| Mille
Lacs Messenger
The Mille Lacs Messenger published a fraudulent letter to the editor,
written by one person and signed by another with the name of a third
person, who knew nothing about it. Editor Patenaude wrote a personal
message to readers apologizing for the paper’s failure to check
with the person whose name appeared on the letter to see if it was
authentic. He said, "I have a responsibility to inform readers
when a source in this newspaper comes into serious question."
He also apologized for something else. He said the person who wrote
the fake letter had backed out of a meeting with him to talk about
it, and then he ran into that person in a public place, urging others
to write letters to legislators. In light of the fake-letter episode,
Patenaude thought that was hypocritical. He confronted the person,
and they had a loud argument. Patenaude apologized in print for
having lost his composure; he said he should have handled himself
differently or avoided the situation entirely.
By
Joel Patenaude
In
six years as a daily newspaper reporter, not once did I get into
a shouting match with a reader or source at a public meeting.
And
I don‚t recall anyone, much less a parade of people, including
a state representative stomping into my publisher’s office
and calling for me to be fired for my news coverage.
No
longer can I say I incited — or more likely, inherited —
such animus. On the other hand, I humbly submit that I’ve never
heard so much passionate praise for my reporting and editorializing
than in the past 18 months.
It
was only that long ago that I arrived on the battle-weary frontlines
of community journalism by taking the position of editor for the
Mille Lacs Messenger, based in Isle.
Be
it an accident of geography or bewildering luck, this barely 5,000-circulation
weekly newspaper situated on the south end of "the big lake"
has consistently found itself in the eye of a hard news storm.
In
the vastness of Mille Lacs Lake, abundant walleye casually take
the bait offered by an increasing number of technologically equipped
anglers. The fish are oblivious to the fact that they and their
surrounding environment have been the subject of a heated, decades-long
struggle over recreation and resource management, Indian treaty
rights and commercial exploitation.
In
short, you could say the subject matter my staff and I cover in
the Messenger is not confined to church potlucks and Pinewood Derby
races. I’ve had to deal with an arrogant small-town mayor and
topsy-turvy police department as well as take up my predecessors’
thankless challenge of tracking the biological welfare of the state’s
premiere walleye fishery.
And
if it’s not about the fish, local politics dwells on the actual
and potential effects of American Indian sovereignty and the economics
of a couple casinos going gangbusters for the Mille Lacs Band of
Ojibwe.
I
don’t take for granted the astonishing freedom and support
I get from my employers to cover this multitude of controversies.
It simply wouldn’t be possible if co-publishers Dick Norlander
and Kevin Anderson hadn’t already survived years of reader
criticism and advertiser boycotts.
In
fact, through 11 years of social and legal strife (resulting from
several decades of tense relations between white and Indian residents),
this newspaper provided valiant coverage. Then editor Jim Baden
competently and eloquently documented the events leading up to and
including the 1999 U.S. Supreme Court decision affirming the treaty-derived
hunting and fishing rights of eight Ojibwe bands in Minnesota and
Wisconsin.
The
lake was still simmering over that when I arrived in August 2001.
It boiled over again after extensive talks between Mille Lacs County
and Mille Lacs Band officials broke down and the county, in February
2002, filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the original 61,000-acre
Mille Lacs Indian Reservation no longer exists.
Late
last month, the chief justice of the U.S. District Court of Minnesota
heard oral arguments for and against the tribe‚s request that
the lawsuit be dismissed. Unless the judge says otherwise, both
sides are preparing to take their contradictory accounts of more
than 140 years of treaty and reservation history to trial in June.
In
the mean time, I’ve followed the legal arguments, calculated
the attorneys‚ fees and researched the relevant treaties, Congressional
acts and Supreme Court decisions. The information I’ve gathered
— voluminous and, I fear, hard for readers to navigate —
has alternately impressed and displeased key players on both sides.
In
my weekly column, informed by all this reporting, I have steadfastly
refused to take sides. I have, however, questioned the county’s
legal strategy and the band’s frequent unwillingness to confront
the fears for re-established reservation boundaries that I hear
among the non-Indian majority of residents and property owners here.
And
as if that wasn’t enough to get me in trouble, I’ve had
to fight the illegal closing of county and city meetings and court
proceedings just to cover other contentious stories.
Ironically,
I’m writing the hardest stories of my career only after leaving
suburban city hall and state legislative beats at 30,000-plus circulation
daily newspapers.
But
on occasion, the hard work and hard headedness pays off. Early on
in my tenure here, I provoked the county commissioner leading the
anti-reservation fight to admit, in exasperation, that he couldn’t
afford to be held personally liable for illegally closing (as I
argued) what should be open negotiations between him and his tribal
counterparts. He slammed his briefcase shut and stormed out of the
room.
Running
for re-election less than six months later, he stood up at a candidate
forum waving a copy of my newspaper — containing my coverage
of an Indian law conference in Albuquerque, NM — and implored
everyone present to read the Mille Lacs Messenger.
In
the interest of self-preservation, I, too, advise locals to read,
rather than shoot, the messenger. Every now and then, somebody grudgingly
admits the coverage of their community has been consistently bold,
fair and thorough. And that’s all I’m here, working my
butt off, to provide.
Joel
Patenaude is the editor of the Mille Lacs Messenger based in Isle,
Minn.
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