Friday, August 1, 2008
Al Diamon
Follow That Reporter!
(page 1 of 2)
Liberty took liberties: Here’s a disturbing footnote on one of the people involved in Maine Media Investments, the group trying to buy the Blethen Maine Newspapers. Back in the early 1990s, developer Michael Liberty was struggling financially and fighting numerous lawsuits. The Portland Press Herald, one of the Blethen papers Liberty could soon own, published several hard-hitting pieces on his difficulties, sometimes revealing information Liberty didn’t want made public. So, he hired a detective to follow the reporter doing most of the stories, in hopes he’d discover his secret sources. The scheme didn’t work, but it does call into question Liberty’s commitment to keeping his hands off the newsroom if he becomes one of the Press Herald’s owners. It would be interesting to get a frank assessment of Liberty’s tactics from the reporter who was shadowed, but somehow, I don’t think it’s going to happen. That’s because that once-relentless journalist is none other than Dennis Bailey, now the spokesman for Maine Media and Liberty.
Liberty takes roles: Just to clarify Liberty’s occupation: It’s true he’s been a real-estate developer for many years, but his real passion is Hollywood. According to the Web site IMDb.com
Liberty has produced several films, including “The Hit,” “Open House” and “Vampire Survivor.” I’d probably be a little more impressed if I’d ever heard of any of those. He also got a couple of acting jobs, although one of them was in a flick he produced, so I don’t think that proves he has talent.
Press Herald takes liberties: In the Press Herald’s “Go” section on July 31, there’s a capsule review of the latest Batman movie. (Sorry, Michael Liberty does not have a part.)
The editor who wrote the headline for the piece must have been gloomy over the impending layoffs at the paper, because he listed the name of the film as “The Dark Night.” Knot hardly.
On the sports page, staff writer Rachel Lenzi has a piece on bobblehead dolls (hey, it was a slow day for news), in which she claims a few bobbles of former Portland Sea Dogs are being auctioned on eBay, including one of Nomar Garciaparra. The Dogs may have issued a Nomar doll, but he never was a member of the team. Back when Garciaparra was coming up, the Red Sox Double-A affiliate was the Trenton Thunder.
The Press Herald finally made mention of Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins’ connection to recently indicted Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens.
But it came in an July 31 Associated Press national piece that made passing mention of Collins and four other GOP senators returning donations from a Stevens-affiliated political action committee.
The local aspects of this story remain uncovered in print.
Posted on Friday, August 1, 2008 in Permalink
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Reader Comments:
Here's an idea. You hook up with Munjoy and the other good Maine bloggers on politics and media and local news and sports and slap up a site where Mainers can go to one spot and read the latest from all.
Bang. Instant state-wide hyper-local well-moderated forum for news and discussion, by people who obviously care.
Add the ability for users to customize their preferences for particular content and it would be golden.
Ideas are free. This one's for you.
You mean, like As Maine Goes?
I'm not sure if the Bangor Daily News is short-staffed, but their priorities are sure screwed up.
A story on mail service to Sutton Island (pop. 25 at most) was on page 1 of Saturday's edition while a story on the pending $400 million state budget deficit rated four inches on page B-5.
As Maine Goes is for those who bunker in ideological dogma. Every discussion is littered with semantically driven arguments where the combatants either link to source material that nobody has bothered to read, or simply deploy partisan stereotypes to lower the discourse. Finding insight is rare, knowledge hopeless.
Perhaps there's a place for such a forum on a news site, but unless you plan to alienate those who find all of the above distasteful, it would be bad idea to make it the main attraction.
Apparently it's all over the radio that Blethen is threatening to shut down the newspapers in two weeks. Huh??? How many more hits to a newspaper's reputation can this company throw? True? Not true?
Blethen has said in court filings that if it can't sell its Maine newspapers soon, it will default on loans and might be forced to shut down the papers. No timeline for those shutdowns has been announced. The radio report you heard on WGAN in Portland was based on a story from WGME-TV, which in turn was based on a more accurate and less over-the-top report filed by Bill Richards on crosscut.com. You can check it out at:
http://crosscut.com/seattle-newspapers/16412/A+bicoastal+newspaper+crisis/
Al Diamon
Thanks Al. Read the court documents on WGME's Web site. Glad to see that Bill Richards is following this story on his site as well. If anyone should know the workings of the Seattle Times, it's him.