Tamarack River Ghost (30 page)

Back in his Willow River office, Josh checked his e-mail. There was one from the University of Wisconsin’s Department of Agribusiness Studies:

Josh read the e-mail a second time. It was a bit ironic, especially the statement about inconveniencing anyone. He wondered what the accurate research results showed. His guess was that the percentage of those approving building the new hog facility in the Tamarack River Valley was much smaller than reported; indeed the results likely would have shown a majority opposing the plan.

Josh immediately picked up the phone and punched in the numbers for the Department of Agribusiness Studies. In a minute, he was talking to his old professor.

“Josh, it’s good to hear from you again. How can I help?”

“I’m calling about the e-mail I just received from you, the one saying some of the early research results of the Tamarack River Valley survey were in error.”

“Unfortunate. Very unfortunate. Shouldn’t have happened.”

“Can you tell me what the results really showed? I assume you now have the correct information.”

“We do—thankfully none of the preliminary findings were published, only presented at the meeting in Willow River. Give me a minute, and I’ll find the correct information.”

Soon Evans was back on the phone; Josh figured he would be receiving many calls like his and would have the information handy.

“What would you like to know? I’ve got the accurate data in front of me.”

“For now, I’d like to know what percentage of the people sampled in the Tamarack River Valley approved of a big hog operation coming into their neighborhood.”

“Okay, I’ve got it right here, both the numbers of the preliminary report and the accurate numbers. The preliminary numbers for the Tamarack River Valley respondents were:
Yes—75 percent, No—20 percent, No opinion—5 percent
. These were the ones that were inaccurate.”

“Yes, I know,” said Josh. “I wrote them down when your graduate student shared them at the meeting.”

“The accurate numbers are:
Yes—40 percent, No—55 percent, No opinion—5 percent
.”

“So 55 percent of the Tamarack folks disagree with the hog operation coming to their community?” Josh raised his voice a bit.

“That’s what the correct figures show.”

“The preliminary figures said 75 percent were in favor—that’s quite a difference in numbers, wouldn’t you say? Quite an error?” Josh asked. His voice had an edge to it.

“Clearly an error—unfortunately, a big one. The preliminary numbers should not have been presented.”

“Thank you, Professor Evans. Thank you for being candid,” Josh said. “As soon as you have the complete report ready, make sure I get a copy.”

“You’re on the list.”

Josh hung up and sat back in his chair. He could tell by Evans’s tone of voice that he was embarrassed about what happened. Josh, knowing
something about university departments, also knew that a department’s reputation was extremely important, especially when it came to attracting outstanding students, and it was even more important for obtaining research grants.

The department, nearly a hundred years old, had carried out outstanding research that had assisted the agriculture community in untold important ways. But it had surely muffed reporting its most recent research findings. He decided to run the e-mail as he had received it, as a sidebar to the story he was writing about Nathan West’s progress in building its new facility, and he decided to run the corrected preliminary figures. He would wait for the complete report to write a longer piece about the research.

Josh wrote a lengthy article, complete with photos, of the progress Nathan West was making with its new hog production facility. He worked hard on the piece, which included quotations from Ed Clark. It was an objective piece; it included lots of facts and no opinions about either the positive or negative features of a large-scale confined hog operation.

In addition to the sidebar with the e-mail he’d received with the corrected survey results, he included another sidebar, one recounting some history of the Tamarack River Ghost with a photo of Mortimer Dunn’s gravestone.

He sent the piece over to the paper’s copyeditor for proofing, and an hour later he punched a button on his computer keyboard and the story appeared on the website.

Two minutes later, Josh’s phone rang.

“Could you step into my office, please?” It was Lexington. His office was two doors from Josh’s. Josh wondered why he hadn’t just walked the few feet and talked with him face to face.

Josh walked down the hall, knocked on the door, and heard “Enter.”

Lexington sat at his desk, staring at a computer screen. His black-rimmed glasses hung on the end of his nose and his nearly bald head shone.

“Just read your piece on the progress Nathan West is making. Good piece, a little long, but a good piece. You could have written something about what an asset the big hog operation will be to the county and the valley—something that would praise its efforts a bit more. We’d likely get more stories from NWI, stories the corporation would pay for, if you did that.”

“I wanted to keep the piece objective,” said Josh.

“Objective is yesterday’s way of doing things. Today people take positions, say what they think, share their opinions. It’s the new journalism.”

Josh stood quietly, not saying anything. He knew what good journalism was, and he also knew the difference between an opinion piece and a good piece of objective writing.

“Something else. Why in the world did you include the sidebar about the university’s correction of its early research report? All that will do is stir up people. And it’ll stir up Nathan West as well; the company won’t like it, you can bet on that. Once the company reads this, we’ll hear.”

Josh remained standing silently, thinking but not expressing his thoughts.

“And one final thing. What’s with this ghost? It’s not Halloween. Why are you writing about ghosts, tombstones, and cemeteries, for heaven’s sake?” It was obvious from the question that he had done little digging into the community’s history.

Josh opened his mouth to respond but thought better of it. He wanted to explain what journalism was all about, how it was important to try to remain objective when writing about something. And, as far as the sidebar e-mail of the agribusiness studies department confessing an error in its preliminary research report—well, that was news and must be reported, no matter who might be offended or might take issue with it.

But he said nothing, deciding this was not the time or the place. He could see that his boss was upset with him—no sense in fanning the flames.

“That’s all,” Lexington said, waving Josh away.

Josh returned to his office, not sure what he should do about the exchange—it really wasn’t an exchange, as the conversation was a one-sided dressing down. How should he help his new boss understand what the newspaper business was about, what
Farm Country News
had been doing for so long? He wondered if a confrontation was the answer. It might get him fired before he’d given the second reason for why he wrote the Nathan West story the way he did.

Before he’d had more than five minutes to think about a strategy, the e-mails began arriving.

Thirty e-mails arrived within the first hour of the piece’s appearance on the paper’s website. The percentage for and against the new hog farm broke down almost identically to the survey results—more than 50 percent were against the idea. Josh wrote back to all of them, asking if they wanted their message to appear in the paper and explaining that the cost to do so would be 15 cents a word.

If hitting a hornets’ nest would stir up the wrath of hornets, the idea that readers should have to pay to submit a letter to the editor was like smashing into the largest hornets’ nest in existence. To a person, those for the new hog facility and those against were united in opposition to
Farm Country News
’s policy for charging people for their submissions. They were livid. Several wrote that they would immediately cancel their subscriptions to the paper, not realizing that the paper was free and that they no longer had subscriptions.

People didn’t seem to mind paying for advertising-type stories, or stories that fit into the “Remembering an Early Time,” “New Ways for New Days,” or any other section of the paper. But the idea of paying for a letter to the editor struck them the wrong way. Some readers reminded Josh that protest letters of the type they had sent were as old as the country.

One wrote:

Josh showed this last response to his boss, who quickly read through it and then snarled, “Write back and tell this guy that freedom is not free. It costs money.”

Josh snatched the e-mail from Lexington’s desk without a word. He went back to his own desk, not knowing what to do. The writer surely had a point. Josh agreed with him, but how could he convince his boss of a newspaper’s responsibilities, in whatever form it took—paper or electronic?

In a series of meetings in the Department of Agribusiness Studies and in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences as a whole—deadly serious meetings held without fanfare or publicity—the “Randy case,” as it was called, was discussed at length. Randy appeared at each of these meetings to share his side of the story. Emily also appeared at each. For a time, the meetings seemed a series of “he said, she said” conflicts, with the attendants having difficulty knowing where to place blame. Ultimately, the information Department Chair Evans shared about Emily’s actions at Ohio State University swayed the committee toward accusing her of tampering with data. However, they did not let Randy off the hook. He was, after all, responsible for the research project and for supervising his graduate student, both of which he had failed to adequately do.

Emily turned on all her charm at these meetings, but crotchety professors worrying about their department and their college’s reputation are not easily charmed. She thought carefully about the appropriate time to share the video she had made. Ultimately, she decided it would probably weaken her case. She decided to pack it away—
Another day, another time
, she thought.

The day after the semester ended, Evans called Randy into his office. Randy had a good idea of what was coming; he hadn’t slept for many nights, worrying about his future, concerned about how he hadn’t properly supervised his graduate student who had presented tampered research results to the public. More than anything else, he worried about Emily’s video. No matter what, he knew his career was in serious jeopardy, if not entirely derailed.

“Have a chair, Randy,” Professor Evans said, motioning to the only chair in the office that did not have something piled on it. “I suspect you know why I wanted to see you.”

“Yes, I believe I do,” said Randy. His face felt hot and his stomach was churning.

“Well, I’ll get right to it. As a better than average researcher, I believe you know how serious it is when data are tampered with,” said Evans.

“Yes, I do.”

“It’s one thing to make a mistake; we all do that from time to time, but to alter data, that is unforgivable.”

“I know that,” said Randy. He could feel a bead of perspiration trickling down the side of his face. He brushed it away.

“After several meetings and considerable discussion, we are convinced that Emily Jordan was responsible.”

“Yes, she admitted it to me.”

“You probably know that she never admitted it to me or to the ethics committee, but she said you did the tampering and at the Willow River meeting she only did what you told her to do.”

“I wasn’t aware of that,” said Randy angrily.

“You probably also didn’t know that she did something like this when she was studying at Ohio State. They couldn’t prove anything, but they asked her to leave, nonetheless.”

“Really? I wish I had known.” Randy sighed and slumped back in his chair.

“We all wish we had known,” said Professor Evans. “But even though she did the actual tampering, you, Randy, were responsible for the project, supervising her work, and making sure what was reported was as accurate as possible.”

“I know that,” said Randy. He looked down at his hands.

“So, here’s what we’ve decided to do. First, we have discontinued Emily Jordan’s research assistantship, as of the end of this semester. She will be leaving the University of Wisconsin and will likely not be pursuing a PhD at any major research university, at least in this country.”

“Yes.” It was all Randy could think to say, because he knew that the
other shoe was about to drop, and that shoe would land squarely on him. He also thought of Emily’s dreaded video and wondered why she hadn’t already shared it with Evans when he discussed canceling her assistantship. Or was something else going on, something that no one yet knew about Emily’s real reason for tampering with the data?