Notes to Readers:
This is the 2,699 word long letter/email I sent to the Duluth News Tribune’s Editorial Page Editor, Chuck Frederick, on 7-15-2015. I’ve broken it into five sections for my blog and put them in order 1-5 which is backwards from how Blog items are usually uploaded. I’ve done this for readers who are not used to the backward in time layout of blogs.
I have taken names out to obscure people who don’t need to be thrust into my blog and for those district employees whose identification might embolden the current school board to remove me from the School Board. It is apparent to me that the District is more inclined to cover up the bad behavior of its employees than to absolve Art Johnston.
Part 1
Chuck,
I’ve got more on my mind than the letter Mxx Xxxxxxxx told me about but I’ll dispose of that first. Your email the other day jogged my memory. I’d forgotten that [he/she] sent the DNT an email [he/she] had sent to the Board with the idea of it being an “open letter” to the School Board for republication in the Trib. I told [him/her] I have seen many such letters before in newspapers and that I didn’t know of any reason that an emailed letter should be regarded by the Trib as though it had already been published in another newspaper or tabloid. Hell, no one sees the email sent to the Board. An admission here. I had noticed Mxx Xxxxxxxx email but hadn’t opened it yet. I’m sure it contained questionable facts because most everyone pontificating about the Board gets stuff wrong. But you have confirmed what [he/she] told me in one regard. You were treating [his/her] email to us as though it had already been published elsewhere. I agreed with [him/her]. That seems silly.
[He/She] did not tell me that [he/she] refused to let you edit or alter [his/her] prose. In fact, I got the impression [he/she] was surprised that you wouldn’t be more flexible. I told [him/her] what you told me. Letters to the editor can be negotiated to a mutual satisfaction grudging though it may be.
I thought long and hard before mentioning your name in my blog post about your putting a thumb on the scale. I had asked Mxx Xxxxxxxx to send me the email but [he/she] didn’t get around to it. I decided to put my little cheap shot in the blog anyway. I’d make some corrections now in it except I gather from your email you simply don’t want me to write about you or your editorial process at all in my blog. Please let me know if I’ve got that wrong because I too make corrections. I certainly don’t see why you should be provided unmentionability in my blog when no citizen caught up in the news can expect it from a newspaper. What you do have a right to expect is that when you are being written about what is published is fair and accurate. I apologize to you for not working a little harder to get the facts absolutely straight. In my defense, which I’ll grant is a crumby thing to add next to an apology, I put a question mark at the end of my blog title to suggest that there might be more to the story. That question mark was a riff on the question mark you headlined in the Trib’s endorsement of me two years ago “and who?”
Generally when I take the Tribune to task for its coverage of the School District I stick to needling the larger entity, “the Trib,” rather than its constituent human writers. In the old days I did mention Sarah Horner and took her to task a few times. I often mention Jana but I sure don’t have a Nixonian “enemies list.” I have liked every reporter and editor I’ve ever met. Back in my BB days (Before Blog) I might give a reporter a call and talk over my reservations about how a story was shaded. I never started a war with a reporter. I understand that those I’ve dealt with were committed to good honest journalism. You and I both know that it is rare for any reporter to dive into a story with the detail of an historian. If I’m fussy about reportage where I am concerned it’s because I take seriously a newpaper’s claim of being the* “first draft of history.” I want that first draft to be as free from* errors as you want it to be.
continued >
