When news broke in early March that the St. Paul Police Department (SPPD) was investigating former Macalester chemistry Professor Paul Fischer for urinating on a student’s property, local media outlets jumped to cover it. It’s one of the most perverse and disturbing stories this year in the Twin Cities.
For the most part, local media did its job: it reported the sparse details that it could at the time with precision and accuracy. There were some exceptions to this rule, and they speak to a larger issue in our media community.
The Fischer story needed to be treated with grace — which is what made it odd when, not long after the Pioneer Press broke the story on March 11, one of its own reporters, Frederick Melo, posted the following on Facebook:
“A COLLEGE SPLASH, aka #urineTROUBLE: A Macalester College professor reportedly urinated on a female student’s backpack when she left it in the hall. St. Paul Police are investigating, and the professor is no longer at Macalester. An isolated incident, or will other victims of #urineTrouble come forward?” … The Pioneer Press generally does not name individuals who have yet to be charged or even arrested for a crime. But let’s just say the #chemistry is a bit off on this one… [the article’s authors] would appreciate your tips…”
Melo is a crime reporter who has written for the Pioneer Press since 2005. His bio says he “was once sued by a reader for $2 million but kept on writing” and describes him as having “a testy East Coast attitude.”
Here, that attitude rings tonedeaf. Melo’s jokes diminish the serious nature of this allegation. He trivializes inappropriate behavior and frames it as a lighthearted mystery. His humor overshadows the grim prospect that a professor of 25 years at Macalester could have perpetrated such an act.
When stories about criminal charges first break, there usually isn’t much the press can publish. Many outlets, including The Mac Weekly, did a write-up of the police report that the SPPD released and added a few quotes from SPPD spokesperson Alyssa Arcand. Everyone else involved — the college, Fischer, etc. — declined to comment. That will not change until the case is resolved.
So, when Melo took his wisecracks to Facebook, it was probably in an effort to drum up attention for a six-sentence story that might otherwise get overlooked. His bathroom humor garnered him all of 16 reactions and eight comments.
One of those comments asks “Why are you making light of it, Fred?” Melo surely saw it — unless it got buried under his seven other comments — but the post is still up and Melo hasn’t said anything, so it doesn’t seem to have prompted any sort of self reflection.
Instead, Melo’s humor spread to Racket cofounder and editor Keith Harris. On March 12, Harris started his daily newsletter with the headline “Urine Trouble Now: Macalester Student Claims Former Prof Whizzed on Her Backpack” followed by a section titled “Putting the Pee in Professor.” After detailing the report (with some editorialization) he finished the section with:
“Upon searching Fischer’s profile on RateMyProfessor.com, the [Pioneer Press’s] Frederick Melo learned that the allegedly leaky chemist has also been accused of urinating in other people’s water bottles. Anyway, this is f— gross, you (alleged) creep.”
Harris at least takes a clearly negative view of the charge, but his tone matches Melo’s. Just like Melo, he took this disturbing event as an opportunity to make urine jokes.
Local media is dying. Pioneer Press is a member of that moribund bunch. Since 2012, the paper has been under the control of MediaNews Group, which is owned by Alden Global Capital. Alden is the hedge fund that has been buying up newspapers across the country and stripping them for parts. It cuts staff and budgets to maximize profit at the cost of quality.
Racket bills itself as an alternative to the Twin Cities’ hedge fund and billionaireowned outlets. It emerged in 2021 from the ashes of City Pages, an alternative newspaper that formed in the 1980s. It follows a writerowned, reader-funded business model, but it doesn’t offer the hard-hitting journalism that other outlets produce. At most, it aggregates those stories — as in the case of Harris’s newsletter.
Melo and Harris are not products of the dying journalism ecosystem — they both began their careers before this downward spiral began. However, they represent what happens in a monetized, attentiondriven media market: punchlines are prioritized over reportage. It is about clicks and likes rather than stories and people.
When you minimize and demean serious issues that deserve respect and empathy, you lose the trust of the communities you cover. Regardless of the outcome of these allegations, Melo and Harris have done a disservice to local media — and more importantly to us, the Macalester community.
