A former editor's apology:
When I first heard last week that Dan Kennings may not be real, I felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach. I also remembered two stories I wrote in the spring of 2004 for the DAILY EGYPTIAN. I thought if what the Chicago Tribune and the DE are saying is true, then I can't guarantee that these two stories I wrote are 100 percent correct. I guess you could say I was duped, too. And I want everyone to know. By the time both of these stories ran, the DE had published numerous Kodee Kennings columns for almost a year. Her opinion columns had become so much a part of the newspaper and she was loved by so many people that I never even considered the possibility that her situation may not be true. I don't think anyone else at the DE did either. Sad to say, if Jaimie Reynolds had never "killed off" the character of Dan Kennings, I don't believe anyone would have ever investigated the matter. I was doing a story based on the one-year anniversary of the U.S. war with Iraq. I had interviewed some members of the Southern Illinois Peace Coalition at the Carbondale town square, and I wanted to get some input from some soldiers to widen the story's angle. I figured it would be only half the truth if all I did was talk to protesters. I told who I thought was "Colleen Hastings" that I was interested in interviewing some of the guys in Dan's unit of the 101st Airborne in Fort Campbell, Ky. She told me she'd be glad to help. She also said that because of their busy training schedules at the base, I wouldn't be able to contact any of these soldiers through the base's land lines. So, she arranged for them to call me at the DAILY EGYPTIAN. The phone rang, and it was the voice that I had come to know as Dan Kennings. I told him I couldn't use him in the story because I felt like I knew him and his daughter, so he passed the phone around to at least three other guys. They all gave their names and ranks, and I did phone interviews with each of them. It certainly wasn't the first phone interview I ever gave, so I didn't think there was anything weird about it. Besides, I'd never had any prior knowledge of how to contact people at military bases and I was clearly unfamiliar altogether with the whole military lifestyle. I suppose my unfamiliarity was something that Jaimie Reynolds preyed on. I took these interviews and a separate phone interview I also did with a woman who I thought was the wife of one of these soldiers and put them into the story. I also used some quotes from the soldier's wife in a follow-up story. Looking back on it, it was a totally stupid interviewing method on my part ˘ definitely something I would not do today. I thought I could trust "Colleen." We all did. I never heard one person say otherwise. She just seemed like too nice of a person to orchestrate something this evil. Who would believe that hours and hours of phone conversation with Kodee was actually someone else? I never meant to to intentionally deceive anybody. I thought everything I was doing was accurate. I'm sorry to the readers of the DE that I wrote two stories that are probably not true. It certainly wasn't done intentionally. I always try to tell the truth in my stories. But I guess that's the reality of any college newspaper. You're in college. You're still learning. I know it sounds cold to say, but in journalism, it's healthy not to trust anyone. The DE and I learned the hard way. Burke Wasson, a 2004 SIUC graduate, was the DAILY EGYPTIAN's editor-in-chief in the summer of 2004.
When I first heard last week that Dan Kennings may not be real, I felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach. I also remembered two stories I wrote in the spring of 2004 for the DAILY EGYPTIAN. I thought if what the Chicago Tribune and the DE are saying is true, then I can't guarantee that these two stories I wrote are 100 percent correct. I guess you could say I was duped, too. And I want everyone to know. By the time both of these stories ran, the DE had published numerous Kodee Kennings columns for almost a year. Her opinion columns had become so much a part of the newspaper and she was loved by so many people that I never even considered the possibility that her situation may not be true. I don't think anyone else at the DE did either. Sad to say, if Jaimie Reynolds had never "killed off" the character of Dan Kennings, I don't believe anyone would have ever investigated the matter. I was doing a story based on the one-year anniversary of the U.S. war with Iraq. I had interviewed some members of the Southern Illinois Peace Coalition at the Carbondale town square, and I wanted to get some input from some soldiers to widen the story's angle. I figured it would be only half the truth if all I did was talk to protesters. I told who I thought was "Colleen Hastings" that I was interested in interviewing some of the guys in Dan's unit of the 101st Airborne in Fort Campbell, Ky. She told me she'd be glad to help. She also said that because of their busy training schedules at the base, I wouldn't be able to contact any of these soldiers through the base's land lines. So, she arranged for them to call me at the DAILY EGYPTIAN. The phone rang, and it was the voice that I had come to know as Dan Kennings. I told him I couldn't use him in the story because I felt like I knew him and his daughter, so he passed the phone around to at least three other guys. They all gave their names and ranks, and I did phone interviews with each of them. It certainly wasn't the first phone interview I ever gave, so I didn't think there was anything weird about it. Besides, I'd never had any prior knowledge of how to contact people at military bases and I was clearly unfamiliar altogether with the whole military lifestyle. I suppose my unfamiliarity was something that Jaimie Reynolds preyed on. I took these interviews and a separate phone interview I also did with a woman who I thought was the wife of one of these soldiers and put them into the story. I also used some quotes from the soldier's wife in a follow-up story. Looking back on it, it was a totally stupid interviewing method on my part ˘ definitely something I would not do today. I thought I could trust "Colleen." We all did. I never heard one person say otherwise. She just seemed like too nice of a person to orchestrate something this evil. Who would believe that hours and hours of phone conversation with Kodee was actually someone else? I never meant to to intentionally deceive anybody. I thought everything I was doing was accurate. I'm sorry to the readers of the DE that I wrote two stories that are probably not true. It certainly wasn't done intentionally. I always try to tell the truth in my stories. But I guess that's the reality of any college newspaper. You're in college. You're still learning. I know it sounds cold to say, but in journalism, it's healthy not to trust anyone. The DE and I learned the hard way. Burke Wasson, a 2004 SIUC graduate, was the DAILY EGYPTIAN's editor-in-chief in the summer of 2004.
His biggest mistake was going to the Call!
