Press Mess
Al Diamon
Press 1 for English: From the May 5 edition of the Original Irregular, a weekly newspaper published in Kingfield:
“Members of the MSAD #58 school board met on Thursday, May 1 approving a $9.8 million budget. The board’s efforts resulted in one of the biggest budgetary reductions since the early 1990s.
“After countless hours of meetings, the board last week voted on a budget that is comparable to the last full year budget of 2006/07 at $9.5 million.”
(Apparently, math was the first thing they cut.)
Press fast forward, please: The headline in the May 7 Morning Sentinel read, “Local woman finishes marathon.” As in the Boston Marathon. Which appears to have been over for more than two weeks. What took her so long? The story doesn’t say, but it could be that it’s just a record-setting case of a newspaper being slow in reporting the news. (This story does not appear on the Morning Sentinel’s Web site.)
Then there’s the sluggish Portland Press Herald, which waited five days to inform its readers about the dismissal of two Portland radio personalities after an on-air spat that included profanity and an ethnic slur. The incident occurred on May 3. The first reports showed up on the Web site As Maine Goes the same day. I reported on it (see “Talking Ugly”) on May 5. WGME-TV in Portland was on the story a day or so later. And the Press Herald brought up the rear by chiming in on May 8.
Not pressed to correct: Portland Sea Dogs fans reading the May 3 Press Herald could be excused for believing the minor-league baseball team had acquired a new catcher. There was a full-page color photo of a player identified as “Clare Norton.” Nobody by that name on the Sea Dogs roster. No Clare Norton in the Red Sox organization. A search of all of professional baseball failed to locate a single such individual. It turns out Clare Norton is the photographer’s name. The player in the photo is Mark Wagner. As of today, the Press Herald still hasn’t published a correction, although the paper did run the same photo again on May 7, this time identified as Wagner.
Not impressed: The Lewiston Sun Journal was quick to report on the poor turnout for Auburn’s May 6 referendum on the local school budget, in which only 5.5 percent of the city’s registered voters bothered to go to the polls. The paper even predicted that lack of voter interest in a May 4 story. What the Sun Journal didn’t report was its own lack of reporting on the issue. Prior to the story on the expected low turnout, in which it noted that even citizens who were usually active in civic affairs didn’t realize there was an election scheduled, it did almost nothing to publicize the upcoming vote. No coverage. No voters. No surprise.
Click here for Wobegon: If you missed “A Prairie Home Companion” live at the Bangor Civic Center on May 3, the entire show is available online at prairiehome.publicradio.org/. If you didn’t miss it, well, it’s available, anyway.
Al Diamon can be e-mailed at aldiamon@herniahill.net.
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