My master's degree is a terminal Masters of Arts In Historic Preservation from Goucher College. I thought I had nailed it in one of my first papers, only to receive the following margin note from my instructor, a preeminent National Register historian — "You need to work on using more exact language. You're an excellent writer, but in preservation in particular, that's worthless if the information is even slightly compromised by sloppiness." It was a harsh lesson, but learning it early has stood me well, both by excelling in my degree and by informing my work since then (it's also made me picky about my sources, but that's another issue).
I am also, for those that know me, a die-hard loyal friend.
I didn't actually read an article in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press about a controversy about tearing down a small-but-historic home when it came out Friday night. I'm paywalled out (I refused to re-up my subscription after a delivery scam...hmm, it appears I am not the only one...), and I was familiar enough with the issue that I figured I would not learn too much from the story. Little did I know.
The next morning, I saw my friend Elyse, who was furious about the article. She had been interviewed, and was livid about several inaccurate parts of it, most particularly that one of her quotes had been taken so out of context that it actually completely reversed her position. She brought it up to show me, but got a 404 Not Found (it had apparently been pulled down later Friday night); however, a quick search of the terms showed that the article had been scraped and was prevalent on several aggregate news sites. And yes, she was correct. Elyse had filed an EAW petition with the state to slow the demolition and have the apparent damage investigated (especially since the damage occurred months AFTER the demo permit was applied for and a historic engineering report showed the building as structurally sound.) Instead, however, her quote was somehow turned around to say:
“If it’s falling down, and it’s structurally unsound, then there’s a public safety concern,” Jensen said.
(She also had several other issues with the article, including it saying it's the "oldest" house in Saint Paul which is only true with a lot of qualifications, but I digress. She can cover those herself if she wishes. This isn't a post about the Justus Ramsey house per se, though I have some links to the issue below).
Though the story had apparently been written by an intern (hmmmm....), she appeared to have a low social media profile and had not posted about it. Pioneer Press reporter Fred Melo, however, had both tweeted linking to the article and posted about it on Facebook, which is where my part of the story begins in earnest.
Anyone with a kid knows that, when you don't provide information, people 1) look elsewhere for it and/or 2) make it up. With the Pioneer Press story down, the scraped story was the ONLY story, and people were referring to it a lot, as well as speculating as to why the original article continued to be down. (Did Moe ask the paper to take it down? Where they revising the quote? What exactly was happening here?)
My main point though, is that Fred Melo had not issued a follow-up to his original tweet on the story, or edited his Facebook post link. They both linked back to the original (pulled) story, with no comment about any ensuing developments. Like I said, I stand up for my friends, so I ended up with a lot of back and forth with Fred on Twitter about his social media. I won't get up my blood pressure up by excerpting the exchange here (I'm @bethanyg on Twitter if you want to look them up), but it started with me saying "I think your quotes are wrong" on Saturday morning, and ended with him telling me "My apologies for your ignorance" last night. So a lovely time was had by all.
Though I think it's a bad look for a paper to let a reporter get into an online war of words with a constituent (do they not have a social media policy?), or to not respond to my inquiry as to who the editor was, that's not really the focus of this post either.
My first point is that, proving my instructor's point many years later (thanks, Toni!) — language matters. In this story, mishandled quotes and sloppy dates, among other issues, led to a big mess that not only held up the article — it was finally reposted at 5:07 this morning — but let other newspapers and scrape sites be the ones to tell the story. This issue deserves better coverage.
The eventual reason given for the misquote is that the story was edited for space (not sure how that relates to online posting but there we are), and that's also problematic. The intern who wrote the piece deserved better editing and assistance than that.
But most of all, this blog post is, perhaps ironically, using a highly changeable online vehicle for demonstrating how the online world is designed to be in flux (who knows, if you read this post again in 10 minutes it might have changed!). Both Patrick and I, among others, asked Fred to edit his social media to reflect the story had been pulled for correction. He refused to, finally deleting the tweet last night, though the original Facebook post remained unedited until this morning — I just looked for it right now and he deleted it while I was writing this post.
My point, however, remains. When a paper has a story that has generated enough concern with any part of it that it is taken down and not put back up for 60 hours, and that a reporter has posted on social media, said reporter should take advantage of the flexibility of social media to indicate that situation. One might even want to consider, giving the benefit of the doubt, that a reader pointing out the discrepancy might be trying to help clarify the situation, especially given the lack of information.
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Want some information on the Justus Ramsey house itself? In chronological order:
The National Register nomination in 1975:
https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/e16e0328-5380-4ca9-b5a2-fb59e75f225a
A blog post about it 8 years ago:
https://findinghistory.wordpress.com/2014/11/09/the-justus-ramsey-house-what-not-to-do-with-historical-buildings/
The petition:
https://www.change.org/p/save-a-historic-house-from-demolition
The scraped original post (not sure if this will auto-update or remain):
https://news.yahoo.com/preservationists-concerned-future-justus-ramsey-220700391.html
The Star Tribune article:
https://www.startribune.com/burger-moes-wants-to-tear-down-st-pauls-historic-justus-ramsey-house/600216315/?refresh=true
The revised Pioneer Press article, posted at 5:07am today:
https://www.twincities.com/2022/10/17/historic-justus-ramsey-stone-house-faces-demolition/
I'm also more than happy to talk to you offline about the entire effort, just reach out!
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