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It really does take a village
Lesson No. 1 about my new job at The Daily Sentinel/GJSentinel.com: It’s not just about the newsroom anymore.
In my e-mail this morning was this from long-time colleague Linda Simms:
Denny,
I read your editorial yesterday about taking the reins, that’s a lot of responsibility on top of what you already do, but I know that you will do it well, congratulations. But, while you gave lots of kudos to the newsroom and the job they do, I think that you may have forgotten the rest of us. It takes a village to put out the paper.
Of course she’s correct. It’s more than just the newsroom who’s responsible for The Daily Sentinel landing on your doorstep every day and for GJSentinel.com to appear on your browsers. It takes a lot of people doing a lot of different jobs. There are sales people and receptionists, press operators and IT specialists, drivers and mailroom workers, business office people and graphic artists, building maintenance workers and special sections editors. It takes all of us.
Sorry, Linda. If anybody should know that it’s me.
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Some things change, and some don’t
Alex Taylor, the publisher of The Daily Sentinel/GJSentinel.com in 2008 is, at this writing, taking up residence in his new office at The Palm Beach Post. Certainly it’s warmer there than it is here, and we can all be a little envious as we gaze out over the annual inversion-plagued Grand Valley.
Being the publisher in Palm Beach is not without its problems, just as being the publisher of The Daily Sentinel/GJSentinel.com in 2008 was not without its occasional headache. All of us at The Daily Sentinel/GJSentinel.com feel blessed that Alex was at the helm this past year.
Our story is not news and I won’t spend a lot of time on it. Alex did that in his farewell column a week ago, and it was well documented in our news and Web pages last year.
We began 2008 with plans for a new facility near the airport. And we were in the final design phase when, in mid-summer, deteriorating business conditions forced a cancellation of those plans.
That was followed just a few weeks later by the announcement from Cox Newspapers Inc., our parent company, that The Daily Sentinel/GJSentinel.com, along with several other newspapers Cox owns in Texas and North Carolina, were on the market.
That is where we find ourselves at the dawn of 2009, as I begin what more than likely will be a short stint at the helm of what is a truly wonderful organization - in spite of the many problems we faced last year.
Our problems aren’t unique, by any means. It’s no secret that the newspaper industry is in the midst of what I, somewhat optimistically, call growing pains as we transition to a new, digital age. That’s why I refer to this organization as not simply The Daily Sentinel, but The Daily Sentinel/GJSentinel.com. Our Website is as important to us - and to you, we hope - as the printed newspaper that lands on most of the driveways in Mesa County every day, and has for 115 years.
Amidst the problems of 2008, and overshadowed by them, was remarkable, unprecedented growth on GJSentinel.com. Unique visitors on the site were up a whopping 34 percent last year. Those are numbers that all of can be proud of.
Readership of The Daily Sentinel, meanwhile, easily beat the industry average.
All of that is the result of a lot of hard work by the 180 or so people who produce those products, and our good fortune to live in a market that still values newspapers. A colleague last week said that if he had to design the perfect newspaper market for this day and age, it would be the market we all call home.
A lot changed in 2008 and a lot undoubtedly will change in 2009. I don’t know how long it takes to sell a newspaper, but I expect that by the end of the year The Daily Sentinel/GJSentinel.com will be under new ownership.
But some things don’t change. Of this I am certain: All of us at The Daily Sentinel/GJSentinel.com will do everything we can this year to continue to make our print and digital products valuable partners to our advertisers. We will continue to make sure that every dollar you spend with us is a wise and business-growing investment.
The three dozen writers, editors, photographers, web developers and artists in the newsroom will continue to provide readers with the best possible daily diet of news and information. As always, our commitment to watchdog journalism will be the driving force in the newsroom.
I won’t for a minute claim that we will ever produce the perfect newspaper or the perfect Website. We never have yet. (Nor has anyone else.) But this I will promise you: That is exactly what we will try to do. Every day.
As always, we want to hear from you, our advertisers and readers. Without you we don’t exist.
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Election season
OK, I don’t know how long it’s been since I posted here. I could check but that wouldn’t change the fact that it’s been way too long. One of the keys to blogging I tell people is that it has to be done with regularity. And they might logically ask just what standing I have to say that. The answer is I don’t.
But I will try harder.
Election seasons are always interesting times for newspapers. Every candidate in the world wants to talk to us every time they come to town. Every local candidate says the same things over and over at debate after debate. They expect, and for the most part we comply, that all of their debates and public appearances get coverage in their local newspaper.
Our fax machine is clogged with press releases from dozens of candidates and seemingly hundreds of issues groups, as are our e-mail boxes.
Just in the past two hours I’ve received e-mails telling me who to vote for if I want good health care, independents have increased their support for Obama, a certain Democratic senator from Colorado plans a conference call to drum up support for Obama, celebrities have joined forces to make sure poor people vote, and others. Judging by that group, I’d say the left side of the spectrum is more active this afternoon than the right. Maybe my political writers, who get more of this stuff than I do, have heard from the other side today.
The other thing that happens in newsrooms every two years in the fall is that we get accused of favoring one side or another. This year has been no exception. The accusations, without fail, come from partisans and for the most part have little basis in reality. We get them from all sides. (That’s of some comfort.) I think there really are people out there who count how many column inches we give to every candidate and every side of every issue. And if they think their guy is not getting as much as the other guy, or if they think we didn’t buy into their spin the way we should have, they are anything but bashful telling us about it. That’s what partisans do, either because they’re paid to, or they fervently believe in their candidates or causes.
Here’s a little secret. We don’t count column inches and make sure that every candidate gets the same amount. Yes, there may be weeks in which one side gets more coverage than the other. But at the end of election day, when we do our post-mortems on coverage, we generally find that the coverage was fair. We will probably look back and say maybe we should have done this, or shouldn’t have done that. But the totality of the coverage served our readers well. I’ve seen nothing this year, despite the complaints and sniping from some quarters, that makes me think anything is out of the ordinary.
Some candidates and some issues are more serious than others, and they will get more coverage. Many years ago there was a perennial Grand Junction City Council candidate who never garnered more than 1 or 2 percent of the vote. We didn’t cover him much because he never had anything to say. Had, for some bad reason, we decided to give him as much space in the newspaper as his more serious opponents it would have made his candidacy appear much more credible than it was. Those are judgment calls we have to make.
But only for another week. I, for one, will be glad when it’s over.
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Community.gjsentinel.com — it’s your site again
Earlier this year we rolled out what we thought was a brilliant idea: Community.gjsentinel.com. It was to be a place within our website that was owned by readers. They were to decide the content and produce it. Our only contribution was to be a few letters to the editor every day that for one reason or another — mostly lack of space — didn’t make it into the print edition of The Daily Sentinel.
And indeed, that’s the way it worked for a while. Readers, often using a letter to the editor as a point of departure, engaged in lively, spirited debate. They did exactly what we thought they would do: They advanced many stories about many public issues.
But it didn’t take long for the site to be hijacked by a small group of people who, instead of debating in a civil manner, decided the best way to make a point was to call someone else a name. The site deteriorated quickly.
We had decided at the outset that pretty much anything was fair game, and so we watched in dismay as Community.gjsentinel.com became, as one staffer here put it, “a cesspool.”
Contributors to the site for the most part couldn’t be persuaded that a point of view other than their own existed. I found out the hard way, when we deleted a thread a few weeks ago because the letter from which it originated contained erroneous information. In fact, the letter never should have been put on the site.
The regulars pounced, wanting to know why we “censored” their comments. I explained why. The explanation was simple. The letter was erroneous and we don’t leave erroneous things on the site. But that wasn’t good enough. It was as if they didn’t read. They demanded again to know why. I didn’t have anything else to say. I could have, and perhaps should have, tried to point out that it was not “censorship.” Nobody was taking away their right to say anything. They were free to start their own blog any time they wanted. And they still are. It’s not difficult.
Finally, last week we decided we’d had enough. Editorial Page Editor Bob Silbernagel announced on the site that from now on we would block anyone who engaged in uncivil conversation or name-calling.
To date that’s had some positive effect, although we still find some unacceptable posts every day and delete them.
But what we hope happens is the Community.gjsentinel.com once again becomes what we always wanted it to be, a place where any of you are free to come and engage in lively, spirited and civil discourse about any number of issues. We still want it to be your site, and if we have to block the people who stole it, so be it.
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Three cheers for the parkway
Gary Harmon, my longtime colleague, the guy you love to hate or hate to love, the newsroom contrarian, and one of the best writers I’ve ever worked with, got it wrong about the new Riverside Parkway.
As those of you who read him know, he’s not a fan.But in one humble editor’s opinion, it’s the best thing the city’s done since it put all the curves in Main Street way back in the 1960s.
For nearly three decades, I’ve labored daily on the wrong side of the tracks. Daily Sentinel workers know how well the coal industry is in Delta County without reading any news accounts. We know by the number of coal trains that we get stuck behind trying to get to and from work. The coal industry is doing just fine, thank you.
But no longer will we have to worry about the trains. The Parkway takes us conveniently over the longest coal trains in the world.
I timed it this weekend, and it takes exactly two minutes — two minutes consumed by a very pleasant drive — longer to get from my house to The Daily Sentinel via the parkway than my old route. And that’s if there’s no train. Add as much as 20 minutes if there’s a long coal train.
I can’t wait for the day when I pull into the parking lot from the south, having arrived via the parkway, only to see my friend Gary, waiting on the other side while the train passes. Maybe I can get him to write a column about that.
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Udall’s missed vote
An editorial we published over the weekend has a lot of Mark Udall supporters calling foul.
In it, we said that Udall, after saying he would be on the House floor to vote against adjourning without debating energy legislation, in fact missed the vote.
The people taking us to task point to a House vote to adjourn and note that Udall was there for that vote.
We’re both correct.
Apparently there were two votes for adjournment. The first one, and the most critical, was a vote to decide whether to vote. It passed by one vote. Udall missed it. Had he been there, as he said he would, and had he voted as he said he would have, there never would have been a second vote, the House would still be in session, and we may have had a chance to see how Udall would have voted on domestic energy production.
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A new look to The Daily Sentinel
A group of editors has been working hard for the past few weeks, thinking about how to best package The Daily Sentinel to make it more useful to readers.
The fruits of their labors will be unveiled next month, when your Daily Sentinel will, while still containing all the news and features you’re used to, plus some, have a different look and feel.
Already you’ve probably noticed that our front page doesn’t look like it used to. It’s much more graphically intense, and every day we pick one story and, as we say in this business, “go deep” with it.
But beginning Sept. 1, the changes will become even more profound. I won’t give away all the details here. Our marketing department is hard at work on promotional ads to do that, and I’ll be writing more about the changes in the coming weeks both here and in the newspaper. But I will say that, among other things, the news will flow much more logically than it does now.
In the meantime, I’d like to thank Managing Editor Laurena Davis, News Editor Brian Harvey, City Editor Tim Harty and Copy Editor Erik Lincoln for all the hard work they’ve put into this project.
We all think it will be a much improved newspaper, and, as always, we’ll be anxious to hear what you think.
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Time out for training
One of the many advantages of working for the company that I do is that it is full of very talented people. And the company does everything it can to spread that talent around.
One of those things is what has come to be known as Cox Academy.
Every year Mike Schwartz, an all-around good guy who hails from Atlanta and is Cox Newspapers’ training guru, contacts editors at all Cox papers and asks them about their training needs.
Then he finds people in the company who can provide the training we need and brings them to our locations. It’s a great opportunity for all of our staffs. We get world-class training and don’t have to pay to send people somewhere else.
Over the years we’ve had seminars on all manner of things — story telling, photography, page design, headline writing, feature writing, media law and a host of other topics.
This week about half The Daily Sentinel staff is being tutored in how to create compelling video for GJSentinel.com. Teaching the class is John Lopinot of the Palm Beach Post.
Video is a new medium for those of us who grew up in the newspaper business. Some might say one has about as much chance of teaching newspaper people how to shoot and edit video as one would have teaching a dog to fly.
My age is showing.
In fact, the younger members of this staff — and even a few of the long-time staffers — are both able and eager to learn new skills. New skills and new ways of telling stories are what the newspaper business is all about in 2008. Video, in particular, is becoming more and more important as we move into the digital world. John is among the best. He’s a great videographer and a great teacher. He’s also a great photographer. Check out his website and see for yourself.
He’ll be followed later this week by Rick Crotts, a page designer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Rick’s been here before and we know that he knows his stuff. I expect many of you have noticed that our front pages have had a new look in recent weeks. They have been much more colorful and more graphically intense. That is largely the work of a talented young page designer by the name of Erik Lincoln. (More about Erik in a future post.) We expect Rick to take that effort to yet another level.
Look for the results from this week’s Cox Academy in future editions of The Daily Sentinel and on GJSentinel.com.
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The world of Washington spin
Sen. Ken Salazar, who has one of the more active and imaginative press operations of any politician we deal with, apparently was alarmed Monday when he got wind that we were doing a story and an editorial about his objection to offshore drilling even if gas prices rise to $10 a gallon.
We were tipped to the senator’s comments on the Senate floor by readers who were not happy with the senator’s position on offshore drilling.
The Salazar spin machine revved into high gear, telling reporter Gary Harmon that the senator’s comments were not a story at all (we disagreed) and telling Editorial Page Editor Bob Silbernagel that the youtube video of the senator objecting to offshore drilling was heavily edited and had the entire video been posted viewers would see that his real position is that any offshore drilling has to be tied to development of renewable energy sources.
To prove that, Salazar’s main press guy, Matt Lee-Ashley, said he would provide the rest of the video and we could see for ourselves that the senator is in favor of offshore drilling that is tied to renewable energy development. We took the guy at his word and inserted a line saying as much in the editorial.
We should have listened to the video first. Here it is. We’ve listened to it a number of times and nowhere do we hear Sen. Salazar saying he’s for offshore drilling if we also develop renewable energy sources.
To the contrary, we hear nothing but what Democrats have been saying all along: Developing new offshore oil is a waste of time because if we begin today it will take years and years before any of it comes on-line and then it will have minimal effect on pump prices. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t.
What we are sure of is that the Washington spin machine is an Alice in Wonderlandian behemoth, one that pays little attention to facts.
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Salazar and $10 gas
This youtube video is making the rounds of GOP and right-wing blogs. It’s also being e-mailed to us by readers. In it, if you don’t care to watch, Sen. Ken Salazar objects to allowing a vote on offshore drilling, even if gas prices reach $10 a gallon. Reporter Gary Harmon is trying to get in touch with Salazar to see if he really means that. Stay tuned.
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The line between news and opinion
I’ve received a couple of e-mails in the past 24 hours from the same person. She asked that her name not be used, so it won’t. Not that it matters.
In the first instance she was praising us, and reporter Amy Hamilton in particular, for the work we did earlier this week when Amy broke the story about Roice-Hurst Humane Society being in violation of state laws that govern charities.
A quick recap if you missed it: Roice-Hurst, the county’s only no-kill animal shelter, has been in dire need of funds. It sent out a distress call to the community and the community responded with more than $210,000 in donations. The problem, as Amy reported, was that the non-profit group failed to do the required paperwork with the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office and as a result could not legally accept donations.
That was a good story, we thought, and one that should be reported. The e-mailer agreed, heaping praise on Amy for her good work.
“Amy Hamilton has introduced the community to a very real problem. One we don’t wish to look at directly. And, she did it factually and with finesse. It does no one any good if you ‘miff’ someone off in the pet industry/community—it serves only to set things ablaze. While any negative comment against or about Roice-Hurst is liable to cause a stir, Amy Hamilton was able to do what she did in a straight forward manner and it allows those of us who wish to look at this problem head on without flinching and try to see if we as a community can discuss (in an adult manner) and address the issues,” wrote the e-mailer.
I couldn’t agree more. Without going into detail because it’s not relevant, I’ll just say that there were some delicate issues to deal with in that story, and Amy dealt with them in the manner we expect from all of out reporters — professionally and with compassion.
Amy’s story ran on Page 1, the prime real estate in The Daily Sentinel for news stories. News stories, by definition, are to be nothing more than facts. They are to take no position and they are to be as objective, complete and fair as we can humanly make them. We don’t decide what is a news story based on what we think of the issue. We make that decision based on nothing more than whether we think it is of importance to readers.
But we do have a place in the newspaper where we do allow opinions — ours and others. It’s Page 4A, the editorial page. And on that page today there is an opinion piece that says we think the problems besetting Roice-Hurst, while very real, are nonetheless not of such importance that they should cause the facility to be shut down. In fact, we think it deserves continued public support. Those observations are opinions. Some people may agree with them and some may not.
The e-mailer in question falls into the latter camp.
She wrote: “You guys have most assuredly pulled a quick turn on a dime that I was not expecting. You are advocating support for an organization who has (by way of Secretary of State records) elicited funding illegally—I don’t care if they knew they were wrong or not. The article somehow puts forth that you hope because the Secretary of State is so overwhelmed and understaffed, that Roice-Hurst will squeak by without being noticed? What the hell kind of reporting/editorial is this? Is it really the Daily Sentinel’s official stance to turn the other cheek even when illegal activity has occurred?
“I’m simply stunned by what I’ve read. Amy Hamilton did some excellent investigating to set you all up for a slam dunk when the timing was right. What the hell happened?
“Now, this latest … editorial actually at the end of the article says ‘help save the unwanted pets and donate to Roice-Hurst.’ That is just too quaint for me. You begin an investigation that could prove to be bruising enough to them to make them contemplate a change in practice, then you end up using editorial space to elicit funding for a program that has illegally elicited funds in the past?
“Wow, knock my socks off. I never saw that coming.”
She fails to understand the difference between the story Amy did and the editorial that appeared in today’s paper. Apparently, she thinks if we do the story that points out Roice-Hurst’s problems, then our editorial position will be that Roice-Hurst should be prosecuted, a possibility, albeit a slim one, under a strict reading of the state’s charity laws.
Reporting about something gone awry, though, does not automatically lead to an editorial position that someone needs to pay for the indiscretion. And in this case, we thought it did not.
What’s more, the editorial in today’s newspaper by no means indicates that we won’t continue to report on Roice-Hurst. If we find out more about the organization that casts it in a negative light we will continue to report it.
The point is this: What is written in the news columns has no bearing on what is written on the opinion page. Facts are facts and opinions are opinions. They appear in different places in the newspaper and serve different functions.
This Sunday, for example, The Daily Sentinel will endorse either Janet Rowland or David Kearsley for county commissioner. I’m not going to say which one now. But it will be one of them. That does not mean that we will quit reporting on the other one, or that if our favorite does something stupid during the campaign, that we won’t report that. We will.
If Roice-Hurst next week does something untoward, we’ll report that, too.
That line between news stories and editorials is one that is very clear to us in the newsroom. I know it’s less clear to readers. I hope this piece helps explain it. But I’ve heard from enough readers over the years (that’s a fact) to know that it won’t erase all the doubts out there (that’s an opinion).
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Covering weather
We’re a daily newspaper, but that doesn’t mean that everything you see in The Daily Sentinel or on GJSentinel.com was produced in the past 24 hours.
To the contrary, some things are produced far in advance of their publication. The New York Times and a lot of other national publications, for example, have scores of obituaries written for people who are very much alive. They’re ready to be pulled out and used when various luminaries depart this world.
We don’t do that around here, but we do try to anticipate events to the extent we can.
City Editor Tim Harty several weeks ago took note of the fact that we always write the same story every year on the first day we hit 100 degrees. He decided to do something different, so he assigned a reporter to find out everything he could about 100-degree days in Grand Junction, and compile it for use on the first 100-degree day of the year.
That little task was accomplished and it’s been sitting there ever since. It seems the first 100-degree day of the year is late in 2008. But it’s forecast to hit 100 this weekend. So we’re going to pull out the story that’s been sitting around and run it on Saturday, assuming that will be the hottest day of the year to date.
Among the things once can do to beat the heat, of course, is sit in an air-conditioned theater. And this also happens to be the opening weekend for the new Batman flick, the Dark Knight. So, the temperature story could segue nicely to our coverage of what is expected to be the biggest film of the summer. “Comics relief” is the headline News Editor Brian Harvey suggested. Not bad.
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About SB200
This is rich.
The editor of the little feature paper in town had this to say in his column today about SB200, the so-called “bathroom bill:”
“One can only wonder: If the other newspaper had done the right thing and pointed out the twisted smear campaign for what it is, would it have reaped the revenue benefits of the Focus on the Family smear ad?
“If you read my column last week, you’ll remember I stressed the benefits of two newspaper voices in a community.”
Let’s deconstruct those two paragraphs. They have much to say about “newspaper voices.” First, Mr. Nichols is talking about editorial positions. Editorials are a journalistic endeavor about which the little paper knows not much. In its five years or so of existence, it has published at most a dozen editorials. (We publish that many every week, and have been doing it for more than 100 years.) The other paper has taken such gutsy positions as warning people to not drink and drive at Country Jam, and such happy talk as urging some guy to raise money for some charity.
Not that there’s anything wrong with discouraging drinking and driving, and the fundraising effort for the Muscular Dystrophy Association was no doubt worthwhile. We occasionally pat people on the back on our editorial page, too. But an editorial page is much more than that. It’s where serious discussions take place about serious issues. It’s where readers go to be challenged. It’s one of the places where public policy is shaped. To the best of my knowledge the other paper has never endorsed a candidate, nor has it dealt substantively with any significant issue.
When it comes to editorials, there is only one newspaper voice in town. It’s The Daily Sentinel. There’s really only one voice when it comes to everything else, too, but Josh’s column was specifically about editorials.
And oh, about that claim that we didn’t say anything about SB200 because anti-SB200 forces were advertising in our paper. That is simply a cheap shot of the highest order. I’m not sure what to say about it other than it has no basis in fact. Around here we work hard at making sure our opinions are based on a set of facts. Readers may look at the same set of facts and arrive at a different conclusion. But the facts will be there. That’s something else that sets us apart.
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First we check
I just posted a comment below from “Cecil.” It’s a comment I received a day or two ago but didn’t post at the time because in it, Cecil made some claims about Mesa County Commissioner candidate David Kearsley. Specifically, Cecil wondered why we hadn’t reported that Kearsley had received a campaign contribution of $20,000 from one individual.
I don’t think it would have been fair to post that comment without first checking out whether in fact Cecil’s claim was correct.
We did. It was.
I suspect, despite the tone of Cecil’s post, that we eventually would have seen that contribution and written about it. We check campaign filings on every candidate periodically. But thank you, Cecil, for pointing it out before we got around to finding it. It is a good story. That’s a very large contribution from one individual. It’s perfectly legal, though. There are no limits on contributions to county commissioner races.
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GJ’s hardest-working blogger
There are a lot of bloggers in this town, but the hardest-working one of the bunch is Mike Saccone, our political writer.
He takes his blog, “Political Notebook,” as seriously as he takes his job covering the political scene in Colorado. It’s become must reading for anyone in Colorado who’s interested in what politicians are up to.
And that, apparently, judging from the number of visitors he gets every week, is a sizable number. Lately he’s been the leading Daily Sentinel blogger. He consistently gets double the number of visitors that I get. It’s not difficult to see why. Rarely does a day go by when he doesn’t post at least a couple of times. Rarely does a week go by when I post more than a couple of times.
I say all of this to draw attention to “Political Notebook” today. It’s a fascinating and insightful look into what Mike worked on most of yesterday. In today’s print edition of The Daily Sentinel he has a story about Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer’s involvement securing contracts with the Iraqi Kurdistan for an energy company and the fact that the U.S. State Department considers such contracts not in Iraq’s best interest.
You can read the story in the paper, but you can see all of his source material and hear an interview with Schaffer only by clicking on “Political Notebook.”
Take a look. You can see how one hard-working reporter and blogger practices his craft.
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Country Jam and babies
Local blogger John Linko didn’t much like our story today about the alarming number of pregnancies in the county after Country Jam.
Guess he would have preferred we spend more time singing the praises of the Nurse-Family Partnership, a program in the Mesa County Health Department that helps young families who might be struggling with pregnancy and parenthood. I’m sure that’s a very good program, and one that, after its Country Jam report to the Mesa County Commission Monday, stands to see its staff of nurses greatly increased. (Note to self: Do story when money for Nurse-Family Partnership, which is funded by money the state got from the tobacco settlement, runs out. When that happens will the program go away or will it continue to be funded by taxpayers?)
Other people saw the Country Jam story differently. While waiting, as a train sat motionless, more than 30 minutes on the north side of the railroad tracks coming back to my office on the south side after lunch, I checked my messages. One was from Wednesday columnist Dick Maynard, who said he had sent a replacement column for Wednesday.
“The Country Jam story this morning was just too rich,” he said, and he wanted to write about it right away. I recommend his column. Let’s just say his perspective is a little different from John Linko’s.
And when I finally did get back there was an e-mail from the Rocky Mountain News. Did we have any “Woodstock-type photos” of Country Jam. I wrote back and said we’d look and send one if we can find it. “Baby story?” I asked. Sure enough.
And the story was getting hit hard on GJSentinel.com today. It’s what we in this business call “a reader.”
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Decisions, decisions, decisions
Not all of our time at The Daily Sentinel/GJSentinel.com is spent contemplating and producing the next day’s news.
In fact, the executive committee has spent a great deal of time the past few months working on the design of our new building. We hope to break ground next month at our site on H Road and move in sometime in late 2009.
This morning anyone driving down S. Seventh Street may have wondered what we were doing on the lawn, looking at bricks and small pieces of metal. With the help of our architects, we were choosing the masonry and metal colors for the new structure, just one of seemingly thousands of decisions that we have to make in the near future.
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Covering death
This is an interesting piece on a debate that has been going on sporadically in this newsroom, and I’m certain every other newsroom in the country, for as long as I’ve been here. Should we publish pictures of dead bodies?
For the record, I’m opposed. I don’t think they do anything other than shock. I say that with the caveat that there will always be exceptions. But they really should be that — exceptions, a story that is far outside the norm. And they should advance the story. An editor needs to ask whether publishing the photo really does tell part of the story that can be told no other way.
The argument from the other side is always that they tell a story, they happened, and why should we be fearful of putting something in the paper that was part of the day’s events.
The debate won’t be settled here, nor will it be settled anytime soon, if ever.
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Janet Rowland’s PR firm
Earlier this week someone called one of our reporters, and some other reporters in town, and passed on this little tidbit: County Commissioner Janet Rowland is going to start a public relations firm, and she’s going to have energy industry clients.
The horrors!
For some reason in this town, there’s a mindset among certain members of the chattering class that says if you accept any money from the energy industry for any reason whatsoever then you’re not fit for public office.
In this newsroom we don’t buy that, and in this newsroom we try not to do what in the business is known as “when-are-you-going-to-quit-beating-your-wife” stories. Those are stories in which we raise an issue so the subject of the story can deny it. That, then, gives a news organization a chance to publish the denial — and it leaves in the mind of the reader the notion that something sinister is at work.
We certainly asked Ms. Rowland about her plans. And yes, she is in the formative stages of starting a public relations business. And we asked her if she intended to target the energy industry as a clients. No, she said, but she wouldn’t rule it out, either.
Our view of that story is that until she takes on an energy industry client, then who her clients may or may not be has no relevance. If she does eventually sign a contract with some energy firm, then it should be reported. And if she signs a contract with, say, a health-care provider, or a developer, that, too, should be reported. And if she were to sign on with an environmental group, that should be reported. But all of it should be reported when it happens, not now. And it should be reported as something she says she did or is going to do, not as a denial.
Her colleague on the commission, Craig Meis, has close ties to the energy industry. That was no secret when he ran for office, and his votes on energy issues as a commissioner should come as no surprise. But there are those who would make the case that those ties somehow make him unfit for office. No doubt they will be an issue in his re-election campaign, as they should be. If voters find that unacceptable, they can remove him from office.
I’ve often found it curious that ties to the energy industry are seen in a negative light, or at least there are people out there who work us to cast such ties in a negative light. But ties to other industries or other special interests are acceptable, or at least people don’t work us so hard to write about those connections.
Jim Spehar, for example, was on the payroll of an environmental organization while serving on the Grand Junction City Council. But I didn’t hear any claims about conflicts of interest or that he was in the pocket of the environmental lobby.
So long as what our public officials do is transparent, we’ll report their connections — all of them — and make no judgments in our news columns about whether that is good or bad. Voters can decide that.
What we won’t do is raise an issue so we can report a denial. That’s not journalism. That’s being used.
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Sentinel Weekly
If you are a non-subscriber to The Daily Sentinel and live between Fruita and Palisade there’s a good chance there was a brand new news product in your driveway this morning.
Sentinel Weekly, more or less a best-of-the-Daily-Sentinel, made its debut this morning. It’s a tabloid sized newspaper full of stories, letters, photos and graphics that have appeared in The Daily Sentinel during the past week, along with eight pages of classified advertising. It will be published every Wednesday.
I’ll make no bones about it. I hope a lot of people read it and realize what they are missing by not subscribing to The Daily Sentinel. But if you’re not one of those people I nonetheless hope you find the new publication to your liking. It’s where you can find the best writing, most innovative design and most compelling photography produced in the Grand Valley.
Enjoy.
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Adopt a greyhound
A couple of years ago the Herzog family found itself in possession of only one dog. Around our house that’s not acceptable. For some reason unbeknownst to me, the decision-maker in our family — that would be wife Kathy — took an interest in adopting a racing greyhound.
That led to “Cordee,” our now-five-year-old retired racer. What we learned during the adoption process is that there are more dogs than there are homes. That’s unfortunate, because greyhounds, contrary to what you might think, are the most docile, sweet, people-pleasing dogs there are.
Now, it appears, there are even more that are in need of homes. The following press release was in my inbox this morning. If you’re interested in a greyhound, give this group a call. If you want more firsthand knowledge about what wonderful dogs they are, give me a call.
Here’s the press release:
COLORADO’S RACING GREYHOUNDS NEED YOUR HELP END OF RACING SEASON AT MILE HIGH GREYHOUND PARK LEAVES LARGE NUMBER OF DOGS NEEDING HOMES
Mile High Greyhound Park in Commerce City is the last track in Colorado to have regular live racing. Their season was scheduled to run through September.
Within the last couple of weeks, Mile High management has decided to end the 2008 season on June 28, taking many by surprise.
An estimated 200 dogs will need to find homes in a very short time frame.
Mile High Management has said that it is their intention to resume racing in April 2009, but they have not, as yet, been able to commit that to the kennel owners.
What does this mean to the kennels?
As you can imagine, there are not too many kennel owners who can continue to feed, house and train their dogs for the next 9 months without income. The kennel owners have a few choices. One is to move to another state. Another is to race their dogs in another state, but keep their operations here. Another is to shut down completely.
What does this mean for the dogs?
It’s likely that only the strongest racers in Colorado will continue racing in other states, either by moving with their kennel, or by being raced in another state. Some may also be used for breeding. All of the rest will need to find new homes. Right now, our best indications are that the number of dogs is around 200. It could be somewhat less and it could be more. The latest we have heard is that the track management has told the kennel operators that they can keep the dogs on track property for only 45 days after the end of the season. As we’ve seen up to this point, this is definitely subject to change! This creates an urgent need to find homes for these dogs as quickly as possible!
What is Colorado Greyhound Adoption (CGA) doing?
Colorado Greyhound Adoption is one of five greyhound adoption groups operating in the state. Right now, we are working with the other adoption groups to assist in developing a plan for making sure each dog is taken care of appropriately. We are all trying to identify the dogs that will need our help. We are also trying to get the best information we can about exactly how long we have to do it. We expect that all of the adoption groups will pool our information and resources to be sure we know about all of kennels and dogs, and the opportunities available to us to help these dogs, including out-of-state transports, boarding facilities, etc. We are communicating heavily with our wonderful and responsive volunteers, but we also need the help of the press to get the word out in a more expansive way than we would be able to do without your help.
What do we need to help the dogs???
Obviously, we need to find permanent loving homes for all of these hounds. We also need foster homes to get many of the dogs prepared for their new adoptive homes. Parties interested in helping with either can contact us at www.coloradogreyhoundadoption.org http://www.coloradogreyhoundadoption.org/ . We are also in urgent need of donations to help with the veterinary and other expenses involved in getting these dogs ready for their adoptive homes. Donations can be made by going to the website as well. There are many volunteer opportunities available in this tremendous effort. Any of the greyhound adoption groups would be happy to hear from anyone interested in volunteering their time and energy to help.
About CGA
Colorado Greyhound Adoption (CGA) was founded in April of 1997. It’s mission is to find permanent loving homes for and promote the adoption of retired racing greyhounds as excellent family pets. CGA is currently the largest greyhound adoption organization in the state. CGA has completed over 3,000 adoptions since its inception and is a 100% volunteer organization with no paid positions.
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Belated best wishes on your new responsibilities, Denny. Per the earlier comment, I’ll bet you never thought you’d be one of the Village People…
... read the full comment by Bill M | Comment on It really does take a village Read It really does take a village
It does take a village to put out a paper, and you have damn good village people.
... read the full comment by Kathy | Comment on It really does take a village Read It really does take a village
Amen.
... read the full comment by Laurena | Comment on Election season Read Election season
Thank you for doing that.
The site had become a sewer. I’m no shrinking violet, but even I didn’t feel much like posting an opinion there.
Thanks again for giving it back to us.
... read the full comment by rockman | Comment on Community.gjsentinel.com -- it's your site again Read Community.gjsentinel.com -- it's your site again