Dog Bites

"I Made a Mistake"
A clarification is scheduled to run in the Feb. 28 Chronicle to explain the shocking similarities between a Feb. 24 piece by Chronicle reporter Susan Yoachum and a Reuters story that moved on the wire the day before. In her Page A3 story, Yoachum writes of Pat Buchanan:

He calls immigrants "Jose" and vows to protect "Judeo-Christian values" and "our Western heritage" from being "dumped into some landfill called multiculturalism."

His most famous speech was made at the Republican National Convention in 1992, when he dismissed the Democratic convention as a masquerade ball of "cross-dressers" and declared that the Republican mission was to wage a "religious war" and a "cultural war" for the "soul of America," which he said is "God's country."

The Examiner story that credits Reuters states:
He calls immigrants "Jose" and vows to protect "Judeo-Christian values" and "our Western heritage" from being "dumped into some landfill called multiculturalism."

His most famous speech was the August 1992 address at the Republican National Convention, in which he dismissed the Democratic convention as a masquerade ball of "cross dressers" and proclaimed that the Republican mission was to wage a "religious war" and a "cultural war" for the soul of America, "God's country."

The similarities between the two stories were brought to light by SF Weekly reader Peter Lurie.

"I made a mistake," says Yoachum. "I wish it had not occurred." Yoachum says that she electronically merged the Reuters story into her own file while writing on Friday, Feb. 23, and surmises that she may have inadvertently moved the Reuters paragraphs into her story. She adds that she never saw the Examiner article.

"Did I learn a lesson? Yes I did," says Yoachum.
Yoachum's boss, National/World Editor Tim Neagle, would offer no comment about the similarities beyond noting that the paper would be running a clarification in the Wednesday edition.

Pressing Matters
On June 30, Bay Times Editor and Publisher Kim Corsaro will ride down Market Street as one of the grand marshals of this year's Gay Pride Parade, whose theme is: "Equality and Justice for All." That's a fact that strikes some of her former employees as just a little bit ironic.

Two weeks ago, Corsaro agreed to pay former Bay Times typesetter Karl von Uhl $1,500, nine months after von Uhl lodged a complaint against Corsaro with the state labor commissioner's office, saying that he had not been paid overtime and that he had not received his final paycheck. Corsaro had argued that von Uhl was an independent contractor and therefore not entitled to overtime, von Uhl says. The settlement agreement was reached in Municipal Court.

This year, the "National Pride at Work" conference, sponsored by the lesbian/gay/bisexual/trans Labor Alliance, is being held in San Francisco in conjunction with Pride Week and the parade.

"Postmodernism is always very big in San Francisco, but I'm getting a little tired of irony," von Uhl says.

Corsaro could not be reached for comment.

City Center Squat
The Housing Authority discovered tenants it didn't know it had when it prepared to demolish the projects at Hayes Valley. Two people had been living in the parking lot in a homemade shack for the last six years.And according to the City Attorney's Office that constituted homesteading rights. Under the law, housing officials must either find them accommodations or give them money to rent on their own. So far, one of the squatters has been placed in another public housing project.

By Jack Shafer, Ellen McGarrahan, George Cothran