The Newsleaders has received some flak and a letter to editor concerning a Dec. 1 news story I wrote about a Nov. 21 city council special meeting that revealed some discord among its members.
The accusations against the Newsleaders and me are unfounded.
First of all, that meeting was called because council member Jill Smith had received three derogatory, accusatory emails in one day from council member Jed Meyer, who then sent those same emails to the other council members.
That meeting, which included all five council members and the city attorney, was recorded on video and posted on the city’s website.
The meeting opened with Smith reading part of one of the emails after which Meyer acknowledged he was “emotional” when he wrote them. What Meyer was emotional (upset about) was the fact Smith had spoken directly to the Newsleaders in early October after she was the only council member to vote against a citywide solar-power ordinance. Smith wanted to emphasize, in the news story about the solar vote, the reasons for her “no” vote. She emphasized she is not against solar-power projects but she felt the ordinance decision should have been tabled until the council could again meet with the planning commission to revisit the issue while considering the results of a citywide resident survey of solar projects in the city limits.
It is not at all unusual or unethical for a newspaper to interview a council member who is a lone vote for “yes” or “no” on a particular issue or project.
In her interview with the Newsleaders, Smith emphasized the reasons she’d voted against the ordinance. In her interview, she did not once disparage any of the other council members for voting “yes.” She merely defended her own voting rationale.
At the special council meeting, after the email subject was brought up by Smith, council members’ rather rambling discussions focused on the importance of each member seeking out and receiving accurate information about issues to be decided at council meetings. There were no direct accusations, but the discord under the surface of the discussion was palpable: questions of trust, open communication, verification of facts, the need for teamwork, provisions of the Minnesota Open Meeting Law and more. Council members and the city attorney made some very good points about how councils should function.
One member, Tim Elness, blamed the Newsleaders for interviewing Smith and more or less stirring up trouble for the sake of “headlines” or to “sell papers.” Those charges are utterly unfounded. It was Smith who contacted the newspaper, and she had every right to do so.
She was also right to request an apology, and Meyer should have done so. The subsequent discussion, which strayed from the Meyer-Smith matter, did at times seem to be a kind of desperate brushing aside from that bristling issue.
The story written by me was a news story based strictly on what I heard and observed while reviewing the video tape. It was not an opinion column or an editorial.
It is not a reporter’s duty to editorialize when writing a news story – just to observe and report what is heard and seen, along with backgrounding of this or that issue. And it was not the reporter’s place to critique Meyer in a news story about his lack of apology.
One writer asked if my “personal agenda” had taken “precedence over the well-being of our city? Of Jill Smith?”
Those charges are wrong. There was no “personal agenda” in that news story. The reporter (me) had no reason or proof to believe Meyer and the mayor are in any kind of cahoots against other council members, as charged in a letter to editor. The story reflected what happened at that meeting, including its moments of discord.
The Newsleaders has since learned Meyer did eventually apologize to Smith. Good.
Now, in this opinion column, allow me to editorialize: Meyer should have apologized at that special meeting; other council members should have spoken up that an apology to Smith should indeed be forthcoming. They didn’t.