The dilemma of a Reporter:
My rainy day post has been bothering me ever since I wrote it. I hate it when people tell me “I’ve got a secret,” or “I know something but I can’t tell you,” or words to that effect. Its so grade school. And that’s what that post screams out at me. It reminds me of a former school board member who would always do that to me – tell me that he/she knew some inside information but then add that he/she couldn’t tell me what it was. Well, why the hell tell me he/she knew something secret then?
For instance I was told about the time this secret keeper had walked into a Central Administration Office that the occupants thought was locked only to find a couple administrators in flagrante delicto. The one on the bottom smiled up at the intruder. The bottom one later rose to a position of some prominence and the witness/board member always thought it interesting how accommodating the smiling partner was to the now sitting school board member. I was curious as heck who the two lovers were and of course a little ashamed by my prurient interest. I hinted once who I thought one of the administrators could have been but my fellow board member kept his/her secret.
I’m glad I don’t know who those people were and I suspect that the story was true based on the story teller and my long life experience.
So I got two telephone calls yesterday when I was painting. (with an oil based paint, yuck!) But I don’t want to tell you who called or exactly what we talked about. Thank you Harry for opening your mouth (fingers) and then shutting it up again. I’ve got my reasons and an example of what they could be.
Last Spring the spouse of a teacher who often told me about the other half’s grinding experiences with the consequences of the Red Plan told me some unflattering things about the new building the other half was in. I was asked that I not write anything that could be traced back to the spouse. I, of course, agreed but quickly put the details in my blog. I convinced myself that the details I’d put in were vague and wouldn’t disclose anything which could get anyone in trouble.
It may not have been as vague as I thought. I don’t know. On a hunch and in a panic this spouse called and left an emotional message on my phone. “God Harry, I hope you haven’t written anything I’ve told you, My spouse will divorce me. I’m not supposed to tell you anything. Please don’t repeat it or my marriage will be over.”
The post had only been up for an hour by that time and it was a quiet time for this blog. Only my eight loyal readers came by regularly back then. I was pretty sure my details had been vague enough to pass muster but Still! I panicked too and worried that I had been too forthcoming and that the spouse would read it and that there would be hell to pay. I deleted the offending post and prayed the spouse would not read it and that no undue attention would be drawn.
In this little episode I experienced the dilemma of a reporter. Reporters are often caught between news and the desires of keepers of a secret. Once you collect a secret do you publish it? Can you do it in good conscience if the info provider doesn’t know you are a reporter and wrongly assumes the tidbits passed on are just gossip the traces of which will disappear into the ether? Can you live with yourself if the info provider finds themselves on the front page the next day much to their chagrin or even fear? What about the public? Don’t they deserve the truth? Will you advance your career with a good story? (or in my case get more readers) There are an endless stream of ethical questions that a reporter can ask himself.
The pull of Friendship:
In my first successful race for the School Board I worked like crazy for Mary Cameron as she had some pretty incompetent help and we grew very close. For those not from Duluth I will add that Mary is black. We had not had an African American school board member in ages if ever. There had been a black woman as a city councilor two decades earlier but I’m not sure about the school board.
A few weeks before the general election there was a front page story in the Duluth Paper. A woman had been found dead in an abandoned house. In short order the police had a suspect. His name was Cameron and he was black. He was Mary’s troubled little brother and it soon became evident he was guilty.
I remember talking about this with her in the cafeteria at UMD where she worked shortly after it happened. As her de facto campaign manager I knew this could have a very damaging affect on her campaign. “Candidate’s brother implicated in murder.” It was an absolutely reasonable and frankly predictable headline. That was on my mind and perhaps Mary’s too. But she was the older sister who had walked with her little brother to school. She had watched him grow up; witnessed his demons as he grew up in a racist era a lonely black child in a town with fewer than one in a hundred black faces. And loved him. Now he was on the front pages and in jail accused of murder. That, more than her election, was on her mind now. We held hands at that table and as she wept I shed tears, am tearing up now at the memory.
The story never appeared in the Tribune. They weren’t stupid. Two black people in the news with the same last name in a city with only a few hundred black people. It was true that Marry was innocent but it was legitimate news coincidental though it was. The Tribune’s editors were lousy journalists for those weeks – they never made the connection in print. What they lacked in journalistic enterprise they made up with compassion.
Two days ago I spoke the first words to Mary in the five years since we parted company over her support of the Red Plan. We both smiled at each other. Many of my fellow anti red Plan allies have never understood my torn loyalty to Mary. She was the evil school board member who helped give Dixon his goddamned majority to screw Duluth. That’s their attitude. Its not fair but I can’t say its wrong either.
Mary and I had eight wonderful years after our first election as friends and allies. She had my back and I had hers.
I evidently did a lousy job with my three Civil War themed posts. One of my old allies wrote me an email telling me they went over her head. I’ve had a lot of history with this person too in Let Duluth Vote. I’m afraid my public support for the levies could end in bitterness here too. How passionate is this Red Plan skeptic? This person moved out of Duluth in a fury because of the shabby deal minorities got from the Red Plan.
My three Civil War posts were all about “reconstruction” the evil period after the Civil War in which the South rejoined the Union state by state and won an agreement to create a new system of managing African Americans that in some ways was more horrific than slavery itself. It was called Reconstruction as in rebuilding but in human terms it was a little like sewing dead body parts together to create a Frankenstein Monster.
The Frankenstein Monster:
That’s where the Red Plan is headed with 44 kids in an English class justified with the lame argument (made by Superintendent Gronseth to me this week) that its not so bad if you have the right kids in a crowded class – say a pre-college class where kids have an incentive to behave and care about their futures. Hey, good kids aren’t such a handful. I wonder if the Superintendent reads the cartoon “Zits?”
I don’t know if I can trust the Superintendent. I’d like to. Frankly it may not matter if he is trustworthy to an old Red Plan critic as long as we keep the Titanic from sinking. He told me that he had good evidence that 74% of the Duluth public wants to put the Red Plan past us and make it work thereby making it clear the levy referendum will pass. Maybe he’s right. Maybe he’s smug. I remember in my youth knowing for certain that Ronald Reagan could never be elected President. More recently, as a bitter-ender moderate Republican, I’ve watched the nation catch on to what I saw twenty years ago in Minnesota – cranky ideologues rushing primary elections to kick out moderate Republican office holders. Its called primarying now and Republican congressmen who dare entertain the wild-eyed notion of compromise, like Abraham Lincoln’s hero Henry Clay, are unceremoniously dumped and replaced by Rush Limbaugh clones.
Duluth just got a ten percent vote in the primary. The DFL and Unions and endorsed candidates had a major impact considering the tiny vote count. The general election will be bigger if not impressive – maybe a twenty percent turn out. Who will come out and vote? Senior Citizens. Who lives on fixed incomes? Senior Citizens. Who is pissed off the most about having a vote stolen from them? Senior Citizens. Who is sick and tired of being chastised for not caring about children to the point that hearing the accusation merely infuriates them? Senior Citizens. If 80 percent of the public that believes we should get past the Red Plan stays home, because its only an off-year election, how will that skew the actual election results? I wonder. I wouldn’t be so confident if I were the Superintendent.
Dr. Frankenstein:
So, while I sat at the Education Committee and said my first hello to Mary in five years Art Johnston came in looking pretty spiffy in a coat sans tie. His unruly hair was sort of ruly. He sat down and after the presentations gave little speeches commending the speakers for their role in making our schools a better place. He said “Member” this and “Member” that like good parliamentary etiquette requires. I wrote a question on my notebook and passed it over to the person sitting next to me. “Is Art Johnston interviewing with the School Board for the role of helpful school board member?” I asked. The reply was that Art’s demeanor was a little different than usual. Maybe that’s because he just got thirty percent of the vote in a primary election and its pretty certain the third place loser’s voters all want someone other than Art as their representative. According to the recent Zenith Weekly story Art said of me “He hasn’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of getting elected.” That’s after I came in a strong second in a four person race for two open seats. Maybe Art is just jealous of me and my locally famous snowballs.
Art may be having a hard time accepting a change of climate.
He called me up a few weeks ago and wanted to meet with me. I’ll admit I had the same idea but Art acted on it first. We talked and, as is Art’s want, he made it clear he did not want me to mention that we had met. He seems to be under the impression that I’m poison. I believe he’s been under that impression for a long time. He also told me that Loren Martell who has been a trooper for ferreting out the truth didn’t know what he was talking about. I don’t know where that came from but I seem to recall that he sadly prefaced the remark by calling it unfortunate.
I don’t think I’ll be serving on the School Board with Art. That’s because I think its more likely that neither of us will serve after this election. I think its even more likely that I’ll be serving but he won’t. Maybe that’s why Art spoke so dismissively of me.
Richard Thomas made much of our not getting along but while I’m absolutely sure I said of Art what is quoted, “the irascible guy everyone can’t stand.” Still I have no memory of dissing Art as Thomas was interviewing me. I mostly talked about the stuff that was in the first five or six paragraphs of the Zenith story. As the article says Art and I pretty much agree about the future of the School District under the current circumstances.
If there is a difference between Art and me it is this: Art sees disaster and is willing to let it befall the children in our classes unless the current Administration admits to being liars and fools. I would like the unlikely confession to take place but am not willing to punish our children should the administrators inexplicably refuse to fess up to plunging our schools into chaos.
My comment about how people react to Art while a pretty fair assessment was meant more as an observation than a condemnation. Had I typed it it would have been a little more forgiving. I’d have WRITTEN something like, “the irascible guy that drives his detractor’s nuts.” It would probably not have made much difference to Art. He’s been a minority of one for two years. He’s dissing me, a potential ally. He dissed Martell, an ally. He often went around Gary Glass when we were working with ASTR on a Plan B much to Gary’s chagrin. He is the quintessential lone wolf and in this he puts me to shame. Maybe that’s why he’s such a good forester. Oops! Engineer.
That point by the way was the second offense on my part that turned Art’s irascibility against me. I had once mentioned him in my blog, probably glowingly, and he took strong exception to being mentioned in it at all. He made me promise not to put his name in it again without his permission. I broke my promise a few months later when we were lining up people to run for the School Board and Art made it clear that he would be a candidate. I tried but failed to reach him before listing his name in our roster on my blog. I thought it would be so innocent to mention all the LDV candidates names and their backgrounds that I wrote that he worked for the US Forest Service. In return Art sent out a blistering email to several hundred Let Duluth Vote people saying I was a liar and had possibly jeopardized his employment and that he wanted nothing to do with me ever again or words to that effect. I was gobsmacked by his fury. I was embarrassed before other LDV members and much of my part in the leadership was now in doubt. I couldn’t fathom that Art seemed oblivious to the fact that the Tribune would soon be publishing this same information for all of Duluth to read when they reported the school board candidates. I learned just how touchy Art could be. Since I had broken my promise I had only myself to blame for being the liar he told all my LDV allies I was.
Art prides himself on not being a “politician” thereby condemning some of my favorite people George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight David Eisenhower and Barack Obama. He also told me at our secret meeting he has no use for “Minnesota Nice.” I’ll give him credit for writing a persuasive reply to the high school kid who wrote a persuasive letter published in the Duluth News Tribune describing Art’s neanderthal-like behavior at a recent School Board meeting. But Art, the non-politician, fails to recognize that “perception is reality” in most people’s minds. “Walks like a duck, Talks like a duck. Must be a duck.”
By the same token you could say, even if it isn’t entirely fair, “Walks like a jerk, Talks like a jerk, Must be a jerk.”
Geez. I guess I got most of what was on my mind said. I don’t think an Art Johnston Part Two will be necessary although there’s plenty more I could write. But that’s no problem. Art nailed it in the Zenith Weekly story. This blog is “bullshit.”
