Los Angeles Times media writer David Shaw concluded in a March 27 column that bloggers don’t deserve protection under “shield laws” that protect journalists because blogs are unregulated and inaccurate. Shaw sniffed that at least four editors look at his column before it hits the printed page.

Apparently all four took the next day off, because the Times two days later printed a horribly inaccurate story from a veteran writer that rumor has it cost the writer his job (Editor & Publisher said a statement from the Times is forthcoming).

UPDATE (19 APR): The Times announced today that Slater has been fired.

As a journalist, I walk down a slippery (and hypocritical) slope if I make a habit out of sledgehammering every journalist who makes a mistake. I’ve made some whoppers, and the victims of my bad writing likely don’t trust any reporters as a result. Like every reporter who’s fallen off the horse, I have to live with that.

But occasionally, a reporter bungles a story so magnificently that it becomes newsworthy. It becomes even more newsworthy when he works for one of the nation’s largest newspapers, which is investigating whether some of the veteran reporter’s characters or places were figments of his imagination. And of course, it is newsworthy that the story’s biggest problem stems from a journalistic bane cited time and time again — anonymous sources.

There’s more, if you read on:

Writer Eric Slater’s story of March 29 explored the Greek system of Chico State University in Chico, Calif., following a hazing death and a rash of other panhellenic unpleasantness (the Times apparently took the story down, but the Center for Local Government’s “Local Liberty” blog has a copy here). Slater penned the journalistic equivalent of that poor ski jumper immortalized as the “agony of defeat” from ABC’s Wide World of Sports.

On the surface, the numerous errors make it look like Slater should never have gotten out of bed. Slater’s story misstated the population of Chico by 36,000 people (the true population is almost double that), quoted the university president by lifting the quote from a local newspaper, stated that a student at a nearby college died when he was only hospitalized, and erroneously stated basketball, not baseball as the school’s claim to fame.

The Times ran a lengthy correction (also here). Articles in the college and Chico city newspapers had sources scratching their heads and wondering how Slater ever got a job with the Times.

But it gets worse. Much worse.

The aforementioned errors don’t even crack the surface of Slater’s (and his editors by default) deep sea of sloth. Slater’s misrepresentation of the campus and its atmosphere (Local Liberty and Patterico weigh in here and here and here) have people wondering whether the reporter ever actually came to Chico, or whether the good people of the town were “Blaired.”

And a big factor fueling the fires of fabrication is Slater’s extremely liberal use of anonymous sources. You know, the sources that only 15 percent of Americans believe are real in news stories, according to a 1998 survey?

Of the six students Slater talked to, only one divulged a full name. What kind of a reporter can’t get on-the-record quotes from a student body of 15,000, especially a college wracked by bad press since January? The Orion, the student newspaper, and the Chico Enterprise-Record apparently don’t have a problem finding people.

Chico E-R editor David Little also smells something a little Blairish in the Los Angeles smog.

In the L.A. Times story, six students are quoted. Only one is identified with a first and last name. In a town with more than 15,000 university students, the reporter could get only one student to talk on the record? That’s lazy. Or worse.

Readers are left to wonder if the people quoted are even real … like the 5-foot-2 brunette who posed for Playboy (let’s see, she posed naked in a national magazine but wouldn’t give her name to a reporter?) or the 19-year-old who walked “a bit unsteadily” out of Crazy Horse (where it’s tough to get in, I hear, with a fake ID), but was able to deliver insightful quotes despite her age and condition, that fit just perfectly into the story.

At best, quoting an anonymous source is a leap of faith for a journalist — the writer is saying “trust me” to a public that these days doesn’t trust journalists much at all. And we’re not talking Washington insiders or crime witnesses here. Little says the same and also reveals the fact that many smaller news operations exceed the big dogs in the ethics department:

Those anonymous sources get a lot of journalists in trouble. Some newspapers allow it. Others don’t. The policy at the Enterprise-Record is to avoid them in local news stories. The only exceptions we make are for sexual assault victims and their family members, or crime victims who may be in danger. In all other cases, forget it.

Our reporters are frustrated by that policy sometimes. We miss some stories because of it. But we never get duped, and we never make our readers question who’s hiding behind anonymity in news stories.

Here’s something odd about our industry: The larger the newspaper, the more often anonymous sources are allowed. And the more it’s allowed, the more reporters use that crutch.

Amen, brother.

Botched facts and anonymous sources aside, things aren’t looking too good for Slater right now, assuming the rumors are false and he still is employed. The Times dispatched an editor to Chico to determine who Slater talked to (if anyone), and where Slater went (if anywhere). On top of that, Slater wrote a rambling apology that reads at times like a Unabomber manifesto, which apparently has further pissed off his co-workers.

And to add a cherry on top of the humiliation sundae, a Chico journalism professor will use Slater’s article as a training tool, according to San Francisco Chronicle columnist CW Nevius:

Stay tuned. At this point, it seems the only people who want to talk about this are on the Chico State campus.

“I know this,'’ said journalism professor [Glen] Bleske. “I am going to use this story in my class for at least the next decade. He’s given me a great teaching tool.”

As an example of what not to do.

I’ll be keeping an eye on this, so stay tuned. Will the Times discover more than a boatload of anonymous sources and factual errors?

I know this post rambled on a bit — I haven’t been following this, and there has been a lot of catch-up work to do. But if there’s one thing that journalists should take from this, it’s that anonymous sources always draw suspicion. Don’t use them. Stories like this are precisely why readers don’t trust nameless people in news copy.