Is the Maine Trust for Local News staff, threatening to expand its union, preparing for a ‘strike’ if it doesn’t get what it wants from the suits?
Apparently, judging from what the state’s largest paper is promoting as its “strike team.”
“The three-person quick-strike reporting team is tasked with identifying strong investigative and narrative stories and getting them to readers quickly,” according to Executive Editor Carolyn Fox.
“Follow along as they report on the looming trade war, cannabis regulation and other important statewide topics.”
There’s only one small problem – the paramilitary, helmeted team just missed its most-recent chance to, uh, strike.
The team was apparently in a dark bunker over on Gannett Drive in South Portland training for the latest strafing from The Maine Wire when it overlooked not just one but two fatal accidents caused by illegal aliens.
Everybody but the Press Herald – even the Maine Public leftists – reported that the driver who killed a New Gloucester brewery owner was in the country illegally.
It took the crack strike team at the state’s largest paper four days to figure that out.
Also, it’s the second time recently that the strike team missed the point that someone here illegally had killed a Maine pedestrian.
But don’t rely on the Press Herald for such basic public-safety reporting, let alone news that should be an easy exclusive for the state’s top, well-financed strike force.
And when Fox refers to “following along,” the late-to-the-scene team certainly has been years’ late “following” The Maine Wire’s cannabis coverage.
Strike force extraordinaire – so lame its cover fire didn’t protect the paper from a recent dressing down from Cliff Schechtman, one of Fox’s predecessors who blasted the rag for pure, unadulterated laziness. “I’m simply embarrassed by what the Press Herald has become,” Schechtman recently told a journalism analyst.
Where is the “strike force” – which includes squad leader Eric Russell as well as infantry men Dylan Tusinski and John Terhune – when Fox needs them?
Thankfully the sleepy force has a backup team, the paper’s Eveready-Yet-Impotent fact-checking squad – which sadly has yet to be outfitted at the local Army Navy store.
Suit up quick, fellas, you desperately need a layer of protection for your so-far failed mission.
