NWH - Creative Writing 101

About ninety minutes ago an article was published on the Northwest Herald website that definitely was not "news." What's a newspaper for? It is to publish "news"; right?

When it publishes "opinion" or an editorial or another work of fiction and innuendo, should it be so labeled? And clearly labeled? This morning's article is set up to look like any other "news" article.

Penned by Kevin Lyons, News Editor at the Northwest Herald, much of it seems to be opinion based on a 200-page deposition given by Scott Milliman in November. Very limited reference was made to Milliman's sworn testimony (depositions are taken under oath) in a December 15th hearing in Federal Court in Rockford, during a hearing in one of Zane Seipler's cases involving the McHenry County Sheriff's Department.

I had been under the impression that depositions were not public. In fact, a court reporter's transcript of the December 15 hearing contains this statement by the sheriff's attorney, James Sotos, "Depositions are not public."

The headline of Kevin's article is "Was sheriff gonna (sic) whack Big Bird, too?" Editors, not reporters, create the headlines. Did Kevin write his own headline?

If the Northwest Herald did a better job of investigating and then reporting facts, and leaving it up to readers to make their own decisions, I think their readership and subscriptions would boom. As it is, they are crashing.

I know that I dropped my own monthly subscription because of their opinionated reporting.

The Northwest Herald seems to be clearly on the side of the incumbent sheriff. A newspaper should not take "sides." Just report the news, the facts. If editors have opinions, put them only on the editorial page. The first sentence in the article was enough to turn me off: "So I guess the good news about being on the sheriff’s hit list is that you have a 50/50 shot at still being alive, possibly operating an inane blog or dead of natural causes."

Is this opinion? "Inane" blog? And when I read "dead of natural causes", I couldn't help thinking of Drew Peterson's third wife, who was found dead in a dry bathtub. Wasn't the first cause of death identified as drowning? Did the Coroner just not see the injury on the back of her head? After her body was exhumed and further examined, wasn't the cause of death changed?

Lyons labeled Milliman's deposition testimony as "bizarre", Dave Bachmann as "McHenry County's most prolific conspiracy theorist", then refers to Bachmann as a "person of little consequence", and then he delivers a career-ending blow to the man he, up until that point, has favored.

On what might have been an afternoon meeting at Vaughan's Restaurant in Woodstock on September 17, 2009, concluding about 4:35PM (a little early for a broasted chicken dinner), Milliman said Nygren wanted him, according to the newspaper article (based on the deposition), "to get petition signatures for (his) campaign."

AH-HA!!! Political activity during working hours!

There's a good reason why I remember that date and time. And the Woodstock Police Department documented it.