All Globe editors, columnists think Woolston being railroaded

Does anyone really believe that more than two weeks have passed and the Joplin Globe has not received a letter to the editor or a "guest column" criticizing City Councilman Mike Woolston or supporting the results of the recently-issued state audit?

Let's take stock of what we have seen since the audit was issued last month.

-A rambling dissertation by guest columnist and former blogger Anson Burlingame urging that the audit be challenged and asserting that Wallace-Bajjali could have succeeded if it had not been for sinister forces (the city council members who voted to fire City Manager Mark Rohr) who kept the company from doing its job. He never mentions that Wallace-Bajjali had never successfully completed any other job.

-A guest column by Rohr in which he also says that those same sinister forces stood in the way of Wallace-Bajjali's success. (It has to be true. Mark Rohr said it and he staked his reputation on Wallace-Bajjali.)

-A prominent Sunday column by Editor Carol Stark, in which she criticized the state auditors for not being forthcoming in discussing their audit with her reporters. This means, of course, in this alternate Stark reality that the audit is flawed, in the same way that the Loraine Report was flawed. That way, of course, is that it did not reveal the results Stark and her friends among the unelected power brokers in Joplin wanted.

-Two letters attacking the audit, both of them, if I remember correctly, from Dianne Slater of Joplin.The most recent letter was included in Sunday's Globe under the headline "Don't Rush to Judgment in Woolston Case."  In the letter, Slater refers to the "flawed" Loraine Report, and includes this statement- "A first-year law student reading the witness statements in that report would immediately see that the witnesses were led by Loraine- just one of many issues surrounding that 'investigation.' "

I would say most first-year students would say Thomas Loraine did a masterful job of unearthing information, considering that he did not have subpoena power and did not receive cooperation from many he wanted to interview, including David Wallace, Charlie Kuehn, and Carol Stark.

And still not one letter, not one guest column even questioning Woolston or demanding that the state audit result in some action concerning his documented activities over the past couple of years has been seen in the area's newspaper of record. Of course, people who think that way may have long stopped reading the Joplin Globe.

(Later today, new information on how the Joplin Globe under Editor Carol Stark has allowed its favorites to heavily influence editorial coverage.)