Among journalists one school of thought has it that there’s no such thing as an inappropriate source. Your source might be embarrassed–or worse–to be found talking to you, but you were just doing your job.
“Justin Kmitch is engaged to be married. Justin reports he proposed to Jen Engel Aug. 17 on the peak of Mt. Haleakala, the highest peak in Maui, and she accepted. No date has been set yet. Jen is a legal assistant at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.”
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“Bensenville pension funding fight over” was the headline, and the story said a negotiated settlement between the village and state regulators “stipulated that Bensenville officials didn’t violate any state law or department regulation.”
Called out like that, the Herald had no choice but to respond. On September 22, a Saturday, the paper carried on its front page an insouciant account that admitted Kmitch’s relationship with Engel but denied that she’d been his source.
Kmitch and Engel wouldn’t talk to me, but Lampinen returned my call. He said Kmitch was a “fundamentally honest and straightforward person” who’d made a “significant mistake” and was being disciplined in ways that went beyond reassignment. Lampinen said Kmitch and Engel had met socially through mutual friends before he bumped into her in Bensenville, and apparently he thought of her as someone he saw on his beat, not as part of the beat itself. He said the paper found out about their relationship when Kmitch’s supervisor heard rumors in 2004 and asked Kmitch about them.
For more, see Michael Miner’s blog, News Bites, at chicagoreader.com.
