When a community has been without a reliable source of local news for some time, government officials can become accustomed to operating without much scrutiny. And when a feisty startup arrives on the scene to report stories that had gone unreported, that can prove to be quite a shock to the powers that be.
Which is as good an explanation as any for what’s unfolding in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The venerable Old Colony Memorial had become virtually a ghost newspaper under the Gannett chain’s ownership, mainly publishing regional coverage from other Gannett papers. Then, in 2023, the Plymouth Independent, a nonprofit digital outlet, arrived on the scene.
The Independent is larger and more ambitious than many such projects; the editor and CEO is Mark Pothier, a former Globe journalist and, before that, editor of the Old Colony Memorial back when it was still covering local news. One of the Independent’s directors is Walter Robinson, a Plymouth resident who’s best known for leading the Globe’s Spotlight Team when it was exposing the clergy sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church.
One Plymouth official who is taking particular umbrage at the increased scrutiny being brought by the Independent is the town manager, Derek Brindisi. According to a message to readers that Pothier published today, Brindisi has ordered “all appointed town officials to cease all communication with the PI.” The only exception is that town officials will be permitted to respond to public-records requests from the Independent, which, after all, they are required to do under state law.
For his unwarranted attempts to prevent the Independent from holding local government accountable, Brindisi is receiving a New England Muzzle Award. “In my decades as a journalist, Brindisi’s blanket edict is like nothing I have ever encountered,” writes Pothier, who also says:
Our job as journalists is to hold government officials accountable and to provide readers with the reliable information they need to foster a functioning democracy. In that respect, the relationship between governments and journalists is necessarily adversarial. We’re supposed to be skeptical of people in power.
Officials, paid public professionals, and Town Meeting members make decisions involving policies and spending that inevitably spark debate. They serve in the public’s interest. The Independent reports on them in the public’s interest.
Before the PI arrived, most Plymouth residents — including myself — had a hard time finding out what was going on in town. Perhaps naively, I figured officials would welcome the chance to present the town’s perspective on important issues. Some have — or did until this latest order to stop talking to us. Brindisi, however, has only reached out to express displeasure with our coverage.
Pothier goes into some detail about a couple of routine stories that upset Brindisi. One was written by Andrea Estes, a former investigative reporter for the Globe. (Estes’ career at the Globe came to a bad end for reasons that have never been adequately explained, but there is no question that she’s an experienced and accomplished journalist.) The other was written by Fred Thys, a former reporter for WBUR Radio in Boston and VTDigger, a leading investigative news outlet in Vermont.
Brindisi, for his part, childishly refers to the Independent as the “Plymouth Enquirer” and has complained about the Independent’s “distasteful reporting” and efforts to “humiliate town officials.”
This isn’t the first Muzzle to be awarded to Plymouth officials in recent months. Back in July, I gave one to select board member Kevin Canty for suggesting that an unnamed person was risking prison for recording the audio of a board meeting without informing those present. Canty was referring to Thys, who had made no effort to hide the fact that he was recording the meeting, which was also being live-streamed on YouTube.
Thys may have been in technical violation of the law, but seriously? “Canty and I later spoke about the incident,” Pothier writes. “We both agreed it could have been handled better, perhaps with a simple request that Thys announce he was recording.”
Pothier also credits Canty with working to mend the rift between Brindisi and the Independent, but that those efforts have come to naught.
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I was shocked to see a “dangling modifier” in the above story (at the beginning of the third paragraph).
So am I.😀
Now fixed.
I know nothing about Massachusetts open-government laws or Plymouth politics, so I’m asking: Can the elected board not instruct the city manager (whom, I presume, they hire and can fire) to respond to questions from the news media to the best of his ability and in keeping with open-government law?
As I understand it, town managers have quite a bit of autonomy, and select boards can’t order them to do specific things. But the board can fire the town manager at any time for any reason, or for no reason.