Bangor Daily News Website Woes Continue
by Al Diamon
Byline bypassed: The Bangor Daily News continues to struggle to get even the simplest things right on its website. Press releases get posted as if they’re news stories. Bloggers use the site for personal opinions and unsupported claims, which often show up on the home page looking exactly like staff-produced news articles.
There shouldn’t be any doubt that more editorial oversight is needed. But it hasn’t happened yet.
On July 26, the BDN’s sloppiness reached new levels when two pieces from the Times Record, the afternoon daily in Brunswick with which the Bangor paper has a story-sharing arrangement, appeared on the Bangor Daily’s site with altered bylines.
As Times Record managing editor Bob Mentzinger noted in e-mail blasts, the pieces on a scooter rally and girls who returned some lost cash were both by Darcie Moore, a TR staff writer. But when they showed up on the BDN site about five hours after being published in the Brunswick paper, they both carried the byline of Beth Brogan, a former Times Record reporter who now works for the Bangor Daily.
After Mentzinger called attention to the errors, the BDN corrected them, but the fact they occurred twice in one day is disturbing. Coupled with previous instances of editorial indifference, they start to form a pattern that can only prove damaging to the Bangor Daily’s credibility.
It’s well past time to tighten up the process.
Ban eased: A little over a month ago, Republican Gov. Paul LePage, angry over a series of articles critical of his commissioner of environmental protection, announced that he and members of his administration would no longer speak to reporters from the MaineToday Media newspapers (Portland Press Herald, Kennebec Journal, Morning Sentinel).
As of this past week, it appears that no-comment policy has been altered, with official remarks from LePage’s chief spokeswoman, Adrienne Bennett, showing up in at least one MaineToday story.
According to a knowledgeable source, the governor’s staff is now allowed to speak to the papers, but LePage himself will continue to freeze them out.
Robin flies south: The Portland Daily Sun reports that DJ Robin Ivy will wrap up her 18 years at WCYY (94.3 FM) in Portland on Aug. 2 to join her former husband in Florida. Ivy has been doing the morning show at the alternative-rock station for 13 years. She tells the Sun she’s the last of the station’s original on-air staffers.
Better late than … no, wait: The most intriguing newspaper correction of the month comes from the July 24 Lewiston Sun Journal: “STONEHAM — A story published on Page B2 of the July 17 in the Oxford Hills and River Valley editions about White Mountain National Forest holding an open house should not have been published. That meeting was held last year. It was a reporting error.”
I’ve heard of journalists missing deadlines, but this has to be some kind of record.
Something else missing: A headline on page C6 of the July 25 Bangor Daily News: “Caring vet’s departure will be missed”
The writer couldn’t make the going-away party?
Al Diamon can be emailed at aldiamon@herniahill.net.
