LDN to Norwich: Drop Dead

Today’s editorial in the Local Daily Newspaper (LDN) is best understood as a formal declaration that it is simply not up to the task of covering public affairs in Norwich. Since Norwich is a small town – just 3,500 people, more or less – in the heart of the LDN’s circulation area, one is left wondering about the future of journalism in our community. And, of course, readers scratch their heads about the Norwich news – the real news, not the ginned up stuff one gets from mining the town list serve – that goes unreported.

On the surface, the editorial dredges up a familiar trope – the idea that public bodies are unfaithful to the spirit if not the letter of their states’ open-meeting “sunshine” laws. What the editorial omits – indeed, what never seems to enter into the discussion – is that open meetings are only half of these sunshine statutes. They also contain provisions requiring government instrumentalities, including municipalities, to make their records open to public inspection.

My fifteen years as a government employee allow me to state, unequivocally, that this is where the news is. When I was general counsel of the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission, I sat atop a pile of newsworthy documents the size of Mount Washington. But you had to know what to request, which required the kind of laborious digging and thinking associated with fabled investigative journalists like I.F. Stone and Seymour Hirsch.

Or . . . you can sit in the back of selectboard and school board meetings, scribbling down what gets said, and fuming about how anything that is interesting manages to get said behind closed doors. That’s what it seems to have come down to at the LDN.

The editorial complains that “clarity” is lacking in Norwich because the selectboard has held 13 executive sessions since January. Well, I’ve never even been to a selectboard meeting, and it’s clear to me what’s going on: The group of human beings consisting of the five selectboard members and the one town manager are having trouble working together and, it appears, are embarked upon an earnest effort to straighten it all out.

How would a newspaper find this out? Well, during my nine years as a fulltime journalist (1981 to 1990), I chiefly pursued two things: (1) a steady stream of written requests to inspect and copy documents, and (2) more importantly, a network of sources who could tell me where to look and share substantive information with me, both on the record and off the record.

Of course to have sources I also had to have credibility – I had to demonstrate that if people talked to me, I would be trustworthy and not take cheap shots. I was a callow fellow back then and sometimes I made mistakes in this regard. But usually I didn’t, and as a result I could report the news and not waste my time covering meetings.

In contrast, the LDN proves, time and again, that public officials in Norwich have nothing to gain by talking to the paper. An excellent example appears right in today’s editorial.

What an obnoxious shot they lob, straight into the face of Selectboard Chairperson Sarah Nunan. Reached earlier this month on the phone, she told Susan Boutwell of the LDN that “multiple personnel issues” were the reason for the executive sessions, adding: “I’m not sure there’s just one.”

“Well,” the editors huffed in response, “if the chairwoman isn’t sure, then you can be sure we aren’t either.”

The point Sarah Nunan was making is perfectly obvious, it would seem, to everyone but the LDN’s editors. She was seeking to undermine the assumption that it all comes down to difficulties between the selectboard as a body and Town Manager Pete Webster. “I’m not sure” is a well-worn rhetorical device, meaning: “I do not agree that . . .”

Well gosh. Whether Sarah Nunan ever shares anything with the LDN on background is between her and them. But if I were her, after such treatment I’d hang up the next time the paper calls. Which is why the LDN is reduced to whining about its inability to get good quotes and information at public meetings.

As it must, the LDN concedes that the selectboard is within its rights to discuss personnel issues – the “appointment or employment or evaluation of a public officer or employee,” in the statute’s parlance – behind closed doors. But the LDN argues that selectboards should not use this perfectly legal reason for an executive session as an “excuse” to meet privately.

This argument does not withstand skeptical scrutiny.

In 15 years of government service, I was never subjected to having my personnel status or job performance discussed by my supervisors in public and I have never seen anyone else subjected to that kind of treatment either. Norwich was fortunate to land a veteran municipal administrator like Pete Webster; how long do you suppose he’d be willing to serve as a town manager, and what public purpose could conceivably be served, if his every personality quirk and professional habit were hashed out with the world watching and the LDN scribbling?

My respectful assertion is that, beyond knowing the terms of his employment, the public has no interest in the town manager’s personnel issues. He, of course, is free to disclose them – a reality newspapers seldom mention when pontificating about open meetings – and if he chooses not to do that, well then maybe he too is skeptical about how the LDN is likely to treat him. Ultimately, it is the results Pete Webster achieves, and the substantive decisions he makes, that are of concern to the public. The selectboard is accountable to the public for the work of the town manager. The electorate can express its judgment about that in the next ensuing municipal election. It’s that simple.

If only to counteract the LDN’s strategy of building circulation by fomenting dissention and discord in Norwich, allow me to conclude with a public call for forbearance when it comes to our selectboard, our town manager, and their laudable efforts to forge an effective working relationship among the six of them. Their success is not inevitable, but people with less dedication and goodwill would have given up well before 13 executive sessions had elapsed.

I know nothing about what has been discussed during those 13 confabs. But the five selectboard members are also my colleagues on the Norwich Board of Civil Authority and thus I can testify that each of them is an honorable person who is striving to do the right thing and bring her or his convictions to bear effectively on the selectboard’s work. My contacts with Pete Webster have been more limited, but they have been consistently pleasant and thoughtful. I have every reason to think he is also earnestly dedicated to serving Norwich with honor and skill.

Please forgive me if I seem to be belaboring this subject. But many years of experience have taught me that journalism improves when people talk back to the journalists. The internet empowers citizens to do just that, however much the newspaper industry whimpers about how the internet is putting them out of business.