Readers may be familiar with Eric Engles (who affectedly follows his name with "Ph.D." even in the most casual of e-mails) [disputed]. He has an occasional "Other Voices" [e.g. here, or search the archives for Engles] guest column published in The Union.

He apparently has taken an intense dislike to the weekly opinion column published by our publisher, Jeff Ackerman, and has started what he calls the "Dump Ack" [disputed] campaign. It's goal is to blitz our parent company, Swift Newspapers, with demands[disputed] that Ackerman be fired.

I came across a copy of his e-mail to 80 or so of his friends asking them to join in the campaign. The list includes many people active in the community whom readers would recognize as having their opinions frequently published in The Union. Mr. Engles may see himself as a Mel Gibson-esque savior, although there is an un-American whiff[disputed] to his crusade.

Swift Newspaper is a strong believer in local autonomy, and in practicing journalism without fear or favor. Or, as its statement of values vows, "We apply our values in our actions. We believe there should be no difference between what we say and what we do."

Mr. Engles' declaration of his values, in the letter to his friends as well as his lengthy entreaty to Swift, is that since Ackerman has different views than Engles, he is being divisive[disputed] His arguments are insubstantial, but a couple of points are worth a response:

• He claims[disputed] Ackerman keeps counterviews out of the newspaper. Observation of almost any edition shows that to be phony.
  
• He says[disputed] Ackerman's role extends beyond the opinion page to include story selection, wording of headlines, etc. Nonsense. Ackerman hired me to direct the news staff, and while he's not afraid to let me know what he thinks, he follows the tradition of this business and leaves me free to do it.

So if you don't like a story or a headline, better start a campaign to get me fired, because it's not Ackerman's fault. And if you like Ackerman and the job The Union is doing in covering our county, the president of Swift Newspapers is Arne Hoel, 500 Double Eagle Court, Reno, NV 89521.

Mr. Somerville,

Your column on Saturday contains at least eight examples of a marked decay in your ethical and journalistic standards:

1. You say that I "affectedly" follow my name with Ph.D. "even in the most casual of emails." I don't do this in either casual or formal emails. I have added the degree to my name when I sign letters to the editor and Other Voices columns, which I think is entirely appropriate. It is possible I signed an email to you in the past with the degree included (although I don't recall doing so); if so, it certainly didn't reflect any habit on my part, and it definitely doesn't provide a basis for your snide aside. Is it possible that you're jealous of my degree?

2. You say that I call my efforts the "Dump Ack" campaign. This is not true; I have informally referred to it as a campaign to "dump Jeff." The difference is not substantial, but it shows how little you care for the truth and for checking your facts.

3. You say that the goal of the campaign is to "blitz our parent company...with demands that Ackerman be fired." The word 'demand' puts a very misleading spin on how I broached the idea of Mr. Ackerman's removal, and how I suggested others put it in their letters. In my letter I wrote the following: "I encourage you to consider replacing Mr. Ackerman with someone who can gain the respect of the entire spectrum of Nevada County residents." The words "encourage" and "consider" do not equate with a "demand," or even a demanding tone. In my "cover email" to others, I wrote: "If this argument is presented to the management people at Swift Newspapers, and echoed by a fair number of Nevada County residents, they might actually take the suggestion of replacing Jeff seriously." Again, usingthe word "suggestion" is very far from indicating a demand.

4. You say there is "an un-American whiff" to my "crusade." You don't explain very well why you think this to be true, but I infer that it has something to do with a mistaken belief that I oppose Ackerman's right to express his opinion. In my letter, I went out of my way to emphasize that I support Mr. Ackerman's right to his opinion: "Of course it is Mr. Ackerman's prerogative to express his opinion in his own signed columns and the paper's editorials--and if that's all that he did I would have no quarrel with him, despite that fact I disagree with his political positions most of the time." In addition, since democracy is as fundamental an American ideal as freedom, criticizing Mr. Ackerman's role in squelching participation in government and in creating barriers to civil community dialogue should be considered patriotic.

5. Rather than deal with any of my criticisms directly, you chose the intellectually dishonest route of distorting them beyond recognition. You don't strike me as a person who has difficulty with reading comprehension, so I have to assume that your distortions and misrepresentations are deliberate and intended to deceive your readers.

5a. You paraphrase my critique of Ackerman's tendency to increase divisiveness in the community with the following: "since Ackerman has different views than Engles, he is being divisive." This statement has absolutely no relationship to anything I wrote in my letter. First, as mentioned above, I acknowledged Ackerman's right to have and express views different from mine. Second, I devoted two paragraphs of my letter to explaining how Jeff's columns increase divisiveness by helping to create an environment in which constructive dialogue becomes increasingly difficult because "each side sees the other as a caricature of its real self." This argument is completely independent from any differences of opinion on the issues.

5b. You say that my letter to Swift claimed that Ackerman "keeps counterviews out of the paper." As you note, it would be ridiculous for anyone to make this claim, and I did not do so. Perhaps you were (inappropriately) extrapolating from the paragraph in which I wrote that Ackerman did not give Mr. Conklin the chance to defend himself. I have recently become aware that I was in error on this point--on the day Conklin's defense was published, I was away on vacation and did not read the paper. If I had known that Conklin had this opportunity, I would have written something like this: "The candidate got to rebut the charges, but this was like training a howitzer on him and then handing him a slingshot. After that, Ackerman continued his assault." The basic point--that Ackerman pursued a relentless campaign of character assassination--is still the same, and doesn't depend on opportunities for defense. Further, nothing in this paragraph was intended to even suggest the idea that keeping counterviews out of the paper generally was part of my criticism. (In connection with this point, you should know that I am grateful that the Union has published most of the columns and letters I have submitted. In the past, in recognition that the Union's opinion page policies allow many opinions to be voiced, I actually defended the Union when friends gave their very low opinions of it.)

5c. You say that I claim "Ackerman's role extends beyond the opinion page to include story selection, wording of headlines, etc." Another fraudulent distortion. I said that some stories show Jeff's influence. That's different. And if you'll examine the paragraph in question, you will note that the sentence that mentions selection of stories and wording of headlines does not contain Mr. Ackerman's name; instead, the grammatical subject in the main clause is "the Union." In the last sentence, I used the word "influence" with regard to Jeff very deliberately because of the breadth of possibility it allows in explaining the link between Jeff and the paper's political slant. The paper does have slant (are you going to claim that Arne Hoel doesn't tell his rich and powerful conservative friends that he is proud to own papers that put forth a conservative view?) and as publisher of the paper, Jeff must have influence over that slant. And he doesn't have to attend news meetings to exert it. He exerted it by hiring you, and he exerts it by creating unwritten expectations among the staff about how to present the news. (I see now that you probably took this paragraph of mine very personally, and I'm sorry if that's the case; but having an emotional reaction to it doesn't excuse you from responsibility for presenting an accurate rendition of what I wrote.)

6. You failed to acknowledge or engage with my major points. By mentioning only secondary points such as the critique of Jeff's influence over the news, you misrepresented the essence of my message to Swift--which was that Mr. Ackerman is a failure as a community leader, renders his opinions in ways that should be embarrasing to an ethical journalist, and alienates a large number of people who might otherwise be Union readers.

So, are you going to allow me to present a condensation of this rebuttal in print, or are you going to prove that you too are a worthy target for a replacement campaign?

-Eric Engles

[since starting this] I(publisher)’ve been threatened, picketed and have been asked to resign...
...
I believe there is sufficient information to warrant an investigation by the grand jury, district attorney or attorney general to determine if [C] violated Government Code Section 1090, the state’s conflict of interest law.

If it was "foreseeable" that [C] could have gone to work for the Land Trust when he voted three months earlier to give the Trust more than a half-million dollars (and it certainly seems possible that it was, in fact, "foreseeable"), the county contract could be voided and the Trust asked to return the $508,000. If [C] knew when he voted that he would eventually work for the Trust, he could be guilty of a felony and possibly jailed. That’s how serious this issue is.

County Counsel Robert Shulman authored a memo this week that found, based on current evidence, [C's] hiring by the Land Trust did not violate any laws governing conflict of interest for public officials.

Members of the Legislature, state, county, district, judicial district, and city officers or employees shall not be financially interested in any contract made by them in their official capacity, or by any body or board of which they are members...

... After all, you [journalist] are using a cookie cutter, but they [who you cover] may actually be thinking, and planning, and strategizing. And so they may wreak the very unfairness, imbalance, or partiality that you rationalize your cookie cutter story mold is designed to prevent.

The uncorrupted ideal of objectivity, in the sense of reporters driving to dig out verified facts and present them fully and fairly, is indispensable in journalism. Unmasking its nefarious twin - an omnipresent and abused pseudo-objectivity - is what I would like to do.

...reaching moral destinations is not at all like reaching geographical ones. It’s a lot tougher to be a good parent, than it is to drive to, and successfully arrive in, Chicago.

Unlike successfully arriving in Chicago, if you are trying to be objective in the true and pure sense, you need to frequently check yourself that you are not rationalizing, not being lazy, not skipping over the tough bits with a high-toned excuse. Whenever you say to yourself as a journalist, "I fell short but at least I tried," you need also to immediately ask, "Am I just rationalizing the fact that I’m sinning over and over and over?"

I'm offering up this guide to modern political speech. It's a bipartisan, multimedia template that works for any point of view on the partisan spectrum, in any venue.
...
You are not just wrong, you and those like you are intellectually insufficient and morally suspect...

When there's a ruckus in the street outside your home, you fling open the window to see what's happening. But if there's a row outside every night, you shut the window and try to block it out. That's what's happening in our public discourse. With all the shouting, we have less, rather than more, genuine opposition - the kind that is the bedrock on which democracy rests.

Agonism grows out of our conviction that opposition is the best, if not the only, path to truth. In this view, the best way to explore an idea is a debate that requires opponents to marshal facts and arguments for one side, and ignore, ridicule, or otherwise undermine facts and arguments that support the other side.
...
In many European countries, heated political discussions are commonplace and enjoyed; most Americans regard such conversations as unseemly arguments...As a result, we aren't forced to articulate - and therefore examine - the logic of our views, nor are we exposed to the views of those with whom we disagree.

On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy.

With a headline larger than the blurb and on a separate line, people tended to view the headlines and skip the blurbs; they scanned the headlines throughout the page more than the group that looked at the smaller headlines.

Researchers believe that it is the contrast in type size that accounts for this behavior, as well as the type size itself. When a headline is larger than its accompanying blurb text, it's perceived as the important element of the headline-blurb block -- so people appear to decide that viewing the headline is sufficient and they skip the blurb.

Headline writers-typically copy editors-have an obligation to give readers the most accurate sense possible of an article's conclusions...They're frequently failing.

...it hardly seems to merit the headline -- which, as it so often does, ends up shaping the reaction to the story...

The story itself, however, tells a much more complex story than the Times copy desk saw fit to capture in the head -- either out of editorial bias or because a harried copy editor ignored the old journalistic rule about reading more than just the first couple of paragraphs before slapping a headline on a story

Schwarzenegger, Tribes Sign New Gambling Pact
LA Times says Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today signed new gambling compacts with representatives of five Indian tribes, securing a $1-billion payment to the state this year, helping to close the coming year's fiscal budget gap.
[Further reading finds it's misleading:]
[Schwarzenegger] caved in and negotiated a deal to get a lousy $60 million or so per year from the tribes, less than 5% of what he claimed he could get during the campaign. And then he blew 18 years worth of the money all at once for this year's budget.

It's just more smoke and mirrors. But the headlines will all say he got a billion dollars.

It was the headline rather than the story under it that sparked readers' ire, Bottomly says. "That's obviously the one thing that readers really focused on and we were wrong... It's possible if readers see the word 'affair' in the headline they might see that as an indication we're downplaying the seriousness of what occurred..."

I absolutely agree that philanthropists need to hold their grantees accountable and ensure that money is used in a fiscally sound way. However, accountability should not mean, "Here is my money and I want you to use this money to focus on this one project because that's all I'm interested in supporting." This approach is shortsighted and discounts the responsibilities and fundamental expertise of executive directors at nonprofits.

Nonprofit directors are typically passionate, caring and committed people determined to make a difference in their community. They are usually more knowledgeable about their issues than anyone else since they are the ones living and breathing their causes every day. Let's give them the credit they deserve and empower them to make critical issue-related decisions without interference from well-intentioned grantors.

Two newspaper owned by news conglomerate Media General recently published bizarre editorials where they scolded President Bush for his record but then fell short of endorsing Kerry.
And it is becoming pretty clear that the reason behind it was commands from corporate headquarters to not support Kerry.
The Winston-Salem Journal...published a bizarre non-endorsement of Kerry....The editorial takes Bush to task on a number of poor decisions and makes it clear that he should not be re-elected. But the Journal didn't take that extra step and endorse Kerry. They cited vague uncertainty about Kerry and then petered out in the end.
...
"Each newspaper is locally operated by the editorial team," [Media General spokesman] said. "It's a local decision in each case."
...
"Whereas our editorial decisions day to day are completely our own, there is - when it comes to presidential elections - we understand that Media General newspapers have a set of values and views and a philosophy that sort of determines who we choose to endorse," [editorial page editor] said.
...
here is a company - that is in the business of reporting the truth - lying (or perhaps not; see comment above)to a reporter. This is the same kind of activity that...papers are supposed to be exposing in other companies.

Journalism is the one solitary respectable profession which honors theft (when committed in the pecuniary interest of a journal) and admires the thief....However, these same journals combat despicable crimes quite valiantly - when committed in other quarters.

Welcome to the Cappuccino West, where cowboys and loggers are giving way to artists, writers, high-tech entrepreneurs and retirees - where a town like Nevada City, once known for its booming gold mines and rowdy redneck bars, now boasts art galleries, theaters and circuit design labs...The transformation of both towns began in the early '70s, when a wave of back-to-the-land hippies arrived with a jolt. This quickly led to frequent confrontations between the long-haired invaders and the locals, especially the crewcut loggers who worked long hours at grueling jobs and who had little sympathy with those who had no jobs at all.
...
Differing values: On the one hand, an emphasis on recreation and aesthetics; on the other, a working relationship with the natural environment. Communal stewardship on the one hand; profits and private property values on the other. When people with these different perspectives start dwelling side by side, it is an almost certain recipe for conflict...

We are once again hearing a cry for affordable housing for the less affluent and jobs for our children, lest they are forced to leave the county....

[But] There are no barriers that allow us to insulate ourselves from the rest of the state. A drawbridge is not an option...We live in a free-flowing environment, both economically and demographically, in which an equilibrium is established through a flux of people who are seeking to maximize their quality of life.

If we achieve a greatly superior position, we will have to raise the drawbridge; how else can we see that it is _our_ workers who win these jobs and our _own_ children who enjoy newly affordable housing? But there is no drawbridge; in this liquid society, the net effect will be population growth and eventually return to our present equilibrium state in housing and jobs with respect to the rest of the state. Soon we are back where we started but with a density increase to cope with...

We need solutions that are real, not just spinning our wheels and making matters worse. One solution is that chosen by ski resorts at Tahoe, where housing is provided by employers for their workers. Another solution has been suggested: It is time to initiate the New Town...

Government works better when it steers than when it rows. The steer-row metaphor comes from Reinventing Government (Addison-Wesley, 1992), by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler. They mean that as a general rule government should not focus -- or get bogged down in -- operations. "Steering," they say, "requires people who see the entire universe of issues and possibilities and can balance competing demands for resources. Rowing requires people who focus intently on one mission and perform it well. Steering organizations need to find the best methods to achieve their goals. Rowing organizations tend to defend 'their' method at all costs." Private-sector rowers that defend outmoded and inefficient methods at all costs usually go out of business, which frees up the resources they were using to work someplace else. Obsolete public-sector rowers, in contrast, just keep wasting the public's money.

Gaebler has been under almost constant attack since his arrival - over an employee retreat that was a tradition long before he arrived; over his salary; over his annual bonus. In the [Nov 2002] election campaign that was hypercharged by the NH 2020 planning controversy, every comma and paragraph of his contract was analyzed and vilified by those opposed to the incumbent candidates.

Gaebler was hired after our county leaders did a nationwide search for the best of the best. Translated, that means everyone in Nevada County was too stupid to qualify for the position and I'm sure he thinks we're dopey enough to buy this [department heads'] retreat nonsense...let's collect whatever money is needed to ensure that he have the ultimate bonding experience of his lifetime ... a one-way ticket to Afghanistan!

Speaking of more government ... I heard that the county manager wrote a book about reinventing government. Then I read about the retreat to Placer County that cost taxpayers a good chunk of change [ .01% of yearly budget, I've read] and wondered if I really wanted him to reinvent my government. It sounds very expensive.

We will miss Ted Gaebler. Nevada County was lucky to have him, even for only three years...we worry about a throwback to the bad old days...

Catalytic government: steering rather than rowing -- Community-owned government: empowering rather than serving -- Competitive government: injecting competition into service delivery -- Mission-driven government: transforming rule-driven organizations -- Results-oriented government: funding outcomes, not inputs -- Customer-driven government: meeting the needs of the customer, not the bureaucracy -- Enterprising government: earning rather than spending -- Anticipatory government: prevention rather than cure -- Decentralized government: leveraging change through the market --Putting it all together.

The first I knew about it was after the election when Gaebler came into the office and told us about his departure. We ran a story at that time.

...symptoms of the same "diseases" are metastasizing here - something terribly wrong is happening in Nevada County - as can be seen by the bitter polarization of our community as evidenced in the pages of this newspaper.

...this election year has generally lacked a sense of humor. None of the candidates are particularly funny....[Keep letters short:] let's say you wanted to bash [candidate R] for her apparent inability to handle her finances. ...with some good editing, you could cut that down to "[R] wouldn't know a checkbook if it climbed up her shirt...Or...let's say you wanted to say something really mean about [candidate I]...[Your letter can be longer if it's funny;] I've been dying for a good laugh...[Candidate DB]'s black helicopter conspiracy doesn't count as funny....

...it's too bad the so-called "Women In Black" anti-war protesters felt the need to protest during a recent Board of Supervisors meeting at the Rood Administrative Center that was designed to recognize our men and women in uniform.
[He also mentioned the Repub. Central Committee head's email which had led followers to threaten violence]
I bring both of these events up to illustrate how our community has been polarized by both the far right and far left**. I'm certain there are many in the middle as tired as I am of these extremists. Maybe we'll even start to hear from some of them on our Opinion pages one of these days. Voices of reason. Voices without screeches. Voices of respect and dignity. They're out there somewhere, just waiting to be heard.

...many publications prefer to correct the record via "rowback," [defined as] "a story that attempts to correct a previous story without indicating that the prior story had been in error or without taking responsibility for the error."

...false equivalence belongs in the trash heap of discredited journalistic shortcuts...In its most common form, it amounts to a reporter holding up actions on both sides as equally blameworthy, when it's clear that no such equivalence exists.

...The meeting was eventually moved after McAteer and the event organizer received several angry phone calls.

[RCC head]'s e-mail is a glaring example of all that's wrong in Nevada County today...And I blame e-mail for that.

A sharp publisher in the newspaper business knows that readers care about their community and if readers know the paper cares, too, they are going to care about the paper.

An anti-war group wanted to have a meeting at the Nevada County Superintendent's office on a Saturday to offer alternatives to military service. It was a pretty innocent-sounding thing, really. Anyone interested in attending could do so of his or her own free will.

But, after reading about the planned meeting, [RCC Head] sent an e-mail alert titled "Peacenicks" to members, warning that a "Peace Group of Anti-Americans and al Quida (misspelled) supporters are holding their rally and training at the Nevada County School Superintendent's office."

He encouraged members to contact schools' chief [TM], a Republican, to "tell him how you feel about allowing this traitorous activity to occur on Nevada County School owned property."

The event was eventually moved to a different location.

Investigative Reporting as Prosecution

Though all reporting involves investigation, what we have come to understand as investigative journalism adds a moral dimension. It engages the public to come to judgment about the disclosure and implies that the news organization considers it important - worthy of special effort. In that sense, investigative reporting involves not simply casting light on a subject, but usually making a more prosecutorial case that something is wrong. Here journalists should be careful they have enough evidence to do so, especially since often pieces can be structured as either exposes or news stories....An expose is in effect a prosecutor's brief and the case it sets forth must be unambiguous; if the story does not meet this test, it should be written as something else.

...an important issue that arises with the investigative model: the news outlet is taking an implied stance on the issue that some wrongdoing has occurred. This is why investigative journalism has been termed..."reporting with a sense of outrage"...Because what the investigative journalism discloses may lead to loss of reputation or change the flow of public events, it carries a greater weight of responsibility, not only in verification of fact but in sharing information about the nature of the sources of that information.

Citizen H and Citizen L took us to a new low of mean-spiritedness in these pages with their recent fairy tales attacking the character of Supervisor [DB]. Their effluvium-laden columns, utterly barren of responsible commentary...

[candidate says that it is] his ability to build consensus that makes him the best candidate...
he was disappointed by the polarization and divisiveness among the board [in Fall 2002]. 'It was so hateful'...

[B]: "...I don’t think the atmosphere of the county is as healthy as it could be in terms of mutual respect, civility and trust."
...
The Union: You were writing opinion columns for The Union during the NH 2020 controversy. Were you trying to be a voice of reason then?

[B]: I wrote a column debunking another guy’s column about a different issue, and I think the second column I wrote was about NH 2020 -that was a kind of a vehicle. I was saying it was a matter of trust, and it was a matter of our being able to get along. I don’t know if I used the word consensus or not, but that’s where it started.

The Union: Looking through some of your columns, you did throw around terms, labels - "environmentalists," "left wing."

[B]: I don’t think they are inconsistent at all. If you go back and look at what I was writing in that column - that was pretty hard-hitting language, I admit. But there was a motivation for it by a certain two or three parties, and I think it was accurate.

...misuses partial quotes by her opponent, [B]. Some are blurbs from columns written for The Union two years ago, which, by design, were point-counterpoint comments about opposing columnists' views, not about [D] or issues relevant to 2004. Others are taken from [B]'s recent interview with the Editorial Board which, when read in context, offer a different meaning. No doubt the same results could be achieved by selecting 'sound bites' from [D]'s transcript."

It's a common [less than completely straightforward] argumentative technique, used by all sides in all contexts when you don't have an answer for the key issues, to pick on small errors on the edges while ignoring the elephant in the middle.

Q: Is there an elephant in this room?
A: Of course not! How could we miss an elephant in the room? That's so crazy! You've been listening to crazy rumors about crazy elephants on the crazy internet, that's what we think.
Q: Then what's that huge gray animal in the corner with the large flappy ears and prehensile trunk surrounded by heaps of elephant feed, elephant dung, and a sign reading "Do Not Touch The Elephant"?
A: That is an armadillo...

Whatever their orientation, journalists are the last line of defense against public deception. If they fail to challenge distortions by politicians, they might as well join the stenography pool.

the trick here is in the timing -- proving that they have no faith in their arguments, foisting the piece upon an unknowing public at the 11th hour of the election. An honest broker of ideas would do so in the light of day, where the idea can truly win the election if proper, and where it can be amplified, diminished, contradicted or buttressed as a matter of public discourse.

[The real job of journalism is] helping the public life of this nation work well...

Public life goes well when people have multiple, useful forums to identify the problems that affect their lives together in community, when their dialogue is civil and robust, and leads to the hope of solutions. Public life goes well when people know about and know how to use the instititions that are civic glue of the community. Public life goes well when elections are about the issues most on the mind of the electorate, when the voters voice helps frame the choices and the debate, and the candidates are required to respond to that voice.

In her own soft-spoken way, Dr. Eva Harris, 38, has become the Robin Hood of biotechnology.

She takes new discoveries in molecular and biological technology, breaks them down into their simplest forms, figures out ways to replicate them at lower costs and then transfers the information to public health workers in the developing world.

Our premier issue will show you how to get involved in Kite Aerial Photography
...we chose to focus on cool things you can do with technology, not just what to buy
..."Martha Stewart for geeks."

I have powered 12V CHAIN SAWS directly (yes, while someone else cut wood with them) with this unit.
...
At one point a ball-bearing 3600 GPH pump was substituted for the generator, resulting in amazing water pumping capacity....

"Prizes have been used to solve many seemingly-intractable problems, from an 18th-century prize for determining longitude at sea, to the 20th century prizes for long-distance flight given to Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. These prizes work well when governments or philanthropists anticipate that a breakthrough would be valuable, but are unlikely to be easily sold in the marketplace or obtained from university laboratories"

The Jhai PC, meanwhile, appears to have exposed an odd little niche. There appears to be quite a few places on the earth which are tantalizingly close to Net connections and telephony, but have no electricity, no cellphone coverage, and no landlines. Think of it as the developing world's equivalent of the last-mile problem.

...The accusation raised by Mr. Ackerman that 'Conklin traded integrity for money' has itself raised an issue of intent. Did [Ackerman] trade journalistic integrity to engineer a Board of Supervisors more to his political liking?"

Following two weeks of allegations regarding the hiring of former supervisor and now candidate Bruce Conklin by the Nevada County Land Trust as project manager for the North Star House, the directors of the Land Trust invited local media to attend a news conference on Tuesday to hear their side of the story and answer questions...

Mr. Wilson was a person who very much wanted to help in saving open space and allow for land to be used for the benefit and enjoyment of the public rather than allowing it all to turn into subdivisions or sprawling suburbs. Therefore, it is hopeful that the County of Nevada will give due and serious consideration toward using this legacy ...in furtherance of preserving any open-space land programs.

The Land Trust board can mitigate the damage that has been done to your image and standing in the community by returning the money to the Board of Supervisors and allow the current Board to distribute the money in a manner that would benefit the community more broadly.

The four aligned supervisors - Conklin, Martin, Green and Peter Van Zant - feared the new board would use Wilson's bequest for something other than open space, which was translated by the supervisors to mean anything related to recreation

They had reason for concern: Bedwell (who recently wrote this) had spoken of the need for softball fields and mental health services, while Sutherland had often discussed the importance of roads.

After a school for troubled youths failed and left the North Star House vacant in the mid-1980s, no one seemed to want the dilapidated building.

Designed by acclaimed architect Julia Morgan...scarred with crude graffiti, smashed windows... Owning it, much less restoring it, would require a colossal commitment of time and money.

A spokesman for Terra Alta Development, which owned the house from the mid-1980s until April 2002, declined to comment on the house for this story.

Lowell Robinson (of Robinson Timber), one of the [then-]current owners...
...
[ironic...:] Andy Cassano of Nevada City Engineering, a representative for the [then-current] owners...
...
The land is also home to a house designed by Julia Morgan, who also designed the San Simeon mansion for newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst. The house has reportedly been in dire need of repairs for years.

As a longtime [Land Trust] board member, I know that my colleagues are extremely ethical, and I know that we have a paper trail to back every one of our statements: that there have been no conspiracies, that there was no "prior deal" with Conklin, that he was selected through a competitive process, and that we can properly account for all spending on the project.

It was clear, of course, that The Union had mounted a serious concentrated attack on Conklin and that the Land Trust was the most convenient vehicle available to reach him. The publisher of The Union was unwilling to meet with me to discuss the facts, although he did meet with one of my board members. ...[The Union] suggested that the Land Trust just admit that it made a mistake and go on.

...it is clear now that our organization, which prides itself on political neutrality, was guilty of serious political naivete in choosing Conklin. The highly ethical board members who made the selection were focused strictly on his nonpolitical qualifications, including his volunteer following, his relationship with the landowners and his passion for historical building conservation....

Andy Cassano has been involved, in one way or another, with almost every contentious land-use and planning issue in Nevada County during the past two decades, and yet the planner is almost universally respected in the community. How can this be possible?

...Because Cassano respects those with whom he works, he seeks to find consensus that will meet the desires of as many people as possible. He is adept at identifying the many attributes of Nevada County that we all value and focusing on them rather than drawing attention to the much smaller number of issues that divide us.

Those who seek to polarize and divide the community into warring camps may win the applause of zealots such as themselves. But those who seek consensus on our future are the people who are truly valuable to a community. Andy Cassano is a valuable member of the community, and we are fortunate that he is among us.

The staff and editorial board of The Union will never conduct itself in any self-serving, self-aggrandizing manner, as we would consider it a betrayal of our policy of fairness and of our ethical standards.
...[our] Endorsements are not intended to coerce or manipulate the electorate...