Sour grapes

There’s a very practical reason why there’s nothing in the paper today about Shasta Groene’s return to the Wolf Lodge Bay site where she was abducted from last year: We didn’t know about it until we saw it on the 5 o’clock news.

But beyond that, an ethical question arises as to whether we would run a story about this media event in the first place.

“I was just frankly appalled at what I saw on television last night,” Steve Smith said. “I don’t want to sell papers on the back of little Shasta Groene.”

Indeed, we have made a concerted effort to avoid casting a spotlight on Shasta - in the beginning, we hemmed and hawed over whether it was possible to leave her name out of coverage entirely once it was revealed the abduction had turned into a sexual assault. Once Shasta had been found, photos of her started disappearing from the newspaper.

But beyond that, we, along with the Coeur d’Alene Press, were shut out from the event. “We’ve been trying to get Steve Groene to return our calls for months,” Idaho bureau editor Scott Maben said. We can only speculate as to why Groene is talking to some media outlets and not others.

Yet another wrinkle in all of this is the fact that Shasta’s privacy has been cited as a reason to restrict media access to the courtroom when Joseph Duncan’s trial begins. Whether or not Shasta’s TV interview will play a role in these discussions has yet to be seen.

Readers are weighing in on the issue at Huckleberries Online - feel free to share your thoughts.

Oops

The subhead on today’s Today cover, “Coward a natural to direct Civic’s ‘Private Lives,’” is not a suggestion that the playwright be exhumed to give notes to the cast. Nor is it a commentary on the fortitude of Trevor Rawlins, who will actually be directing the play. It’s just an oversight, one which generated a round of really bad puns at the table this morning that I won’t recount here. Feel free to offer your own, however.