James Keating was city treasurer in Grant, MN when $120,000 worth of assessment checks went missing. The Pioneer Press ran a story on November 15, 2001, when the Grant City Council instituted a deadline for finding the checks. The story stated that Keating would pick up the checks or have them delivered. It also quoted a City Council member saying that Keating was instructed to turn over deposit slips to the clerk, but he didn’t. Keating thought that the article should have explained that the acting city clerk, who was supposed to give him the checks, was an untrained temporary employee who never delivered them. The reporter did not contact Keating for that story. Another story ran on November 17th. For this story the reporter tried to contact Keating at his home, leaving a message with her pager number on his home machine. She said she thought he was out of the office looking for the checks, and so did not try to contact him there. Keating didn’t get back to the reporter, thinking it was too late. 

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Participants included the spokesman for the complainants, Larry Miller, a manufacturing quality manager from Big Lake, and Bruce Gordon, director of communications for the Department of Commerce (DOC), as a witness for the complainants. Gary Meyer, editor and publisher of The West Sherburne Tribune, submitted a written response to the complaint, but did not attend the hearing. The hearing took place at the Ramsey County Library in Roseville.

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The Winona Post ran an editorial critical of the practices of the Winona County Board of Commissioners following a committee of the board meeting on January 9, 2001. After reading an incorrect report in the Winona Daily News that said the board had decided to buy a former school building in an effort to recover lost office space after a courthouse flood, the Post’s editor called the board and obtained a denial of the report. The editor concluded that if such a decision had been made, it would have to have been at an illegal meeting.

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Attending the hearing were the complainants, Jeffrey Thompson, Rice County Attorney and Assistant County Attorney Noah Cashman, and the Hanlon Family: Donna (mother), Casey, Kelly, and Katie (children) and the children’s uncle, Dan Hanlon. Representing the Faribault Daily News were Lisa Schwarz, managing editor, and David Balcom, publisher.

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Scott Vreeland presented his grievance and the Star Tribune was represented by Tim McGuire, managing editor; Mike Finney, deputy managing editor; Lou Gelfand, reader representative; and Mike Kaszuba, reporter.

Scott Vreeland, chairman of the board of the Cedar-Riverside Project Area Committee (PAC), a neighborhood governing body of elected, unpaid members, complained that an August 4, 1988, article about the neighborhood in the Star Tribune was “bad journalism.”

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Grievant R. J. O’Neil appeared at the hearing, accompanied by his real estate broker, John Klien. No one appeared on behalf of the Dakota County Tribune.

Mahnomen City officials complained that the paper published an inaccurate story that was damaging to the city’s reputation, then failed to adequately correct the error. The officials contend the correction should have appeared on the front page and that the newspaper should also have made a public apology.

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Bruce Brisbine, Vice President and General Manager of Spectrum subscription television, complained that an error damaging to Spectrum, which appeared in a popular local sports column, should have been corrected in or near the column. Brisbine also alleged a conflict of interest on the part of the column writer, who is also employed by a Spectrum business competitor.

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Scott Shely of Stillwater, a member of Concerned Citizens for a Nuclear Free World, a local group formed to promote a mutual Soviet-U.S. nuclear weapons freeze, complained about unfair and inadequate coverage of the group and of the nuclear freeze movement.

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The Minnesota Gun Owners’ Political Victory Fund complained that the newspaper inaccurately stated that Attorney General Warren Spannaus had not “pushed for more legislation” in the six years since the state’s existing firearms laws were passed. In addition, the gun owners complained that the newspaper did not respond satisfactorily to the charge, losing the group’s first letter to the paper and then incorrectly telling it that it didn’t publish corrections to editorials. An offer to print a letter to the editor for the group was rejected and a correction demanded.

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