The Duluth News Tribune has aided and abetted the folks who despise Art Johnston. It follows a pattern I’ve seen in Duluth over the years of a kind of piling on of dissenters, and gadflies along with real villains. The first such victim in my forty year life in Duluth was a City Counselor, Tom Agnew, recently deceased.
Just before the Red Plan saga began I put together a fat little notebook of news clippings about Tom that I gathered at the Duluth Public Library in preparation for a book I intended to write about the biggest Minnesota political scandal of the Twentieth Century. The scandal cost a popular former Governor his US Senate Seat in what was called, at the time, the “Minnesota Massacre.” The “Massacre” followed by seven years his designation as the man who presided over a miracle – the “Minnesota Miracle.” Tom Agnew was a bright, earnest harbinger of the scandal I was researching busily pointing his fingers in too many directions at shady going’s on in the Zenith City. For this he was put through a public ringer from which he emerged a few year’s later a broken man with a broken family.
Agnew’s lesson was one I’ve taken to heart. Make sure your aim is true before you point fingers.
The News Tribune is, as are all American Newspapers, “the first rough draft of history.” The Agnew draft, written so long ago, took place in a post Watergate golden age for journalists, when good reporters were a very sexy commodity and the print media made politicians jump. (My Dad subscribed to three papers simultaneously.) Had Tom Agnew’s suspicions been a little more carefully directed without him becoming the subject of ridicule and approbation the journalists of that era might have figured out the real source of that 1970’s scandal. Instead, Tom Agnew, flew too close to the Tribune and ended up like poor Daedalus with wax melting off his wings.
Art Johnston has been a much more careful finger pointer but he too has roused the resentment of many in our local establishment. To a large degree what they know about Art comes from the Tribune, a significant newspaper shrunken commercially to the point of treading water. The Red Plan is a trap for the paper. Antagonize its boosters and you lose precious subscriptions and the advertising that gives the press its shrinking salaries. Antagonize its critics and you do the same. As a result the Tribune’s coverage of the Duluth Schools has been very safe. That’s not an easy thing to do when you are covering a civil war which is what the Red Plan has been from the start.
This morning a Shelly Wick-Zeman, has taken the cue from the Tribune’s editors to object to the District paying for the legal defense which preserved Art’s seat on the School Board and upheld the election victories he earned – twice. Like the School Board she is eager to inflict a financial penalty against him for the court case the School Board gave up on as well as an election in which she voted for the losing side. That sounds like sour grapes to me.
I’ve described paying Art’s costs of roughly $40,000 as a pittance – to the Duluth Public Schools if not to Art Johnston. Hell, the Duluth School District which spent so much more than advertised on the Red Plan was forced to transfer six million classroom dollars to bond repayment three-years-in-a-row! (My guess is that this was only what the District couldn’t hide and the tip of an iceberg) I don’t think I know Ms. Wick-Zeman but the fellow who emailed me the letter did a little googling and reported to me that she is an employee of the District, a fact she did not mention. In that case Ms. Wick-Zeman is stomping on the reputation of a man who, for six lonely years, has fought to preserve the very money that she depends upon to do her work for the children of our community. Congratulations News Tribune. You have done your work well.
I like the folks at the Trib. I like the school board members who have put Art Johnston to a thumbscrew. I have to like folks who do mean and foolish things because if I didn’t I’d be very lonely. There are very few saints in this world. (By the way, I’m grateful for the story that appeared in the Trib about my drive to pay Art back. It followed a serious, honest but cordial dialogue of an hour-and-a-half with both the reporter, Jana Hollingsworth, and, Chuck Frederick, the editor. Even Art Johnston who feared my talking to the Trib was impressed by its fairness)
But Ms. Wick-Zeman’s letter drew strength from the Trib’s editorial heaping scorn on Art. (I just heaved an impressive sigh as I wrote that) I need to offer a corrective for that collective work of the paper’s editorial board. Chuck told me he only wrote it. Like a rancid stone soup it had a little bit of a lot of people’s rotten ingredients.
After I woke up at 1 AM from an odd dream about Don Ness and UMD politics I was too alert to fall back asleep so I cranked up the computer to begin writing a book I’d prefer to have more ten years to think about before starting. I made the mistake of looking at a new email message which included Ms. Wick-Zeman’s letter to the editor Reader’s View: Art Johnston is an embarrassment. I read it and wept:
By Shelly Wick-Zeman from Duluth on May 16, 2015
I am a resident of the western part of Duluth, and I am totally embarrassed that we have a School Board member like Art Johnston representing us. Even though he was elected by the majority of people, I find his behavior deplorable and unacceptable. He didn’t get my vote (“School Board may not remove Johnston,” May 13).
I thought he was so concerned about the money spent on the Red Plan, yet he has no worries about the amount of money the school district has spent on his inappropriate behavior.
I applaud the other School Board members for not spending any more money on this ridiculous situation. They are thinking of the students and taxpayers and the amount of money that would have been spent carrying this situation any further.
Johnston considers this a victory for him and does not accept any responsibility for any wrongdoing.
Maybe he could resign and we could get a person who would represent us in the west in a positive way and think of the students in Duluth. A person who would not be “abusive,” “disruptive,” “threatening” and “intimidating,” as the independent investigation found Johnston to be.
Is there a way we can have him removed? I would like to have a representative who puts our students first.
