Press Releases: Straight to video

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Over the past few years, Frank Blethen, the guy in charge of the Seattle Times Company, which owns the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, and the Waterville-based Morning Sentinel, has spent a lot of time supporting federal regulations that limit media consolidation, saying more owners equal more viewpoints, equals better democracy.

But recent moves by the Press Herald suggest that at least the first part of that equation isn’t necessarily true. While the paper may be owned separately from the city’s TV stations, it’s starting to act a lot like them, missing an opportunity to actually serve its audience something new.

Consider, for example, coverage of a vacant house that apparently filled with natural gas and exploded in South Portland on October 1.

Press Herald “online reporter” Dieter Bradbury, who has been with the Press Herald his entire 27-year journalism career, went straight to the scene after hearing about the explosion. Bradbury’s video on the Press Herald’s site was shaky, often without audio, and spent a lot of time showing us fire trucks with flashing lights and police officers walking around. Bradbury and other staffers filed written updates to the story throughout the day, and even into the next.

Other than the video pros covering the silent spots with voiceover, the Press Herald’s work was nearly identical to the TV coverage of the event.

But even Portland’s broadcasters don’t think the city needs more TV news. Two of the five channels that could have their own local news programs instead outsource it to other local stations. WCSH, the NBC affiliate on Channel 6, has a 10 pm news broadcast on WPXT, the Channel 12 CW affiliate. And WGME, the CBS station on Channel 13, puts out a 10 pm news show on WPFO, the Fox affiliate on Channel 23 (Channel 7 on cable).

It’s uncommon for print Press Herald stories to mention the TV coverage of the same events. But editor Jeannine Guttman continues to talk about “convergence” between the paper and the paper's Web site. We should expect, then, a good package story in the paper and online the following day, referencing video, at least, and maybe the previous day’s frequent updates.

Think again.

The 1250-word effort by staff writers Trevor Maxwell and Ann S. Kim on October 2 was written and presented — on the front page — as if no one reading it had heard the slightest rumor of a story that had received blanket coverage from the TV evening news and the Press Herald’s own Web site.

There is no mention — even in the online version of the story — of any video or previous coverage on the Press Herald’s site. And on subsequent days, the in-paper follow-ups repeated information that had been widely available hours earlier from the TV stations. The online follow-ups never once mentioned or linked to any previous coverage on the Press Herald's site, not even the words-only updates.

Let’s not kid ourselves — this was an insignificant story. It had good visuals (if you define “good” as a roof lying on the ground surrounded by tiny bits of wood), but nobody was dead, or even injured. No tragic tale of a life cut short — just a couple of neighbors who were a bit startled by the blast. Not even a family left homeless — the building was under construction and vacant.

The Press Herald has spent a lot of ink on Guttman’s talk of “trailblazing” news coverage. Its staff had a chance at a trial run at collaboration and teamwork on this story, with not much at stake if they did it poorly. Perhaps they gave it a try; if so, they failed so miserably that any effort was completely invisible. Or they didn't try, and will have to work out the logistics while on deadline for a vital story. Either way, they missed a chance to show Portland what they think news coverage should look like.

Gov’t secrecy is fine with Maine’s attorney general

Published in the Portland Phoenix

A man widely believed to be interested in becoming Maine’s next governor, Democratic Attorney General Steven Rowe, is refusing to defend the state’s Freedom of Access Act from a court ruling that would destroy the state’s open-government law almost entirely.

The ruling — that a three-man commission appointed by Rowe can keep its records secret because it was not a government body engaged in government business — is being appealed to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, with the support of the Maine Civil Liberties Union.

If upheld, the ruling would allow Rowe — and any other government official — to “outsource” official business to a purportedly “independent” group of handpicked appointees, in complete certainty that the group’s actions will never become public.

The dust-up centers on the 1989 conviction of then-31-year-old farmer Dennis Dechaine for the 1988 rape and murder of 12-year-old Sarah Cherry, in Bowdoin. Dechaine was sent to prison for life, but a group of citizens who believe he is innocent have subsequently reviewed as much of the evidence in the case as possible — and have taken their efforts to the Legislature and through the courts to overrule repeated refusals from Rowe’s office to turn over documents. One member of the group, James Moore, a retired agent of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, has published two books detailing this investigation and the evidence he has found.

Even without access to crucial documents, Moore’s research raised enough questions in lawmakers’ minds that in 2003 they passed a law specifically forcing Rowe to open his office’s files to the public. And, in 2004, when Rowe violated that law by failing to hand over everything, Moore took him to court and won, getting copies of previously withheld state evidence — including information kept from the jury. Moore and others believe these documents prove Dechaine could not have killed Cherry.

Which brings us back to the Freedom of Access Act. After being forced to release his records, Rowe appointed the three-man commission to investigate the allegations, from Moore and others, of police and prosecutorial misconduct in the case. Rowe promised Dechaine’s advocates that he would publicize the commission’s report, which he did. It’s available on the AG’s Web site even today. It concludes that there was no “substantive merit” to the allegations of wrongdoing.

But when Moore asked to see the commission’s supporting evidence — the documents they reviewed and the notes from interviews they conducted — the commissioners refused, claiming that they are not, in fact, a government agency required to open their files.

In July, a judge agreed with them, but Moore has appealed that decision to the state’s highest court, arguing that the principles of open government demand their files be made public.

Rowe could, at this point, throw his weight behind Moore’s appeal and argue on behalf of the people of Maine that the Freedom of Access Act is gutted by the July ruling. But the attorney general, who has been selected four consecutive times by the Legislature to be the state’s chief law-enforcement officer, and who has once been formally asked by a resolution of the Maine House to support a retrial for Dechaine, appears to be on the side of secrecy. He is refusing to argue — in court or elsewhere — that the commission’s records should be made public.

Despite the fact that Rowe, in his memo appointing the commissioners, wrote that the group would be performing a “very important public service,” he now apparently supports the position that the report was not, in fact, the product of a public body.

Rowe did not return multiple calls seeking comment for this story.

“Presumably what [the commission] found makes the officials look good,” says Moore, professing confusion about why the commissioners have refused to open their files, and why the AG’s office has not gotten involved.

The MCLU is more direct about the long-term consequences of Rowe’s inaction: “The court order, unless overturned on appeal, creates a template by which public officials can dodge Freedom of Access laws by transferring their work to committees outside the scope of the Freedom of Access Act,” says Sigmund Schutz, from the Portland law firm Preti Flaherty, who is helping the MCLU with the case.

While we can lament his lack of resolve as attorney general, we can also act on it should Rowe ever appear on a ballot for governor.

US Rep. Allen to protestors: go directly to jail

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Neither US Senator Susan Collins nor the man challenging her for her senate seat will mention an important difference between the two: First District US Representative Tom Allen, a Democrat, has activists arrested when they demonstrate at his offices; Collins, a Republican, lets them stay.

In February, two anti-war protests at Allen’s Portland office resulted in 19 arrests. There were eight more, on September 25, at a rally supporting impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney.

“In Allen’s office, [the staff] really have the attitude like, ‘Why are you coming here? [Allen is] a liberal Democrat. You should be voting for [him],’” says Bruce Gagnon, a longtime Maine peace activist who has been arrested at several nonviolent civil disobedience demonstrations. He says Allen’s staff has been “cold and harsh and even a bit nasty to us” since at least 2005 (see “A Somber Occupation,” by Sara Donnelly, December 14, 2005).

Mark Sullivan, Allen’s spokesman, says the staff calls the police to arrest demonstrators because “at the close of business, we can’t leave the office with people still there.”

“I hope they realized that the man they work for had ordered the arrest of eight of his constituents,” wrote one of the eight who was arrested, Jonathan Queally, in an e-mail to the Phoenix, “whose only demand was that he uphold his solemn oath to defend the Constitution of the United States by holding Bush and Cheney accountable.”

Collins’s office doesn’t feel the need to involve the cops. At a March protest, a member of the senator’s staff was willing to stay the night to avoid throwing the demonstrators out or leaving them alone in the office, says Collins spokeswoman Jen Burita. She says the 12 arrests during that protest were at the insistence of security staff who needed to secure the Margaret Chase Smith Federal Building, not at the request of Collins’s staff.

The test of the senator’s hospitality came on August 31, when five anti-war protestors from Farmington visited Collins’s Portland office, which is not in a federal building. The group, all women involved in Farmington’s chapter of the protest group Women in Black, had an appointment with one of Collins’s aides, in which they urged the senator to end funding for the Iraq war. After that, all five stayed in the office and began reading aloud the names of Americans and Iraqis killed in Iraq.

At the end of the day, the aide asked if the women intended to stay. “We said we hadn’t finished reading the names,” says Lee Sharkey, a retired UMaine-Farmington professor who was with the group. The aide’s response made it “clear we could have stayed all weekend,” Sharkey says, but the aide has a family, and she was “uncomfortable” with the idea of staying so late on the Friday of Labor Day weekend. Sharkey says the protestors “had nothing against her” and didn’t want to keep her from her family, so they left voluntarily at around 9 pm. There were no arrests.

“Clearly the senator wasn’t interested in that kind of negative publicity,” Sharkey says.

Activists have had mixed results at the offices of Maine’s other two delegates to Washington.

Republican Senator Olympia Snowe’s office in Bangor has been “very, very bad,” says Gagnon. “The chief of staff ... slams the door in your face, won’t even let you get in.” In September 2006, 11 people were arrested there during a sit-in. Snowe’s Bangor office is not in a federal building.

At Second District Democratic Representative Mike Michaud’s Bangor office on September 26, the staff was so polite and welcoming to anti-war demonstrators, that the protestors “decided not to sit-in his office,” Gagnon says. “They felt they were having a real dialogue.”

Allen’s efforts to avoid speaking with protestors are extensive: those arrested in February were warned that Allen’s staff would have them arrested again if they returned to the building within a year. The protestors objected, saying that prevented them from having access to their elected congressman, and the warning was retracted, according to Kathe Chipman, who was arrested on February 21 and again on September 25.

Chipman, a retired art-and-architecture librarian, chose not to pay a $40 bail commissioner’s fee on September 25, and stayed in jail overnight because, she says, “I believe that sitting on the floor of an office paid for by taxpayers beyond closing time is not a criminal trespass but rather a purposeful presence, one that is the opposite of ‘criminal,’ since the sole goal is to effect honest adherence to the Constitution of the United States.” She was released without being charged the following day.

None of the February protestors at Allen’s office was charged with a crime, says Portland lawyer John Branson, who has represented people arrested at both February events. And Branson doubts the eight arrested September 25 will be charged, though prosecutors have reserved the right to do so.

“It’s a political decision,” says Branson. “This Republican district attorney [Stephanie Anderson] has essentially done a favor for this Democratic member of Congress by making the story go away very quickly” by not charging those arrested at his office. With Allen challenging Collins, Branson wondered aloud how long Anderson’s favors would continue.

On the Web
Video of protest: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=maineactivist | http://www.youtube.com/user/patriciaWheeler

BruceFest: Music Seen at Bubba's Sulky Lounge, September 22, 2007

Published in the Portland Phoenix

On Saturday evening, Bubba's filled with fans eager to hear tributes to the heartland-rocker-in-chief, the gravel-voiced singer wrapped in the American flag. No, it wasn’t Toby Keith at the Tweeter Center (though that, we hear, was a great show, too). It was Portland’s fourth annual tribute to the Boss, Bruce Springsteen, on the occasion of his birthday (he turned 58 Sunday).

Founded and hosted by Phoenix scribe Rick Wormwood and his band, the Rumbling Proletariat, the night kicked off with “Blinded by the Light,” the first track from Bruce’s first disc, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973), performed by Elf Princess Gets a Harley, whose frontman, Brandon Davis, drunkenly slurred half of the song’s lyrics. Few noticed, though: the words are pretty unintelligible anyway.

Next came Handsome Dan Knudsen, whose performances of “My Hometown” (off 1984’s Born in the USA) and “Brilliant Disguise” (from 1987’s Tunnel of Love) had a touch of Weird Al Yankovic. It was a great lead-in to the Peter, Paul, and Mary–influenced quintet Chipped Enamel, whose three-song set started with a cruise in a “Pink Cadillac” (the B-side of the 1984 seven-inch single “Dancing in the Dark”), moved through “Fire” (the oft-covered song not released by Bruce until 1986’s Live/1975-1985 compilation), and ended with “My City of Ruins” (from 2002’s The Rising).

But nobody was quite ready for reverb-heavy An Evening With, who started a disco-fest on the floor with “Dancing in the Dark” (Born in the USA), slowed down with “Streets of Philadelphia” (from the soundtrack to the 1993 Jonathan Demme film Philadelphia), and echoed their way through “Thunder Road” (Born To Run).

By then, the floor was packed for a seven-song J. Biddy and the Crossfire Inferno power-set: “Atlantic City” (Nebraska, 1982), “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” (Born, again), “Prove It All Night” (Darkness on the Edge of Town, 1978), “I’m on Fire” (Born in the USA), "Trapped" (The Essential Bruce Springsteen, 2003), “It’s Hard To Be a Saint in the City” (Greetings), and “Born To Run.” The “Free Bird”-like interlude between the last two, however, meant it was time to burn on down the road.

Speak now, or forever pay for copies

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Last month, the Maine court system forbade the public to photograph court documents — a practice it had allowed for more than five years. The order, issued by Superior Court Chief Justice Thomas Humphrey some time in August, was secret . . . and never put in writing.

But after inquires from the Portland Phoenix, the state’s top judge, Chief Justice Leigh Saufley, has promised to revisit the change, and perhaps to formalize permission for the practice, which helps members of the public save money and time when reviewing court documents.

Reversing Humphrey’s order would likely have more impact on poor people involved in legal cases than on journalists or lawyers. According to Gregg Leslie, legal defense director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in Washington, DC, “non-media requesters [for court documents] are often people who are having a case brought against them . . . or they’re trying to bring a suit” to protect their rights or property. He also says that many states ban photographing documents to protect court-system revenue that comes from photocopying fees.

Saufley says one reason people may want to photograph court documents more than other government papers is because many agencies provide records electronically on their Web sites. The Maine courts do not. And they do charge photocopying fees — $2 for the first page and $1 for each additional page — that far exceed the actual costs.

By contrast, the federal courts have an online system that costs users eight cents per “page” viewed online, or, for in-person services at the courthouse, 10 cents per page of a computer printout and 50 cents a page for photocopies.

For years, people — including me — have avoided the state courts’ fees by bringing cameras into courthouses to photograph documents. When I was recently barred from photographing documents (based on Humphrey’s verbal order) a member of the Superior Court clerk’s staff told me it was because the courts want the revenue from photocopying.

State court administrator Ted Glessner said that’s not true: “We don’t get to keep or use any of the money” paid for copying fees.

He is technically correct. Court revenue goes into the state’s general fund, but that’s the same fund out of which the Legislature appropriates money for the court system. Lawmakers and court officials regularly talk about both the costs of the system and its revenue to the general fund.

In 2006, Maine’s court costs were $55 million, while revenues were an all-time high of $43 million, up from a meager $32 million in 2002. Of the 2006 record haul, $6.3 million was in “fees,” of which only $155,000 was for photocopying.

It used to be that photocopying was a service provided for the convenience of people who wanted copies of court records. The fees were instituted to cover the costs of photocopying, such as buying toner and paper, and paying for staffers’ time to make the copies (though all of that is already paid for by taxpayers). Now, though, photocopies are treated as a profit center.

Saufley takes pains to say that court-system revenue “has nothing to do with how much the Legislature should spend on access to justice,” but only after saying she might need lawmakers’ approval if the courts reduce their expected photocopying revenue.

She ends on a high note. In words suggesting she leans toward allowing the photographing of court documents, Saufley promises that at the very least the state’s advisory Committee on Media and Courts will discuss the matter publicly, and may recommend allowing the practice. If the practice is to be restricted, she says there will be opportunities for the public to weigh in, including — if it does go to the Legislature — public hearings before lawmakers.