At the top of page one of Thursday's edition, the headline reads "Letter cites advice on firing." The story's lead- "It was special investigator Tom Loraine who advised Joplin officials in the firing of Mark Rohr without cause, a letter written by Loraine shows."
While the headline and lead are accurate, it is once again a case of the newspaper burying the lead and perhaps pushing its own agenda.
The cost of the investigation, which has been the subject of much coverage, comes directly as a result of something serious Tom Loraine discovered about Mark Rohr, something which was more worrisome even than the apparent conflict of interest of City Councilman Mike Woolston or the completely blown out of proportion accusations against Councilman Bill Scearce.
In fact, that is spelled out clearly in reporter Debby Woodin's story:
Loraine, in the Feb. 20 letter, said that as he took depositions in the probe that was to primarily focus on ethical questions regarding Councilmen Bill Scearce and Mike Woolston and an ote from Rohr's desk, "Mr. Rohr's conduct loomed larger than those issues originally outlined concerning Messrs. Scearce and Woolston."
Loraine's contention that Rohr's problems, whatever they were, were far more serious than those alleged against Scearce and Woolston is buried on the page 10A jump, in the eighth paragraph of the story.
That is what is called burying the lead.
The Globe has steered away from whatever it may be that served as a cause for Rohr's firing and instead concentrated on the 10 missing pages and its own "heroic" efforts to make those 10 pages public.
While I, too, think that the pages should be made public and that they will eventually become public, the Globe has spent little time looking into the important revelations that were included in the open session of the report.
Loraine believed the city should dump master developer Wallace-Bajjali. And there is certainly enough in that firm's history, which those read the Turner Report or who have done their own research know, while those who rely on the area's newspaper of record have not heard a thing about it. The firm has been riddled with bankruptcies, been investigated and fined by the SEC, had tor return $1.2 million to investigators, and have been accused in lawsuits of fraud and operating a Ponzi scheme.
Not one word of most of that has ever been in the Joplin Globe.
Woolston's actions were also questionable to say the least. After the Joplin Tornado, public officials should have known better than to get involved in anything involving real estate in the affected area.
Those findings have been almost completely ignored because of the Globe's fixation on Rohr and what appears to be an obvious effort to discredit Tom Loraine.
It also appears to be an obvious effort to affect the outcome of the April 8 election.
4 comments:
I keep waiting for the Rohr fans to cry out in dismay knowing that their hero was abandoning them. His faux display of moral outrage wasn't because he was being fired, but because that dismissal might have hurt his chances of being hired in the next town. That town, coincidentally, is just a few miles from Wallace Bajjalli headquarters. He is no hero. He was getting ready to abandon the ship like a lot of other folks have around here lately.
Ah, the sweet smell of money, it smells like Texas.
People need to stop and ask why the globe and rohr are Siamese twins. Is it because he was such a great manager? Lets take a look at his managerial skills: the most employee turnover in the history of Joplin, rampant waste of taxpayers money such as spending $300,000 to remove and replace the new downtown lights with newer downtown lights that "were more suitable to his style" and his well known domestic problems that no one talks about. He cant even manage his personal life.
So why does the globe keep its lips attached to his behind? Because one of his pie in the sky proposals was to buy out the globe property as part of a big multimillion dollar downtown re-development. what a sweet deal for the globe.Its no wonder they want the 5 council thrown out
Everything else, the cost of the investigation, who said what and who did what is just a diversion.
There is an old adage that goes something like this..... ( if you always do what you always did you always get what you always got) in other words nothing ever changes. In all of this attention given to Rohr and rehashing of the 911 all we are being given old news in a different form, nothing new. Now if someone on the council tried to buy the old J- Town property after the tornado for 95,000.00 and had been successful would we be talking about his using foreknowledge of things to come or a conflict of interest? By the way it wasn't Woolston. It was one of the good old boys on the city council. They should be ashamed of what they have done to the City of Joplin.
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