Gene Weingarten and Ethics

Two time Pulitzer Prize winner Gene Weingartner brought up several issues that always seem to come up in conversations about journalism when he spoke to students, teachers, and others in the Cape Cod Lounge on the University of Amherst campus on Tuesday.

For a writer who's two most famous works have been about violinists and parents being responsible for the death's of their children, he is a pretty funny guy. Medline Blais, another Pulitzer Price winner, introduced Weingarten and gave a quote of his that advises writers to "always put the funniest word at the end of the sentence," which was later revised to "always put the funniest word at the end of the sentence underpants."

Weingartner spoke to his audience about several issues in journalism, a main one being the subject of honestly. He spoke to the crowd in a way that easily kept the attention of a group of journalism people, by showing rather than telling. Weingartner shared with his audience various stories from his career as a writer and editor, and they were in many cases as outlandish as they were funny.

The issue of honest reporting was explored quite a bit, especially when Weingarten talked about the time he impersonated a doctor in a hospital in order to gain access to talk to a gangster type that was being held there. He lied to the man in order to trick him into giving him information that he would never give him otherwise.

"I knew enough even at the age of twenty-three that I could not tell him that I was a doctor," Weingarten said. "So what I did was I held out my hand, and when he held out his hand, instead of shaking it I took his pulse."

At the time Weingarten clearly was not too concerned with being as honest as possible, but now he would advise others against his former methods. At this point he asked the audience if he had done anything ethically wrong. When a student sent guess of "no," Weingarten replied by saying, "I did something terribly wrong!"

"That was the first big story of my life, and I got it dishonestly," Weingartner said. "I would not do it again."