In honor of #rosaparksday, I wanted to share the story of how a reporter for Minneapolis Tribune (an early version of @startribune) used basic reporting to debunk a nefarious hoax that threatened to end the 13-month Montgomery bus strike after less than 2 months. A thread. https://twitter.com/AP_Images/status/1333783803295268866

In 1955, reporter Carl Rowan traveled to Montgomery for a series, Dixie Divide, on race tension in the South. Newspapers were still segregated. White papers covered white issues; Black papers covered Black. Rowan was one of the first Black reporters to work for a white paper.

While reporting, Rowan was impressed by seeing 2 pastors drinking Jack Daniels. Rowan grew up in Tennessee, where preachers didn’t drink. So he walked up and said, by way of intro, “Man, these are some modern preachers!”

It was Martin Luther King Jr and Ralph David Abernathy.

King became a good source for Rowan’s reporting. In stark contrast, not a single reporter at Montgomery’s daily paper, the Advertiser, had King’s phone number. (The Advertiser was considered a pro-segregationist paper at this time).

On Jan. 21, 7-weeks into the bus boycott, a Mpls Tribune editor saw a story on the wire from the Advertiser: The bus strike had settled. Rowan’s series was set to begin the next day, with day-one on the bus strike (this is, for the record, every reporters’ greatest fear).

Did he want to kill or rewrite? asked a Mpls Trib editor. Rowan, who had a high-functioning bullshit detector, asked a different question: Was it true?
Rowan hit the phones.

He reached King at 9 pm, who was “stunned” by the report. King confirmed there was no agreement. But if boycotters read that it was over in the Sunday paper the next morning, they would think it was over. In other words, a hoax in the Advertiser saying it was over could end it.

After Rowan’s call, King et al called every preacher in town and told them to dedicate their Sunday morning sermons to debunking the rumor. Then King spent all night going to juke joints and speakeasies to tell people not to believe the story.

As a result, “the hoax was exposed. The boycott continued as if that day's newspaper had never come off the press.”
-Source: “The Race Beat,” by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, a must-read book on the media’s history covering race in America in the 20th Century.

I read The Race Beat this summer after covering the George Floyd protests in Mpls. I like this particular story bc it shows how much has changed, and how much has stayed the same, in 65 yrs. And it hammers how the importance of fundamental reporting: Always Check It Out.