To Our Readers

By Richard H. Girard
Publisher
On Tuesday, we published a front-page story regarding the tragic, untimely death of Ian Pierce, entitled “That’s the Kind of Guy He Was.” We regret that we must retract that story.

The author, Angela Houle, was one of our recently recruited freelance writers. A full-time paramedic, we believed she would be able to write an article with unique and valuable insights. She was supposed to interview Ian’s coworkers at Golden Cross Ambulance on Sunday. Unfortunately, instead of conducting the interviews, she took several quotes from John Lippman’s September 22 story, published in the Valley News.

Once brought to our attention, Ms. Houle was asked about the source of the quotes. She confirmed that she took them from the Valley News believing that, because they were quotes, they were usable material. Running short on time, she was unable to conduct the interviews. As a result, she used the quotes as a shortcut to get the story written.

What she should have done was notify the editor who arranged for her to write the story. For the error, we apologize to those quoted, the Valley News, Mr. Lippman, the communities we serve and, especially, Mr. Pierce’s family, friends and co-workers.

The Eagle Times has worked hard to bring “community journalists” into its ranks to help cover local people, places and things. Some wonderful writers have come to our paper as a result and our readers have benefitted by the many good stories they, including Ms. Houle, have written.

We require all such writers to watch a four part series on how to cover and report community news, taught by the Granite State News Collaborative and the Nackey Loeb School of Communication. We also work with them one on one to help them develop as writers, once the course has been completed. In light of this error, we are reviewing what we do to ensure our community journalists understand what is and isn’t allowable.

Our paper has welcomed many new staff members. They range from veteran journalists and editors with decades of experience to freelancers starting out. They have all enhanced our ability to report the news. Please know that, as we continue to expand our team, we will redouble our efforts to ensure our journalists “get it right” before we go to print.

In closing, we wish to thank Valley News Publisher Dan McClory for his gracious treatment of us, after we brought this error to his attention. He could have reacted very differently. We appreciate that he didn’t.