist, whose byline is fairly well-known in the area, ended up in the headlines of his own newspaper, the local daily. His name is Dave Lieber, and he writes a column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram called The Watchdog. He's been around for a while, and I met him once when he guest-lectured in a column writing class I had in college.

Here is the news story that came out yesterday about everything. Basically, he and his 11-year-old son got in an argument at a McDonald's on Aug. 13, Lieber got angry and told his son to walk home (he says in this column that it was a few blocks). After Lieber had driven off, some customers called 911 and the police came. When Lieber came, he and his son were sent home, and yesterday he turned himself into the police on two felony counts and two warrants: one for child abandonment with intent to return and the other for child abandonment/endangering a child.

Lieber went home after turning himself off, released on $4,000 bail. The Tarrant County district attorney will determine whether or not to file charges. He's currently suspended from his column while the case goes through, and the last column he wrote was on Aug. 15, where he told his side of the story.

First of all, I'm not going to pass judgment on what he did. I'm not a parent, but I can see both sides of the whole situation: yeah, maybe the kid was in danger, but then maybe not and the kid just needed to suck it up. Parenting is difficult.

But what I do find curious is the whole way his own newspaper is handling it. If this were some father who is a tax accountant, would this have warranted a whole news story when he turned himself in? Doubtful. A news brief, maybe, by whatever bored cops reporter is looking for something interesting, but I don't think it would have gotten a full 300-plus words.

They are suspending his column, so it does seem appropriate to have some explanation. Could they have gotten by with just putting up a disclaimer about "Lieber will be on indefinite leave while taking care of a family matter" have sufficed? Did he have to write about the whole ordeal in his column, which appears to have been posted a week and a half before he turned himself in and the news story came out?

I think this is something a lot of newspapers deal with. I've heard editors warn reporters before: if you get drunk and cause a crash, you bet your ass you're getting in the newspaper, same as everyone else. That's fair. But with these sometimes strange cases, it's hard to tell what would have happened if Lieber had been a non-journalist.

Does the fact that Lieber is a well-known newspaper name make a difference? Should journalists be treated a bit differently because they often report on genuine public persons, like a mayor or actress? Just because you see a byline all the time, does that mean the journalist is a public figure, even if you know little about them other than the stories they write?

Lieber was a columnist, and so did bring a lot of his personal life into his job. A lot of people probably feel they know him, just from reading his columns through the years. He is a sort of minor celebrity. He probably should be treated differently than a normal reporter. But even the "normal reporters" sometimes get minor celebrity status.

What do readers feel about the way it was handled? There's a lot of comments on Lieber's column about the whole thing, but most of them are about his parenting, and frankly, I don't have the patience to go through all of them and see if any are about his job and the editorial decision. Would people have been angry if the news story hadn't run? Would they have called foul and said he was getting preferential treatment because he works for the paper? Would they ask whether he'd get that news story if he didn't work for the paper?

What I do know is I would have loved to be in the editorial meetings about this but would have been loathe to participate in the decision-making process. Also, since I work at a business weekly, I guess I'm safe to get drunk and crash my car into a tree. It may show up in the daily Star-Telegram, but at least it won't show up in my own paper.