On Wednesday, the local City of Ludington Daily News (COLDNews) paper seriously misquoted what I said at the April 8, 2018 meeting, so I sent their editor a pointed bit of criticism this is word for word between my salutation and 'signature':

"Your Noah Hausmann printed rather defamatory words coming from my mouth at a city council meeting, of which I never said. He printed on the front page: "[Rotta] also said he doubted Steckel told the truth about the hours she worked and said she should have to submit documentation to account for her extra hours."

I said neither, here was my full statement, it's recorded on the video of that meeting:

"I don't like renegotiating compensation after the fact, when both parties were well aware of the job involved going in, and nothing unexpected happened in the interim. On January 28, the council approved a decision to pay Jackie Steckel an amount that she felt was acceptable for a job that she, probably more than anyone, knew the rigors of.
Regardless, it was during perhaps the deadest part of the year as far as city hall is concerned, February and early March. I have a hard time believing that she would need to consistently put in 14-16 hour days to manage Ludington during that time. Bigger council-manager type cities than Ludington all over Michigan, do perfectly well without hiring an assistant to the city manager, and I haven't found one complaining yet about working 16 hour days in February.
Frankly, I feel that if I was a councilor entrusted with the people's money and this ex post facto pay raise came in front of me, I would insist on the employee justifying the expense by showing me concretely what they did during those 70-80 hour weeks they say they worked. That isn't done here, I certainly didn't witness anything spectacular coming from city hall those weeks, and so I would remind Jackie she did a fine job, but that we had a mutually agreed-upon historically-consistent contract. The council capitulated tonight for fear of offending a long-serving officer, but they should have rejected it for fear of offending the taxpayers. We are so far in debt, yet our council rejects competitive bidding and contractual agreements for no legitimate reasons." [END]"

As you can read and hear (if you listen to the recording of the meeting), I never said I doubted Steckel told the truth about the hours she worked, nor did I say she should have to submit documentation to account for her extra hours. You wanna-be journalists should know the value of verifying information, reporting truthfully, and the importance of the city council doing their job to justify public expenditures. But you don't, you just have your presstitute do a hit piece on me so that he can retain his access to city hall goodwill and propaganda. Please print a retraction, and retrain your dogs."

The next morning, Managing Editor David Bossick replied:  "Thank you for emailing.  We will run a clarification in Friday's newspaper. If you would like to discuss this further, feel free to give me a call at 843-1122 x312, and we can meet to discuss things."  Again this is a direct quote.

I replied back:  "I'm hoping that your clarification has a jigger or two of retraction thrown in, otherwise it may be hard for me to swallow. Thanks for the response and the invitation to call you if further discussion is required."

In short time, I received:  "After discussing the matter further with others, we are having the clarification reviewed by our attorneys. It will not be in Friday's edition because of the review.  If you have any further questions or comments, again, feel free to call any time."

I didn't have other questions, and so while this wasn't a textbook example of demanding a retraction from a newspaper, it did the trick as a 'clarification' was printed in the weekend edition, albeit not on page one, but on page three.

I thank them for the direct quotation, rather than having it being broadcasted that I said I 'doubted Steckel told the truth' and that I said she 'should have to submit documentation to account for her extra hours.'  Both of which can be easily 'paraphrased' themselves into a lot meaner things that weren't implied or explicit in my full speech.

Yet it also bothered me somewhat that a learned person like Editor Bossick declared the original words used by Noah Hausmann were 'paraphrasing' my words.  I paraphrase people some of the time, but I generally don't add anything that wasn't already there.  That's good writing and journalistic practice.  Most sources like this one claim that:

"Paraphrasing involves taking a passage - either spoken or written - and rewording it. Writers often paraphrase to deliver information in a more concise way. When paraphrasing, it is important to keep the original meaning so that the facts remain intact. Basically, you are writing something in your own words that still expresses the original idea." 

So had the city hall beat reporter actually wanted to paraphrase my eight longish sentences into one or two concepts, in a professional journalistic manner, he would have keyed into my main points, such as:  "a set agreement should not be changed w/o good reason", "there does not appear to be a solid reason proposed other than a large estimation of hours w/o work product explained" and "the council should have due diligence in reviewing such matters, lest they go further into debt by appeasement of unproven grievances."

It is, of course, too much to hope for that city hall presstitutes will actually mention something about the council's previous failure to perform competitive bidding protocols in choosing the sidewalk contractor.  When a City council does not take a low bid and cannot adequately describe why they didn't (because they lacked due diligence to actually review the records-- and isn't that the same thing that happened with the pay raise), that failure should be in the headlines, paraphrased to make it clearer to the public that they are not being well served by their city council.  

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I'm glad you asked for a retraction and got at least an acknowledgement. I did make a comment on the last post and couldn't see where Hausmann could have paraphrased with such blatant inflammatory additions. I hope he learns a lesson.

Noah was at last night's special meeting where a variety of issues were discussed, among them primarily sidewalks and Open Meetings Act issues.  The council seems poised to dramatically alter their policies in each, for the better.  It will be interesting to see how Mr. Hausmann translates what happened at the meeting.

Our older readers may notice that the initial picture was from "The Paper Chase" a non-traditional TV show about students matriculating through a law school.  You may also recall the actor portraying the overbearing professor was named John Houseman.  I couldn't resist the juxtaposition, since his character demanded strict adherence to the rules, and Noah Hausmann-- not so much.

  Could this lead to the coldnews printing the actual questions asked by you and how the city council is trying to pull the wool over the taxpayers eyes?  Will the paper actually do some investigation into your investigations of underhanded dealings by the city government?  I would say it would probably boost the sagging newspaper sales. Everybody likes to read the real dirt on shady deals. The daily news could become the Ludington National Enquire .  Don't they wish they had that huge circulation.

Very well said X. Again LDN uses the English language to justify fake news by calling fake news paraphrasing. A retraction is pulling back something that has been let out, in this case it is fake news in the form of false reporting by a LDN reporter. A clarification is an explanation of something which makes it easier to understand. What was needed in this case was a retraction and clarification explaining word for word what was actually said. LDN should have printed your entire comment because taking your words out of context as they did only confuses the issue. For those not familiar with what was said at the Council meeting the clarification means little without full knowledge of what took place. Even this latest attempt by LDN to clarify reveals what kind of business they are running. To me paraphrasing a conversation is appropriate if done honestly and helps shorten the article but when a statement is given at an official Government meeting there must be no "paraphrasing" because it is actually changing what was said. Statements at a Council meeting become a matter of public record and should not be paraphrased. LDN is why people are fed up with present day journalism and the sooner they fold up and lock their doors the better. Maybe the City should change the zoning of LDN's property to "red light" district because of all the presstitution taking place.

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