(This chapter is excerpted from “Akron’s Daily Miracle,” copyright 2019, University of Akron Press

By Tim Smith

Sometime in late 1979, (memory dims after a couple weeks, let alone after 40 years), two Akron police detectives – Helmut Klemm and Sgt. Ed Duvall – were investigating the reappearance of handguns that were supposed to have been tossed into a blast furnace.  The story started developing after the Beacon Journal had run a series of stories about corruption in the sheriff’s office. The series was written by Dick McBane, the Beacon’s courthouse reporter, and Morse Diggs, the police reporter, joined by investigative reporter Keith McKnight, a curmudgeonly old bulldog I had hired from the Dayton Journal Herald (full disclosure: also my oldest friend).

McBane and Diggs had been hearing rumors about an investigation into guns missing from evidence lockers or maybe showing up in pawn shops. Klemm and Duvall started leaking stuff to Diggs about the guns and how deep into the courthouse their probe went. They also wanted us to run some blind-source stories about their suspicions, of course without offering any hard evidence and nothing they would stand behind.

Imagine our reluctance to participate. 

But Klemm and Duvall were serious cops, even if a little naïve about the news business and standards of proof prior to publication.  And, of course, they were cops.  They had the same trust level that lambs have with lions. (I doubt they would appreciate the imagery.)  Still, they were able to convince me that the probe could reach deeper into the courthouse than we had been led to believe, including to judges and major local political figures. 

After clearing their request with Editor Paul Poorman, I allowed the two cops to come to the newsroom on a Sunday afternoon when the place was vacant to examine our clip files on, among other topics, Probate Judge James V. Barbuto and Akron lawyer Robert Blakemore, the former county party chairman and a significant figure in state and national Democratic politics.  They were there for several hours and I made copies of numerous newspaper stories – called “clips” – that would later come back to haunt me (more on that below).

Though we were digging into the story, we weren’t moving fast enough for the cops, who decided to up the ante. In early 1980,  they invited the ABC-TV investigative show 20/20 – and its star Geraldo Rivera (a.k.a. Jerry Rivers before he became a TV icon) – to Akron to dig into the story.

We heard rumors that Geraldo had been spotted when I got a request to meet with his producer Charlie Thompson. (I remember talking to him in my BJ office, but I cannot remember how he got invited.) I was a newly minted night school lawyer (having passed the bar in `77) and one of my law-school favorite clichés came to mind: “You knew it was a snake when you picked it up.”

Charlie talked a good game about sharing and helping each other, but mostly he just kept trying to milk me for as much information as he could get about the main players we had been looking at for weeks.  What I didn’t know at the time was that the cops had already provided Thompson and his crew with copies of the clips I had given them.  I guess with the hindsight of 40 years, I can’t blame the cops. They didn’t trust anybody: the prosecutor, the judges, certainly not the Beacon Journal and probably not some of their fellow cops (some of whom got caught up in the gun probe).  And, hanging out with Geraldo was a lot cooler than some local newspaper reporters.

 It turned out that the gun probe was small potatoes compared to what the cops turned up on the local judge, Barbuto.  They had women who were willing to testify about being pressured for sex, but they wanted a special prosecutor to handle the case because they didn’t trust Prosecutor Stephan Gabalac, who had been Barbuto’s chief assistant before taking over when Barbuto was elected to the bench.  It didn’t help that Gabalac didn’t trust the cops, apparently fearing their agenda included bringing down as many Democratic officeholders as they could. 

In the midst of all this, 20/20 producer Thompson was going around town, bad-mouthing the Beacon Journal at every opportunity, including doing the occasional radio interview.  Taking shots at the local newspaper was always a popular game for other local media and some local politicians (except when they wanted an endorsement).  You could hardly blame them. By this time in the paper’s storied history, it was probably at the peak of its influence and near the top of its local reach, circulating in four counties, with bureaus in Stark, Medina and Portage counties besides the headquarters in Akron. 

The paper had long worked behind the scenes to influence issues in the city under the guidance of Executive Editor and Publisher Ben Maidenburg. Following his retirement, there was something of a revolving door in the editor’s office until Poorman was hired in 1976.   Shortly after the gun probe got underway, Poorman hired a tall, curly-haired, kick-ass type from the Philadelphia Inquirer named Dale Allen to be the new executive editor.  Allen was soon caught up in the local intrigue surrounding the gun probe and the Barbuto investigation.

Not long after Dale’s arrival, 20/20 aired its story about crime and corruption in Summit County.  The gun probe barely figured in the story because the cops had shared their findings about Barbuto’s sexual escapades while a sitting judge.  And former Democratic Party chairman Robert Blakemore provided the angle to justify doing a story about hanky-panky in the courthouse: the Beacon clips showed a connection between Blakemore and the Kennedy family from the 1960s.  Never mind that the connection was tenuous, and old, and unrelated to Barbuto, guns or anything else in the 20/20 story. The Kennedys were the hook. This was a story with national implications.

Well, not actually. 

It was classic Geraldo.  Barbuto was up to his neck in trouble, as subsequent events would prove. But the rest, as time would show, was made-for-TV-razzle dazzle.  The program’s most dramatic scene was Rivera chasing an alleged “hitman,” Bobie Brooks, supposedly hired by Barbuto to intimidate witnesses, through a downtown hotel and through city streets.  The show presented the event as a bold confrontation between the intrepid Rivera and the shadowy “hitman.”  The hitman turned out to be a small-time crook with a conviction for manslaughter in his past. Even better, a picture later surfaced of Rivera sitting with his arm around Brooks at the Tangier restaurant, taken some time before the “chase” took place. 

Another feature of the program was an interview with one of the witnesses against a young woman who had met with the judge.  Rivera and his cameraman, lugging a hidden camera and mike in a suitcase, talked their way into the woman’s house with a promise that she would not be identified nor quoted by name.  The whole segment was done with Rivera’s voiceover while showing the young woman sitting in her house facing Rivera. The woman sued Rivera and 20/20 sometime later and the need for the voiceover became apparent.  The cameraman had taped Rivera repeatedly reassuring the woman he wouldn’t take her picture, use her name or reveal anything she said.  Of course, he did all three. Hence, the need to pass on the tape recording and just stick with the video. (The woman won at trial, but lost on an appeal.)

Still, with all its faults, the show left the Beacon looking as if it had ducked a major story.  Fact was, we had missed a major story about Barbuto’s conduct.  We immediately started playing catch-up, including an extraordinary meeting at Allen’s house called by Poorman and attended by me, editorial page editor Dave Cooper and a local lawyer, Orville Hoover, who would soon be appointed special prosecutor.  Hoover was a compromise appointment agreed upon after Gabalac and the common pleas judges ended a stand-off on how to handle the Barbuto allegations. 

Dale recently admitted to some reservations about getting involved with community issues from the outside, instead of being the usual neutral observer.  I can’t say I was wild about it, either, but I had a much longer history with such conduct at the Beacon under Maidenburg, who had often acted as an arbiter when local rubber worker unions struck the local rubber companies, which they did like clockwork every three years.  There was also a local chamber of commerce committee of bankers and other heavyweights who met in secret any time a city, county or school tax levy was being considered.  Maidenburg attended and the rule was no endorsement of a levy that the committee dinged.  All done in secret. 

I know because when I was a county government reporter in the early 70s, Ben invited me to attend a committee meeting, off the record of course, to discuss county government finances, which were a shambles.  On the walk back to the paper, Ben commented archly on county operations. Feeling a bit stung at the implication that my coverage was lacking, I allowed as how the presentation made by a chamber economist missed the problems of county government by a country mile. 

Put up or shut up, Ben replied, leading to the publication of my series on county government that prompted the first formation of a county charter commission and a county charter (that got clobbered on the 1972 ballot – another decade would pass before one was adopted).  Ben’s famous line about all that: ”There’s probably a special place in hell for those who manage the news.”   

So the meeting with Hoover, no matter how uncomfortable, was nothing new for me.

Meanwhile, Barbuto went on trial, got convicted, and was sentenced to prison. He got out a few months later on “shock probation.”  I often wondered whether he knew too much to be left in prison too long.

The gun probe that started it all ended more with a whimper than a bang. A few law enforcement types got rounded up and procedures were changed to eliminate light-fingered treatment of guns confiscated in crimes.                 

Now, looking back 40 years at the story, I’m trying to focus on the lessons of my encounter with journalism from the receiving end.  The Geraldo story itself was a whole separate trip, but, at bottom, it was just another story. Complicated, to be sure, and more than a little frustrating when you’re caught between feuding public officials like the cops and the county prosecutor, with neither side trusting you and both sides trying to get you to spin the story their way.  

But the enduring part — still crystal clear despite the passage of four decades — was my interview with Wall Street Journal media reporter Dan Machalba.  He had heard about Geraldo stirring things up in Akron, resulting in some Beacon coverage about the tensions between the TV star and the local paper.  He had already interviewed Poorman and Allen, but he wanted the perspective of the line editor, the one in charge of the staff having to deal with Geraldo.  

“Why not,” I remember thinking. “Just another reporter. How tough can it be.”  

So much for my predictive ability.  What I remember most of the lengthy interview was what he didn’t write down. When I made what I thought were substantive points about our coverage and the 20/20 team’s less-than-professional approach to news gathering, Machalba listened politely, but he didn’t take any notes. However, when I lapsed into one of my occasional smartass remarks (really out of character for me), he wrote it down.

I should have known. When his story appeared a short time later, in the middle column of A-1 in the Wall Street Journal, my worst suspicions were confirmed.  The story accurately recounted my quotes, just not in the order that I made them, nor in reference to the topics they involved. But they were good quotes.

For example, Machalba asked me about the reporting work the 20/20 crew was doing. I called it “sleazy,” being charitable.  Machalba placed it next to reference to the show 20/20 aired, which didn’t appear until long after my interview.  It was, it turned out, a sleazy show, but that’s not what I was talking about.  Other quotes were also out of context. Made for a good story, but my sense was that it played more like how the little hick paper got rattled by the big time, if disreputable, reporter.  

It was a lesson about how journalists can spin stories to fit a preconceived notion that stayed with me and influenced how I taught journalism for 30 years.