Funeral coverage

Managing editor Gary Graham admitted he had some reservations about covering Otto Zehm’s memorial service yesterday. “I wasn’t convinced the story had reached that level,” he said. “We generally reserve funeral coverage to notable people … well known folks.”

In retrospect, though, Graham felt we did the right thing with the story. The turnout and reaction by friends and neighbors highlights the frustration many in the community are feeling about the altercation with police that ultimately led to Zehm’s death.

The back story

Our policy is to identify whenever we’re reporting on affiliates of the Cowles Company, which owns this newspaper. We slipped up in a recent story on this point, so when reporter Jonathan Brunt was working on his story on unpaid sewer fees , we took extra care to make sure we identified whether any of the violators were Cowles affiliates.

While we’ve got a list of the major companies that Cowles owns, it doesn’t include every single entity they’ve got a hand in. Assistant city editor Dave Wasson said that as of yesterday, the company wouldn’t give us a comprehensive list. What they would do, however, is let us read the list to a company representative, who would then confirm or deny whether a specific company was affiliated with Cowles. With over 3,100 names on the list, you can see how this wouldn’t be a very practical option.

So, in the interest of not delaying the story any longer than necessary, we opted to work with the information we had on hand. So, if one of the conspiracy theorists points out that some obscure Cowles interest owes $1.87 in sewer bills, you can’t say we didn’t try.