Editor's apology and newspaper's coverage of his DUI arrest comes too late for some

Newspapers frequently publish arrests and other personal matters of local public figures, but what happens when the public figure is one of their own? At the Gainesville Times in Georgia, "Executive editor Mitch Clarke was arrested for driving under the influence and briefly jailed, but his paper didn't report it until Sunday — in his column," Jim Romenesko of The Poynter Institute reports. It was not until after Clarke's court appearance that the Gainesville Times officially reported the incident. To read the Times story detailing Clarke's sentencing and the arrest click here.

Clarke wrote in his column that the "newspaper's policy is not to run DUIs unless they involve public figures. My supervisors made the call that I didn't meet that standard," Romenesko reports. In hindsight, Clarke said, he should have insisted that the newspaper report the story because he is in fact a public figure. (Read more) Clarke and the newspaper received much criticism for the lack of coverage of the arrest. To read his apology to the newspaper staff and readers, or see readers' comments click here.

Clarke was luckier than Mike Alexieff, who as editor of the Daily News in Bowling Green, Ky., defended a story about a local official's DUI arrest partly by saying that if he ever was ever arrested for the offense, it would be on the front page. When he did get arrested for DUI, he lost his job.