Monday, March 3, 2008

KJ Does It Again

It's been more than two months since the Kennebec Journal published a pro-Collins letter with a glaringly-incomplete writer attribution.

So I guess we should have expected this letter from Penny Morrell in today's paper.

Is this the same Penny Morrell who's sat on the Maine Republican Platform Committee, the Kennebec County Republican Committee and served as chair of the Belgrade Republican Town Committee? You wouldn't know it from reading the letter.

Let me reiterate: There's nothing wrong with Maine Republican officials cooking up letters to the editor as a way to frame the election debate. And there's nothing wrong with Maine papers printing those letters.

But would it be so difficult for KJ editors to spend a couple of seconds on Google? Would it be such an imposition for them to let Mainers know when a letter has been penned by someone who's part of the state Republican party apparatus?

3 comments:

mainefem said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Contrapositive said...

I removed the above comment because it lapsed, if only momentarily, into the kind of coarse, charged rhetoric I'd prefer we steer clear of here.

I've never been explicit about this, so let me take this opportunity: I hope the discussion here (while focused on the topic at hand) is vigorous and impassioned. But I'd also like it to stay within the bounds of civility.

Admittedly, there's no bright line separating civiity from incivility. So there will be some close calls, and I'll be the one making them.

But my hope is that these relatively loose constrainst--civility and relevance--will help keep the discussion here engaging and informative.

If the writer of the comment--or anyone else--would like to me to flesh out my thinking, just e-mail.

mainefem said...

Failure to vet well-known political activists, MRP party leaders, and former candidate's LTEs in Maine appears to be a chronic ongoing issue w/Blethen Maine Newspapers, Inc.

Naomi Schalit, Opinion Page Editor
(207) 621-5649 e-mail

Deja Vu, re: Keith Mahoney LTE

Google, indeedy.