Mystic Journalism with Patti Klevorn of the COLDNews

[XLFD]

Tucked away among the obituaries on page six of the Tuesday City of Ludington Daily News (COLDNews) was a article by Patti Klevorn dealing with the Spartan Academy and the Mason County Central school (MCC) Superintendent's contract.  It caught my eye while I was looking at the notice about the March 8 primary poised next to it on that page.

Those who have seen the latest Ludington City Council video for the February 22 meeting may have wondered why I fled the meeting just before the water treatment plant supervisor came to the podium about 33 minutes in.  The reason was because I had to make the MCC Board of Education meeting to make my case about a couple of FOIA denials I had that actually covered a fairly long time in their processing.  I arrived about 25 minutes into the meeting, as I had been notified by Superintendent Jeff Mount that my matter would be discussed towards the end of the meeting, which he estimated to be around 30 minutes into the meeting. 

Anyhow, I arrived at the sundry meeting of educators and educational bureaucrats (edeaucrats) and noticed Rob Alway from the MCP tapping away at his computer along with the COLDNews representative who I believe was Riley Kelley doing the same thing on either side of the only other seat that was available in the small crowd of principals and teachers otherwise.

After listening to the board decide how best to spend some found money on projects (something called Qualified Zone Academy Bonds) and a few reports from the assembled principals, they got to my issue, where I supplied them with what amounted to a four page legal brief after reading them most of the introduction and conclusion, and warning them that the body of the essay was more technical (and sleep-inducing). 

Board member Jeff Barnett lamented over them having their attorney look it over and supply a reply, thinking it would cost them some money they could use elsewhere.  What he failed to realize is that such expenditures could be easily averted by just handing over the non-exempt records they tried to deny by using the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) to shield their non-educational records involving two disciplinary proceedings.

Shortly thereafter the meeting we dispersed and went our own ways, and then this story appeared in the COLDNews the next day with the Patti Klevorn by-line.  I contacted someone who was at the full meeting who confirmed that Patti was never at the meeting, yet she writes the story above as if she was at the meeting witnessing the events occurring, quoting various people who she had never heard speak at the meeting, unless Mr. Kelley had some hidden microphone where she was listening in, while he was typing away at his keyboard.

Being that the sentence and grammar differs from her usual fare that offers up after some of the Ludington City Council meetings, it appears she may have had a little bit of ghostwriting done for her, whether it was done by her compatriot or someone on the board.  Or maybe she just has mystic powers that allow her to cover things from another zip code without being present.

[Willy]

This could explain why the LDN is so inept at covering and reporting the news. The LDN reports on news by the surrogate method, which means that the right side doesn't really know what the left side is doing. This would account for the incomplete, inaccurate, erroneous, false, untrue, ignorant and biased information they print.

[XLFD]

I have noticed this happen twice before in Ludington when the city held smaller meetings not all that well attended.  But a version found its way into the COLDNews written as if it was penned by our city leadership itself, but with a COLDNews propagandist, absent from the meeting, on the byline and writing as if they were there.