Column: Anonymous letter raises issues about credibility

http://www.limaohio.com/news/crish_27411___article.html/story_anonymous.html

There wasn't a story in The Lima News on Tuesday about someone questioning whether sheriff candidate Sam Crish should be eligible to run.
You're not likely to see one in this newspaper, either. We looked into it, and we didn't find anything wrong. From looking at personnel records and talking to people involved, Crish was a resident at the Bellefontaine Road address he claimed as his home on election paperwork.
You might wonder why I'm telling you about a complete and total non-story in The Lima News. Based on some of the calls I handled Tuesday, we'd dropped the most important story in Lima's history.
It all comes down to an anonymous call, an anonymous letter and a little but extremely important thing called credibility.
The people who called Tuesday heard about an anonymous four-page letter our newspaper and several other media outlets received Monday. The letter questioned if Crish really lived at the home address he used on his candidacy form, citing an Ohio law that requires a sheriff candidate live in the county for at least one year prior to the qualification date.
The story really started for us nearly a month ago, when an anonymous caller asked a similar question. So we did what we do with any accusation like this: We looked into it.
Reporter Greg Sowinski looked over the sheriff's personnel files of Crish and some other officers who allegedly lived in the house last January. He spent more than three hours looking through them, comparing dates and residences.
He found nothing to suggest Crish didn't live there last January. Then he talked to the people involved. Those stories all clicked, too. Crish used to live near Indian Lake, then he moved to a house on Bellefontaine Avenue.
We talked about it and decided it was a non-story, a journalism cliché for something that's just not that interesting. A guy living where he says he does is about as exciting a story as a guy who pours milk on his cereal every morning.
We take our credibility extremely seriously. Each of our reporters does his or her best to be certain everything they print is true, to the best of their knowledge. Given that we'd already looked into the incident and found no merit, even repeating accusations in that anonymous letter would do nothing to serve the common good.
It's the anonymous nature of the letter that concerns me. I read several anonymous letters each month and receive a handful of anonymous calls each week, asking us to look into things.
After nearly 15 years as a professional journalist, I've noticed something: Anonymous sources aren't as reliable as people willing to put their names by their words.
Quite simply, most of these accusations end up being unfounded hearsay. It's often the result of rumors and innuendo, where no one bothered to check the authenticity of the information they've repeated.
You'll notice my name and picture is on this column. I stand by it. The stories we publish from our local reporters include their names. They stand by their work. Even our editorial page has the names of the men who helped craft that opinion.
Perhaps you don't believe anything you see with my name on it. That's your right, but at least you know who wrote it.
It's a cornerstone of good journalism. You can not only evaluate whether you believe something based on your experiences with that reporter, you can also judge whether you believe it based on who they quoted.
This Crish issue came from an anonymous letter that had incorrect statements in it. I don't know the motivation of the writer, nor can I ask since I have no name, phone number or even e-mail address. I do know the goal can't be to get Crish removed from the ballot, as the deadline to protest an independent candidate's petition was May 30.
As a reporter, I never used a source unless I felt confident in their knowledge about the story. Now as an editor, I won't allow our reporters to do so.
You should expect that much out of a news-gathering organization. You should be able to trust us.