A complaint against the Roseau Times-Region newspaper by a city official was denied by the Minnesota News Council. The vote was 8 to 4 with one abstention.

Todd Peterson, the city’s development coordinator, said that columns by Jeff Olsen, a freelance reporter and opinion writer for more than 20 years at the newspaper, were inaccurate, misleading to the public and unfair to city officials. Peterson noted that Olsen writes about city business without attending meetings or checking with officials on verifiable facts.

The News Council majority applauded the newspaper’s inclusion of a strong opinion column, and they urged the newspaper to seek out vigorous rebuttals. They also urged Peterson and other city officials to more aggressively seek to get their views published in the newspaper.

Council member Reed Anfinson, editor/publisher of the Swift County Monitor-News in Benson, lamented the fact that so few rural weeklies run editorials or other opinion pieces. He said readers need lively exchanges to inspire them to participate in local public affairs.

Olsen, the columnist, apologized for having mistakenly written that the city ought to occupy office space in a new building. Peterson pointed out that funding for the building was intended for commercial development and did not allow governmental use.

But Olsen insisted that he has never written maliciously about anyone and that he uses what he considers misguided city actions as a basis for offering his readers civics lessons. And he said he does not attend meetings because he hears news about city activities on the radio and reads official minutes.

“I don’t have to be physically present to write about Mr. Bush in Washington,” Olsen said, claiming his right and ability to do the same in Roseau. He said he lives out in the country, teaches school during the day and uses the phone at night to gather material for news articles and columns.

Peterson and the publisher, Jodi Wojciechowski, appeared to have resolved the matter recently when she said she would require Olsen to talk with city officials before writing about them in his column, though he could choose to disregard their views when expressing his opinion.

But the agreement unraveled when the very next Olsen column appeared without the publisher’s having discussed the settlement with him. Peterson reinstated his complaint.

The publisher said she had no time after the agreement and before the newspaper’s deadline to confer with the columnist, and so his next column appeared without his having consulted city officials. Several News Council members said the publisher should have at least called Peterson to advise him that the agreement would go into effect the following week.

Another .council member suggested that the publisher could have held Olsen’s column that week and run it the following week, next to a counterpoint from a city official.

“Every paper should have at least one curmudgeon,” said media member Benno Groeneveld. “Every paper should have an Olsen.”

Public member Jane Berg said she was concerned about Olsen’s use of a radio news report as the basis for his opinion: “It’s possible [using a secondary source instead of going to city officials themselves] to perpetuate misinformation. Facts can and should be verified.”

Olsen agreed, but he said he did not make up facts, he wrote opinions based on the facts as he understood them.

Media member Mollie Hoben, founder of the Women’s Press, said none of the participants was taking a strong initiative to improve the quality of information: The columnist should be checking his facts, Hoben said; the publisher should more actively solicit responses to Olsen’s columns, and city officials should write their own views for publication instead of waiting for someone else to write in their behalf.

Publisher Wojciechowski said she runs almost all letters to the editor. Peterson said he thought a letter from a city officials taking issue with an opinion piece was not an effective way to combat misleading information. Council member Lorin Robinson, a former communications professor, agreed: Information that is published first, he said, stays uppermost in readers’ minds.

Peterson said the newspaper did not cover enough news about city government. The publisher said she welcomes any story ideas, which she said are often hard to generate in a small town.

Tags: Roseau Times-Region

This entry was posted on Monday, January 3rd, 2005 at 12:37 pm and is filed under 2005, Complaint Denied, Hearings, Political Coverage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.