Editorial: Stakes are sky-high in coming election

The Courier editor says he thinks an informed and vigorous electorate is a good idea. I can't write a response much better than this comment by Elijah Middlebrook:

Dear Mr. New Editor,

I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiments. Please help us avoid being "easy sells" by improving the coverage of city and county politics in the Daily Courier. Please encourage your reporters to do real investigative journalism rather than just repeating the information that is given them. The voters of Prescott need your assistance. Only you can transform the Courier into the kind of paper we need to be an informed, critical thinking electorate. The current approach to covering local politics and news is grossly inadequate. Thanks for listening.

I might add, however, that if he is at all concerned about the paper's reputation and building its credibility in the community, Tim could do worse than to write a byline column on his vision for the paper and how he intends to address the sort of concerns that Mr Middlebrook expresses. Set a standard, publicly, for yourself and your staff to meet.

Missing: Senator's son arrested

Hat-tip to Mayor Wilson for alerting me to yesterday's story in Prescott eNews on the arrest of Nelson Pierce, 33-year-old son of LD1 Senator Steve Pierce, on a raft of charges related to heroin, meth, X and acting like an idiot.

Lynne posted the story at about 5:30pm yesterday, before deadline at the Courier, and Tuesday is usually police-blotter day at the paper anyway, so I don't see an excuse for not running it in today's edition.

Maybe the assigned reporter had already gone home or whatever, but this was a big fail for the editors as it's so easy to infer that they buried the story out of concern for Sen Pierce, who is running for reelection. If it doesn't show up online by about 10:30 tonight, readers should definitely smell a rat.

Update, 6:30pm: And it appears.

Our former mayor has an interesting exchange about this today on his Facebook page with Tricia Lewis of Lewis Marketing & Public Relations, which claims as clients, among others, the City of Prescott, Country Bank and Fann Environmental.