Andover Town Manager Livid That We Got
The Story! When tommyduggan.com broke the exclusive story last week about teachers receiving too much in health benefits from the town of Andover, the Tribune took our story, verified our information and wrote their own expose. Ok, Fair enough! I encourage that. I have made it clear to local media outlets that they are free to use and circulated anything published on the web site so that the widest audience will be exposed to the information. Anything I publish is community property. Period. The function of tommyduggan.com is to "get the story out." It is not about credit. It never has been. Sure it would be nice to be recognized once in a while, but my goal is news not publicity. However…. Since tommyduggan.com was first posted 4 years ago there have been occasions when our breaking the story has become part of the story itself. So was the case this week when the Andover Town Manager threw a hissy fit and publicly accused a School Board member of "leaking" public documents that were published in the story (10 Taxpayer Lawsuit Demands Andover Officials Follow Law on Teacher Benefits). (For the record, I did not speak to nor did I receive any documents from any elected official in Andover concerning the story). Unfortunately for that school board member, the story we published (and the backup documents which accompanied it) has created such a stir in Andover that the Town manager has threatened to file a complaint with the Ethics Commission. Something I would encourage him to do so that the public will see that he is more concerned with hiding public information than he is with complying with Massachusetts General Laws. Make no mistake about it, the Town manager took great pains to stop this story from reaching the media and the public. The public at large deserves to know that. Unfortunately, the editors of the Eagle Tribune don't want the public to know, as they have summarily cut all mention of the conflict and the website from their front page article in yesterday's paper. This has robbed the readers of the Eagle Tribune of important information concerning the temper tantrums, strong arming and false accusations against an elected official by the Town manager. It means that the people of Andover only got half the story if they relied on the daily paper without visiting tommyduggan.com. Would it have killed the Tribune editors to inform the public that the Town Manager is losing his mind over the leaking of documents from his office? That he is more concerned with finding the "leak" than the issue of health insurance overpayments? Even without naming me or the site? In my view that would have been the responsible thing to do. Something akin to: "The Andover Town Manager was livid that someone leaked public documents and accused a school board member (with no evidence whatsoever) of being the source of that leak. The Town Manager has threatened to file an ethics complaint against the board member whom (I would assume) denied the accusation." Again, I don't care about credit. What I do care about is that the public at large who read the Tribune yesterday only got half of the story. The weren't told about the Town Manager's efforts to conceal public information and they were not told about his behavior once that information was published. Perhaps that explains why more and more people are visiting tommyduggan.com every week. It may also be the reason investors have broken down our door here at tommyduggan.com to start a weekly, regional newspaper covering Andover, Methuen, Lawrence and North Andover. Stay tuned |