Thursday, March 23, 2006

When in doubt, run the press release

The Lamar Democrat, after showing some initiative on a couple of recent stories concerning the O'Sullivan Industries bankruptcy reverted to form in its Saturday, March 18 edition.
The news that O'Sullivan is going to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy was quite rightly placed in a prominent position on page one. Unfortunately, all the editor did was to run the company's news release verbatim. The article did not feature any reaction from city officials or anyone from the Barton County Chamber of Commerce, or most importantly, no reaction from workers.
No background was provided, and no timeline was given of the events leading up to the announcement. And in a situation in which many of the company's moves have been detrimental to the city (including its welching on city utility bills and on bills owed to numerous local businesses), leaving the writing up to some paid flack for the Newell Rubbermaid Mafia smacks of dereliction of journalistic duty.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

dan dan hes tha man if he cant do it no one can