Huckleberries Online

SS: Miscreants Enjoy SR Departures

March 24, 2009 4:21 p.m. • 21 comments

To understand their impact (of Bill Morlin and Karen Dorn Steele leaving the SR), think for a moment about the people and institutions in our community who are today celebrating their departure. Other celebrants: City Hall politicians and bureaucrats. The Spokane Fire Department. The Spokane County Sheriff’s Department and especially its pre-Ozzie, but lingering, mouthpiece. County Republican officials, alleged business leaders, educators and clergy who either defended Jim West or stood back while other people exposed his misdeeds and then turned him out of office. Corporate environmental polluters. Aryan racists. Federal nuclear regulatory bureaucrats. Diploma mill operators. Religious cultists. Uncountable criminals, miscreants and thugs brought to the bar by Karen and Bill during their storied careers/Steve Smith, Still A Newspaperman. More here.

21 comments on this post so far. Add yours!

Fishwife on March 24 at 5:32 p.m.
“who either defended Jim West or stood back while other people exposed his misdeeds and then turned him out of office. Corporate environmental ”

So Steve, will you be inventing a Motobock Bill down in Portland? How’s that mayor doing down there?
Bent on March 24 at 5:41 p.m.
Typical Steve Smith …They are all celebrating in his mind, so it must be factual!

He doesn’t pose the question: I wonder if they are …? Or even say: Wouldn’t it stand to reason that they would… ?

Nope, according to Steve they are celebrating, but he can’t get anyone on the record to confirm that … so he’ll just state it as fact and follow with their denials:

SPOKANE — Mayor Verner denied Tuesday that the city has plans for a massive secret private party — complete with parade through Peoples Park (so Jack Lynch can attend) — to celebrate reporter layoffs at the Spokesman Review.

“We all know the entire civic structure I mentioned on my blog is a corrupt bunch of same-sex perverts trying to score drugs and sexual favors in the seediest parts of town, while working on the public dime,” Smith insinuates. “It was only a matter of time before these Good Ole Boys forced out the only people on the face of this earth who could possibly expose corruption.”

Well I guess Spokane will just have to collapse in the wake of all this corruption.

Give me a break. I’m sure these reporters were good people (well, except for one, but I won’t name that person) I just have to say get over it, Smith. You were instrumental in driving a once thriving newspaper into the ground. Go back and watch Frontline piece with an open mind…

Are you so sure that all of the ad dollars are drying up due to the economy? How many of advertisers and subscribers do you figure walked away from the paper in disgust during your tenure?

DFO, I know it’s beeen a tough transition for you, and sorry for the rant, but to make this small layoff any more or less significant than the loss of the ENTIRE Idaho newsroom just gets me BENT.
Escapee on March 24 at 6:56 p.m.
The nagging question that comes to mind each time I see the “Still A Newspaperman” column is…what good is it to be a “newspaperman” if you don’t have a “paper”? In my mind, he’s a former newspaperman, who perhaps will return to being a newspaperman once a newspaper decides to hire him, and we all know the climate of the newspaper industry in these troubled times. It sounds as if Mr. Smith is a sort-of self-appointed “Media Critic”. To be qualified to hold down an Editor Position, as Mr. Smith did, and may again, entails much more skill and judgment than I’ll ever have, so I’m not disrespecting Mr. Smith here. I just kinda wonder, ‘what’s the point’?
Cindy_H on March 24 at 7:00 p.m.
Hehehe Bent :-)
I happen to know exactly which reporter you are referring to, but for the price of a Bent beer, I’ll hold my tongue.
And BTW, give me a break! The loss of these veteran stalwarts is devestating to be sure. But really. Entire municipal departments holding celebrations upon their retirement?
Hyperbole, thy name is Steve.
Sam on March 24 at 7:51 p.m.
It seems to me the people who are all up in arms in this thread don’t apparently understand what Smith was trying to say with the post. He wasn’t being fully serious. He was relaying some of the absolutely fantastic stories those two reporters did to hold officials accountable.

I’m not sure there are two better reporters in all of the Northwest than those two. I’m thinking about all of the reporters I know and have met at the Seattle Times and P-I, The Oregonian and elsewhere and Dorn Steele and Morlin are right there at the top as two of the best investigative reporters around. They could have easily done bigger and better things but instead they chose to stay with the S-R.

That paper is, frankly, totally hurt by their departures, though I’m sure the paper will be able to find fresh talent that will be good and probably work up to the similar caliber. It goes with the circulation level of the paper – they’ll be able to hire great talent. But they’ve lost an amazing amount of institutional knowledge with those two gun. Lots of sourcing will be lost.
Sam on March 24 at 7:53 p.m.
By the way, I’m specifically focusing on those two reporters and not Smith. I never always agreed with my former boss (for full disclosure) and even went at him here on the blog. I don’t regret those debates, though I’m sure it never helped me get a job at that paper. I don’t really care, either. I also disagreed with Smith’s actions toward The Emerald, though I’m sure he meant well.

I’m sure Bent will come on here and tell me I am “entitled” to my opinion as he did last time. And my reply will be: Of course my am, that’s the point of the blog.
Sam on March 24 at 7:54 p.m.
“Of course *I* am.”

Even with a preview button. Seriously.
Sam on March 24 at 7:56 p.m.
By the way, though I am disappointed in no personal sense that these two reporters are leaving, I’m very, very pleased personally that my friend Meghann Cuniff gets to retain her job because of these departures. It’s a horrible win-lose, but Meghan is a damn good young reporter who deserves to be reporting information to the public. Smith did a great thing by hiring her (and that hire came over me, I should point out. I was mad for about 1 hour before I realized Cuniff is 10 times the reporter I am).
Sam on March 24 at 7:57 p.m.
And a note to Steve Smith:

“o date, no other medium exists to fill that role, certainly at the local level. TV won’t do it. Amateurish, ethics-lacking, drug-addled alternatives won’t do it. Bloggers, Facebook and Twitter communicators can’t do it — yet.”

… drug-addled alternatives? That’s ridiculous.
Bent on March 24 at 9:29 p.m.
Sam, what Smith was trying to say was not lost on me. I just totally disagree with him. His rant is more about him and than anyone or anything else. It’s a pathetic attempt to salvage an imaginary legacy he thought he had built at the SR.

His blog post illustrates the reason for his demise. He still holds this notion that cicvic fabric of Spokane is somehow corrupt to the core, and there is nobody to get to the bottom of it now that he and the reporters that did his bidding are gone.

He came at his SR job from day one with that preconcieved attitude, and he blatently ignored North Idaho as a backwater town unworthy of any serious news effort. What he failed to realize (or maybe he did, but couldn’t admit it), was the fact that the North Idaho news room owned the front page for the majority of the time he ran the paper.

What makes me sick at times is that he actually told some who I know that he would rather cut of an arm (north Idaho newsroom), to save the body (spokane newsroom). Sad. Really.

Chris Peck, like him or not, knew how to run a paper. He built the SR up into a top-25 newspaper — not by exposing the perfectly legal sexual habits of elected officals, but by taking the time to acurately and fairly reflect the happenings of all the “communities” in our region every single day. For the most part, Peck resisted the temptation to sensationalize. He understood the importance of keeping the story separate from the personalities and the newspaper. Well except for the time the SR shot a picture Mark Fuman’s wife at the airport, but everyone makes mistakes.

And look … I said all that without giving you permission to express your opinion ;-)
JBelle on March 24 at 11:24 p.m.
;)

That Bent is more than just anothe pretty face.

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D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.