Hello, readers.
As we proceed with lifting our journalistic enterprise off the ground, we are pleased to note that six of the last seven stories published in the Monitor have been scoops.
We never used to worry about scoops too much, believing that it was better to get a story right than to get it out first. We still believe that. But if we are to make good on our boast to run the other media in town ragged, we must also get scoops.
As we announced when we launched, our primary strategy for getting stories first is attending and reporting on meetings that other media do not attend. Four of the six aforementioned scoops were attained by following that strategy alone, so we’ll keep doing that.
The remaining two scoops were investigative in nature—one concerned city councilors’ frequent failure to explain their conflicts of interest, and the other was about the city’s failure to keep minutes which adhere to state and city law. As the only news outlet in Duluth doing investigative reporting, the Monitor is happy to monopolize that niche as well.
All in all, things are going well. We are up to 14 sponsors on Patreon, and we have been pleasantly surprised by the number of people who have opted to simply write us checks in lieu of going through Patreon. We certainly do not wish to discourage such generosity. All donations are important at this stage of the Monitor’s development; a lot of the funds are being used to pay for data requests, as we build up our files on various subjects.
You’ll notice that internet ads pop up on the Monitor website now. Please be aware that the Monitor does not control the content of the ads you see. A third-party computer does. It’s an aspect of the digital age—the Monitor is being used to advertise things of which the Monitor has no knowledge. We’re not sure how we feel about that, but we tend to be understanding of anything that leads to more revenue coming in.
As always when one is a somewhat controversial figure, rumors abound. One rumor that I recently heard making the rounds about me is that I leave my digital recorder running in closed meetings, hoping to pick up confidential information after I leave. I was warned about this by the city attorney, who advised me that doing such a thing was illegal. But he had no actual proof of me doing it; he had just heard stories.
It’s laughable, really. Anyone who follows my work knows that my hardest-hitting articles come from attending meetings, studying publicly available documents, interviewing people, and searching my archive of more than 1,000 recorded public meetings for relevant information. Even if I considered listening in on secret discussions, my inherent thriftiness would prevent it. I would never intentionally risk losing an $80 recorder by leaving it behind somewhere, because I’m too big a cheapskate.
Oh well. If rumors are the price I must pay for being at the forefront of Duluth journalism, so be it. Is the Monitor breaking more news stories than everybody else, as we said we would two months ago? That’s the real question. And the answer is: Yes, we are. If you like what we’re doing, we encourage you to support us financially. Every donation we receive goes into producing more news that matters to you and your tax dollars. We’re eagerly awaiting the day when we can hire another reporter. We’re looking for somebody on the smaller side, who can easily hide under a table.
