Stoneage Ramblings

By John R. Stone

You may have heard something about a recent incident in Marion, Kansas, where the local police chief got a search  warrant and went to the offices of the local newspaper, the Marion County Record, and took the firm’s computers and electronic media like cell phones. He also raided the publisher’s home.

It may have been for something that it printed, but also it may have been about something the newspaper had not yet printed.

A local restaurant owner was seeking a liquor license. Someone sent the paper information that the restaurant owner had incurred a DWI five years ago. The paper printed the information after verifying it.

The restaurant owner alleged the paper was violating her privacy. The issue was that if the owner had a DWI she would not be eligible for a liquor license according to city ordinances.

Publisher Eric Meyer didn’t say who gave the information to the paper, some suspect it could have been the restaurant owner’s estranged husband. Even so, he verified it elsewhere.

Police Chief Gideon Cody was also being checked on by the newspaper. He is new to the town and a half a dozen people had called the paper with negative information about the chief during his previous employment in Kansas City. The newspaper had printed nothing about the chief’s background, it hadn’t been able to verify any of the information. That is how responsible journalism works.

Even a small business these days is pretty dependent on computers. They are used for ordering merchandise, payroll, banking, tax payments like payroll deductions for Social Security, state and federal tax withholding and more.

In a newspaper office stories are written on computers and later formatted into newspaper pages. Pictures are added, using the computer. Ads for the paper are also “built” by graphic artists on computers and added to pages. When a page is completed it is proofread, then corrected, converted to a PDF and sent to the printing plant via the Internet.

Also important are legal notices, some of which have to run consecutive weeks.

The Record did come out with an issue last week and was able to reset all the legals and format the paper on older computers it still had. It was a complicated process which included downloading software and rebuilding page templates.

I can tell you from past experience that would have been a huge process. Meyer said it took all hands on deck, I believe him!

Meyer suspects that Cody is seeking information about who might have called the paper about his past so the“recent calls” list on many cell phones might give him some information about that. And maybe he could find some search information on a computer that might give him a clue about what the paper might be looking for.

But none of what the paper did would be illegal, of course, which makes one wonder how Cody managed to convince  the county attorney and judge to give him a search warrant. He would have had to tell quite a different story to a judge.

Further complicating the issue is that Meyer, who is 69, lived in a house with his mother, who was 98 and the owner of the publication. He provided care for her. The Meyer house was raided as well as the office. The day after the raid Meyer’s mother died, and the coroner said the cause was cardiac arrest. Meyer blames it on the raid.

Then last Wednesday the county attorney withdrew the search warrant and the paper’s attorney reported that he had received all the computers and cell phones back.

Also on Wednesday the Kansas City Star reported that Cody retired from the department after he was threatened with demotion from being a captain on the force over words with a female officer.

I suspect the legal aspects of this are far from over.