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News’ incomplete story less than informative

It seems The Alpena News is becoming a Cubist painting, and not in a good way. Example: we learn on Feb. 16 that a man named Steven Donajkowski, a former Trustee of Alpena Public Schools Board of Education, had been censured by the BOE “because of sexualized comments he posted to Facebook about Vice President Kamala Harris.” We learn further that Mr. Donajkowski, who resigned as Trustee, made the comment on Facebook “in response to a special a local restaurant was offering as part of an event for the Alpena Democratic Party held last week.” The article references Mr. Donajkowski’s history of posting (let’s call them) controversial comments on social media.

However, the article never tells us what Mr. Donajkowski said that caused all the ruckus. For that, we have to go back to the Feb. 15 News, specifically a letter from Marie Fielder of Alpena, a long dense paragraph of a thing, chastising “an elected School Board member” for logging onto a Facebook page “promoting the betterment of Alpena” and referring to Vice President Harris by saying, “You don’t know who or what has been inside her.” Ms. Fielder’s understandably indignant letter goes on for a couple hundred words, referring to “an [unnamed] elected leader” and “this [unnamed] School Board member” and, the most abstract, “this [unnamed] person” (twice).

Here’s the Cubist part: assuming the BOE isn’t lousy with people posting disparaging Facebook comments about Vice President Harris, we determine that it was Mr. Donajkowski, who alluded to her rumored sexual history. But why couldn’t the News print the offensive Facebook posting in its February 16 article? It had no problem printing it earlier in Ms. Fielder’s letter. We shouldn’t have to piece together disparate items from the News just to get the basic facts of a story.

CLYDE A. SHUMAN

Ossineke

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