Reporters Canned for Drinking a Beer

If you're a reporter and you have a beer with your sources, prepare to get pink-slipped by your high-and-mighty bosses (who surely have never sipped a cocktail with an advertiser or another business contact, I have to assume).

The Kalamazoo Gazette published a series of stories last Sunday focusing on the problem of heavy drinking by young adults on and off campus. In that report was a story about a drinking game called "beer pong." As a part of the reporting for the series, staff writer Craig McCool and photographer Mairin Chapman arranged to go to an off-campus apartment where the game was being played. McCool and Chapman said they consumed alcohol while reporting and photographing the story. They did not divulge this information to their editors prior to the story's publication. "Their conduct is unacceptable and violates the standards that we uphold every day as journalists," Editor Rebecca Pierce said.