Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Flint Journal: Punked

A sometime poster here, Kevin McKague, has admitted that he is the real author of a letter from "Nona T. Reilly," which if you say it fast (or slow) comes out "No Not Really."

Don't know how long the letter will be up at the site, but Kevin's blog has a screen shot of the letter to prove it was there.

I saw it tonight. Used to be that the editors would call and actually talk to a letter writer to confirm the authenticity.

It's happened before and likely will happen again. Kevin, a pretty prolific letter writer, may have published his last letter to the editor in The Flint Journal, but you have to admit, it was a wild one.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe Kevin can start writing letters to the folks at The Saginaw News. He can start by asking them why they've done nothing on this:

http://www.wnem.com/news/24321430/detail.html

My apologies if the link doesn't work.

Anonymous said...

Flint Journal punked? Bulletin: expect more of the same! My understanding is that the Opinions Editor is based in faraway Bay City. Sure, he can keep in touch electronically, but the arrangement is fraught with risk and certain things falling through the cracks. Whatever is left of the risk-averse Opinions Department seems busy appearing on local access cable TV running political meetings and smiling for the camera as one of several FJ potted plants in the audience for various FJ booster club events. What to do? As I've said before on this blog, eliminate the politics among what's left of the staff and you take a big step forward right there. One thing positive about hiring a green editorial staffer, he or she doesn't carry the parisan, objectivity-damaging baggage of sitting on a handful or more of Flint civic and outright political committees and organizations. My understanding is that may be nothing new at the FJ, but that doesn't excuse it. In fact, one could argue that such behavior contributed to the paper's downfall. Bottom line: the FJ no longer can afford to be punked when it is fighting for survival as a "daily" newspaper. Thank you.

inky said...

The total collapse of professionalism at the Flint Journal, Saginaw News and Bay City Times is mind-blowing even to those of us who've always had low expectations of these papers' managers.

The Flint Journal published an editorial about Flint's library millage that waffled so much, the headline should have said "Eggo." How do you waffle on a library millage -- ether you support it or you don't.

Enlightened editorial page editors will even do a little independent research to develop an informed recommendation. But for a paper tht can't even verify letter writers, that's probably notgonnahappen.com

Anonymous said...

@ Anonymous 13:24
Saginaw news publisehd the story on Mlive, 36 minutes before the WNEM post you shared.

Published: Sunday, July 25, 2010, 5:00 AM

Anonymous said...

Anon 5 a.m., The Saginaw News did nothing before WNEM ran its story on the 11 p.m. news one week ago. Perhaps it scrambled to get something together before WNEM put its piece on its Web site.

And, of course, The Saginaw News amazingly ran a 1A, top-of-the-fold story yesterday, from what I've been told.

'Scooped by a TV station on a story that should've run ages ago. Sad.