Handling a biz columnist's conflicts

David Brauer of MinnPost.com writes about how the Minneapolis Star-Tribune will deal with potential conflicts arising from the hiring of Eric Wieffering, the paper’s former business editor who has worked for a PR firm for the past year, as its business columnist.

The issue is what would happen if Wieffering decided to write about a company or an industry that was a client of the PR firm where he previously worked.

Wieffering told Brauer that this is how he would proceed:

I plan to provide managing editor Rene Sanchez and business editor Todd Stone with a list of the companies that I may have done some work for during the past year. This list will include accounts that I managed — which is very short and includes a nonprofit and two firms not based in Minnesota — as well as accounts I may have worked on in a substantive way.

For six months I will not write about those organizations or any firms that were Haberman clients during the year I worked in public relations. If, in the subsequent six months, news compels me to write about one of those firms, I will note the former relationship in the column.

For what it’s worth, I was not a principal or partner at Haberman, and the firm does no political, government or lobbying work. Many of Haberman’s clients are listed on its website, though in true agency fashion some of those companies were no longer clients while I worked for Haberman. Beyond that, it would be unfair and potentially damage Haberman from a competitive standpoint if I disclosed all of its clients to readers.

Read more here.