Vindicator

by Denney Clements

  Emery posted a story based on the 42-page report on The Vindicator. More than 3,000 users read it. He also posted a link to the entire report, which several hundred readers had downloaded. The report showed that the three-member authority board had for 10 years violated state law by issuing no-bid water-project contracts to a local construction company in which two board members had a financial interest. As a result, the auditors estimated, the authority had wasted $18 million in public money. The report accused O’Toole of inadequate oversight and of colluding with the board to keep the audit under wraps. Now she and all three board members were under criminal investigation by Sedgwick County District Attorney Steve Jung, who had thrown himself into his job with renewed zeal after losing the governor’s race.

  Emery beat all of Wichita’s legacy news organizations to the enhanced story. They were all forced to acknowledge that their coverage had originated with a story in The Vindicator. It was a triumphant moment, but it wasn’t The Story.

  Cushing led Emery into his corner office, which overlooked the South Commercial Street Warehouse District. After Cushing got two bottles of boutique water out of the cooler behind his desk, they settled into leather and chrome chairs by the front window.

  “I am so glad I was able to entice you to start your blog and link it to my web site,” Cushing said. “I trust you feel the same way?”

  Emery sipped his water and nodded. “But I’m really wishing I’d held your feet to the fire on 20 percent of my revenue.”

  Cushing peered closely at him. “I think you’re joking. But at the end of the agreed-upon one year, we can review that issue.”

  “That’s fine,” Emery said. “And I was joking. It is a great relief not to have to handle ad sales. The Spotlight has certainly earned its cut.”

  “I'm glad you see it that way,” Cushing said.

  “So what issues do we need to discuss?”

  “The main one is your logo. It needs modifying.”

  “The logo? A young friend put that together for me and I’m very happy with her design.”

  Cushing spread his hands. “I am, too, my friend. The design is stunning. I’m referring to the ‘Slugs Sliming the Sunflower State' phrase below the name. Can’t we come up with a descriptor for The Vindicator that’s more comprehensive? There’s no slime involved with many of the stories you report, such as that highly interesting piece on WiMax Internet in some parts of rural Kansas. Or your marvelous post-election pieces on the importance of water in Kansas politics.”

  “You’re right, but that phrase is part of the brand now. Readers would notice if it disappeared.”

  “Quite right. What I would suggest is a new sub-logo phrase, such as (he made quote marks with his fingers) ‘the Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Kansas Public Life' – I’m sure you could some up with something even better. Then you could create a ‘sliming Kansas' cell below the logo in the blog itself for stories appropriate to that theme.”

  “I further compartmentalize my stories, in other words.”

  “Exactly,” Cushing said.

  “Good idea. I’ll get my design person on it tomorrow. She’s not available until then. What else do we need to discuss?”

  Emery finished with Cushing a little before 2. The day was cold and sunny. He walked down Commercial Street toward the parking lot – the city had closed the street to vehicular traffic the year before.

  Halfway to the lot, he heard a familiar voice cry, “Mr. Emery, oh Mr. Emery.” He cringed and turned. Sure enough, it was Martha Jean Hutcherson, waving at him. Not wanting to be impolite, he met her in the middle of the street. “What are you doing down here?”

  “I’m working here now,” she said breathlessly, “at the Mullins temp agency.” She indicated a revamped warehouse across the street from Cushing’s offices.

  Astonished, he asked, “What happened to your job at the Examiner?”

  She shrugged. “I was laid off 10 days ago.”

  “Oh my God. It’s my fault for making that nasty remark about too many HR people at the newspaper. I’m so sorry.”

  She smiled. “It’s not your fault – may I call you Joe?”

  “Sure. So what happened, Martha Jean?”

  “We got word that Schmittlapp was handing down its final layer of buyouts. If that doesn’t stabilize company revenues, the next step is bankruptcy protection, which means …”

  “No more buyouts for anyone.”

  “Correct. So I told Angela I wanted one and she gave it to me. I have 22 years with the company and my husband still has his job as an engineer at Cessna, so we're OK. You’d be surprised how many local and regional companies need part-time HR help.”

  “Really? That’s interesting.”

  “I’m glad you’re doing so well.” Her eyes narrowed. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this but you deserve to know it. Angela came under special pressure to lay you off.”

  “Who from?”

  “Topeka,” she told Mack and me. “Someone in state government. They threatened to take away the newspaper’s state and local legal notices unless she let you go.”

  “Whoa. That would be a big hit, what, $300,000 a year in steady revenue?

  “More than that.”

  But you don’t know who? Or why?”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry. She wouldn’t tell us. All she said was the Examiner couldn’t afford to lose the revenue from legal notices, that it would sink us. So she included you in the next scale-down order that came from corporate.”

  “How much time elapsed between the call from Topeka and the Schmittlapp scale-down order?”

  “Less than a day. We knew more cutbacks were coming when the threat came from Topeka. Have to run. See you, Joe.”

  He stood there agog as she walked away. Then he called his friend Marcus Tyler, former publisher of the Examiner. He needed the man’s help.

  Chapter 18: Go with What You’ve Got

  November 19, 10:30 a.m.

  Tyler met Emery in the hallway outside his office. He was a compact African American, like Emery in his mid-50s, with wiry graying hair and hard, bright brown eyes. Three years earlier, his reluctance to slash the newsroom budget when the recession drove down advertising revenue had resulted in his “early retirement.”

  A few months after Tyler left the newspaper, he became the first Distinguished Chair in New Media at Wichita’s Fairmount State University. During the past two years, he and his colleagues had transformed the old College of Journalism into an academy for Internet-based citizen journalism.

  Tyler led Emery into his chaotic inner office, asking, “How can I help you?” He sat behind his desk, on which sat three monitors, motioning Emery toward a padded chair beside the desk.

  As Emery sat, he noted that The Vindicator’s home page occupied the center monitor. “Let me tell you about a conversation I had yesterday with Martha Jean Hutcherson.” He told Tyler the story in digest. “I need to know whether this sounds plausible, Mark. Is Hutcherson a reliable source? Is Brun capable of such treachery?”

  Tyler sat back in his desk chair, fingers tented. Finally, he said, “I’m inclined to believe Martha Jean. But before I say anything more, let’s see if we can get her on the phone. I want to hear this from her. Got her number?”

  He punched the number into his desk phone keypad as Emery read it to him. After she answered, he said, “Martha Jean, this is Marcus Tyler.”

  “Well, hi, Mark,” she exclaimed. “It’s good to hear from you.”

  “Welcome to the Examiner alumni club. I’ve got Joe Emery with me. OK if we put you on speaker phone?”

  There ensued a 20-minute conversation. Hutcherson repeated the story she’d told Emery: Brun had told her and Mack Clay that she was laying Emery off to avoid losing revenue from local and state legal notices. Hutcherson had asked Brun who had threatened the newspaper with the loss of the legal notices and whether the threat was credible. Brun would say only that someone in Topeka had targeted Emery for eliminat
ion and that she was following through for the good of the newspaper.

  Tyler asked whether she had “any personal motivations for making Brun look weak and evil.” Hutcherson said her personal relationship with Brun had been cordial and that she had left the newspaper on good terms with her.

  “Mark, I regret that I lacked the guts to face her down on it. It’s been keeping me up nights. Last night, after I told Joe about what happened, I slept well for the first time in weeks. I’m sorry I didn’t fight for you, Joe.”

  “It’s OK, Martha Jean,” Emery said. “It wouldn’t have made any difference.”

  “Joe is right, Martha Jean,” Tyler said. “You had no leverage. Let me ask you a hard question: Is it OK with you if Joe writes about this on his blog, and quotes you by name?”

  There ensued a long silence, during which Emery, eyebrows raised, looked Tyler in the eye. Tyler smiled grimly and waved a hand.

  Finally, Hutcherson said, “That would be all right, if it’s absolutely necessary.”

  “It is,” Tyler said. “Joe’s forced dismissal from the newspaper could be part of his ongoing investigation into the Colorado dam explosion and the people behind it. His dismissal and the reason for it need to be part of the public record.”

  “As long as I don’t become a target for, for … retribution,” Hutcherson quavered.

  “You won’t,” Tyler said. “Brun can do nothing to harm you now that you’ve separated from the newspaper and collected your buyout money. And just to make certain she can’t harm future job prospects, you can use me as a reference for your years at the Examiner.

  “As for the people dogging Joe, whoever they are, they have no motivation to harm you and would be foolish to try. It’s Angela they’d be upset with for telling you and Mack why she singled out Joe.”

  “OK,” she said, sounding more confident. “If it helps Joe, I’m happy to be a source.”

  After they rang off, Emery said, “I can’t report on this. It’s a single source interview and there’s no one else to corroborate the story.”

  “Well, confront Angela and report what she says. And call any state official you can think of who might have the power to do this to you and report their denials. Angela will probably try to bluff you out of reporting the story and you, my friend, will call her bluff, on your blog.”

  “Would you be advising me to do this if we were working for a newspaper and you were my editor?”

  “Maybe not. Corporate newspapers have gotten so cautious that they often sit on stories that aren’t completely nailed down. The lawyers insist on this, and they’re running the show. Go with what you’ve got in hope that more sources will materialize to further flesh out the story, which is far larger than the circumstances of your liberation from corporate journalism.”

  “You make my dismissal sound like a blessing.”

  Tyler shrugged. “Isn’t it?”

  A half hour later, back at his condo, Emery called an unlisted number at the Examiner, which Tyler had provided. Brun picked up on the second ring. After Emery identified himself, she demanded, “How did you get this number? This is my private line.”

  “And Marcus Tyler’s before you. Why did you cave in to outside pressure in laying me off?”

  There ensued a silence. “I did no such thing,” Brun said finally. “I eliminated your position because I needed your salary and benefit dollars to meet the corporate demand for cost reductions. Considering that you’ve gone into competition with us, in most effective fashion, I often regret that decision.”

  “Look, Ms. Brun. I know that someone in state government demanded you get rid of me or else you’d lose your state and local legal notices. I need to know who it was.”

  “May I ask where you heard that?”

  “Martha Jean Hutcherson. I ran into her yesterday and she told me what had happened. She recounted the story to Tyler and me earlier today.

  “Look, I don’t blame you for acting on that threat. I know how important legal notices are to the bottom line. And you did me a favor by laying me off. The Vindicator is doing well and is on track to do better. I don’t want my job back.”

  “I’m afraid Martha Jean is misinformed. Now, if you’ll excuse me …”

  “She was telling the truth. And Mark believes she’s telling the truth. You can level with me. I just want to know who put pressure on you. I think it ties in with my coverage of the Los Llanos dam sabotage and murders.”

  Another silence. Then Brun whispered, “I can’t help you.”

  “OK. I’ll report your denial. I’m putting together a post on all the loose ends pertaining to the Los Llanos case, and this has to be one of them. That’s what I was working on when you laid me off. Someone in power in Topeka, someone who did not understand how easy it is for a journalist to go into business for himself these days, wanted me off that story.”

  “Don’t you dare say anything about this conversation or Martha Jean’s delusional statement on your pathetic little blog. That information is proprietary. We’ll sue you for libel and tortious interference with our right to do business and put you out of business.”

  “I have a one-word response to your lawsuit threat: discovery. Your phone records and sworn testimony would be the first things that Mr. Bernier and I go after. So sue away.”

  She hung up on him.

  Heart pounding, he laid the phone on the desk. Did he dare follow through with this post? Carol, who was driving in for the weekend, would have to help him answer that question. This was about her, too.

  Chapter 19: Common Denominator

  November 20, 8 a.m.

  Emery opened the post he'd dodged out the day before. He turned to Carol, seated next to him at his desk. “Here’s what I came up with after my consultation with Marcus Tyler. I’m still leery of publishing it.”

  “Let me read it.”

  They turned to the laptop screen:

  COMMON DENOMINATOR IN LOS LLANOS ATROCITY?

  This week, I learned that my determination to tell The Story of one of the most horrendous crimes in recent memory likely cost me my job at the Wichita Examiner. The Story, as regular readers know, is the demolition of the dam at the Herman Gunderson Reservoir in Los Llanos, Colo., which sent a massive wall of water eastward into Kansas and killed three people. Before the publisher of the Wichita Examiner terminated my job in mid-October, I reported that the Oct. 14 collapse of the dam was attributable to domestic terrorism, and not to an ‘act of God,’ as the FBI initially deemed it.

  Two days after I returned to Wichita and resumed my duties at the Examiner, Publisher Angela Brun laid me off, along with two other employees. The putative reason for the termination of my job was a demand from the newspaper’s corporate parent, Schmittlapp Media, for $200,000 in additional budget cuts. Ms. Brun told me then, and reiterated this week, that she targeted me for termination because she needed the dollars from my salary and non-salary compensation to reach the corporate target. (Full disclosure: As part of my dismissal, I received a corporate buyout valued at more than $30,000.)

  I subsequently founded The Vindicator. As regular readers know, I was able to report that the white Dodge van seen at the Gunderson dam before the explosion had a Kansas license tag. More recently, I reported on Lazlo Harrelson, who died in the explosion and may have handled the demolitions for the people who plotted to destroy the dam.

  On Thursday, I learned that pressure from “someone in Topeka” was the likely cause of the termination of my job. My courageous source for this information is Martha Jean Hutcherson, the former assistant human relations director at the Wichita Examiner. Hutcherson told me and former Examiner publisher Marcus Tyler that this unknown person threatened Brun, the current publisher, with the loss of the newspaper’s state and local government legal notices if I weren’t removed from the payroll. Hutcherson told us that Brun informed her of this threat and that Brun acted on it because the Examiner relies heavily on earnings from government legal notices to meet its corpo
rate earnings targets.

  Brun denies that any such threat was made, so it’s her word against that of the former assistant HR director. While it’s possible that the former assistant director (who recently left the Examiner of her own accord) was mistaken, Tyler and I found her statements on the subject to be credible. They had the ring of truth. Tyler, who worked closely with her while he was running the newspaper, believes her to be a person of integrity.

  Such a threat could only have come from someone highly enough placed in state government to seem credible to Brun. Its motivation can only have been to stop my reporting on the dam explosion and murders. That is what I was working on at the time I lost my job.

  Gov. Hodge’s press secretary, Natascha Schroeder, refused to comment on Hutcherson’s revelation. No one else in Hodge’s chain of command would take my calls. Nor would the governor herself. Kansas House Speaker Troy Ecklin, a Concordia Republican, and Kansas Senate President Ezekiel Sergeant, a Manhattan Republican, both stated they know nothing about the threat allegedly conveyed to Angela Brun. Both men refused to speculate on who in state government might have made such a threat.

  Did a highly placed state official succeed in bullying Brun into terminating my job? If so, why? And who? Is there any connection between the alleged threat to Brun and the Los Llanos murders and sabotage, as well as the attempt on my life? I believe there is.

  I could be wrong to see a common denominator in these events. Perhaps there is no unifying factor that explains everything that has happened. So I would appreciate readers' help in sorting through these events in search of alternative meanings. If anyone has hard information that sheds more light on the connections among these events – or conversely, that could debunk my thinking – he or she should let me know. Those who would rather not convey information in the form of blog comments should e-mail, call or write me via snail mail. My contact information is at the top of this blog, on the left. Joe Emery