I read with bemused resignation editor Steve Smith’s recent apology for news coverage of the River Park Square controversy in the 1990s – coverage he neither directed nor can possibly put into context since he wasn’t living in Spokane at the time.

Now, I am left wondering this. Do I need to start apologizing for stuff editor Smith has done that I might have done differently during my 20 years at the post?

Should I apologize for the sting The Spokesman-Review conducted to depose the now departed Spokane Mayor Jim West who was a closeted gay man?

Should I apologize for the paper no longer running the Bloomsday results in print?

What about an apology for cutbacks in Idaho coverage, or other decisions on how to deploy resources?

The answer, of course, is no. For me to apologize for news judgments I didn’t supervise or plan could well be viewed as self-serving, scapegoating, and silly.

And, there is a deeper reason I shouldn’t be apologizing for decisions editor Smith has deemed appropriate. Very simply, he’s the editor now, and I’ve moved on. It’s his call on how to run his newsroom, deploy his resources, cover the news.

Let me do something else than apologize. Let me speak up on behalf of all editors who sit in the hot seat every day and make news judgments in the context of what they think their communities need, want, deserve to know. It’s a tough job, a public job, and nobody does it perfectly.

Of course The Spokesman-Review newsroom of the 1990s could have done more, or done better on River Park Square coverage. Honestly, every story that a newspaper reports could be covered more comprehensively or with more nuance. I know that. So does Steve Smith.

While I am resigned to the tendency of journalists to revel in after-the-fact perfectionism, I must take exception to implications that the Spokesman-Review newsroom in the 1990s was somehow orchestrated to turn a blind eye to the problems with River Park Square. Not true.

My editors fully comprehended the challenges that came with covering RPS and the Cowles family during that time. As challenges emerged, we dealt with them.

There was no grand plan for River Park Square coverage. It was an ongoing business story and ongoing political story. Frankly, other issues were bigger, in my view, things like the rise of the white supremacists in the region, the growth in North Idaho, the defeat of Tom Foley, etc.

Reporters and editors assigned to the RPS story were asked to follow the arc of news as it developed. The project was conceived as a way to revitalize downtown, and that’s where the coverage began. When some disputed financial details of the project led to the lawsuits and countersuits, coverage reflected those disputes and changes.

True enough, ownership issues related to RPS and The Spokesman-Review both being part of the Cowles family enterprises indeed were complex. I recognized this complexity.

As editor, I took steps to address potential conflicts.

I ended the pre-publication review of stories about the Cowles. The family never asked for special treatment and often caught factual errors made by reporters, but I ended the practice because I didn’t want to give critics of the family a hammer. At the same time, reporters routinely double-checked complicated details about stories with other sources to make sure they were right before publication.

I suggested to Stacey and Betsy Cowles that the newsroom not use Duane Swinton as legal counsel on RPS stories. I wanted to avoid appearances of conflict because Duane also represented the Cowles development interests on RPS.

When cries went up that the newspaper wasn’t being ethical in its coverage of RPS, I brought in Joann Byrd, ex-ombudsman for The Washington Post, and Bob Steele, an ethicist from the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, to meet with our staff.

Using the lessons learned from RPS, I asked our staff to work on an updated code of ethics and standards back in 2000. That work was completed before I left.

In Spokane then, and in Memphis today, I have encouraged my staff to look for learning moments during real-life news coverage. That’s the best way I know to assess and improve what journalists do.

That’s why I am puzzled by The Washington News Council’s agonizing rehash of River Park Square coverage from a decade ago. It’s old news. It’s a dead horse. Whatever lessons that needed to be learned from RPS, were learned years ago in the S-R newsroom.

Despite their best effort, the News Council report strikes me as unfair.

The report inflates the importance of the RPS story and magnifies presumed flaws in coverage without answering the key question: Would any of what the council breathlessly found actually have impacted the controversy, or the politics, of the RPS project?

No.

If these were the two driving reasons for examining coverage in the first place, the report ends up as nitpicking but ultimately not very illuminating.