Say Anything Blog

The Grand Forks Herald’s editor had a column today on why they spiked the news story on the sad story of Tom Clifford’s last days.  I find this column to be very interesting in the matter of media policy.
From the Column:

The Herald’s newsroom motto is “Never hold the news.”

So, why did we hold off printing a story about an investigation involving the family of former UND President Tom Clifford?....

A second question arises against this background. Why are we publishing a story now?

Well, the competition did. WDAZ-TV reported the investigation on its 10 p.m. newscast Friday. On Saturday morning, the Associated Press distributed a version of it….

Print provides credibility in a way that broadcast just can’t do. It might have been possible to overlook a broadcast report. A printed report becomes part of the permanent record, the archives, if you will….

The point of this blog post isn’t to question the Herald’s coverage (or lack of) of this sad incident.  Tom Clifford was a man that I also greatly admired.  I can see not wanting to do run this story.  But this column certainly is a great place to point out the piss poor job the Herald (and their parent company, the Fargo Forum is doing.

Mike Jacobs said their policy is NOT to hold the news.  Well that’s just baloney.  They’ve done it several times that I’m aware of.  That’s remarkable because we usually won’t know what they’re covering up.

I got the inspiration from a comment on this post I did this morning questioning why Chris Dodd is still in the news for the Countrywide Scandal while the Forum Communications newspapers are doing all they can to keep it out of the news.  In effect the press is acting as the public relations firm for Senator Conrad.  The last story they did was several months ago and they only ran that because Rob here at Say Anything and Scott Hennen were pressing them for coverage. 

And of course they ran the story in the most sycophant way they could, like all of the stories they did on the subprime Senator, Kent Conrad.  To my knowledge they never bothered to let the public know how Conrad waived the budget rules to funnel money to Countrywide and the rest of the mortgage industry.

The Forum Communication’s papers acted the same way concerning Byron Dorgan’s involvement with Jack Abramoff. They didn’t run the story as long as they could and when they did they ran it as a public relations type piece rather than covering it as a serious news organization.  As far as I know they never mentioned Dorgan’s inappropriate work for the Saginaw tribes who gave money to Dorgan at the direction of Jack Abramoff. 

Again why don’t the people in Grand Forks know about this stuff?  Because the Grand Forks Herald (and the Forum) don’t think their readers should be informed.

Another example is the recent history on Grand Forks’ Alerus Center subsidies and losses.  Say Anything broke that story nine days before the Herald ran it.  In fact the Herald described in the column that same sort of events that forced them to finally run the story.  In the case of the Clifford story, first the TV station ran and article and then the AP picked up on it.  In the case of the Alerus subsidies it was Say Anything and then the AP picked it up.  Only then did the Herald decide that the rest of the public needed to know. 

After the Herald finally ran the story about the losses the reporter who covers the center admitted that he knew about it for over a month.  He didn’t want to write it because then in future stories he’d have to cover it again. 

How does that fit with the Herald’s policy of “not holding the news.”  And it’s not that there was a news blackout on the Alerus.  During that time the Herald ran a story on how the director said the financials “looked good” AND the director’s plan for the taxpayers to throw ANOTHER thirty million dollars into the Alerus in improvements. 

Don’t you think the public should have known the true financial picture when they consider that?

As the column said the local paper has much greater impact than a television news story that’s here today and forgotten about.  They also have wider local readership than a blog (although we’re growing and they are shrinking). 

How many more stories are we unaware of?  These three examples that come to mind are all news stories that the public deserves the right to know. 

Now I admit that I don’t blog on every story that a reader might want to know about.  We blog on things that interest us.  On the other hand, Rob’s policy of providing free blogs for all points of views makes us fairly immune to any criticism on this issue. 

The Herald’s readership is plummeting fast.  I’m sure a large part of that is just a change in how we get our news.  But I’m sure the news room’s selective reporting isn’t helping their cause one bit. 

At least there’s one thing that the Grand Forks Herald is still good for: