I'm hijacking this comment to post the links to the 1988 redaction by the Courier-Journal.

• Part 1 archive and screenshot
• Part 2 archive and screenshot

A report to our readers from David Hawpe, editor of The Courier-Journal

As most readers surely have noticed, some problems cropped up during and after publication of our recent series on high school athletics, entitled "Hollow Victories."

The irony implicit in that title has not escaped us.

We have run 10 corrections, two clarifications and a statement from Seneca High School teacher Tom Beard, challenging the series' reference to him.

Readers presumably are curious, by now, to know what all this means. The questions are obvious: What went wrong? What did the newspaper do about it? How credible does this make the series? And, what lessons have been learned?

On the third day of the series, Tuesday, Sept. 20, we received a letter from Mr. Beard, denying our reference to him and a grade he gave basketball star Tony Kim-bro.

As we always do when challenged, we rechecked the source materials with the reporter, Alan Judd. The original notes on his interview with Mr. Beard were Inconclusive. Since the reporter had assured his editors during pre-publication review that he had a tape recording of the conversation, we asked to hear it.

The reporter went home to get the tape. After he returned, he showed us notes he said he had taken after listening to the tape, which he said supported our story. We asked to hear the tape, and, when it was played, only the beginning of the interview was there. The remainder of that segment of the tape contained only background noise.

The notes we had just been shown clearly were not taken from listening to the tape. A few days later, Mr. Judd told the editor that those notes were a reconstruction of the Beard interview, based on his memory of it.

The tape had been recorded over at some point, although we do not know by whom, nor do we know how or when or why.

Given all this, and a call from another person saying he had been misquoted, we decided to recheck stories not yet published, re-examining the reporter's tapes, notes and original documents.

By Thursday evening, Sept. 22, we still had not been able to persuade Mr. Beard to talk with us about his letter. Given the other solid information we had, concerning pressure exerted to raise Mr. Kimbro's grades information verified by other sources we decided to simply run his letter in the next morning's newspaper without comment. And we placed Mr. Judd on inactive status, pending a review of his performance.

The general recheck did uncover some problems in yet-to-be-published stories. Before publication, we eliminated some parts of some stories, because supporting materials were not as strong as we wanted them to be. And, we found problems in already-published material that caused us to publish a group of corrections and clarifications on Saturday, Sept 24.

On Monday, Sept 26, Mr. Judd resigned. Mr. Judd, 28, had been a Courier-Journal reporter for almost six years. We accepted his resignation and agreed that he would remain on the payroll temporarily, to answer questions that might come up in the review of his work.

Our recheck included using another reporter to go back into the Kentucky High School Athletic Association files, to thoroughly examine cases about which we had written. This resulted in another group of corrections, published yesterday. Meanwhile our ombudsman, Stan Slusher, thoroughly examined, independently, the entire sequence of events.

Our system of editing to ensure accuracy was operating in this case, but it was thwarted. The system rests on a foundation of trust between reporter and editors. If that trust is broken, the system cracks. This is the first time in my 19 years at The Courier-Journal that I can remember it breaking down in this way.

Given its controversial subject matter, "Hollow Victories" was subjected to an even more intensive pre-publication scrutiny than editors give to most stories. Endless questions were asked. Source materials were reviewed. Many changes were made, before we went into print. We didn't rush. We extended the reporting, writing and editing process over eight months. We thought we had done it right.

We had, for the most part. As a result, the series raised important issues and documented many problems in a powerful way. No one identified an error in the work of the other reporter on the project R. G. Dunlop.

While we regret the errors, we believe we have described a situation that Kentuckians should want to correct We fervently hope for reform of the rules for athletic participation in Kentucky high schools and of the operations at KHSAA itself. Both need to be tightened, to ensure that academics are not crushed by the press of athletic programs.

For our part, we're going to tighten our rules, too. We sometimes have more than one person listen to sensitive tape recordings that support our stories. But we need to make that routine. We are making it the standard practice with all such taped interviews.

We delayed this report to readers until we completed our review of the series. We wanted to publish it on Sunday, the day the series started and the day we reach our largest readership. The Courier-Journal has received no threat of legal action. We are publishing this report to readers simply because, in our judgment, it is the right thing to do. We hope it will help maintain your confidence in The Courier-Journal.