Monday, February 5, 2007

Watchdog journalism shows teeth, sues county commission It's one thing for journalists to keep an eye on their local government, but I can't recall ever seeing a paper directly ask a court to run officials out of office, in this case eight county commission members, the sheriff, register of deeds, trustee, and county clerk. Maybe some local journalism grad student can get a historical thesis out of this... Read all about it: News Sentinel sues County Commission And, in this age of the blog, the paper's editor has a blog item about it. Nice lead, Jack: "Well, we sued the Knox County Commission today..." The lawsuit itself is online as a PDF file. (It's linked to the story page under a small "related links" heading, which is sandwiched between the hair loss and AARP life insurance ads.) Elsewhere, the local grassroots community blogsite KnoxViews has dozens of comments piling up. Check the "term limits" tag for a summary. I'm sure there will be plenty of follow-up stories from here to Sunshine Week. Meanwhile, the mayor is calling for a special election, "because the appointment last week of eight new Commission members was a damaged process, because appointees were selected with no public input and decisions were made outside the public's view." (On the Knox County home page, that story gets second billing after the county's ranking last May as No. 5 on Forbes magazine's "Best Places for Business and Careers" list. County Commission careers were not discussed in the Forbes article.) Disclaimer: One of my friends and colleagues is a commissioner, but not among the ones whose positions were filled in the term-limit shuffle. 10:06:59 PM    comment []

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