Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Air America and N&O editor: There's more to do.

With very few exceptions, the messages responding to Raleigh News & Obswever exec. news editor and blogger Melanie Sill have been civil, informed, and literate. The best of the blogosphere!

The e-mails I've received have been the same.

Very many of the messages have focused on a self-contradiction Melanie put before us. Here, in part, is what one commentator said:
________________

In her first Air America post, Melanie said:

"We've checked our news services in recent days and do not find this story"

but in her second post Melanie said:

"I found the same stories on Air America that you all mention a couple days ago in Internet searches and by using Factiva, a paid service we use for research"

The commentator added:

I am so confused...
___________________

Melanie needs to clear up her self-contradiction and the ensuing confusion so people can move on.

Meanwhile, the N&O should report on the Air America scandal.

I think N&O readers would be proud if the N&O led its sister McClatchy papers in reporting on the scandal.

And wouldn't it be great if then the McClatchy papers broke through the current MSM blackout and brought the story to the American public’s attention?

Here’s a chance for MSM news organizations and bloggers to team.

I’ll post tomorrow by 11 AM Eastern a list of McClatchy papers with e-mail and phone contacts.

Check back then. If we all do our bit, something good might happen. Don’t give up on MSM.

BTW – If anyone does the McClatchy contact work first, please send the link.

And now, good night.

John

5 comments:

Elizabeth said...

John,

Here are the links to the McClatchy daily and community paper contact pages:

http://www.mcclatchy.com/newspapers/

http://www.mcclatchy.com/newspapers/non_dailies/

The 12 dailies look like better targets to me, especially the Sacramento Bee and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Anonymous said...

The N&O has now shutdown and comments for the second (most recent) post, citing personal attacks.

Does anyone have any idea what was said?

Anonymous said...

A poster (gave her blog as www.reasonandradical.blogspot.com) posted something in support of the Editor.

Someone else came in, using her name and website in the name/website line (obviously not the blogger of www.reasonandradical.blogspot.com) and started to post some offense stuff attacking "conservative loosers (sic)"

Others responded back in kind and it turned into a name calling fest.

It got yanked this AM.

Anonymous said...

Whoo, whoo, thin skinned!

-AC

Anonymous said...

By now, you probably figured out the comments are back open.

I'd contacted editor Sill and offered advice about how to handle the situation temporarily and logn term, and it looks like she's taking that advice.

Now if she'll only do what the right thing and write on the story.

I'll go out on a limb and suggest that McClatchy has as much to do with stopping the story as Sill.

The Star Tribune ("Strib") is the infamous hometownpaper of the guys at Powerline and also a McClatchy paper, and they, too, are running lockstep with the "it's not local news, we're waiting on a wire service article" defense.

I'm going to try to get more into this over the weekend, but I thank john for getting us started on this, as it almost looks like this could be muzzled from the highest levels of McClatchy, not from the individual papers.