Just Another Guy Named Joe
By Al Diamon
Say it ain’t so: According to the Bangor Daily News, Joe Lewis resigned as a member of the Portland Planning Board sometime during the week of Oct. 15. Lewis had served on the board since 2008 and was a former chairman. His resignation went unnoticed by not only the Portland Press Herald, but also by the Portland Daily Sun and The Forecaster, which is usually tenacious in digging out City Hall stories.
No big deal, since most planning board members are practically anonymous. Which is probably just the way Lewis liked it.
The Bangor Daily and reporter Seth Koenig might have ignored his resignation, too, except that on Oct. 26, Lewis’ name was among those released by the Kennebunk Police Department as one of the clients that allegedly paid a local Zumba instructor for sex.
Lewis is a lawyer, whose website claims he’s “heavily invested in the community” as a Little League coach and umpire, and as a volunteer in schools.
According to the Bangor paper, the address police gave for Lewis matched the one he had used until recently for his law office. When reached by a BDN reporter, he declined to comment.
The Press Herald reported on Oct. 27, in a story by staff writer Edward D. Murphy, that the latest list of those accused of patronizing a prostitute “contained no immediately recognizable names.” The Portland paper had earlier identified a former South Portland mayor and a high school hockey coach, both of whom had been indicted in the case, so it’s tough to figure why Lewis got a pass. As of Oct. 29, the Press Herald had still not updated its reporting to include his name, nor acknowledged its oversight, even though it ran a story on how long the case was likely to drag on in the Oct. 28 paper.
No Portland TV station identified Lewis, nor did the Associated Press or the York County Coast Star, which has followed the story closely.
Two points here: It’s obvious from the Press Herald’s failure to note Lewis’ resignation that the paper isn’t doing as thorough a job covering City Hall as it should. A planning board vacancy deserves at least a mention in the local briefs. What’s even more concerning is that it appears nobody at the paper recognized Lewis’ name or bothered to do a Google search of those charged. Difficult to say whether that’s the result of sloppiness, indifference or some other cause.
Whatever the reason, it’s disturbing.
Speaking of disturbing: The MaineToday Media papers, which include the Press Herald, have made a lot of noise lately about how they’ve upgraded their staffs by hiring more reporters and editors. And in some places, there’s been some noticeable improvement.
But that upgrading hasn’t reached the hinterlands, where the Morning Sentinel in Waterville and the Kennebec Journal in Augusta continue to be filled with amateurish work.
From the Oct. 23 KJ, these paragraphs from a story headlined “Police: Distraction caused crash”:
“Young said police believe Lola was distracted by something that caused her to veer into the oncoming lane and into the path of the truck; however, they don’t know what caused that distraction.
“’We are not able to determine why [Lola] was on the wrong side of the road,’ Young said. ‘We just know she was on the wrong side of the road.’”
I don’t know about Lola, but the editor who wrote that headline and let that first paragraph slip by was certainly distracted.
The Oct. 27 Sentinel had this headline on a piece about a local legislative race:
“Incumbent says parties are cooperatively working together, challengers disagrees”
The disagreement(s) isn’t/aren’t as widespread as it/they appear(s). There’s only one challenger mentioned in the article.
Speaking of editorial oversights: The editorial in the Oct. 29 MaineToday papers decrying the influx of big money from “third-party groups” in legislative races fails to mention a significant factor in that increased spending. According to an Oct. 12 story in MaineToday’s Press Herald, a major contributor to some of those deep-pockets organizations is S. Donald Sussman, the majority owner of MaineToday.
Disclaimers aren’t just for news stories.
No more mic for Mike: Mike Audet has been doing newscasts on Maine radio stations for longer than a lot of his listeners have been alive.
But he won’t be for much longer. Audet announced last week that he’s retiring at the end of the year, ending a career that began at WTVL in Waterville in 1954. Since then, he’s worked at just about every top-rated news station in the Portland market, including WGAN and WPOR.
He was my first news director when I broke into broadcast journalism in 1978, and he inspired me and everyone he worked with to strive for the highest standards of professional and ethical conduct.
He’ll be missed.
Al Diamon can be emailed at aldiamon@herniahill.net.