Sources Review Led to Firing of Columnist, Ariz. Paper Says

Escalating newsroom rumors that one of its high-profile columnist’s colorful quotes were more a product of her imagination than intrepid reporting drove editors at the Arizona Republic to hire a private investigator to check up on her.

After going to remarkable lengths to verify the accuracy of her stories, the newspaper concluded that its prominent columnist could not substantiate many sources in her work and that she gave conflicting answers in trying to defend herself. In a detailed front-page story in Tuesday’s editions, the state’s largest paper explained the rationale for its firing Friday of Julie Amparano, who wrote a thrice-weekly column, “Conversations.”

Amparano, 39, has hired an attorney and has insisted her sources were real. She told Phoenix radio station KTAR-AM that the nature of her column was to seek out people on the margins and tell their stories. Such individuals may not always be easily found.

“I went out there, I went to different places of the town, looking for people from different walks of life and they’re real,” she said. “If they are saying I should have seen the driver’s license . . . well, that changes the rules of the game. I was told to be a fly on the wall, get conversations, bring them into the paper, and that’s what I’ve done.”

Julia Wallace, the Republic’s managing editor, said she fired Amparano in part to maintain the paper’s credibility.

“Every time we have a factual error, every time we spell a name wrong and somebody reads it, it brings into question our credibility and it eats away at it,” she said in an interview. The paper ran a front-page apology to its readers on Saturday announcing the firing.

Amparano was described as personable and well-liked among her colleagues and was especially appreciated by editors for her connections in the Latino community. She had been at the Republic for five years and began the column, which appeared in the Life feature section, in July. She had previously worked at the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press and the Philadelphia Daily News.

Amparano’s attorney, Stephen Montoya, said he was considering a defamation case against the Republic.

“Julie absolutely denies that she fabricated anything,” Montoya said from Phoenix. “Moreover, the mere fact that someone didn’t take the address and phone number for a source of a feature story does not suggest the story is fabricated in even the most fertile imagination. The Republic never had a policy that feature reporters had to take the name, address and phone number of every person interviewed.”

Montoya said Amparano was afforded little more than a day to compile a list of phone numbers and addresses of sources she had used in her columns.

The dismissal of Amparano, a regional director of the National Assn. of Hispanic Journalists, has been the topic of much debate in the paper’s Phoenix newsroom. Wallace acknowledged some division of opinion on both the firing and the subsequent news stories but said the entire episode might serve as a cautionary tale.

“It has certainly brought about a lively debate about ethics and values in journalism,” she said. “We can learn from that.”

Wallace said senior reporters and editors began to question the accuracy of Amparano’s columns, which were peppered with lively quotes from “common” people in the Phoenix area. After one senior editor had difficulty tracking people named in the columns, the newspaper last week hired a private investigator, Scott Yeager, to find the people quoted.

The paper said it reviewed a sampling of Amparano’s work and compiled a list of 65 names culled from the columns. That list was narrowed to 40 names to be investigated. Twenty-four with uncommon names were checked out through a variety of databases and tracking services: Four actual people were found.

The paper also said it found that Amparano used the name Jennifer Morgan four different times in reference to four separate people in her columns.

Amparano is the latest journalist to make unwelcome news. Last year, two Boston Globe columnists resigned after reports of fabrications. Patricia Smith admitted to inventing characters in four columns. Mike Barnicle, long the newspaper’s star columnist, resigned amid suspicions he fabricated a column about two children with cancer.