Local News Coverage (and legal organs and blogs)
What, no love for this blog (or Brian Brodrick's or Steve Holzman's)? Come on Charlie, share the glory. 
Adam Thompson has done a good job of covering Oconee County from the daily desk, while my old editor Wayne Ford has completely forgotten about running any real local news in the weekly supplement no longer sent to all the mailboxes. He will clone the coverage Adam writes for the Daily, sometimes even adding letters and articles before the 50 cent a day newspaper gets sold.
I looked up the statutes for changing a county's legal organ in the state code, but since the Leader has no paid subscriptions, yet alone the mandated three-quarters paid subscriptions, they are not in the running yet to remove that plum from the Enterprise. Maybe if Rob Peecher, Sr. can pay the retainer of a large law firm, then maybe they can finagle them away after two years of hemorhagging legal fees on both sides. You have to get a Probate Judge, the Sheriff and a Grand Jury involved in changing Legal Organs.
The Athens Observer actually did wrestle the legals away from the Banner-Herald some years ago, and it took two years plus of hassles and maneuvers to do that, and almost as soon as they did it, the Observer started a series of rather unfortunate ownership changes which I believe actually went threw Miss Vinnie's soiled hands for a few months.
Look, 99.99% of the criticism of the Oconee Enterprise is warranted. But we are stuck with it, by in large, due to the failure of the Oconee Arrow a few years prior. The newspaper business is a dinosaur in general, and I should know, having spent about half my life working for every weekly north of Atlanta. There are two things which will derail the Oconee Enterprise from being the punching bag or the bird liner of the community: removing all advertisers and subscribers. I subscribe, and I read it online. They are joining the late 1990s by printing an unsearchable online edition, and have scooped the daily paper at least once with the recent reporting of the fire at Jennings Mill. Miss Vinnie is an anachronism in today's media conglomeration. She has become the class clown, our class clown, but not in the way that is flattering or self warranted.
Charlie writes a story which should be immortalized in the pages of the local legal records, but unfortunately unless it is added on a few dozen more blogs with tags and picked up elsewhere, I doubt it will. I think we are giving the weekly a bit more credit then it deserves when it comes to their nefarious dealings and dirty double-crossings.
Questions left unanwswerd about all this: did someone put flyers on cars around the courthouse? If so, what did they say? If not printed by Baugh, then by whom? Why does Miss Vinnie continue to grind on citizens groups? What is her vendetta based upon? Why is Miss Vinnie giving advertising to Esther Porter and not to other candidates? What would happen if no one advertised in the Oconee Enterprise? What would happen if we all cancelled our subscriptions at the same time in a unified front of protest? Does Miss Vinnie not want the First Amendment to apply to everyone but her newspapers?
From: oconeesfuture@aol.com
It is time to bid goodbye to The Oconee Enterprise (but the question is how)
Adam Thompson has done a good job of covering Oconee County from the daily desk, while my old editor Wayne Ford has completely forgotten about running any real local news in the weekly supplement no longer sent to all the mailboxes. He will clone the coverage Adam writes for the Daily, sometimes even adding letters and articles before the 50 cent a day newspaper gets sold.
I looked up the statutes for changing a county's legal organ in the state code, but since the Leader has no paid subscriptions, yet alone the mandated three-quarters paid subscriptions, they are not in the running yet to remove that plum from the Enterprise. Maybe if Rob Peecher, Sr. can pay the retainer of a large law firm, then maybe they can finagle them away after two years of hemorhagging legal fees on both sides. You have to get a Probate Judge, the Sheriff and a Grand Jury involved in changing Legal Organs.
The Athens Observer actually did wrestle the legals away from the Banner-Herald some years ago, and it took two years plus of hassles and maneuvers to do that, and almost as soon as they did it, the Observer started a series of rather unfortunate ownership changes which I believe actually went threw Miss Vinnie's soiled hands for a few months.
Look, 99.99% of the criticism of the Oconee Enterprise is warranted. But we are stuck with it, by in large, due to the failure of the Oconee Arrow a few years prior. The newspaper business is a dinosaur in general, and I should know, having spent about half my life working for every weekly north of Atlanta. There are two things which will derail the Oconee Enterprise from being the punching bag or the bird liner of the community: removing all advertisers and subscribers. I subscribe, and I read it online. They are joining the late 1990s by printing an unsearchable online edition, and have scooped the daily paper at least once with the recent reporting of the fire at Jennings Mill. Miss Vinnie is an anachronism in today's media conglomeration. She has become the class clown, our class clown, but not in the way that is flattering or self warranted.
Charlie writes a story which should be immortalized in the pages of the local legal records, but unfortunately unless it is added on a few dozen more blogs with tags and picked up elsewhere, I doubt it will. I think we are giving the weekly a bit more credit then it deserves when it comes to their nefarious dealings and dirty double-crossings.
Questions left unanwswerd about all this: did someone put flyers on cars around the courthouse? If so, what did they say? If not printed by Baugh, then by whom? Why does Miss Vinnie continue to grind on citizens groups? What is her vendetta based upon? Why is Miss Vinnie giving advertising to Esther Porter and not to other candidates? What would happen if no one advertised in the Oconee Enterprise? What would happen if we all cancelled our subscriptions at the same time in a unified front of protest? Does Miss Vinnie not want the First Amendment to apply to everyone but her newspapers?
Daniel J. Matthews, Jr.
From: oconeesfuture@aol.com
Citizens
Over the past 40 years as my wife and I moved about the country most of my local news came from The Oconee Enterprise, through my wife's parents, life residents of Oconee County. In 2001 we retired back to Oconee County. Many long-time readers have come to know that the paper is not as accurate as they would like, but most manage to sort out what is accurately presented from what is not. It is often amusing to attend a meeting and then see what is reported about the meeting. I have assumed good intentions and attributed sloppy editing and inaccurate articles to the reality of a weekly newspaper with limited staff doing the best it could with the resources available. For the most part the paper seemed to maintain some level of impartiality in political races.
That has changed, and I have spent some time wondering why it is that a weekly newspaper that bills itself as a community newspaper would abandon all pretense of neutrality by supporting selected incumbents and challengers. Now I think I understand what is behind that.
Several months ago the paper began writing negative articles about two of three Board of Commission members who had been critical of Chairman Melvin Davis. About that time, a citizen in the grading business - Mike Maxey - came forward and volunteered to do the grading for the Veterans Memorial, a project that had been stalled for several years. This appeared to be an incredibly generous offer, and Maxey received a great deal of publicity.
Citizens may recall that the Veterans Memorial fundraising stalled when Jim Ivey looted the funds. It was reported that the Veterans Memorial board members at that time were Commissioner Don Norris and the Oconee Enterprise Publisher, Vinnie Williams. Mr. Ivey was found guilty, and, during the sentencing hearing, Commissioner Jim Luke and Chairman Davis appeared as character witnesses for Ivey, their political friend and mentor. Based on their testimony, Ivey received a very light sentence.
In April Maxey made the rounds in the county claiming to be looking for support to run against Melvin Davis. Later he told others he would run against Don Norris. Sometime later he told others he had decided not to run for any post. The day before the final qualification date, he qualified to run against Chuck Horton. Chuck Horton has been a thoughtful and independent board member and has been critical of Melvin Davis for his secrecy and failure to provide board members with information needed to make voting decisions.
A consortium of citizen groups sponsored a forum for BOC and Coroner candidates on June 2nd at which all candidates responded to questions from the floor. There were many questions about relevant issues, with incumbents defending their positions and challengers answering questions about those issues. The publisher of the Enterprise, who was not present at the forum wrote a particularly vicious editorial attacking the groups that sponsored the forum, and has continued to write negatively about the groups since.
Just recently it was revealed that the Enterprise had gone beyond publishing stories promoting the favored incumbents and attacking the citizen groups to providing free advertising to a candidate challenging incumbent Margaret Hale, one of the commissioners who had been critical of Davis' policies.
The final straw for me came when the paper ran a fabricated story in the 7/10 edition accusing Citizens for Oconees Future of violating state election laws by putting campaign literature on cars near the early voting polls. This accusatory story ran with absolutely no hint of verification or investigation of the issue. I can only conclude that the intent was to take one more shot at discrediting a citizens organization.
So the memorial fund treasury is looted while the newspaper publisher who has worked for years to get a veterans memorial is on the board. And you have a Commissioner in the same predicament. Now after Davis and Luke save Ivey from a long prison sentence, you have three Commissioners (the chairman and two others) who need cover, and they need to eliminate an independent member of the Board. Along comes Maxey who wants to run for Commissioner and is willing to put up the money for grading the memorial as well as spend heavily on his election bid. The Oconee Enterprise attacks incumbents Hale and Horton, provides cover for Luke, Davis and Norris, attacks anyone else who is critical or is perceived to be critical of favored incumbents and provides free advertising for selected challenger Esther Porter.
It is difficult to know if the publisher is a willing participant or is just a pawn who feels obligated to provide cover for this group because they moved the memorial forward for their own reasons. It doesn't matter, the result is the same. Davis, Norris and Luke get cover for their part in the Ivey affair, Maxey, the grading contractor who says he intends to vote on rezones and then do grading work on the projects, gets support against a very effective Commissioner, and the publisher finally gets a sense of relief from the Ivey debacle.
We now have other more reliable sources for local information. The Oconee Leader is mailed free to every household in the county each week. That paper is totally dependent on advertisers and thus must tread a fine line between news and advertisers. However the campaign coverage has been far more balanced than that of The Oconee Enterprise. The Athens Banner Herald is providing much improved coverage of Oconee events. The internet offers another source of information through several blogs that are very timely and informative. The blog AVOC.com, posted by former BOC Chair Wendell Dawson, and the blog OconeeCountyObservations.blogspot.com, posted by UGA Professor Lee Becker, are particularly effective in covering local issues. Tim Bryant on Radio Station WGAU 1340 has done a good job covering this election cycle and often covers other Oconee events.
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