KOAA TV was just here to ask me some questions about the number of comments that readers have posted under the John Newsome story. At the time of their visit, the comments numbered 539. I don’t have logs at hand, but that’s got to be a record for any single story. Even 60 or 70 comments is pretty unusual.
Aside from the inherent news of videotape capturing the district attorney down a lot of beer and then get behind the wheel, twice, the story has prompted intense discussion about the responsibility of public servants to live up a higher standard, about the role of the news media and the hidden-video method KOAA used to get this story, about the reaction — or lack of one — from the (inconveniently named) bar association, attorney general, and the local Republican Party.
This story rang a lot of chimes, and readers who have taken the time to log on and comment at gazette.com have been discussing them all. And if the discussion at gazette.com is only a small fraction of discussion across the community at large, then this story has been biggest talker of the year so far.

“DOW backtracks on advice for euthanizing frogs.”

And here’s the story.

In another category are headlines that do much with little space. Among my favorites I ever saw:

Chain saw

ends debate 

We recently discontinued our weekly Norman Chad “Couch Slouch” sports humor column that appeared on Mondays on Sports 2, for the rest of 2008.
The column was trimmed when some recent cuts had to be made in the sports budget. The decision was made in favor of local/area content by staff writers so our writers can travel and write about as many items of interest to our readers as possible. It also frees up a fair amount of real estate in Monday’s paper.
We will investigate bringing the column back when we start the 2009 budget process.
Also, some readers have inquired about the fishing report that used to run on Wednesdays until last summer. Since then we have referred readers to the Colorado Division of Wildlife Web site, where the report is listed. The report is seasonal and started back last month.
That decision was made for several reasons. For one, the report often did not update individual fishing sites for weeks at a time, so a lot of the information was not current. Secondly, it took up lots of space, at least two columns just to run the SE Colorado areas and stocking report. It also took a lot of staff time to edit, code and cut down the report.
If you have thoughts or comments about these and anything else pertaining to the sports section or sports items on our Web site, please contact me:
Jim O’Connell
Sports Editor
Colorado Springs Gazette
636-0263
 jim.oconnell at gazette.com

Saw this reader comment on a story at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune about Avista’s breathtaking 75 percent writedown of its year-old investment in that paper:

When somebody finally discovers that there is a market for objective news reporting, and balanced editorial comment( or dare I say: even, gasp, a conservative leaning), then get the thing delivered when and where it’s needed- readership, and ad revenues will flow to them. Good newspapers have online subscriptions and/ or significant ad revenues.

Set aside the question of whether the reporting in newspapers is or isn’t biased. Not going there, at least not now.

There are two flawed premises at work in this view of the business.

First, newspaper readership began a long decline nearly 40 years ago. It’s not a symptom of some recent outbreak of bias, real or perceived. That decline has accelerated with the rise of the Internet, and even moreso with the advent of instant-publishing and social networking capabilities available to anyone with an Internet hookup. Bad delivery has always been the quickest way to drive away subscribers, but even papers with superb customer service have suffered steepening readership and advertising declines. Papers of all kinds — big, small, liberal, conservative, good delivery, bad delivery — they’re all in the same boat. Better writing and delivery are always the goal, but it’s not the cause of the the industry’s current state, nor it is going to stem the digital tide.

Second, almost no paper sells “online subscriptions” as its primary distribution model. The Gazette sells subscriptions to an electronic replica of the printed paper,and that’s all it is — an electronic replica. If you think there’s bias in Gazette reporting, the same bias shows up in the electronic replica. And since nearly all newspapers are suffering revenue declines, even the “good newspapers,” the argument that good ones are getting the ad dollars at the expense of the bad ones doesn’t hold water. Advertisers aren’t taking their money out of print because of some concept of news bias; they’re moving their ad dollars to where the eyeballs are — online.

Whether the economy is up or down or the industry is in a period of growth or decline, it’s possible to have good and bad newspapers. The industry’s profound shift is not some kind of cosmic journalistic justice for the sins of bias.

People still respond strongly to watchdog journalism.

The most-viewed story today at gazette.com, by a 9-1 margin over the No. 2 story, is the ongoing revelations in the John Newsome story. First it was KOAA’s hidden-camera report on his drinking and driving; then it was Newsome’s mea culpa.

Modern journalism must do many things. It must tell the story of what happened and what to watch for. It must be an independent monitor of public institutions and officers. It must present a rounded picture of community life. It is trying to figure out how to be an enabler of a community network, and not a mere announcer of facts that a group of editors decides is important.

In this Long-Tail, Here-Comes-Everybody, web2.0 world, going out and getting the story almost seems like making buggy whips. Any blogger with a decent cellcam could have reported and published the Newsome story, and it would have been just as important and newsworthy. Maybe someday soon, someone will do something equally as blockbuster. Actually, not maybe. It will happen.

And when it does, citizens will be equally transfixed, as they should be. Because it’s not the method that matters. It’s the information. Accountability from our public servants still matters. Thus, the watchdog still matters, and their numbers are increasing.

Just got a call from a reader questioning this illustration, which accompanied a wire story on Tuesday’s Life cover about teachers who create personal pages on MySpace, Facebook and other social networks. Turns out that some teachers reveal a bit more about themselves — and of themselves — than they would let on while in the classroom.

The illustration shows a black person — maybe a teacher, maybe a student. The reader’s question: are we trying to say something negative about black educators by associating an image of them with a story that reveals a stunning lack of circumspection among some professional pedagogs?

I can say with authority that the Gazette did not intentionally mean to send any message about race. But if I hear the reader correctly, it’s not our intentions that are at issue, it’s the unintended perceptions that our decision to use this image might create. It made me stop and think.

A reader sent me a note saying he will drop the paper because of “your distortion of NEWS in favor of your ideological and political values.”

The reader claims our news stories betray a conservative bent. In particular, Sunday’s front-page story about Peyton resident Krsiti Burton’s attempt to place an anti-abortion measure on the Colorado ballot is an example of “playing to your evangelical right wing readers.”

“Hopefully they will be enough to keep you in business,” the reader says.

As of Sunday night, the story was the object of a lengthy and intense debate among readers, judging by the online comments. A good number of them have a very low regard for Burton’s initiative. If we were biased as accused, we would delete criticism of the measure.

Point is, we don’t use our news pages to make a play for conservatives, liberals, Whigs, Know-Nothings, anarchists or people of any other political persuasion. Some stories deal with topics that appeal to various groups. But publishing a story whose topic is appealing to a particular group is not the same thing as carrying that group’s water. A few weeks ago, we published a story about a local Jewish teen who didn’t like the fact that her school had scheduled its prom on Passover. The story didn’t claim one or the other was correct. It was simply an interesting issue that pitted some basic values against each other — the kind of conundrum that pluralistic societies have to work through.

The Burton story is a profile of a local person responsible for a citizen initiative that, should it qualify for the ballot, promises to be the most controversial measure placed before Colorado voters since Amendment 2. What the story is not, is a complete analysis of the pros and cons of her idea. That story will come later, if the measure makes it to the ballot. That’s the way we, and any other newspaper I can think of, does things. People in the news, especially local people, get profiled. Ballot measures get examined closely, once they’re actually on the ballot.

Given how many newcomers have arrived in recent years and how transient our population is, there’s a good chance you never experienced living in Colorado Springs while Bob Isaac was mayor. “Mayor Bob,” as he was called, died Friday afternoon in the same town in which he was born.
He was the first elected mayor of Colorado Springs, and he dominated local public affairs like no other figure since maybe Spencer Penrose. Just to give you an idea: the municipal courthouse was named for him years before he died.
His news obituary is being written and posted at this moment, and is in the hands of Rich Laden, who covered City Hall during much of Mayor Bob’s reign. No journalist knows Isaac’s legacy as thoroughly.
That legacy will be much debated: Mayor Bob oversaw an annexation boom that pushed the city’s boundaries outward at a rapid pace. Some will see him as an architect of sprawl; others will see him as visionary.

Behind today’s rather perfunctory news account of our legal tussle with the sheriff are some ringing words from 4th Judicial District Judge G. David Miller that ought to be required reading for any public official.

Backstory:

A El Paso County Sheriff’s deputy, Shawn Moncalieri, arrests two men in early 2007. Something goes wrong. Shortly thereafter, Deputy Moncalieri is dismissed from the force.

The Gazette asks, twice, to see the internal investigation file that documents the episode. The Sheriff refuses.

Fast forward one year. The Gazette learns that the county had secretly paid $20,000 to each of the men arrested by Moncalieri, to avoid a lawsuit.

The Gazette again asks for the investigation file, and is denied. The Gazette sues for access to the file.

In its response to the complaint, the county claimed the Gazette’s request “has been denied by El Paso County as being contrary to the public interest and violative of the privacy interests of Deputy Moncalieri.”

To which Judge Miller responded, in so many words: Say what?

“In this case we have a government body paying a large sum of public money to two citizens because of alleged tortuous acts of a government servant. The internal affairs investigation is likely the operative document that convinced the governmental body to pay the settlement sum in order to receive a release of liability. The public has a legitimate interest in knowing how law enforcement officers behave while doing their jobs, and how their superiors respond when claims of misconduct are raised and later validated by investigation. That interest becomes absolutely compelling when taxpayer dollars are spent to pay for the misdeeds of public servants.”

It really is simple: When you work for the public, the work you do, and the mistakes you make, are public. As Judge Miller noted, the facts of this episode “reflect actions while on duty, in public, and in the presence of witnesses.”

Nor was the judge buying the county’s assertion that future investigations will be more difficult if there’s a chance the details and findings can be reviewed by citizens.

“Assuming that these investigations are conducted for the correct purpose of identifying official misconduct, there should be no ‘chilling’ of future investigations or potential witnesses simply because the information may be released to the public.”

But here’s the part I hope all other elected officials read. Judge Miller gets right to the heart of the flaw in the line of reasoning, all too common among public officers, that transparency hurts the government’s ability to do its job. On the contrary:

“In fact, a review of the subject investigation by the Court reflects positively on the officers and supervisors who candidly expressed concerns about deputy Moncalieri’s conduct and performance. Stated another way, the public interest is most certainly enhanced by a transparent look into how our local law enforcement reviews accusations of misconduct against its deputies. . .

“[I]t is likely that any dispassioned reader of these lengthy investigations will come away with the conclusion that many individuals with the Sheriff’s office acted with diligence and integrity in the reporting, investigation and evaluation of these complaints.”

Emphasis mine. Moral: when you conduct public business in the sunshine, you gain credibility. And when you gain credibility, you gain authority.

Interestingly, the judge’s ruling indicates that the most strenuous objections to release of the investigation file came not from the county, but from the two people arrested by Montcalieri. Their lawyer filed a motion asking that the names of his clients be kept secret. While the judge agreed to balance their truly private information against legitimate public interest in the investigation, he didn’t go along with the claim that the two people are entitled to complete anonymity:

“[T]hat interest . . . was subordinated to the public interest of full disclosure when they chose to hire an attorney and assert a claim for monetary damages out of taxpayer funds.”

Important footnote: We still haven’t received the investigation file. We expect an appeal.

Read Judge Miller’s Ruling

The newsroom is training on a new publication computer system. Our current platform, which was the first at the Gazette to replace knife-and-paste page makeup in 1996, is a vintage that isn’t even supported any more. That makes our I.T. director very nervous.

The new system, made by Digital Technology International, will continue to create page files that are turned into printing plates, but also gives us the ability to send the same news stories, photos, video, and other information flying in a bunch of digital directions — e-mail, SMS, Twitter, blogs, gazette.com . . .

Getting nearly 100 people trained in a new software environment, while still keeping the business running, takes some coordination. Half the staff is in class for a week of half-day lessons (page designers and some other power users get two weeks), while the other half puts out the paper. Then the process repeats, roles reversed. Then individual sections of the paper, sports first, convert to the new system. For a few weeks, parts of the paper will be produced by the old system, and parts by the new. Two computer networks will be running simultaneously, the new gradually overtaking the old, probably by mid-June.