Robert Rivard failed to note CPS Energy pay while lauding utility

SAN ANTONIO — Former San Antonio Express-News Editor Robert Rivard has made no secret of his admiration for city-owned CPS Energy and its chief executive, Doyle Beneby, on his news website.

He has defended Beneby on the Rivard Report against charges he misused his expense account, supported the utility's controversial solar power project and endorsed its new, more aggressive public relations strategy.

“Done well, good in-house reporting gets picked up by other media and redistributed to an even larger audience,” Rivard wrote, lauding the new approach in a story he wrote for the website in September 2012.

However, he never told his readers that CPS paid his consulting firm, the Arsenal Group, more than $41,000 in ratepayer money over four months in 2012 to evaluate the utility's communications department and public relations strategy.

Indeed, Rivard was under contract as he praised CPS' handling of PR.

“This is the most blatant type of conflict of interest — when a journalist is taking money from a person, a company, whatever it might be, and then pretending to write independently about that company,” said Robert Jensen, a professor in the University of Texas' School of Journalism.

Rivard acknowledged erring in not disclosing the relationship in certain articles and columns his news website ran about CPS, which currently is seeking a 4.75 percent rate increase for gas and electric service, its first such request in more than three years.

He said the utility did not pay for positive coverage from the Rivard Report.

“I will fully concede that I should have had the standard Rivard Report disclosure that (is published) with almost all of our stories where I have a consulting relationship,” Rivard said. “We have a record of consistently, consistently disclosing, even when I don't write the story.”

However, he also said his relationship with CPS was comparable to H-E-B buying ads in the Express-News, which he edited for more than a decade before abruptly leaving two years ago.

Jensen doesn't see it that way.

“Just imagine if in a newsroom, a reporter had the kind of arrangement with a news source or a news subject that he has,” Jensen said. “When he was editor, would he have allowed it? And the answer is just obvious — he would have never allowed it. No editor would ever allow it.”

In all, the website published 12 articles in which the utility or its CEO figured prominently from August 2012 through last month. The Rivard Report added disclosure statements to many of the stories it had published about CPS after the Express-News made inquiries.

The Arsenal Group began its work for the utility in late July 2012, according to contract documents obtained by the Express-News. Beneby made the decision to hire the firm, Rivard said.

“I had a relationship, going back to the time I was editor, with Doyle Beneby,” Rivard said, describing Beneby as a “change agent.” “He heard from somebody who was very pleased with our (consulting) work, or my work, and asked whether or not I would look at their communications department.”

Beneby declined to comment.

Rivard charged the utility $300 per hour for his services, earning $6,000 a month for 20 hours of work, a billing schedule attached to the contract shows.

His wife, Monika Maeckle, a former vice president at Business Wire, a distributor of news releases, was paid $150 per hour, making an estimated $3,000 a month.

CPS hired Maeckle in June. Since then, Rivard has alerted readers to her new employment: “Full disclosure: Monika Maeckle, my wife, recently accepted a position at CPS Energy as its director of integrated communications.”

Maeckle makes $145,000 a year in base salary, a CPS document shows.

The Arsenal Group's contract to consult with CPS initially was supposed to last for three months, costing $10,000 per month. However, documents show the work stretched into mid-November 2012. By the end, CPS had paid $41,737, invoices show.

Rivard said he recommended a significant overhaul of the utility's blog, so the utility could tell its own story. He also advised CPS to use social media more aggressively to push its content, and to hire a professional writer for the blog.

While Rivard's firm was consulting for CPS, the utility re-launched its blog, transforming it into a home for the utility's own in-house reporting and analysis, giving it the ability to bypass local news organizations in a way it never had before.

The utility hired then-Express-News reporter Tracy Hamilton, a friend of Rivard's, in August 2012 as a project manager.

On her Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, Hamilton, who earns $82,000 a year in base salary, describes herself as CPS' “Chief Blogging Officer.”

Rivard said one of his recommendations to the utility was to hire Hamilton, though CPS Energy spokeswoman Lisa Lewis said the process to hire Hamilton was underway before Rivard began consulting at the utility.

Lewis noted that many of the initiatives Rivard suggested were underway before the Arsenal Group began consulting.

Rivard founded the consulting firm in November 2011, shortly after his departure from the Express-News, according to the résumé he posted on LinkedIn. His hyper-local news website launched a few months later, in February 2012.

Rivard has taken pains to build the website's image as a news organization that extensively covers events in central San Antonio and as an advocate for redeveloping the city's urban core.

He and his wife, prominent members of the community, have described their website as “hyper-local, daily news magazine” and as “local, independent and all about San Antonio.”

For Jensen, a longtime professor of media ethics and law, the question of whether Rivard's site should conform to the standards of journalism boils down to how it presents itself to readers. And the Rivard Report, he said, presents itself as a news website.

He also said the public's perception of Rivard's news website is defined by Rivard's long history in mainstream journalism.

Rivard, however, questioned Jensen's objectivity. He accused the professor of bragging to him that he had leaked news Rivard was interviewing to become director of UT's journalism school to the San Antonio Current and said that Jensen opposed his appointment.

Jensen said he didn't remember the incident and added that Rivard's application and interview both were matters of public record.

Jensen's conclusions were echoed by Kelly McBride, an ethics expert at the journalism think-tank the Poynter Institute.

“The audience is really cynical right now about information,” said McBride, who edited the book “The New Ethics of Journalism: Principles for the 21st Century.” “When it is revealed, after the fact, that someone had a conflict of interest, people tend to dismiss that organization and lose trust in that organization.”

Just a few weeks after he lauded CPS' new blog and its new effort to make 'in-house' journalism public, Rivard took to his site to blast coverage of Beneby's expenses as part of a larger opinion piece, which argued that San Antonio media is overly interested in scandal. He still was under contract with the utility.

After the contract was over, the Rivard Report continued to publish stories about CPS and its CEO, without informing readers of the past relationship.

However, a search of Rivard's website shows he regularly discloses his consulting firm's work with institutions like the San Antonio Symphony and Trinity University.

When asked why he disclosed his work with the symphony but not CPS, one of the largest employers in the city, Rivard said: “I missed it ... You can indict me on that one.”

nhicks@express-news.net