Dwight E. Hines, Ph.D. IndyMedia 42 Israelson Rd. Livermore, Maine 04253 207-897-2032 dwight.hines@gmail.com January 1, 2014 Mr.

Paul Gillin, Editor and Owner Newspaper Death Watch paul@gillin.com Dear Mr. Gillin: I have two requests: Please place Maine!s Lewiston Sun-Journal (1) on the Newspaper Death Watch list because of its selective reporting on the local town governments Livermore, Lisbon, and Peru. Each of us (2) has complained to the Editor and to the Publisher about the reporting that not only leaves out substantive issues, such as failure to obtain sealed bids, failure to write about citizen complaints, failure of Selectmen to account for various sums of tax-payers money, and bias in favor of the towns when there are conflicts. You can see some of the facts on the webpage <www.lisbonreporter.com>. Mr. Fillmore has also won lawsuits against the Town of Lisbon for failure to comply with Maine!s Freedom of Access Act. In addition, the Town of Lisbon videotapes its Board meetings, Ms. Witherell videotapes the Peru Board meetings, and I have been videotaping the Livermore Board meetings, allowing objective observers to compare what happened in the meetings with what was reported in the Sun-Journal. Which leads to my second request: Would you know of an independent organization or professional standards group for print media that will accept fact-based complaints against a newspaper and provide an unbiased opinion about the quality and completeness of the newspaper coverage? As you likely know, for the past four years, Maine has been rated at the bottom (50th) of the states for friendliness to business by Forbes Magazine (3) Maine has also earned an F on corruption risk integrity (4). Given the importance, if not the necessity of robust media for economic development (5), weak and inaccurate reporting may be a significant factor in Maine!s current economic condition. Please note that we have no data on the other towns in Maine at this time but we do know that the Maine Attorney General has never filed a court case against a town for failure to comply with open records requests or failure to comply with open meetings acts. We (Hines and Witherell) did meet with Ms. Phyllis Gardiner, Assistant Attorney General for Maine, to show her videotape clips of Peru Board meeting showing the problems, like the Chair of the Board stating he polled the Board all the time (a violation), and so on, but neither she nor her investigator would view the tapes.

What we need is a procedure that will allow plain citizens to put their facts before an independent group, allowing adequate notification to the Sun-Journal so they can rebut the facts, if possible. If we can have that procedure, I think in time the SunJournal might be taken off the Death Watch list, although due to other governance problems, Legislative FOAA advisory committee (6) and judicial system (7), the overall impact may not be significant. Such a procedure for newspapers could be modeled after that used by physicians or attorneys. I hope you understand that ignoring poor journalism has measurable, qualitative and quantitative, negative effects on the way all media are viewed by the public (8). For the press not to shine light on poor governance, shoddy management, and the absence of meaningful long term goals means that a white collar broken windows effect may allow us to predict the amount and extent of Maine!s underground economy more accurately than electricity use because broken government windows have ripple effects that put pressure on police and health care providers to the point where they lose their discipline (9). I will post this letter to other appropriate lists (Investigative reporters and editors, FOI-L, Net-Gold, datajournalism, sunshine foundation) and will forward it to others who might be of help to us. Dwight Hines 1) Invisible Paywall, Portland Phoenix, December 12, 2013, <http:// portland.thephoenix.com/news/156759-invisible-paywall/> SJ!s circulation, which may be in the low 20,000s, and certainly is no higher than 31,000, according to recent self-reported statistics. Al Diamon, Media Mutt, Death Spiral, the bollard, <http:// thebollard.com/2013/11/04/media-mutt-114/> USPS reports concerns the Lewiston Sun Journal. The daily edition sold an average of 31,369 papers during the past year, a drop of 8 percent from 2012. The Lewiston paper!s Sunday edition, down about 15 percent in the past 12 months, mostly gave back the gains it made in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Since 2008, the paper!s average sales are off only 3 percent, to 30,450. SunJournal is owned by Sun Media Group. 2) Martha Winterell, Peru, Maine < marthajanew@yahoo.com>, Larry Fillmore, Lisbon, Maine <larry.fillmore46@gmail.com>, and Joe Hill, Lisbon, Maine < admin@lisbonmaine.net> 3) <http://www.forbes.com/best-states-for-business/list/> 4) Center for State Integrity, <http://www.stateintegrity.org/maine> 5) S. Islam, Djankov, S. & McLeish, C. The Right to Tell: The Role of Mass Media in Economic Development, World Bank,New York, 2002. Burgess, J. Media Literacy: A sampling of programs around the world: An update for the Center of International Media Assistance. November 21, 2013. <http:// cima.ned.org/publications/media-literacy-20-sampling-programs-around-world> 6) Hines, D. Dysfunctional Legislative FOAA Advisory Committee, In preparation, due January 8, 2014. 7) Hines, D. Themis, aka Justice, she fading. She be blind, mebbe. Mebbe not. In preparation, January 5, 2014. 8) Danaher, B., et al. Understanding Media Markets in the Digital Age: Economics and Methodoloy, October 2013 version. <http://fulltextreports.com/2013/12/12/ understanding-media-markets-in-the-digital-age-economics-and-methodology/>. Rudiger, J. Cross-Checking the Media. Munich Personal RePEc Archive, November 28, 2013. <http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/51786/>.

Reporters Talking Shop and the issues: Fall 2013. Highlights at the Shorenstein Center, December 3, 2013, <http://journalistsresource.org/skills/reporting/journalists-talking-shop-highlights-fall2013-shorenstein-center>. World Bank Institute Media Program, <http://wbi.worldbank.org/wbi/content/wbismedia-program-image> 9) Hus, E. Tomorrow!s Metric for news in action. Nieman Journalism Lab: Pushing for the future of journalism A project of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard. December 19, 2013, <http://www.niemanlab.org/2013/12/tomorrows-metric-for-news-is-action/>. Davie, L. Five ways to future-proof journalism. Muck Rack Daily, December 10, 2013, <http://muckrack.com/daily/2013/12/10/five-ways-to-future-proof-journalism/>. Kaufman, L. Turning to Public to Back Investigative Journalism. New York Times, December 1, 2013, <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/02/business/media/turning-to-public-to-backinvestigative-journalism.html?_r=0>. Uncoverage: Building a Platform to help journalists investigate untold stories about politicians, crooked corporations and much more. <http://www.indiegogo.com/ projects/uncoverage>. Bowles, N., et al. Transparency in Politics and the Media: Accountability and Open Government. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. I.B. Tauris, London. December 5, 2013, <https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/about/news/item/article/ transparency-in-politics-and-the-me.html>. TriustLaw Connect, News, Information and Connections for Action. Thompson Reuters Foundation, <http://www.trust.org/services/trustlaw-connect/>. Arnold & Porter, LLP, The role of lawyers in the fight against corruption. TrustLaw, January 2013, <http://www.trust.org/contentAsset/raw-data/af585d7d-6a7f-4c65-9b5c3b5534118c74/file>. Schutz, S. Portand, Maine, Attorney, Preti Flaherty. <www.preti.com/Sigmund-Schutz> . Heath, E. & Jones, L. Using Electricity Demand to Estimate State-Level Underground Economic Activity in the U.S. International J Bus Soc Sci 4(8), July 2013. <http:// ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol_4_No_8_Special_Issue_July_2013/27.pdf>.