Brave editor of The Storm Lake, Iowa, Times takes a strong stand. Well, okay, only sort of a strong stand. Well, honestly, just a stand. Well, actually not so much of a stand. Umm, would you believe TWO stands?

The editor here seems to change identities when he writes
 op-ed pieces for the other Times, the one in New York

I learned while I was still a college student that editing a small town newspaper is like walking a tightrope 50 feet off the ground, while balancing a flaming pinwheel on your nose.

I was educated to this fact of life by osmosis. I edited a college newspaper that was job printed by the local weekly in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Whenever I went downtown to the weekly, to read galleys, or check on layout problems, or deliver copy and engravings, or to pick up copies of the paper on Friday night and haul them back to campus, I watched the two owners of the weekly, Keith Howard and Ken Champney, sweat out their own newspapering problems.

There’s a big problem at small town papers. The people you write about are not only your subscriber base, but often also your advertiser base. Denounce the local asshole who’s running for town council on a platform that he’ll arrest people for using birth control, and there goes one precious subscription and $3,000 a year worth of advertising from the asshole’s seed and animal feed depot. Favor Obamacare and you’ll never display a used car ad from Catastrophe Cal the Car Trader again.

The Internet has only made matters worse. Now in addition to balancing that flaming pinwheel on your nose, you have to ride the tightrope on a unicycle, and the tightrope is getting frayed.

In Yellow Springs, Ohio, it was sometimes even worse than that even well before the Internet. I remember being told that on occasion, in the late 1940s or early 1950s, pacifist publisher Keith, and Ed the local feed mill operator, a right wing zealot, would set out on a collision course from opposite ends of Xenia Avenue, the main drag. 

Swiped from the Yellow Springs News 

The annual knockdown. When they met face-to-face, Ed would knock Keith to the ground. Keith would then pick himself up, brush himself off, head to the police station, and swear out a warrant against Ed. It was an annual ritual for a while, I was told. Sort of like reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in grade school,  or fireworks on the 4th of July.

Keith and Ed have long since passed on, Keith most assuredly to that great small town news room in the sky; Ed, I wouldn't be surprised, to a stinking pit in hell reserved for remorseless right wing Republicans. Ed's son is now Ohio Congressman Mike DeWine. And the Yellow Springs News is still going strong — now the work product of six women, two men, and a  large shaggy dog named Destiny the News Hound. 

So I was heartened when I saw in the New York Times what appeared to be a bit of honest, straight-ahead reporting on racist Republican Congressman Steve King’s prospects for re-election — written by Art Cullen, editor of the Storm Lake (Iowa) Times, paid circulation 3,386, in King’s Congressional district.

I don’t know if Storm Lake has a diner, but since he’s not a visiting fireman from Big City Journalism, Inc.,  Cullen didn’t need one. Like any good small town editor, he knew exactly where to find the local dog groomer, the woman who “proudly plants a huge red ‘KING’ sign every two years in her yard along Lake Avenue, the main drag,” and the local Snapper dealer. (For some mystified city slickers, let me explain that a Snapper dealer would be the guy who likely sold you your new tractor or riding mower.)

Relentlessly, each person Cullen quoted stood by their Steve, evidently mystified that language from King that shrieked “White Supremacy” to the rest of the world had any negative connotation at all. On the contrary, it meant to them that Steve is the kind of guy who “tells it like it is.”

Cullen’s conclusion? While there are some rivals to King in the wings, including a Democrat, “…from the sounds I’m hearing, Mr. King has not exhausted his appeal.”

Okay, fair enough. That one half-sentence at the end makes this an op-ed piece. Other than that, it’s an non-judgmental report on a newsworthy topic, and Cullen is an unbiased reporter in the heart of the heartland. Or so I thought.

Feeling delighted, I searched for the Lake County Times on the Internet, hoping for more unbiased, insightful reporting from the heart of Real America. What I found instead, was a very different take, on the same matter, from the same journalist. Cullen wrote:

With respect, we disagree with our friends at The Des Moines Register and Sioux City Journal who this week called on Rep. Steve King, R-Kiron, to resign over his remarks involving white supremacy, white nationalism and western civilization, as it were. They argue that he is not fully representing the Fourth Congressional District because the House Republicans just stripped him of his agriculture and judiciary committee assignments, and that his statements do not reflect mainstream Iowa values. 

King should not resign. He was just re-elected in November to a ninth term with everyone knowing full well what his views were on race and culture. Nobody should be suddenly shocked. Voters took all this into account before casting their ballot. Perhaps nothing is better known about King than his views on Latino immigrants. 

In fact, the government is shut down because President Trump took up King’s long crusade to build a wall that spans the US-Mexico border and has made a national crisis out of it. This is what the people voted for. 

King losing his committee assignments is inconsequential in a House controlled by Democrats.

And so on, and so forth. The gist is, as I interpret it, “Hey, we voted for more racism, so damnit, we’re entitled to more racism.”

While Cullen (whose publisher, by some coincidence is also named Cullen)…while Cullen presents the face of impartiality to the big city, he presents the face of a King supporter to his local readers. 

The way I count ‘em, that’s two faces.

Or to put a bit more tolerantly, Cullen gets to present us city slickers with his straight-shootin' reporter credentials, and to keep his Snapper dealer's advertising, too.

And I'm still counting. And that's still two faces.

Evil Step Mother, 21st Century Version

Excerpted from a blog post by Lauren Heaton in the Yellow Springs, Ohio, NEWS (and you should read the rest and retch):

I'm not a mom, but I am a step-mom. I’m a step-mom who likes to cook all manner of new and surprising dishes and try them out on my captive consumers. Well, actually they wouldn’t eat it any other way.

The first dinner I ever made for “the kids” occurred shortly after we met. None of us knew anything about step-relationships, let alone how our individual personalities would mesh. If I was going to be part of the crew they were going to have to turn the kitchen pretty much entirely over to me, and I didn’t want to create false hopes that they would be seeing Kraft Mac ‘n Cheese and boiled peas every night. So I made the kids, ages 4, 7, 10 and 12, vegan shabu shabu, a Japanese hot pot with nappa cabbage, tofu and cellophane noodles in a citrus-soy fish broth.

Look, I'm as much a fan of quirky Yellow Springs as anyone else, but enough is enough! Have a heart, lady! Give the kids a cheeseburger!

Antioch Univer-SUE-ty. It can’t run a college but it sure can sue-sue-sue. Guess who the trustees are threatening to sue now?

Just when you think you’ve milked the last there is to milk out of the subject of Antioch University’s high-handed trustees and chancellor, who put a great college out of business after letting it slide to the brink of bankruptcy, the trustees come up with yet another whack-a-doodle legal maneuver to demonstrate that their ineptitude and mindless dudgeon have no bottom.

But first take note that:

•The trustees are already involved in a lawsuit with college faculty in Yellow Springs, Ohio, who were fired despite their tenure. And further...

•The trustees have also threatened some alumni and faculty of Antioch College and Yellow Springs with lawsuits for “trademark infringement,” after those groups founded an organization called Antioch Nonstop to continue teaching college courses that once were taught on the defunct campus. The supporters of Antioch College’s survival coined a slogan, “Be ashamed to let it die,” based on founder Horace Mann’s slogan, “Be ashamed to die until you’ve won some victory for humanity.”

There was unintentional irony in this trustees’ threat of a suit, in the name of “trademark protection.” It came from group that had overseen the college’s financial “failure,” deliberately shut down the college, contributed big time to the destruction of the college’s reputation, and refused millions of dollars in pledges from alumni who wanted to save the college.

The trustees’ lawyer had the gall to write, that use of the name Nonstop Antioch “…is likely to deceive the public with respect to Antioch’s trademarks and associated services and dilute the distinctiveness of the well-known Antioch marks and logos. The unauthorized use of Antioch’s valuable trademarks will cause confusion and improperly benefit you to the detriment of Antioch.”

Valuable trademarks? Valuable as what? Thanks to the trustees and their chancellor, the Antioch name these days is as vauable as an odiferous quart of month-old milk, with flies buzzing around the open container. But I’m getting off the topic here.

Here we go again – another
threatened trustee law suit

On Thursday, the Yellow Springs (Ohio) News revealed that the University is now threatening to sue the Village of Yellow Springs over an air conditioner that is reportedly creating an ongoing noise nuisance to its residential neighbors and that the village says was built without the required permits.

According to the website The Antioch Papers, even the air conditioner’s manufacturer says the unit in question is “not suitable for residential areas.” Oh, and by the way, the trustees are also threatening to sue The Antioch Papers.

Twisted reasoning

You wouldn’t believe the University’s twisted reasoning for refusing to turn off an obnoxiously loud and neighborhood-disrupting air conditioner in an empty college. They make the prima facie insane claim that the Village of Yellow Springs is trying to make the college re-open by suing it to turn off its noisy, code-violating air conditioner.

This mad dog legal defense of an obnoxious machine has been going on for four years! The University seems to lack the money to run a once-great college, but evidently has plenty of dough in its war chest to spend on foaming-at-the-mouth legal trivia concerning illegal air conditioners, “protecting” a trademark that its own actions made worthless, and other nonsense.

Quick, somebody call the
men with butterfly nets

Why is this sounding more and more to me like certifiable insanity? Are the trustees and chancellor suffering a collective mental meltdown?

There ought to be a law requiring Antioch University trustees and their chancellor to pass a mental competency exam. And if they flunk it, they ought to be carted off to the looney bin, which more and more is where they are demonstrating they belong.

Perfidy at Antioch: tales of university trustees and senior staff lying, double-dealing, and committing institutional sabotage continue emerging.

If you’ll forgive an old (but apt) cliché, studying the reasons why Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio has in effect ceased to exist is like peeling an onion.

Antioch, as you may recall from an earlier post here, is a 157 years old college controlled by a “university” of the same name – although the university facilities consist of a bunch of second rate college continuation and adult education schools, some offering a few graduate courses.

These satellite “colleges” have no tenured faculty, no residential campuses, and sometimes offer courses of quality one well might question. (See the item on the Seattle campus’ science lab, way down below.)

An ongoing horror story

Each time I receive an e-mail from enraged college alumni – about the university trustees’ rejection of an attempt to save the college by an alumni group called the Antioch College Continuation Corporation (ACCC) – I go digging a bit more. And each time, I find myself peeling off more layers from the onion. It’s an ongoing horror story and at the center of it, if anyone ever gets to the center, you may find a plot as tangled and crooked as the Watergate scandal.

Needed, an ambitious
Ohio attorney general

It’s the kind of case that an ambitious state attorney general – if Ohio has one ambitious enough – might fruitfully explore to see if members of the Trustees and the parent Antioch University chancellor’s staff have been up to shenanigans that might violate state laws involving charitable trusts.

At any rate, here are some shockers I’ve stumbled across this week:

From the Yellow Springs News, the local weekly that finally seems to have its dander up:

Had the negotiating team, led by Chancellor Toni Murdock, wanted an agreement with the ACCC, it would not have started out asking the outrageous price of $54 million for the college, then stalling almost a month before lowering that price while every passing day was critical to the college’s ability to stay open. Had the university negotiators wanted the college to live, they would not have included the demand that the college pay the university $22 million for the college’s own $22 million endowment.

What’s clear is that the university negotiators showed no interest in reaching an agreement that would benefit both the college and the university. Bottom line, they wanted cash. And now it’s reasonable to assume that should the college close, the university leaders will sell off its assets to the highest bidder.

Trustee asset raids worthy
of Wall Street barbarians

Turns out the University wanted to make a grab for assets created at and by the college. The $22 million endowment was only part of it. The University also demanded that it keep WYSO, the college radio station whose license could be sold for a small fortune, and Antioch Education Abroad, another potential money maker. Both WYSO and the education abroad program were begun before there ever was a university.

From Inside Higher Education:

And in an additional complication, university officials said over the weekend that if another buyer for the college emerged — willing to pay for the college with cash immediately and willing to let the university keep Antioch’s NPR stations — a sale was still possible. This prompted a mock ad on Craigslist that said: “Antioch College no longer holds any substantial meaning or value to its Board of Trustees, beyond what it can be sold for on the open market. Offers by alumni groups promising to operate the college in a continuous manner, beholden to its traditional values of openness and academic freedom are particularly loathsome. Real Estate developers with proven military-industrial success are preferred. Contact the Board of Trustees at their Corporate Headquarters in Yellow Springs for more info.”

Also from the same article:

A statement from the university said that negotiations fell apart because the alumni group, which offered to buy the college for $12.2 million, was able to provide only $6 million in cash immediately, and wanted to pay off the remaining sum over the next few years. The lack of security made the deal impossible for the board to accept because the university’s creditors wouldn’t have liked it, said the statement. (At least one trustee, however, reported that there was never a formal vote on the matter and that some trustees might well have accepted the condition.) The statement went on to pledge support for the revival of the college at some point in the future.

Leaders of the Antioch College Continuation Corporation disputed the board’s statement. Eric Bates, co-chair of the group, called the board’s statement “mostly incorrect” and said that he was “shocked” by it. Specifically, he said that his group had offered to use the physical campus of the college to back up its financial pledges, so that in fact the alumni had offered something of far more value than the funds it would have still owed the university.

Borgersen [One of the people trying to keep the college open] said [of the trustees] …“They are trying to build a University of Phoenix clone out of the ashes of Antioch College and we will not let that happen.

From another source comes the news that Tulisse (“Toni”) Murdoch, the Chancellor of Antioch University, received a campus-wide vote of no confidence from the college community last year.

The referendums stated Murdock has “violated long-standing Antioch College values, community standards, and the Civil Liberties Code.” This community-wide vote of no confidence in Chancellor Murdock unifies the two pre-existing votes of no confidence in the Chancellor by Antioch College faculty and union staff. The College’s advisory body to the President, Adcil, was concerned and frustrated with the lack of consultation leading to the departure of President Steve Lawry. The community also endorsed a second referendum that advocates independence from the Antioch University system, including a separate Board of Trustees. This referendum posits that Antioch College can maintain operations beyond the 2007-2008 academic year by attaining autonomy and with the support of the College Alumni Board

And if you think Tulisse Murdoch’s reign is better on other “University” campuses, find the full text of this post to an article about Antioch from an anonymous faculty wife on the University’s Seattle campus. (You'll have to scroll down once you reach the linked article to find it.)

The science laboratory on the Seattle campus is a 3’by 5’ former clothes closet. A shelf has been installed, upon this shelf sets two (2) very, very cheap (toy store) microscopes. Yes, folks that is a science lab in Antioch terms. Any curriculum to accompany this facility? What do you think?

And so I’m waiting, Mr. Ohio Attorney General. Please bring in your charitable trust experts, your forensic accountants, a couple of hard-nosed assistant DAs and lots and lots of subpoena forms. With any luck, we may see some trustees and university administrators performing a classic dance:

The Perp Walk.