Peyton Place

Seriously, that's what the politics locally are like here. Everyone seems to be looking out for themselves and they try to undermine other people. Yesterday, after I got back from an interview, one of the New Durham Board of Selectman came into the office to give me the heads up about some anonymous phone calls going out to media outlets (read: us at The Baysider, and Fosters, the competition) about members of the Board of Selectmen were meeting in secret, which is a violation of New Hampshire law. Anyway, the other outlet received some of these anonymous calls and essentially printed the allegations with comment from several town officials, except they never mentioned that they had received anonymous phone calls in their article. This gave the allegation more credence than it deserved. So anyway, the Selectman (who owns a gun shop in Wolfeboro) came to tell me about the article, and basically I turned around, called the town administrator and one of the other selectmen to get their comment and wrote my own article. They each informed me that the other article had used anonymous phone calls as the basis of their story. I say in my story that the other outlet told the town officials that they had heard from anonymous sources, and the town officials told me as such when I asked them. That's in my story as well, as are denials from the two selectmen who were available for comment, and the town administrator telling me that he was aware of the rumor, but didn't know of anything like that happening.

Now, the ethics of this are the following: you don't use anonymous sources. Now the difference between unnamed sources and anonymous sources is that unnamed sources are known to the reporter. When Woodward and Bernstein used Deep Throat as a source, they didn't just print what he said as fact, they investigated it first to see if what this person was saying was accurate. Just using anonymous phone calls as the basis of a story, and to essentially say that people are alleging that selectmen are violating state law, without any proof of anything, and then not to explicitly say that in your article, is either the height of questionable ethics, or plain not knowing any better. Both are scary, I think the second scares me more.

Still, I've seen backbiting and dirty politics before. I saw PLG (the little blonde girl who managed to get Colleen Kelly, the most friendly woman on earth, to hate her guts) up close and was a part of the Albion College Theatre Department, the Music Department and the politics of the Euphonics. So I know the dirtiest of dirty politics. Plus I lived in Chicago and voted six times last year. Okay, just once ;).

Okay, (steps off of high horse for a while) so it's been a busy last couple of days. I got to layout a page, one with a long story I wrote, last night, something I'll be doing more of, which gives me more responsibility, which I like. A lot of sources didn't get back to me quite in time, and so I had to work really hard to find stories or to finish the ones I started. I'm sure when the paper goes out tomorrow, that we might get some feedback, and certainly, when I post my stories on Friday, you'll be able to judge as well. We've gotten great feedback so far, especially from people like Selectmen and Planning Board members, because Adam and myself write well and we cover their meeting fairly, and sometimes, they like us because we cover their meetings at all.

I'll post some fun thoughts tomorrow, seriously.