The Northern View will have to share their Pulitzer prize

The Daily News went Headline with the current Howie/Hesse hiring story, including a letter to the editor from the Mayor on the issue.  We’ll try and have the Podunkicized version of it all on the blog by tonight or tomorrow am…

Interesting that it took a posting on htmf from AnnA to get the two local papers to finally take this thing to the investigative phase, it was only after she advised you folks on htmf that she had submitted letters to both the city and the newspapers (both to no avail until last week) that things seemed to finally come out from the shadows.

It shall be interesting to see how this all progresses from this point, shall be worth watching to see how many councillors jump for the life rafts as well…

It’s all so interesting and just in time for the fall municipal election too!

Yes, it is good timing that we get to learn about these less than transparent actions from our local government.

Let’s not get too side tracked by it though. Although it demonstrates poor judgment, I do NOT believe this is a valuable election issue. I pray that nobody wastes all candidates questions on this.

I say again - let’s focus on what we WANT out of an upcoming City Council and not spend too much time on what the previous council did/didn’t do.

Well I tend to disagree to a fashion the past events between elections aren`t worthy of our attention at election time, if the current roster of municipal legislators choose to run again they certainly should be held accountable for any past developments.

While it is important to focus on the future, it`s just as important to remember their past performances as well…

Yes this issue shouldn`t dominate the agenda but it is more than important to focus on how the city has been governed to this point.

For those interested in the Daily News headline story today and the mayor’s letter to the editor on the Howie/Hesse story, I’ve posted an item to the Podunk blog.

atowncalledpodunk.blogspot.com/2 … 3147722832

While there’s no limit to the credit Anna Ashley deserves for forcing this issue I think it’s worth noting that (whatever you may think of The Daily News) there was a damn good reporter named Leanne Ritchie who fought tooth and nail to publish this story for nearly two months before it made its way to HTMF…

Can you give us some detail on that?

I’ve heard some rumours and stuff, but nothing concrete.  What’s the story behind Leanne Ritchie’s leaving the Daily News?

Yes it certainly is the night for questions isn’t it.

Just what happened that saw Ms. Ritchie disappear as though sent into the witness protection program anyways?

We sure didn’t learn much from this heartfelt farewell from the Daily News back in July when they offered up this…

atowncalledpodunk.blogspot.com/2 … 9743 

As for the current story, the two papers didn’t seem to find the current of the moment until Ms. Ashley went on htmf with her letters, both to the Mayor and the papers, it was only after she advised that her letter to the editor was not going to be published that they seemed to jump into the story.

As for Ms. Ritchie, I think most folks that have read the Daily over the years (five of them that she was there for) understand how much hard work she put into her work and probably those same readers realize that something isn’t quite right on her sudden departure (first time I’ve seen a reporter leave without one of those long farewell columns about our great people and the fun times etc, etc, etc.) so don’t worry I’m pretty sure most folks probably would be quite interested to one day learn (as Paul harvey would say) the rest of the story…

Mig, I would love to get into it. However, i’m not so sure that it’s really my place, or that I wouldn’t be accused of having a malicious intent at some later date. All I can really say is that she wrote several versions of a story on this issue (the original in particular was a fantastic piece of investigative journalism that really outshines anything that has been published to date) and they were all rejected for various reasons. Because of this, and a number of other reasons, she tendered her resignation. One of the individuals who FOI’d the docs may be willing to share what they know. Sorry I can’t tell you more…

I don’t know if you know where Ms. Ritchie is now, but if she still had a copy of her story and wanted it published online…

I believe she is in Victoria working for the government in the PR department. Nice move Leanne. Congrats. You’ve earned and deserve it.

I’ve also heard that there’ll be some interesting changes in the staff pictures over the next few days/weeks. Keep your eyes open and listen to the speculation that will follow. lol I love Prince Rupmour.

Changes in the staff picture where?

the last time I saw Ms. Ritchie, 2 weeks ago she was working at CN. I guess she has moved on from here then…