Big-rig modules awaiting transport through Missoula.
As Missoula debates the transport of huge oilfield equipment through town, en route to the oilfields of Alberta, no one has stopped – until now – to ask where we get the gasoline we use each day.
This past week, the Missoulian dispatched reporter Kim Briggeman in search of an answer to that question. You’re going to be surprised by the answer, presented in detail in an A1 story in Sunday’s newspaper.
The quick answer: Canada.
The larger implication: You can’t shut off the oilfield equipment, or the flow of oil from Canada to the U.S., unless you intend to stop driving your car. Because Kim found that the Billings refineries that supply our gas stations here in Missoula rely almost exclusively on Canadian crude.
You’ll want to pick up a copy of Sunday’s paper to read the full story. It’s fascinating and essential reading – and good, solid, enterprising journalism – as our community continues its discussion of the “big-rig” transport project.
At the least, read it before you fill up another tank with tar-sands petrol.
Steve Breen, the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist for the San Diego Union-Tribune, has once again proved the importance of journalists going straight to the source.
Tormented by the Gulf oil disaster, but worried his bosses would think the idea hair-brained, Breen bought his own plane ticket and headed to the oil-slickened Gulf beaches earlier this month. There, he saw the devastation for himself and collected tar balls in a Tupperware container. His mission: to paint cartoons about the Gulf using the polluting crude itself.
The resulting cartoons, one of which is reprinted above, are powerful opinion pieces – simple, yet seering.
His bosses, of course, approved and in fact devoted full pages to displaying Breen’s five oil-tinted cartoons. One shows the Statue of Liberty cradling leaky oil drums, another spells “BP” in tarball-drenched ocean life. Response has been strong nationwide. They are watercolors, almost, created from oil.
“Week after week, we saw more and more of this oil spewing from the ground,” Breen said. “I wanted to do something powerful, something different.”
My interest here, though, is in congratulating and saluting Breen for his initiative and instinctive understanding that there is great value in getting out of the office and confronting news stories and newsmakers on their own turf.
Mike Johnson, left, and Bill Wiesner check vital signs on a grizzly bear they trapped near Ovando recently. Montana FWP is working on a federal study to determine the number of grizzly bears in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem. Photo by Michael Gallacher/Missoulian
When grizzly bears come to town, it’s a story. This week, when a sow grizzly and three cubs entered the Soda Butte campground near Yellowstone National Park, it was a tragic story.
By the time the bears left the campground, a Michigan man was dead and two other campers were badly injured.
That intersection of people and bears is the life’s work of Jamie Jonkel, bear manager for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Region 2. His work is the focus of our Sunday Territory cover story, and it’s a fascinating – and after the Soda Butte attacks – timely read.
Increasing numbers of people in bear habitat, and increasing numbers of bears as the species rebounds under federal protection, have generated lots of controversy, discussion and news stories in recent years. And Jonkel has been a key player.
Thus this Sunday’s in-depth look by reporter Rob Chaney and photographer Michael Gallacher, who spent time in the field with Jonkel’s bear management team, documenting their work with big bears and lots of people. Chaney has the story; Gallacher has the photos and a terrific audio slideshow.
Also coming Sunday: Chaney and photographer Tom Bauer take a look at the future of aerial firefighting – and of Missoula’s Neptune Aviation. With the nation’s fleet of big retardant bombers aging and dwindling, what will the next generation of airborne firefighting machines look like?
And we’ll have coverage of Saturday’s Celtic Festival in Missoula, which includes something called Irish road bowling – which involves a cannonball – that reporter Jamie Kelly intends to try.
And State Bureau reporter Jennifer McKee has a lengthy investigative piece on the state public defenders office, which has been criticized as ineffective – and worse. We’ll take readers inside the office and take a hard look at the problems.
And reporter Kim Briggeman is going to provide news that will surprise you and which answers this question: Where does the gasoline that flows from pumps in Missoula come from? If you answered Montana, Wyoming or the Dakotas, you are wrong!
And there’s more, more, more news, sports and features – but you need to get up Sunday and grab a Missoulian to read the full report. You’ll be glad you did!
Big Sky High School educator Kim Lucostic, beside student Chanelle Paakkonen, left, says, “My students determine the content of the newspaper. I advise them.” Lucostic is opposed to proposed changes to the MCPS publications policy. Photo by LINDA THOMPSON/Missoulian
The First Amendment – and high school students’ rights to speak and write freely in their newspapers and yearbooks – received a hearty pat on the back this afternoon from Missoula parents, teachers and students, and from University of Montana legal counsel David Aronofsky.
Unfortunately, Missoula County Public Schools administrators didn’t share their zeal. MCPS Superintendent Alex Apostle continues to insist it’s important to clamp down on student publications to “protect” the district and its students. And at least one high school principal appeared to attend today’s meeting to keep watch over his students and teachers.
As I’ve written before here, I wholeheartedly disagree with the proposed policy. It’s chilling, and unnecessary, and the wrong way to teach our young people about the First Amendment and this nation’s guarantee of a free and unfettered press.
No one said it better today than did Aronofsky:
“Let me tell you something,” he said, addressing Apostle directly. “Journalism isn’t any good if it’s not provocative and offending somebody.”
Indeed. Here is Jamie Kelly’s story on today’s meeting, as it will appear in Friday’s Missoulian.
By JAMIE KELLY
of the Missoulian
High school principals would get “the legal backing and the tools to censor” young journalists if the Missoula County Public Schools adopts a proposed publications policy, a University of Montana journalism professor said Thursday.
Clem Work, who teaches media law, was among a dozen people urging MCPS administrators to scrap the proposal – and in Work’s case, consider a new one.
“I would advocate going the other way,” he told a room full of people in the MCPS administration building. “Strengthening our commitment to teaching the role of a free press in society.”
Work is one of 15 people sitting on a special committee formed by MCPS Superintendent Alex Apostle to look into the policy, which has become highly controversial among academics, students and teachers.
Others committee members include student journalists, journalism teachers, the chief MCPS legal counsel and administrators including Apostle.
As proposed, the new language would update MCPS’ existing policy, scrapping some sections and adding others.
The most controversial changes would ban “socially inappropriate” journalism and writing “inappropriate due to the maturity level of the students” in school newspapers, yearbooks and other school-sponsored publications.
The district says it needs the new policy, in part, to address the threat of a lawsuit. But Apostle also said on Thursday that hurtful and demeaning things written about students are also a threat to the “educational mission” of MCPS.
“I have a responsibility as the superintendent to protect the district and its students,” he said. “When we disrespect a student in any way, it detracts from the mission of this school district. And our mission is clear – we want a rigorous curriculum and we want all students to graduate.”
But that curriculum won’t include a healthy respect and regard for the First Amendment if the policy is approved, others said.
The current policy already bans libelous, racist or obscene language, they said.
And spotting it “is what you have journalism teachers for,” said Dave Severson, a 20-year Sentinel High School journalism teacher and now president of the teachers union. “Otherwise, why not just make the principal the writer and editor-in-chief?”
******
Already, the proposed policy has made students nervous.
“You have to trust in your editors,” said Chanelle Paakkonen, who will be co-editor of the Big Sky Sun Journal this coming school year. “And I think that’s being taken away from me.”
Sentinel senior Michael Melugin complained that the policy “is not going to help anything. I don’t think it helps to make students afraid to write something.”
But MCPS chief legal counsel Elizabeth Kaleva countered that the Supreme Court has already outlawed the broad censorship that many feel is imminent at MCPS, and that school administrators “cannot viewpoint-censor articles.”
Much of the language of the policy is adopted from Hazelwood vs. Kuhlmeier, a 1988 Supreme Court decision that gave school administrators broad authority to regulate the content of publications published as part of the school curriculum.
Yearbooks and newspapers in Missoula’s high schools are part of for-credit journalism classes. Such publications are not a “public forum” and therefore subject to more stringent standards, the court said.
But MCPS’ policy goes beyond the limitations of Hazelwood by using terms like “socially inappropriate,” said David Aronofsky, UM’s legal counsel, who drew the afternoon’s only applause with his testimony.
“Let me tell you something,” he said, addressing Apostle directly. “Journalism isn’t any good if it’s not provocative and offending somebody.”
Most people, including school principals, would fail a test on libel law, he said. And as written, the policy could be used to strike any objectionable material – libelous or merely distasteful to a school administrator.
“In 10 years, you’re going to be retired,” said Aronofsky, drawing the only applause during the two-hour meeting. “We’re not going to have a record of the committee’s intention. We’re just going to have the words of this policy.”
*****
Bob Campbell, a delegate to the Montana Constitutional Convention in 1972 and author of much of its language regarding the First Amendment, urged the district to abide by that constitution and dismiss the Hazelwood decision, which journalism teachers view as onerous.
“The burden is not on (the students),” he said. “The burden is on you to prove you need to abridge their right to publish.”
Journalism teachers at Big Sky and Sentinel said they are capable of teaching and leading their students, and that the policy is overly broad and could be used as a weapon by a school principal.
“I’ve never had a principal in my 18 years review the newspaper,” said Kim Lucostic, journalism adviser at Big Sky. “My students determine the content of the newspaper. I advise them.”
When something controversial arises, “I will talk with (my principal) about it, and I share what’s going on.”
Sentinel’s Jennifer Keintz and her students already have to turn in their stories to principal Tom Blakeley days before they’re published, but that may change next year after discussions between the two.
Still, the policy “makes us very nervous,” she said.
In a quick vote as the meeting wrapped up, 11 of the 15 advisory board members present said they wanted the district to scrap the proposal and let the existing policy stay.
The recommendations of the committee will be forwarded to MCPS’ policy committee, which will take up the issue again on Aug. 25.
When things start moving a bit faster than she’d like, my Aunt Laura likes to holler out: “Whoa mule!”
These days, in newsrooms all across the country, someone probably ought to be shouting out the “whoa mule” every now and again.
In fact, at least one blogger this week suggested a “slow-news movement” to counteract the rush to print – before facts are checked – prevalent in some corners of the industry nowadays.
Walter Shapiro, a senior columnist at PoliticsDaily.com, put out the call in a Tuesday post.
“What we need in this country — and I am being entirely serious — is a Slow News Movement,” he said.
“Maybe we can never return to the era when we learned the news by reading a hefty newspaper with breakfast and watching a 30-minute network newscast before dinner. But there was something comprehensible about that bygone pace of news delivery. We could think about what happened in the world, read bits of stories aloud to our spouse and even discuss things at work around a physical (as opposed to metaphorical) water cooler. If something epic and tragic occurred like the Kennedy assassination, then the TV networks pre-empted the soap operas and the sitcoms to give us the round-the-clock coverage we craved.
“But now we all have the attention span of . . . sorry, I lost my train of thought — I was checking my BlackBerry. We have lost sight of so many significant aspects of our age because they cannot be boiled down to bite-sized news nuggets. It is more than combat fatigue that produces the bizarre reality that — military families aside — most Americans appear to have almost forgotten that we are still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. These are wars that defy easy answers, and the latest updates from the ever-shifting battlefields cannot be encapsulated in 140-character tweets.
“A Slow News Movement would be a form of reader rebellion. The faster-faster, win-the-morning, dominate-the-evening proponents of the new instant information journalism are not going to change their methods. Nor are the stink-bomb-tossing Breitbarts of this world suddenly going to behave like the reincarnation of Walter Lippmann. The reigning media orthodoxy is that tomorrow will be like today — only more amphetamine-laced and more irresponsible.”
While I like much about the immediacy of the various forms of new media – and, in fact, just spent the day at a social media workshop in Billings – I do think a number of newsrooms and independent bloggers have abandoned the basic journalistic tenets of fairness, accuracy and balance in the rush to break a story on the web. Some of these “stories,” when actually checked, aren’t even stories. But they’ve been published nonetheless and remain on the web for hours, days or forever.
And that, my auntie would say, is when you should whoa up that ornery mule.
This month, the award for best letter to the editor by an inmate goes to Jeremy Valdes, a convicted double-murderer who wrote to the Ogden Standard-Examiner not just to complain about his trial and its coverage – as do most letters from convicts to news reporters and editors.
He was also writing to ask – for himself and his friends in lockup, he said – that the newspaper bring back “Garfield” and “Pearls Before Swine.”
“While I have you here,” he wrote, “my friends and I would like to request that you bring back the comics, Pearls Before Swines and Garfield. Thank you.”
The Standard-Examiner is, in fact, looking closely at its lineup of comics – something we’ll do here at the Missoulian in the fall. So it wants the feedback.
But who remembered the – pardon the pun – captive audience over at the prison? Now they’re on the record lovin’ Garfield.
I’ll keep you posted here on how Ogden votes – and we’ll compare that to Missoula’s tally when we survey readers this fall.
Sherry Devlin
I wrote about this first last week, shortly after the Associated Press reported on an alarming practice by political appointees in the national office of Homeland Security.
Seems that requests for the release of public documents submitted to Homeland Security under the Freedom of Information Act were subjected to lengthy political reviews for the past year. In fact, had the AP not uncovered the practice, I’m sure the delays would have continued indefinitely.
The idea: to limit “damage” to the administration caused by the release of documents that proved controversial.
The delay lasted months in many cases, and included these same appointees digging into the backgrounds of those folks filing the FOIA: journalists, lobbyists for nonprofit groups, congressional staffers, etc. All of which, of course, produces a chilling effect on the media and citizens – and even other politicians – fulfilling their essential watchdog role in our democracy.
And all of which comes in stark contrast to President Barack Obama’s promise – as his administration began – to open the doors of his administration to the scrutiny of journalists and the American public. That promise, quite simply, hasn’t been kept.
The Missoulian editorial board – which includes myself, publisher Stacey Mueller, opinion page editor Tyler Christensen, city editor Gwen Florio and advertising manager Jim McGowan – weighed in on the Obama administration’s failed promises in Sunday’s editorial.
Here’s what we said:
The United States government produces volumes of public information at a dizzying rate. It can be a challenge for news organizations, much less average citizens, to follow these ever-growing reams of information, pluck out the pieces that are most important, and hold them up for all to see.
A challenge, certainly, but one that is of critical importance to the success of our democracy. Our systems of government – from the most local city council to the most distant federal agency – can only be held accountable to the people on whose behalf they act if those people are kept informed of their actions.
The Obama administration has paid a lot of lip service to this truth, promising an unprecedented era of government transparency and public access. Unfortunately, the reality has failed to live up to the hype.
The most recent, and one of the more glaring, examples of this came with news that the administration has been subjecting Freedom of Information Act requests to intensive, unnecessary and time-consuming investigations – of the people and organizations filing the requests.
For more than a year, the Office of Homeland Security has been running information through a political review process before releasing it to the public, and conducting extensive background research on those members of the public, media or special interest groups who dare ask for information about the workings of our government.
Ironically, this practice came to light only after the Associated Press lodged a FOIA request demanding nearly 1,000 pages of internal e-mails. Those e-mails reveal that Homeland Security has made it routine to route any requests of a “controversial or sensitive” nature to senior political advisers. Apparently, it was also common practice to look into the requester’s background, political affiliations and who knows what else.
Caught behaving badly, the department promptly ceased the practice just as it released its e-mails to the AP. But that doesn’t reverse the damage done. While the administration contends that no requests were denied as a result of this process, they were undeniably delayed for an unconscionable amount of time while government officials performed unnecessary research about requesters and evaluated requests for their potential to do political damage.
Sometimes, just as important as what information we are given is when we are given it. Federal agencies should be and are afforded a reasonable amount of time to meet most FOIA requests: three days. But by making sure it received information first – and weeks ahead of the person making the request – the administration put itself in a position to control the flow and timing of information for its own benefit.
That is unacceptable. The people of this country must speak up and let the Obama administration know that we expect an open, accessible and transparent government – because information is power and the power, in these United States, rightly belongs to the people.
Daniel Schorr in 1975, as a CBS News correspondent.
Daniel Schorr is dead.
But his legacy will live in generations of journalists who were inspired by Schorr’s dedication to investigative journalism, his zeal for questioning authority, and his glee upon discovering that he was on President Richard Nixon’s “Enemies List.”
I first encountered Schorr – or the repercussions of his work – in 1976, as a congressional intern for Rep. Robert McClory of Illinois. McClory was a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, and was so concerned after Schorr broke the story on the findings of another committee assigned to investigate illegal CIA and FBI activities, that he had me hand-carry his communications to other members of the committee – in sealed envelopes that I could hand only to the specified congressman, not to anyone on his staff.
After he refused to identify the source that leaked him a copy of the Pike Committee report, Schorr was threatened with a whopping fine and jail time. He stood firm on his refusal, and was never fined or put in jail.
Schorr also came to the University of Montana shortly after I started work at the Missoulian in 1979 – as the Dean Stone Lecturer at the UM School of Journalism. I jostled for the assignment, to ensure my attendance at the speech. The audience was not disappointed: Schorr delivered a fiery exhortation to boot-leather, no-holds-barred reporting.
His passing brought this tribute from National Public Radio, including an awesome slideshow and several great audio clips. Schorr had spent his later years as an NPR correspondent. If you didn’t know of Daniel Schorr’s work, read these stories and watch the clips. He was quite the thorn in the side of government!
NPR’s tribute left me wondering about our obsession in journalism these days for the quick-hit story, the 140-character tweet and all sorts of other web-based gizmos and gadgets.
Those innovations, and others, all serve a purpose in bringing new audiences to journalism. But they cannot replace the tough investigative reporting that Daniel Schorr stood for. In fact, those of us who spend our workdays – and, in fact, our lives – as journalists could pay no greater tribute to Dan Schorr that this: To rededicate ourselves to investigative reporting. To hold ourselves accountable for achieving more in-depth, give-it-to-government reports, to following Schorr’s lead boldly and assertively into the halls of power.
Our congratulations and best wishes go out today to Robert Nichols, who is retiring as the Tobacco Valley News cartoonist after 34 years on the job.
That’s an impressive tenure in a tiny town like Eureka, one richly deserving of a long and happy retirement.
Here’s the announcement, as reprinted in Saturday’s Weeklies Reader column in the Missoulian:
EUREKA – In his very first editorial cartoon for the Tobacco Valley News, Robert Nichols drew a gas pump resembling a Las Vegas slot machine – a comment on the fact that gasoline was pushing (gasp!) $1 per gallon.
Now, five editors, 34 years and countless gallons later, Nichols is retiring.
According to reporter Krista Tincher, Nichols enjoyed a career of making people laugh and cringe and think.
“Humor,” he said, “is in the eye of the beholder. It’s a subjective thing.”
He always began his cartooning process with a look at the headlines, followed by a chat with the editor, “digging for humor between the lines of newsprint.” Some weeks, he drew as many as four cartoons for the paper to choose from.
“Sometimes,” he said, “when you feel like you want to say something, but you can’t say it without hurting somebody’s feelings – you can make it funny, and you can say it. And if you’re sly enough, you can say a lot.”
Nichols drew as a child, and later for high school projects, and for a college magazine at Montana State University in Bozeman. There he earned an art education degree, which led to work in Eureka Public Schools, where he taught art for 43 years before retiring in 2003.
Along the way, he drew thousands of cartoons for the local paper, always signing with his characteristic signature, “5¢.”
Enjoy your retirement, Bob, and know that you and your work will be missed by your friends and neighbors in Eureka.
I sure am enjoying the monthly Sunday Territory features by Michael Jamison and Kurt Wilson, celebrating Glacier National Park on its centennial year.
This Sunday’s installment is one of the loveliest.
It is a tribute to the artists who have helped share – and in the process, protect – Glacier’s great beauty over the past 100 years.
Art has been a part of Glacier Park’s story from the start: Railroad magnates knew the value of art in advertising the park and its chalets, and used it extensively.
These days, artists congregate in the park each summer to attempt what – at least to me – seems the impossible. I’ve always envied artists’ ability to look at an incredible scene and then re-create it on canvas.
Of course, I also envy the skill and talent that went into Michael and Kurt’s story-photo package for this Sunday’s newspaper. It’s beautiful.
So get up early, grab a newspaper and be inspired! Then head up to Glacier sometime in the month to come and wish those grand mountains, rivers and lakes a happy birthday!
On Garfield, prison inmates and reader feedback
This month, the award for best letter to the editor by an inmate goes to Jeremy Valdes, a convicted double-murderer who wrote to the Ogden Standard-Examiner not just to complain about his trial and its coverage – as do most letters from convicts to news reporters and editors.
He was also writing to ask – for himself and his friends in lockup, he said – that the newspaper bring back “Garfield” and “Pearls Before Swine.”
“While I have you here,” he wrote, “my friends and I would like to request that you bring back the comics, Pearls Before Swines and Garfield. Thank you.”
The Standard-Examiner is, in fact, looking closely at its lineup of comics – something we’ll do here at the Missoulian in the fall. So it wants the feedback.
But who remembered the – pardon the pun – captive audience over at the prison? Now they’re on the record lovin’ Garfield.
I’ll keep you posted here on how Ogden votes – and we’ll compare that to Missoula’s tally when we survey readers this fall.
Sherry Devlin