What Probably Went Down at the Beheading

It's a PR flak's job not to stop trying, so you can't fault that person for persistently bugging a reporter to the brink of insanity. As a result, one previously unknown motivational speaker who would have had a limited turn-out for his speech just scored a bonanza of free publicity and cast a massive PC guilt trip over all the liberals in town. If you don't come to his speech now, the verbal terrorists have won. From a PR point of view, that flak is a genius.

But who are we kidding? Many people say disparaging things about others among themselves, especially under stress, under extreme aggravation, or even for public stand-up comedy under the defense of "it's comedy." Who gets more publicly insulted than overweight people? What comedian hasn't let slip a sly joke about the governor of New York's disability? Who hasn't "The Family Guy" insulted? Yes, it's part of the culture. Tasteful and polite we're usually not. So why did a local reporter get axed today?

On a less national (or showbiz) scale and especially when you're in a sensitive official position, you have to know better than to put an unPC insult in writing. Then there's the nightmare of hitting the REPLY button on the email instead of FORWARD. Whoops. This isn't the first time email technology has resulted in dire consequences.

I professionally know, and at times have competed against, the reporter in question, Chris Dovi, for more than a decade. This behavior wasn't out of character. He's had similar dust-ups at previous jobs. Those of us who travel in the same circles have heard about them. He's rough around the edges and doesn't play by the rules. It is part of what makes him good at what he does, actually. But journalism in Richmond has historically been a bow tie profession for gentlemen. There's no other explanation for why the premiere investigative reporter in the area, Mark Holmberg, was aggravated out of the city's only daily newspaper, and no one with the same skill set has ever taken his place there.

I have no doubt Style Weekly has privately flogged him before for brash behavior, loose talk, chronically missing deadlines, or being less than tactful with sources in order to squeeze info out of them. Years ago I read Dovi's unedited stories in the Hanover Herald Progress. They ran his copy as written. Somewhere along the line, someone had given him the bad advice that every first paragraph of every story -- whether it was hard news or a soft feature -- had to be clever, funny, or a pun. His lead-ins were almost always excruciating attempts to be attention-grabbing, and his stories were rambling and sensationally written. When he advanced to the next level, the Times-Dispatch with its grim, humorless copy desk, I knew there was no way his rambunctious style would survive intact. Predictably, his bylined stories there were indistinguishable from any other reporter's. The copy desk was earning its salary distilling him into bland, acceptable news-ese.

From there he went to a county public information office -- who thought that would be a good fit? Apparently it wasn't. It wasn't long before he turned up at his most recent employment where he was a contributor before he was put on staff. I suspect they were hoping someone else would show up to fill the position full-time, but it's not easy finding a writer who can produce hard-hitting investigative journalism and still be such a nonabrasive person, you never cause your publisher one moment of embarrassment. Plus, if your rough copy needs editing for style and structure, turning it in late all the time must make your immediate editor hate the day he was born (or you were born) on a regular basis. I've heard Holmberg was similarly unconcerned with copy deadlines.

So, when a good excuse to part company appears out of the blue, the employer grabs it, even though with such a small writing staff, it's going to hurt. A lot. Management could have offered a rote apology to the offended party and then circled the wagons around their star employee, but when the wagons don't circle, you know there's more to it. I've been through this myself with different results each time, and on the surface, it never makes sense to outsiders. You have to know all the unrelated deep background. Sometimes a boss throws a protective shield over you, and sometimes they let you twist in the wind, regardless of the transgression, which is seldom the only deciding factor. This was just the final straw on a totally different haystack.

There will be a lot of public dialogue in the coming days about whether the punishment fit the crime, our culture and our social boundaries -- and that's what the PR flack wants you to think this was about, as well as buy a ticket to hear his client -- but the fact is, that's not even what this was about.