Friday, January 12, 2007

At Least They're Consistent . . .

Consistency is a virtue, so we could say that the New Hartford Town Board is virtuous. Somehow we just knew that a meeting billed as "informational" would be used to conduct official business ... which is exactly what happened last night.

One curious thing that we noticed this morning, the links to certain stories this week about the NH Bond vote no longer function -- particularly the one we provided below where we quoted the newspaper quoting the Supervisor. The newspaper's 7-day index has been revised to eliminate the story and (as of this hour) even mis-reports dates (the 10th being listed twice). Interestingly, the link back to a story from the OD's Story Chat forums also exhibits the same lack of function (at this hour). View Story Chat item at
http://forums.uticaod.com/viewtopic.php?t=685 and try clicking on the link" to
N. Hartford to discuss $4.6M bond resolutions Special meeting called to provide information and the same thing happens.

As Alice would say, "Curiouser and curiouser."

Is this a case of removing links to inaccurate stories so as to contain the damage, or
Is this a case of trying to rehabilitate someone the editors have just scolded, but who is now prepared to obey and do the editors' bidding.

Shouldn't there be a difference between reporting the news and making the news?

[Update 10:00 PM - For those who still have Tuesday's paper, both links refer to the same 1/9/07 O-D article which appears on page 1A, titled as indicated above. The Town Supervisor's quotation appears on page 5A.]

[2nd Update 1/13 11:00 AM - The O-D's 7 day index currently leaves out all of this week's New Hartford stories. Besides the one discussed above (which appears to have been removed entirely since even Google could not pull it up), here are other non-indexed stories, some of which may still be accessed thru StoryChat or Google:
  • 1/12's Page 1B headliner "Board officially postpones bond vote" (see Story Chat)
  • 1/11's "New Hartford Postpones Bond Vote" (see Story Chat)
  • 1/11's Page 1A "N. Hartford to promote delayed bond vote" (see Story chat)
  • 1/10's Page 1A Headliner "School Bond May Exclude Land Buy" (Story Chat link broken; access thru Google)
  • 1/9's Residents question Oxford Crossing (see Story Chat)

. . . . Are these "New Hartford-centric" computer glitches? or Not?]

[3rd Update 1/15/07 9:30 PM: New Hartford Online apparently attended last Thursday's "informational" meeting at which official business was conducted, and reports on an apparent discrepancy between what the Town alleges it told the Observer Dispatch and what the OD actually reported. Who said what to whom and whether the OD's reporting was accurate could easily be determined by comparing a copy of the press release issued by the Town with a copy of the release received by the OD (this blogger trusts neither party), and compare those with the story. Regardless, it makes the missing links even more interesting because something seems to be going on between the OD and NH Officials.]

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