Sharon Bondroff? Not much of an improvement

Sharon Bondroff wrote on a council meeting for The Gray News. On the one hand it’s good that the paper has an actual person actually attending meetings on which they write about. The Vapor Approach and the Make It Up As We Go Along Approach were getting tiresome.

However, Ms Bondroff’s approach is obviously one that mirrors her fluffy creative non-fiction writing and is not based on any journalism training or other news media education. In seeking to write evocatively and prettily, like in her old personal columns she used to do for a little while, instead of just reporting, she missed the fact in front of her face. Literally.

Each councilor has a name plate in front of them. Ms Bondroff was at a meeting for at least three hours, staring at the name plates. At said meeting the idea is to listen, write, and look around. Facts abound. Including the name plate in front of each Councilor, which, though staring at it for three hours, Ms Bondroff misspelled when it came time to put the facts to paper. It’s CRANE, not CRAIN. It's LIBBEY. Not Libby. Oy.

Skip Crane has been a councilor for a year and a half. His name has been spelled properly in three papers, exists on the town website and is broadcast almost daily on local cable. She stared at it for three hours. Where has she been? Small mistakes are telling, making the observant and intelligent reader wonder, “If Ms. Bondroff got so simple a thing wrong, a fact so obvious and basic, what else did Bondroff miss?”