SLM Daily

We were emailing this New York Times story about Gov. Blagojevich's final trip to the Illinois Capitol around the office when the following graf caught my eye:

It immediately made me wonder: Why was the decision made to explicitly state that the reporter and photographer made the trip at the newspaper's expense? Wouldn't it just be a matter of course that the NYT would pay for the reporter to accompany him? Isn't all reporting, per the NYT code of ethics, supposed to be done "at the newspaper's expense"?

I'm sure that line does at times get blurred - I would guess, for instance, that pool reporters on Air Force One/their originating publications don't have to pay back the government for associated fuel and travel costs, though I could be wrong - but it seemed strange to me that the cost issue was specifically called out here.

A colleague suggested that the reporter may have just been trying to make things scrupulously clear, lest anything in Blagojevich's track record lead readers to doubt the integrity of reporting about him, especially reporting that follows him on a trip that's more of a personal mission than a governmental one. Or perhaps the reference is there to ensure no one accuses Blagojevich of anything else, e.g. pulling something like Connecticut Gov. Charlie Crist did last summer.

Still, without more context, the reference almost raised more questions for me than it answered: What in this instance cost the newspaper money? Did the reporter and photographer ride along in Blagojevich's vehicle on the six-hour trip? If so, where were costs incurred? And if, on the other hand, the reporter took her own car (or perhaps rented a car) and followed Blagojevich on his six-hour journey, what kind of access did she have to the governor throughout the trip?

It may well be that these questions aren't of interest to anyone besides me ... but I'm certainly curious to know the answers! —Margaret Bauer, Associate Editor