Apologies to my far flung readers to whom the following cannot be of the slightest interest. It is of interest to my local following, however, needs to be said, and this is my most effective vehicle for disseminating it to the large number of locals who subscribe to this site. I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving something the two people who have been vilified by the local press won’t have.
Clint: I have followed with dismay as the Camera has pursued a downward spiral ever since Colleen Conant left. I have watched as it proclaimed such significant changes as putting all local news in the first section and international news in the second section, and then proceeding to totally ignore its new format. I have watched as you struggled with the best location for “Dear Abby”. I have watched as you eliminated the free obituaries unless the dead person happens to be someone like Delbert Mann or Monty Westmore who are entitled to free obituaries even though odds are few if any of your readers has the slightest idea who they are. I have watched as you have shrunk the editorial page until it consists of few editorials and fewer op ed columns. Not that all the changes are for the worse. As Mr. Kaufman proudly trumpeted a few weeks back, the funny pages are now printed in color during the week as well as on the weekend. Mr. Kaufman’s enthusiasm to the contrary notwithstanding, that hardly seems to offset the other changes that go more to substance than style. But of all those sad changes, none can compare to the contemptible behavior you have displayed during the last three weeks with respect to Judge Dick McLean and Edi Stevens.
Although I am in the same law firm as their lawyer and was a law partner with Edie many years ago, I have no familiarity with the details of their case. I know the outcome and like you, that is all I know. Like you, I have no knowledge of what, if any, discussions about settlement of the dispute took place. Like you, I am in the dark with respect to everything except the outcome. Unlike you, I have not because of my ignorance, inflamed the community and turned it into a howling mob and now a lynching party.
Bob Greenlee’s commentary was sufficient to awaken the mob. And you, in what has to be one of the most scurrilous examples of journalism ever seen in this town, have continued to feed the mob by making the story front-page news on an almost daily basis. Violating your own rules about “letters to the Editor” you have published an unending stream of letters attacking Dick and Edie even though most are duplicative and many vituperative. On Thursday the headline on the front page was “Couple will appeal ruling” and the accompanying story regurgitated the facts of the case. On Friday there was apparently nothing that you could dredge up to report so you wrote a “Who me?” editorial in which you first spell out what you perceived to be the outrageous conduct engaged in by the judge and the lawyer. You wrote: “As numerous observers have noted, it seems inappropriate for two ex-judges and an attorney-officers of the court-to have knowingly and “notoriously” trespassed on neighbors’ property with (apparently) the intent to seize it.” Thus having further incited the mob, you chastise it, piously proclaiming further in the editorial: “One needn’t excuse roguish behavior to urge zealous critics to take a deep breath … [T]he critics’ extreme reaction discredits their cause.”
Clint, it is and has become the Camera’s cause. The very next day your headline has another front-page lead headline about Stevens’ reaction and next to it a discussion by lawyers of adverse possession to continue to inform and inflame. Today, Sunday, the front page advises the mob that there will be a lynching next door to the Stevens-McLean house on the empty lot that has been the subject of the lawsuit. You repeat all the facts about the case in case anyone is left in Boulder who has not heard the details you have so carefully repeated on a daily basis. You then publish the address of Edie and Dick and tell everyone they are invited to the lynching at noon today. You report that the aggrieved owner of the adjacent lot says she is buying lemonade to serve to those who show up for the lynching. Tomorrow morning I am confident your front page will have a picture of the lynching mob drinking lemonade and holding up signs attacking Dick and Edie. (Although this is not about the mob, I would be remiss if I did not express my astonishment and dismay that a community that prides itself on its many liberal virtues would so quickly be seduced into rank thuggery by a two-bit newspaper.)
Clint, one hundred years ago in the South courageous people like you and others at the Camera incited mobs to lynching, piously proclaiming as will you, that you are simply reporting the facts and cannot help it if it inflames the public. Edie and Dick have received threatening e-mails and phone calls. The lawyer who represented them has received threatening e-mails and phone calls. And none of this would have been possible without your assistance.
Lest there be any mistake, I am not commenting on the merits of the respective positions of the parties. I do not know whether I would have followed the route chosen by Edie and Dick had I been in their shoes. I do know that because of what you have done the lives of those two people who have contributed so much to this community will never be the same. And for this they have not the court system or the lawyers to thank but you, Kevin Kaufman and the Boulder Daily Camera. You should hang your heads in shame. Chris Brauchli
