Diana Kapp’s article on the UC compensation scandal was riddled with errors, omissions, and false allegations. Among the article’s many problems, it wrongly asserts that the Chronicle “backpedaled” in reporting UC’s explanation for the $871 million in extra compensation.

Contrary to your article, the Chronicle stories repeatedly said that the $871 million went to a wide range of employees—not just executives. Nor did we wait until January to publish a breakdown of the money, as your article asserted. We published UC’s breakdown of the $871 million in extra compensation on November 17, which was as soon as that information was available. We published the information again on November 30, and on January 12, we published UC’s revised breakdown, since it differed from the university’s initial figures.

Contrary to your story, we also published UC’s assertion that the university must offer the extra pay and benefits to attract and retain top educators and administrators. In addition, we reported that many other universities engage in some of the same practices.

The Chronicle series did not focus on Denice Denton as your article asserts. Denton was a very minor figure in the series. When Denton was mentioned, it was typically a small reference, often as one in a list of all chancellors or as the result of an audit finding.

The only story that focused specifically on Denton prior to her tragic death was a short piece on the cost of renovations at her home at UC Santa Cruz. The Chronicle was not the first to write about the cost of the dog run the university paid for at her home. We mentioned the cost of the dog run only after UC president Robert Dynes testified about it at a legislative hearing in Sacramento, calling it a $7,000 project that just got “out of whack.”

Sincerely,
Ken Conner

P.S. Kapp can’t even spell my name.

Editor's response:
Ken Conner was the editor of the Chronicle articles on the compensation scandal. In defending the paper's investigation, he mischaracterizes Diana Kapp's piece, as anyone reviewing the article can see “The Scandal, the Scapegoats, and the Suicide”.

Kapp accurately reported that the Chronicle series began with the fact that 8,500 employees, not just top executives, received unreported pay. Yet, as she could not help but point out, the bulk of the Chron's subsequent stories were about top executives. When the paper ultimately reported UC's accounting of the $871 million, it neglected to mention that, according to UC, less than 1 percent of the money had gone to top executives. Reading the brief articles on UC's accounting, Kapp concluded that the paper looked like it was backpedaling. Others were less generous, charging the paper with burying the truth.

As for the Chronicle's treatment of UC's hiring difficulties, Kapp simply observed, “Only two articles, which ran six months into the series, addressed UC’s primary line of defense, that the pay and perks have become a competitive necessity in recent years.” Which was true, and which Conner doesn't dispute. On this point, Conner's own boss, Robert Rosenthal, told Kapp, "I think we could have done better, sooner."

Finally, Kapp never reported that Denton was the focus of the Chron’s reporting. She wrote only that “ten of the 40-odd stories that appeared between November 2005 and July 2006, often on the front page, mentioned Kalonji’s hire, Denton’s severance plan, and her home renovation" and that "Denton was among the offenders most often cited." Conner does not dispute either statement.

The fact is, because UC couldn't or wouldn't tell them, the paper's editors could not say what the $871 million figure meant when they discovered and headlined it. But when it became clear that most of their reporting had focused on a minor contributing factor—perks and compensation for top executives like Denton—the paper's editors never corrected the false impression that their 40-plus articles had left.

We did spell Conner's name Connor twice. We regret those errors.