Almost, But Not Quite There

McBride does a rather lengthy piece on JB Van Hollen and his handling of the crisis in Crandon. McBride pleasantly surprises us with a fairly rational and level-headed critique, pointing out legitimate flaws, making constructive criticsisms. Whallah was quite impressed, especially when one would have expected McBride, in her normal mode, to try to shred the winner of last year's Attorney General election into little pieces. This fear was reinforced with the title of "I hate to say I told you so, but..."

That was until the end, when the McBride we all know and love (OK, not quite love) comes through to sink the whole piece:

Quick. Someone get this guy a crisis manager. He's now getting beaten up by Sykes, Belling, AND USA Today, not to mention Badger Blogger, Freedom Eden, and Texas Hold 'Em, but he thinks everything went smoothly. Not a good day.

I don't know how to tell McBride this, but if these are the only people he has to worry about criticizing him, that is a good day. It means he probably is doing something right after all.

Crandon, Part III

After having two fairly reasonable postings on the Crandon tragedy, we get our old McBride back, full of her usual professional standards, or lack thereof. Here is her entire post:

The new media narrative on Crandon

"The shooter was too young to be a cop and possess a gun! It's the fault of the system!"

How old do they think the soldiers in Iraq are?

Who else but McBride could make such an irrational assertion, offer no proof, and then tie in one of her favorite objets d'obsession. Oh yeah, her former mentor and BFF.

Crandon, Part II

In her second posting regarding the Crandon tragedy, McBride again strives to take MSJ to task on their journalistic skills. This time her beef is that the story didn't focus on the timing of the 911 calls to the final confrontation between law enforcement and the gunman. She feels that this aspect of the story should be the gist of the story, and wants to know why there was such a delay by the authorities.

However, if she read the article, she would have gotten at least a partial answer to her questions. The police were unfamiliar with the terrain, they were unsure of the situation except that a person who just shot seven people, killing six, was held up in a home full of potential hostages. Maybe McBride has been watching too many episodes of "24", and doesn't realize that the cowboy approach usually only works in the movies and TV.

Furthermore, as an alleged teacher of journalism, and supposedly covering stories of this nature when she actually worked, she would recognize a developing story in progress and realized that sometimes it takes time to put all of the pieces together. Oh, wait a minute, she almost does:

Maybe the full printed version of tomorrow's story will have more.

But then still goes on with her critique. Sigh.

UPDATE: In the morning MSJ, there is indeed an editorial raising the same questions about the response time to the 911 calls. At the time of this update, there is no acknowledgement of this by McBride.

Crandon, Part I

In her first posting about the tragedy that occurred in Crandon Sunday, McBride takes MSJ to task for printing the names of the victims before they were released by the authorities. She states that this is "VERY wrong" due to the risk of the families finding out this way. While she would be correct under normal circumstances, and there have been documented cases in which it was the reporter who ended up being the one to notify the family of a tragic death, it could be argued in this case that MSJ wasn't that far out of line in this story.

The MSJ report wasn't filed until late that night, and it was reported that the names came from families and friends. This shows that the families were aware and were identifying their loved ones. Secondly, perhaps McBride forgot what living in a small town is like, but the news travels much faster informally than through official conduits, so it is likely that the family was already aware of what occurred, long before the paper or even law enforcement knew the identities.