Maine: public records withheld by LePage may soon see light of day

Maine has a notoriously weak public records law, one lacking in meaningful enforcement provisions. The result: bad actors in state government are able to defy the intent of the law and never turn over records. The Maine Warden Service provided one infamous example of sustained stonewalling a few years back, and the system demonstrated it was impotent to compel compliance. Governor Paul LePage provided another, failing to turn over the receipts for his emolument clause-relevant stay (or stays) at Donald Trump's Washington DC hotel.

But with the change of administrations, Mainers may finally see some of the results of some long suppressed requests under Maine's Freedom of Access Act. In Monday's Portland Press Herald I report on the hows and whys of this, and talk to experts about the shortcomings of Maine's FOAA and how it might be rectified.

Last week I reported on another public records problem: many older ones have likely been lost as information technology staffers purged servers.

[Update, 3/15/19: The documents were finally released to my intrepid Press Herald colleagues Kevin Miller and Scott Thistle, who reported on their content here.

Maine TV anchors among those recording Sinclair's "fake stories" promo

Over the weekend, a montage went viral that featured dozens of local television anchors at Sinclair Broadcasting stations across the country reciting the same promo about their concern over "fake stories" being carried by other (unnamed) media outlets. The anchors expressed their concern about "the troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing out country" and denounced "some media outlets" for publishing "these same fake stories...without checking their facts first" and for using "their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control exactly what people think."

As I report in today's Portland Press Herald, WGME-13, southern Maine's CBS affiliate, was no exception, with anchors Kim Block and Gregg Lagerquist producing the requisite segment, which ends with the observation "This is extremely dangerous to democracy." The promo also runs on Sinclair's local FOX affiliate, WPFO-23. (Here's a link to the clip.)

Critics noted that the Sinclair stations themselves have a troubling reputation for running one-sided, pro-Trump opinion segments and nightly "Terrorism Alert Desk" updates produced at their Maryland headquarters and distributed on a "must run" basis to all of their nearly 200 local stations' newscasts. They're also currently seeking Trump administration approval to buy dozens more stations nationwide. More details in the story.

I last wrote on Sinclair and WGME last summer, when the chain was under fire for "must run" segments featuring a former Trump aide.

Rescheduled: talking Journalism in the Trump Age, Dec. 19 Scarborough, Maine

On Tuesday, Dec. 19, I'll be speaking on "Journalism in the Age of Trump" at the Scarborough Public Library here in Maine. It's rescheduled from last week, when frozen rain compelled a last minute postponement.

The event is presented by the Camden Conference, which kicks of its 31st annual meeting in February on the theme of "World Disorder and America's Future." My talk kicks off at 6:30 pm and is free and open to the public. Details herein.

My next scheduled speaking event is at the the 2018 Forum of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities in Dallas, Texas, where I'll be presenting the American Nations paradigm and some of the key themes of American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good.

Speaking on Journalism in the Trump Age, Scarborough, Dec. 12

Next Tuesday I'll be speaking on "Journalism in the Age of Trump" at the Scarborough Public Library here in Maine.

The event is presented by the Camden Conference, which kicks of its 31st annual meeting in February on the theme of "World Disorder and America's Future." My talk kicks off at 6:30 pm and is free and open to the public. Details herein.

[Update, 12/13/17: Due to freezing rain, the event has been postponed to Tuesday, Dec. 19, also at 6:30 pm]

My next scheduled speaking event is at the the 2018 Forum of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities in Dallas, Texas, where I'll be presenting the American Nations paradigm and some of the key themes of American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good.

North Woods Lawless II: From official denial to legislative hearings

My investigation of a controversial Maine Warden Service undercover operation and large-scale raid in the far northern Maine town of Allagash has gotten plenty of attention in the two weeks since it appeared, from personal slander from Maine Gov. Paul LePage to an announcement of legislative hearings on the issues raised in the piece. Having trouble keeping up? Here's a recap:

May 8: "North Woods Lawless" appears, with sidebars on past problems with MWS undercover operations, their success in improving routine interactions with the public and their senior brass's flaunting of public records law and the entire, Kafka-esque email chain between ourselves, the wardens, our attorney, their attorney at the Attorney General's office, and the AG's public records ombudsman, Brenda Kielty.

May 9: In the morning, Sen. Paul Davis, R-Sangerville and co-chair of the legislative committee that oversees the wardens, tells me he is demanding answers from their boss, Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Commissioner Chandler Woodcock; he notes if he doesn't get answers, he may turn to another committee he sits on, Government Oversight, which has subpoena powers. I appear on WCSH-6 and WLBZ-2 to discuss the piece. At 5:30 that evening the wardens issue a short statement denouncing the piece as misleading (but without saying why), declaring that "the majority of Maine's law-abiding citizens" support the Allagash operation (without evidence), and promising a full response in article form in a few days. 

May 10: In the morning, Gov. LePage appears on a WVOM radio talk show, makes some slanderous statements about yours truly, proclaims the article to be a whole lot of nothing....and then proceeds to say how troubled he is by each and every major allegation and finding in the piece; LePage says his office is going to investigate.  Several lawmakers call for legislative investigations of the allegations in the story, including Judiciary Committee co-chair Rep. Barry Hobbins, D-Saco, whose committee oversees public records law. Former Sportsmen's Alliance of Maine head George Smith weighs in, as does the Press Herald/Kennebec Journal editorial board.

May 11: In the afternoon, Gov. LePage's communications director, Peter Steele contacts the Press Herald's Opinion Page Editor, Greg Kesitch, demanding he print a 2800 word response from the wardens in the next day's edition. "I will not accept a 3,000 word submission from anyone. I don't have the space and that's not what the opinion pages are for," Kesitch writes back. "If there are errors in the story you should communicate with the reporter and editor (copied here) to discuss corrections. The opinion pages is not where we correct errors of fact. I would be interested in a piece that defends the wardens' service policies, but that can be done in a regular length column." 


Steele doesn't respond, but shortly thereafter, Gov. LePage issues an official press release ranting against, yes, Colin Woodard and declaring the Allagash investigation to be "one of the most outrageous examples of the Portland Press Herald’s complete and total lack of journalistic principles." He then goes on to an official, fact-free rant. "Let’s be perfectly clear: Colin Woodard is not a journalist; he is an activist and a novelist who never lets the facts get in the way of his fictionalized stories. Sadly, Woodard is the kind of guy the media elite celebrate as a Pulitzer Prize-worthy author." (For those just joining the program: I am a journalist; I've never written a novel; I've never published a story which was found to be incorrect; and I've never won a Pulitzer Prize as an author (though I was a Pulitzer finalist for my journalism this year.))


Shortly thereafter, the Maine Warden Service issues their 2800 word response to "North Woods Lawless" which makes a number of false claims, claims things I (accurately) reported sources saying as being things I myself said, and puts forward some details of their side of the story -- details they refused to share in the months we were reporting the story. We respond that evening with a detailed point-by-point response to some of MWS' more blatant falsehoods.


May 12: I appear for an extended live interview with Ken and Mike's popular morning politics show on talk radio station WGAN, further setting the record straight.

May 13: The Press Herald reports allegations by several York County men who say they had nearly identical experiences as targets of another undercover investigation by the same warden operative at the center of the Allagash operation, Bill Livezey. Livezey, they claim, drank heavily and operated his vehicle while drunk. The story -- reported by Scott Dolan with additional reporting by me -- also revealed that a judge had admonished prosecutors for concealing Livezey's identity from defense attorneys, which prevented them from learning he had run into serious credibility problems in case involving a guide in Fryeburg; the judge had dismissed all charges against the one defendant who had taken his case to trial.


The Warden Service responds with a truly bizarre press release, one Mainers everywhere should read. In it, the wardens purport to speak for all the people of Maine, and denounce the story, saying that while it had "contributions by Colin Woodard" it "was produced by a new author, perhaps as another attempt at credibility." The Press Herald, the law enforcement agency declares, "has taken on a personality that no longer reflects Maine values. Maine people are different. We have strong core values. We respect our friends and neighbors. We tell the truth." The statement then goes on to make three substantive points, all of them untruthful: that the story didn't quote the judge in the Fryeburg case's fuller statement (it did, further down the piece); that by 5pm the paper hadn't reported a shooting incident in New Hampshire (it had, at 8:03 that morning) and that state police had issued a cease and disist order against one of our sources that afternoon for harassing a warden by telephone (which would be rather a strange thing to do, since said source had started his sentence at the York County Jail at 8:30 that morning and could make no outgoing calls for the next 22 days.) The wardens then refused to answer questions about the latter incident.


May 15: Press Herald staff columnist Bill Nemitz weighs in.


May 19: Lawmakers announce they will hold legislative hearings into the conduct of Warden Service undercover operations, with Senate President Mike Thibodeau, R-Winterport saying "Folks deserve to have an understanding, to know what transpired." House Speaker Mike Eves, D-North Berwick, promises a "thorough inquiry." Sen. Davis says he will also call public records ombudsperson Brenda Kielty to testify about the public records side of the story. The wardens say they will cooperate. The hearings will be held in the next two weeks, legislative leaders say.


PS - There's now a landing page for "North Woods Lawless" at the Press Herald.

[Update, May 31, 2016: Further developments -- including accusations against the same undercover warden in connection with another four operations -- detailed here.]

Talking with CBC, WCSCH-6 about Gulf of Maine and climate change

Mayday, our six day, seven part series on how climate change is affecting the Gulf of Maine, continues this morning in the Portland Press Herald with this story on how invasive species are taking advantage. Yesterday's story showed the ongoing retreat of many cold-loving native species.

Yesterday, I spoke with CBC-New Brunswick's prime time "Shift" program about how Canadian officials hindered my reporting of the series by blocking access to marine scientists. The interview is now available here.

I also spoke with Pat Callaghan of WCSH-6, Maine's flagship NBC affiliate, about the ongoing series. Here's that segment as well, which ran yesterday evening.

Mayday, which continues through Saturday, has its own landing page where you can find all the stories.

Speaking on watchdog journalism, Bowdoin College, Oct. 16

Tomorrow night, October 16, I'll be speaking on the importance of (and challenges facing) watchdog journalism at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. It's free and open to the public.


The talk is entitled "Watchdog Journalism: The Vital Role of a Threatened Discipline" and kicks off at 7:30 pm in the Throne Hall's Daggett Lounge in Thorne Hall. Come by if you can.

My next public talk is on American Nations at the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust annual meeting -- support the Trust, however -- and I'll be talking about Lobster Coast at the University of Maine Farmington in November. Details, as always, from my book tour page.

Maine: updates on paint recycling, climate adaptation, governor's "blackout"

A few updates on some of the stories I've been covering here in Maine:

Paint Recycling enacted: As I reported in today's Portland Press Herald, Gov. Paul LePage chose not to veto a bill creating a household paint recycling program here in Maine. His administration has opposed this and other so-called product stewardship programs in the past. (His spokesperson, Adrienne Bennett, told me a couple of hours ago -- well after the piece came out -- that the governor was satisfied with changes made to the original bill that helped ensure no toxic paint would escape into the environment.)

This piece of legislation -- which was backed by both industry and environmental groups -- featured in part three of my recent investigation of the state Department of Environmental Protection.


Blackout against Press Herald lifted?: After said investigation appeared last month, Gov. Paul LePage's office declared that state officials would no longer speak to the Press Herald or its sister papers, the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel. The move received unfavorable coverage across the country, from the Associated Press and Poynter Institute to WGBH's "Beat the Press" and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show.

It would appear the blackout has ended. While reporting the paint story, I received prompt, live, and forthcoming attention from the DEP. I also ultimately (although past deadline) received a response from Bennett herself, who has previously said she was the one who instituted the ban. Gov. LePage has also recently answered questions from our State House bureau chief at a live press event and the Department of Education has tweeted that it has never stopped speaking to us.


Climate adaptation bill killed: While we're talking about the DEP, one update on my March story on the death of Maine's climate adaptation strategy. This session, the state legislature passed a bill that would have compelled the DEP to re-start work on the strategy, but as the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting noted last week, it was vetoed by LePage and the legislature was unable to over-ride.

In response to DEP series, Gov. LePage orders staff, commissioners not to speak to Press Herald

The third and final installment of my investigation of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection appeared in today's paper, and we didn't have to wait long for the governor's reaction to the revelations.

Today Gov. Paul LePage ordered all his staff and commissioners not to speak to the paper, which is Maine's largest, or its sister papers, which together constitute the state's largest chain. Needless to say, this has caused the story to become national news.

The full series -- "Lobbyist in the Henhouse" -- is now available at this special landing page.

Woodard on Woodward

Bob Woodward is coming to Portland, Maine tomorrow and, as a result, I interviewed him last week for the Portland Press Herald. The article - pegged to his talk at USM - is in today's paper.

At the start of our conversation, Woodward asked: "That's 'Woodard' with no second W?" Yes, I said, although for my entire career people have been trying to add the 'w' back in on account of you. (The reverse, I understand, is not true.)

In any case, enjoy the interview, which focuses on Woodward's thoughts about investigative journalism in the age of Wikileaks and weakened newspaper companies.

The talk, should you go, is sponsored by WEX, the company until recently known as Wright Express. Company president Mike Dubyak wrote to let me know of their central role in the event. He said Woodward is speaking before his company's employees at USM Thursday morning and that he, Dubyak, will be moderating tomorrow night's event. (It's also a fundraiser, with 100 percent of the proceeds going to scholarships for USM students.)

Photo Credit: Jim Wallace (Smithsonian Institution) via Wikipedia Commons

Joining the Portland Press Herald

For those who follow my reporting on Maine, it now has a formal home. Next month, I'll be joining the staff of the state's largest paper, the Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, where I'll be doing investigative reporting, news analysis, and coverage of what I think is the all-important beat these days: political finance. Here's the Press Herald's announcement from today's paper. (They've also hired Steve Mistler, intrepid State House correspondent for the Lewiston Sun Journal.)

I'll continue to work on my books and write on national issues for other publications -- foreign stuff too, although with a toddler at home there's been much less of that of late -- but look for my reporting from the Pine Tree State in the Press Herald and its sister papers, the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel. More details to follow.

For background on the Press Herald and its parent company, start here. If you're looking for more on me, my books, and my reporting, try my website. If you're really looking for Bob Woodward and Google has led you astray, redirect your browser here.

LePage, transparency, and public records

Governor Paul LePage has pledged to run the most transparent government in Maine history. But he and his staff sometimes have trouble applying it to themselves, even when a request for information or public records would help the governor.

My piece in the new Portland Phoenix describes some of my recent adventures with the governor's staff in this regard, and their efforts of late to make their actions more difficult to track by reducing or concealing much of the paper trail associated with them.

Maine: the Olsen affair explored

This summer, Maine Governor Paul LePage's marine resources commissioner, Norman Olsen, tendered a fiery resignation, accusing his boss of bullying and having declared the state’s largest city to be his enemy, and his colleagues of having been involved in gross mismanagement and, perhaps, smothering his investigations. The governor's staff wasn't agile enough to fire back effectively, but Republican pundit Matt Gagnon helped them out by requesting scheduling documents that appeared to undermine Olsen's case. There were allegations and counter-allegations, and then the press lost interest.

So what really happened?

My piece in the current issue of Down East asks that question, and taps on additional public records to try to piece together a more complete picture of what occurred.

A side note: While researching this piece, I requested a range of public documents pertinent to determining whose version of events was correct. In a matter of days, the governor's office released perhaps half of the documents, promising to issue the remainder as soon as natural resources advisor Carlisle McLean returned from vacation (and after my piece was off to the publisher.) Alas, nearly two months later they have failed to do as promised, despite regular prodding from your correspondent. One hopes this is not because the remaining documents will contradict their version of events -- presumably they do not -- but sadly it may take legal intervention to compel the governor's staff to turn them over. Stay tuned for further developments.

More encouraging in regards to the governor's intentions, the report Mr. Olsen ordered has in fact been released, apparently without interference.

For a little additional context, here's my prior interview with Mr. Olsen in Working Waterfront.

Update: DeCoster bill loses key supporter

Here in Maine, the legislature is in session, and one of the stories I've been following is the fate of a bill to help the infamous Maine-based egg magnate, Jack DeCoster, by denying his workers the right to collectively bargain.

In case you've forgotten, Mr. DeCoster was in the national spotlight last summer, when a massive salmonella outbreak was traced back to his Iowa-based farms, and the national media started piecing together his companies' staggeringly long rap sheet of health, safety, immigration, labor, and environmental violations. I have a story on this in the forthcoming Down East, and wrote about the erroneous testimony given before the Maine legislature's labor committee here at World Wide Woodard last week. [Update, 5/24/2011: my Down East story has posted online.]

Now that bill may be in trouble. The chair of the labor committee, Sen. Chris Rector (R-Thomaston), was apparently not pleased to learn that DeCoster's companies' recent record in Maine isn't as sterling as legislators were led to believe. "I have changed my position and am opposing the bill," he told me this morning. "The testimony we received was not full and complete. We did not get the whole story."

Sen. Rector said DeCoster's allegedly respectable OSHA record was "critically important" to the decision to back the bill, LD 1207, which passed the labor committee on a 7-6 party line vote. "To discover that that was not really the case have me great pause." He said he'd be working to defeat the bill in one of a variety of ways. He also noted that, unlike Congress, legislators lack research staff and rely on committee testimony when considering legislation.

This raises another issue: unlike, say, the committees of the Portland City Council, the legislative committees don't post online the (usually written) testimonies they receive so that journalists and others might have an opportunity to scrutinize them and, perhaps, point out falsehoods. Indeed, staff apparently don't have access to scanners to digitize documents, so obtaining records of testimony is difficult, and paper files are often missing submissions. Time, perhaps, to join the 21st century and post PDFs of everything online.

Chris Hondros (1970-2011)

The world lost two of its most courageous photojournalists yesterday. Tim Hetherington -- who directed Restrepo -- and Chris Hondros were killed by a rocket propelled grenade while covering the fighting in Misrata, Libya.

Hondros was a Pew Fellow in International Journalism a couple of years after I was, and we were briefly introduced at a 2007 reunion conference of sorts. There, he was on a panel about covering the Iraq war and, as program director John Schidlovsky noted today, talked about his work there with striking humility. I remember thinking the world was fortunate to have such people documenting what was happening in its most troubled corners.

If you don't know his name, you've probably seen the images he captured, often at considerable personal risk. There was this famous sequence from Iraq. And perhaps the most iconic image from the Liberian conflict (right). And all of these from conflict zones around the world. And the final set he uploaded from Misrata yesterday, literally from the midst of the fighting.

There aren't a lot of people who - like Hondros and Hetherington - have the courage, skill, and constitution for this kind of genuinely truth-telling work. The rest of us are impoverished by their passing.

[Update, 4/23/2011: On Hondros and his last days in Libya, from his best friend.]

Maine: Were LePage and Connor separated at birth?

I've had my hands full with finishing a book and becoming a dad, but my head has remained free to shake in disbelief at the antics of two local figures: Republican gubernatorial candidate Paul LePage and Richard Connor, owner and editorial czar of Maine's largest newspaper chain. What amazes me most are the similarities between the two men's behavior, which have put both of them in the national spotlight.

LePage, the darling of the state's Tea Party crowd, has shown himself to be a petulant child whose mouth is usually running well ahead of his brain and with the political instincts of a small time street thug. Amid a string of strange, easily exposed lies -- that a Democratic official derided him for his Franco-American roots (never happened), that that he doesn't know what "creationism" means (and yet knows he supports it being taught in schools), that he never swore at reporters (even though he did so on tape), that he stormed out of his press conference because someone had used the F-bomb on him (again, didn't happen), that his name was never on the deed of his wife's home in Waterville (it was) -- he stormed out of his own press conference (not liking his tax dodge exposed), said he'd like to punch a Maine Public Broadcasting reporter (for asking those questions), and promised reporters that if he were elected governor, they'd see a lot of him on the front pages of newspapers telling President Obama "to go to Hell."

No wonder his support has collapsed in the most recent poll, dropping him into a dead heat with Libby Mitchell, despite her tepid campaign.

Meanwhile, MaineToday Media owner/editor Richard Connor was running his editorial voice way ahead of his brain, making a front page apology to readers not for failing to cover the 9/11 observances adequately, but for having provided coverage of local Muslims' observance of the last day of Ramadan. (One commentator aptly asked if Easter observances should therefore no longer be covered unless linked to the Catholic Church's child rape scandal.) Connor was roundly mocked and condemned for his bizarre apology -- the Press Herald website has even appended it with a new preface to spin their position -- with attention from Stephen Colbert ("isn't there one day of the year we can all agree not to be Muslim?"), Time Magazine ("Paper to Readers: Sorry for Portraying Muslims as Human"), New York Times columnist Nick Kristof (who was sickened to see all Muslims lumped in with Al Qaeda), and the Hartford Courant's Susan Campbell (who offered a spot-on professional edit of Connor's sloppy prose).

Connor's reaction was LePagesque. First he decided not to run any of the enormous pile of letters his apology had generated for over a week. Then he appeared on Boston's WBUR and dismissed criticism from the curator of the Nieman Foundation as coming from a product of "corporate journalism." Subsequently, he tried to spin what had actually happened and became testy when National Public Radio's On The Media wouldn't let him wriggle out of his own words, declared he wouldn't retract his apology, and hung up on the host.

Neither man seems to have the temperament or maturity for the job they seek to perform. At least Mainers have the option of voting against Mr. LePage.

Cloistering the Monks

Al Diamon has taken the Maine Sunday Telegram to task for their tip-toeing around a memoir by a member of the influential Monks family (it's about mental illness). But I'm far more surprised that the New York Times agreed to report fiction as fact in their Aug. 11 article on Millicent Monk's book, Songs of Three Islands.

I've no desire to intrude on the Monks' privacy, but most anyone around here knows the photo accompanying the Times article was not taken "on a Maine island," as the caption asserts. Nor did the events in the article take place on an island, despite many statements to the contrary by writer Lisa Belkin. (Belkin should also have noted that "Northern Island," like "Crescent Island," is a pseudonym.)

There's nothing wrong with protecting your subjects' privacy, but the Times should have done so by writing around Mrs. Monks' geographical sleight-of-hand, not by repeatedly printing statements of fact they knew to be false. (Even the Telegram was wise enough not to descend down this very slippery slope.)

Next time I'm reading a Times piece about an influential person, I don't want to be guessing which passages are fact, and which are fiction.

[Update, 9/3/10: I invited Ms. Belkin to respond. She sent me a note that entirely ignored her central deception -- claiming she visited an island estate, when she was in fact in Portland's outer mainland suburbs -- and responding to my aside about Northern Island by pasting an altered version of the relevant passage, with quotes added around the island's name. Guilty as charged, apparently.]

Maine: Forecaster investigates Air Station's savior

Here in Maine, investigative reporting is so rare that when one of our news outlets actually does some, it's a newsworthy event in and of itself. Aspiring-to-be-informed-citizens become so surprised and excited they pass the article around as if it were a picture of a live Great Auk, even if the piece has little or nothing to do with their own community. Look!, they write one another, Such-and-such news outlet actually did some digging! Can you believe it?

Such is the case with this week's issue of the Mid-Coast Forecaster, which carries a front page story by Steve Mistler which reveals that the company seeking taxpayer subsidies to open an aircraft maintenance facility at the soon-to-be-defunct Brunswick Naval Air Station already fleeced taxpayers in a strikingly similar scheme at the Sanford Regional Airport. The company, Oxford Aviation, is asking Brunswick for public subsidies while it can afford to pay power attorney F. Lee Bailey (of O.J. Simpson and Patty Hearst trial fame) to represent them at meetings of the local Redevelopment Authority.

It's the kind of reporting any newspaper worth it's salt should be doing week-in and week-out. If public officials and private interests know nobody is watching, there's little limit to what they'll try to get away with.

(P.S. Are you the editor of a major Maine newspaper and don't have any ideas about investigative stories to pursuit? Try this one. Or this one. Or maybe even this one.)

Obituary: San Francisco Chronicle Foreign Service

My editors at The San Francisco Chronicle tell me that my piece in today's paper will be the last to be produced by the Chronicle Foreign Service, the latest casualty in the battle to keep the venerable daily afloat.

The Chronicle Foreign Service -- or CFS -- was a network of freelancers which provided Bay Area readers original, on-the-ground reporting from around the world. In continuous operation since 1985, CFS gave many young journalists a start in the business, teaching them the ropes of foreign news reporting.

Many CFS-ers have gone on to do great things, including Colombia correspondent Karl Penhaul (now at CNN), London correspondent Kimberly Dozier (CBS News, injured in Iraq in 2006), Middle East writer Borzou Daragahi (a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist), Peter S. Goodman (now national economics writer at the New York Times) and Andrew E Kramer (now the Times' Moscow bureau chief.) Jill Carroll filed two CFS pieces from Iraq before her famous kidnapping, and Billy Nessen was held for 40 days by the Indonesian government while reporting from Aceh.

My own CFS career took me to Antarctica, Georgia, Belize, and the Marshall Islands, (while researching Ocean's End, a book on the global marine crisis), Iceland (on Keiko the whale, glaciers, genetics), Greenland (climate change), Canada (tidal power, fisheries, gas drilling) Micronesia (WW2 ships, kava crisis) Croatia (killer seaweed), Denmark (wind power, sustainability), the Netherlands (sea rise defenses), Bosnia (post-conflict), Romania (ethnic conflict, state secrets, interview with the president), Mexico (post-9/11 effects), and Panama (canal zone handover).

Nine years ago, things appeared to be look up for the Chronicle. It had a new owner -- the Hearst Corporation -- which promised to make it a "world class newspaper." But while the paper won several prizes, it has continued to operate in the red. This winter, Hearst threatened to close it entirely if it could not win major concessions from the unions. Since then 150 jobs have been cut, and on Friday management announced there would be more to come.

CFS stopped taking new stories late this winter, just after I filed my piece from Iceland which, fortunately, had the shelf life to survive a long wait for a spot in an ever-shrinking news hole.

I know I'll miss working with CFS editor Jack Epstein, and I suspect many readers will miss the coverage he and his predecessors oversaw.

Interviewing Hungary's far right

I'm just back from Hungary where one of my assignments has me exploring the reasons for the success of far-right political parties like Jobbik (and its uniformed paramilitary arm, the Magyar Garda.)

When I was last in Budapest, I wrote this piece for The Christian Science Monitor, and found communicating with Jobbik relatively straightforward. They had an international spokesman based in London, one Zoltan Fuzessy, who responded quickly and efficiently to interview requests.

Strangely enough, the party is becoming less media savvy as their popularity grows, with some truly bizarre notions about how to communicate their message to foreigners.

When I contacted their spokesmen, I received this media request form, which includes requests for a €250 "donation" (€100 for freelancers), detailed personal information, and to sign a pledge to respect their opinions (which is rather difficult to do in advance.)

Spokesman Zsolt Varkonyi explained that the donation was in fact voluntary and that the request for personal information was to ensure accountability, apparently by letting them know where you live. (He eventually agreed to answer my questions -- in writing -- without filling out the form, although it took over a month to get his responses. ) Fuzessy, for his part, accepted a Skype invitation but then didn't respond to any messages or calls; I can only surmise that he made me a contact so that I could read his motto: "Those to whom evil is done do evil in return."

Seems a strange way to try to win the hearts and minds of the press.