What's up with the Northwest Herald and its (lack of) reporting on the arrests of two Woodstock 17-year-olds after the death on Saturday of Billy Vahldieck?
This morning's paper carried no update or report of the arrests yesterday of Steven A. Vasquez-Gomez and Michael P. Dunn, Jr. The online edition of the paper indicated that reporter Brian Slupski had updated the previous day's article at 1:30AM, but no updates are shown as of 6:50AM. Worse, all the reader comments were removed. There were 16 yesterday afternoon, including my comment naming the two who were arrested (from the Woodstock PD press release).
The power of blogging is obvious here, because a NWH reader had posted a comment about knowledge of the fight on Thursday night and the beating of Vahldieck. This let the cat out of the bag, since the Woodstock Police Department had been silent on the fight and even on the hospitalization of Vahldieck after the "collision" on the ballfield. That got my interest and I began nosing around and sent an email to Woodstock Police Chief Lowen just before 1:00PM, asking for any press release to be posted on the City's Police website.
Knowing how press releases get put together (from corporate experience) and word-smithed by many people before they are ever released, they had to be working on it, and I commend them for the 3:30PM press release. They would have faxed it to the Northwest Herald. Why did the NWH take a pass on reporting the arrests in the Wednesday print edition and not refer to them in its online edition?
A reader of WoodstockAdvocate.com sent me three comments this morning that were posted to yesterday's NWH article at 9:53pm, 9:55pm and 9:58pm, purportedly from a witness to Thursday night's fight at Emricson Park. At least one reader of those NWH comments called the Woodstock Police Department upon reading them, to alert officers to print the comments before they were removed.
To my knowledge, once comments are posted to the NWH comment section following an article, the author of those comments cannot delete them. Of course, the NWH can and frequently does. But why would the NWH delete all the comments?
The witness's comments as they appeared on the Northwest Herald website last night may be printed here later. In the meantime, I'll forward them to the police department, just in case they did not print them last night before the NWH removed them.
Many thanks to the reader who copied those comments and sent them to me this morning. You know who you are.
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