So mad I could spit. The total national coverage of the Tobin trial is a few places like Wired picking up the pitiful summary AP story. Let me tell you the genesis of that story.
After the trial, after the waiting for the verdict, after the arrival of the verdict, the lawyer interviews, the attempted lawyer interviews, Real Reporters (RR) and I gathered near the courthouse door, hoping that some passing juror would give us some quotes. (They didn’t, but several RR later phoned them and got some more background. RR had provided themselves with the names of the jurors for this very reason.)
All of a sudden, a woman none of us had ever seen before rushed in through the revolving door. “What happened? What happened?” she cried. This was the AP reporter, the brand-new AP reporter, “assigned” to this story 20 minutes before she arrived.
Because the RR were working, I pulled out my notebook to help her. “Not guilty on the first count,” I said. “Guilty on each of the other two.”
“First count?” she said. “Do you happen to know what the different counts were?” I’m not putting the reporter’s name here–it wasn’t her fault that she had been thrown into a new case without any background. The AP reporter who covered the actual trial had been re-assigned pre-jury to write up human interest about Christmas bird counts.
The AP story about the verdict should have been the best, the most comprehensive story of all. Isn’t it real news that Bush’s top guy in New England was guilty of two felonies arising from an innovative technological effort to cheat NH voters out of an honest election? Instead, AP gave us a bland and bloodless mini-summary cobbled together at record speed–the entire story in its final form was on the wires by 6:15 p.m.that day–just one hour(!) after the reporter first tumbled into the courthouse waving her notebook.
And that’s now the end of the story, as national news.
Ladies and gentlemen, readers of national news, you have been robbed.