I wish it was Saturday!
Why? Not because I want the day off, although I do like me my days off.
Saturdays, I have time to hang out a little more with the newspaper, not just slam it down with my coffee. And today, we had a bunch of awesome stories.
If you haven’t caught up yet and you don’t have lunch plans, make a date with a juicy burger and the Thursday Missoulian. The print edition … but if you can’t wait …
Here’s Jamie Kelly’s story about the evidence mounting against a man accused of rape and other crimes. The jury is deliberating this morning.
Here’s Chuck Johnson’s story about the American Tradition Partnership case likely heading to the U.S. Supreme Court. Read this analysis of the case posted on Truthout. A great quote from the piece:
“The Montana Supreme Court, through this decision, has shown contempt for the overriding law of the land and has thumbed its nose at the United States Supreme Court, which has specifically held that the State of Montana has no interest in prohibiting people who associate together from speaking,” said ATP Executive Director Donald Ferguson.
Here’s my story about the rail yard in Missoula. I think it’s time for some meaty coverage on this topic. First, though, a couple pictures I took yesterday of Lowell Chandler and his dirty hands.
Is it coal dust? Is it other grime? Does anyone care? Yes, but read the story. Sorry, but the picture with Chandler’s face cuts off his head when I load it into WordPress, so I’m not using it.
Oh, also, here’s Kim Briggeman’s story about the Board of County Commissioners banning camping on county lands.
I heard the story on KUFM yesterday, and one of the Occupy people argued that Missoulians would have no idea that Occupy Wall Street existed if it weren’t for campers on the Missoula Courthouse lawn.
Perhaps we can look forward to edifying reenactments of other world events soon.
– Keila Szpaller
January 5th, 2012 at 12:49 pm
Ok, I’ll bite. So when DID the Missoulian start covering Occupy Wall Street? I learned about the movement from contacts on Twitter and Facebook, not the Missoulian, not the New York Times, not the Huffington Post.
But yes, there were many interesting articles in the paper today. If I wasn’t buying food on credit I might have paid for the online content. Yay me.
January 5th, 2012 at 3:16 pm
I wouldn’t expect most folks to learn of the existence of Occupy Wall Street from a newspaper in the Rocky Mountains, but we did run some great wire stories about the movement. As for the local scene? Your local county reporter Kim Briggeman has been covering Occupy Missoula like fly on stank. I’m sure there’s plenty of good arguments against the ban on camping, but that snippet I heard on the radio isn’t one of them.
January 5th, 2012 at 5:02 pm
Well, I think the Missoulian spends lots of “A” pages reporting national and international news. So I don’t agree that people weren’t expecting local news to cover it. But I guess that’s the complaint about how media covered the story – they chose not to for a while.
OWS started September 17 and the first Missoulian article that I could find was on Oct. 4 by Chelsi Moy regarding the Missoula Occupy movement. I think the commentator on KUFM may have been saying Montanans didn’t hear about OWS until the local protest activities in Missoula and elsewhere started. I think that’s true for a lot of people.
January 6th, 2012 at 8:54 am
The Missoulian reported the coal sales could result in an estimated 30 coal trains a day through Missoula. And the empty trains heading back to the coal mines? Each train entitled to block the western route in and out of the Rattlesnake Valley for up to ten minutes? Added train noise and diesel? Anything to add to the irritation of grime? What’s the thinking on mitigating the noise, pollution, delays, etc. that will come with this?
January 6th, 2012 at 11:57 pm
I rode my bike on Cemetary Road off and on this summer and fall and the diesel fumes can get downright nasty at times. I can imagine any adjacent residents get a frequent noseful.
January 7th, 2012 at 12:01 am
Misspellings and abrupt verb tense changes. I hate the internet. Writing comments on line accesses a less refined part of our written communication zone in our brains.
January 9th, 2012 at 5:23 pm
Aha! Perhaps you’ve just explained some *other* online comments. “Less refined” is putting it nicely!