The Media’s Summer: Bad to Worse?

For a short while, it seemed as if Kenneth Y. Tomlinson would have the last word on the Mike Barnicle matter.

Tomlinson went public last week with his recollection that Reader’s Digest, which he used to edit, had wanted to reprint a heartbreaking Barnicle column about a child who died from cancer but that the monthly had been unable to confirm the story. Tomlinson’s flashback to 1995 led to Barnicle’s requested resignation on Aug. 19 from the Boston Globe, which also could not authenticate the column and faulted the veteran columnist for failing “to follow the most basic reporting requirements,” to quote editor Matthew V. Storin.

Read all about it in “Mike Barnicle’s Just Desserts,” a piece by Tomlinson that appears in this week’s issue (Aug. 31) of the Weekly Standard.

But wait. Barnicle, who has insisted even since his resignation that he made nothing up, may not be the last journalistic casualty this summer--a summer that has brought the resignation of Boston Globe columnist Patricia Smith, for inventing people and quotes; the firing of Stephen Glass by the New Republic for widespread fabrications; the retraction by CNN and Time of a story alleging the use of nerve gas by U. S. troops during the Vietnam War; and the dismissal by the Wall Street Journal of reporter James S. Hirsch, who wrote that the New York Times Co., which owns the Globe, had “declined to comment” on an earlier story about Barnicle, though he had not phoned the Times’ spokesperson.

Scott Shuger, who writes the daily “Today’s Papers” roundup for Slate, the online subscription magazine published by Microsoft Corp. (https://www.slate.com), says he knows of two other cases of what he calls “plagiarists and fiction writers” employed by newspapers. What’s more, Shuger said in an interview from his Los Angeles home on Monday that he might publicly identify the pair, perhaps within a month, unless their papers “come clean” first.

Shuger, who first raised this threat last Thursday in his Slate column about the national press, said he has known of the two cases for a while. He said he found them especially relevant in light of recent newspaper editorials criticizing President Clinton for withholding the truth about Monica Lewinsky until he was all but cornered seven months later. “To a moral certainty, the papers know of these people and the cases,” Shuger said.

He declined to be specific, except to say that the two are not necessarily columnists.

It’s a prosecutorial stance for Shuger, who at one point referred to his Slate column as a “bully pulpit,” an archaic term that also hints at a rather lofty sense of righteousness. Still, he said, Slate readers have applauded him and “responsible people at one major place” have asked him to inform them if one of the guilty is in their midst.

Adventurous Women: The hot adventure-travel category of magazines is getting larger.

Mariah Media Inc.--the publisher of Outside, winner the past two years of National Magazine Awards for general excellence--will follow through on long-standing plans and launch Women Outside on Tuesday. The new quarterly, also based in Santa Fe, N. M., will start with a newsstand distribution of 225,000 copies.

“First, a promise,” co-editors Susan Casey and Laura Hohnhold write in the premiere issue. “You’ll never see a story in this magazine about hair care. No ‘Tighter Tush in Ten Days’ . . . Our expertise lies in stories like the ones that appear in this first issue of Women Outside--tales about Hawaiian surfer girls and wild wolves in Yellowstone and a road trip across the Australian outback.”

The surfer piece carries the byline of Susan Orlean, staff writer with the New Yorker.

In addition, Travel Publishing Group Inc., based in Miami, bought and now has merged three outdoor magazines--Adventure West, Outdoor Action and EcoTraveler--into the newly launched Adventure Journal. Calling itself “the adventure travel authority,” the bimonthly went on sale this week with pieces on the Yangtze River, Glacier National Park, the Amazon and Belize.

The mag, whose editorial office is in San Francisco, claims 125,000 subscribers.

Answering Reviews: The artist known as Method Man glowers from the cover of the new hip-hop magazine Blaze, but he doesn’t look half as menacing as Wyclef Jean of the Fugees sounds.

Blaze editor in chief Jesse Washington writes in an opening “Manifesto” that Wyclef threatened him with a 9-millimeter pistol, “pointed at my chest,” because the magazine was planning to run in its premiere issue a negative review of an album he produced, Canibus’ “Can-I-Bust?” Although Wyclef denied to MTV News in mid-August that the incident took place, the editor’s description suggests that Blaze won’t be easily intimidated in its approach to hip-hop. For one thing, it will offer artists the right to reply to record reviews before they appear. Funkmaster Flex (“Mix Tape Volume III”) is among those who have taken Blaze up on the invitation.

Blaze, whose 224-page premiere went on sale Tuesday, is a new offering from Vibe / Spin Ventures, the owner and publisher of Vibe and Spin magazines.

When the plan to launch Blaze was announced in March, it led to immediate speculation that the publication is a way for Vibe / Spin Ventures to defend competitively against the growing popularity of the Source, a 10-year-old rap magazine that also aims young. The difference, Washington said this week, is that Blaze “will be tighter, more concise, cut to the chase and leave room for more big pictures.”

Blaze starts with a circulation guarantee, a so-called rate base, of 250,000 and will publish 10 issues a year.

Afterwords: The much-admired Texas Monthly says it will publish Texas Monthly Biz and bag the separate business magazine along with copies of TM’s March issue. It’s a one-shot deal right now, but a spokeswoman for the parent mag last week left open the possibility that Texas Monthly Biz might return at a later date . . . .

Stephan Talty, who has reviewed films for Time Out New York, the weekly entertainment guide, gets the new slot of film editor at Details magazine.

* Paul D. Colford is a columnist for Newsday. His e-mail address is [email protected]. His column is published Thursdays.