Boise News

Column

Why We Need the Alternative Press

By Jill Kuraitis, 7-24-09

When Boise Weekly editor Rachael Daigle and its news editor Nathaniel Hoffman planned to cover the story of Holocaust denier David Irving coming to town, they went through a bit of intrigue.

“David Irving, who, for at least 50 years, has written sympathetic and revisionist books about Hitler and the Nazis, announced months ago on his Web site that he would arrive in Boise on Wednesday, July 15, as part of a 17-city Western and Midwestern book tour. But he never said where he’d be speaking, for fear of protesters showing up and disrupting the thing.”

Daigle and Hoffman spent that Wednesday afternoon trying to figure out where Irving would appear. A tip led Hoffman to Irving’s cell phone number and Irving told Hoffman to call back later for the location, but Daigle happened across Irving and his party before it was necessary. They were at the Red Feather Lounge on 8th Street.

“Had we known who this guy was and what they were going to use the cellar for, clearly we wouldn’t have booked them,” Red Feather proprietor Dave Krick said. “Once they were in there, for me it would have been really hard, without some kind of disturbance to ask them to leave. Everybody’s got a right to speak their mind even if we radically disagree with it.”

Hoffman, who from the beginning identified himself as a journalist, got Irving to agree to let him into the small (a dozen people) event. But Irving changed his mind and someone in the room threatened to call the police.

Meanwhile, Daigle was filming everything she could with her cell camera. The people at the lecture didn’t like that. Daigle continued.

But when a man said he was a veteran and Daigle wasn’t worthy of the sacrifice he paid and wanted her to leave, Daigle said,

“I think I made the decision to be a protester rather than a reporter when the guy told me to thank a veteran and get out because I wasn’t ‘worthy’ because I didn’t know a damn thing about defending my country,” Rachael told [Hoffman].

Since Daigle comes from a long line of dedicated veterans, the bell of protest within her rang loudly, and the story from there is a remarkably skillful example of how to handle it when the lines between reporter and participant are blurred.

Exquisitely careful to tell the story-of-the-story with revealing accuracy, Hoffman wrote,

I was still in reporter mode. Rachael was in fighting mode. We agreed to leave when a manager, whom we had informed of our presence and intentions, asked us to leave and after the threat of police involvement from one attendee.

Neither of us slept that night and now a week later, we are finally publishing our account of the evening. In some ways we never got the story. In other ways we inserted ourselves into the story. For the past week we have both struggled with how to cover this event.

“Why haven’t we covered it yet? Because I can’t. I completely crossed some line ... although I’d say it’s a line that the alt press should probably cross more often, though perhaps with more grace,” Rachael reflects.

I wrote something the next day, irritated at the fact that my editor screwed up the interview. But I was also sympathetic with her need to shout down those people; neither of us wanted them to think they could just slink into Boise, spread ignorant and hateful ideas and leave with no questions asked.

There were actual protesters around the corner, waiting to find out where Irving was, but we did not know that, nor would I have called them in. I can’t speak for Rachael.

My goal was to determine the level of Irving’s fraud, expose him and observe the extent of his audience here, but I never got to hear him speak.

Friday morning, Hoffman told NewWest.Net/Boise, “As I wrote in the story, we considered not writing about it at all, but we decided that if we didn’t no one would ever know about it. That’s what the Boise Weekly and the alt press does best, we shed light on the dark places in society.”

Hoffman ends the story saying he and Daigle marveled at the “absolute American right to free speech” including the right to be “blissfully, ignorantly wrong.”

Yes.

I marvel at another thing: not very long ago, this kind of journalism was a rare thing in our country, and when it did appear, the journalists were often discredited for not staying strictly out of the story and stringently nonjudgmental about its content.

A traditional Associated Press-style newspaper story on Irving’s appearance could look something like this:

Author David Irving, who writes books about Hitler and the Nazis, spoke at a downtown restaurant in Boise last night. He autographed and sold some of his books.
About a dozen people attended.
A confrontation between a reporter and attendees disrupted the event for a few minutes.
Irving will now continue on his 17-city book tour.

That kind of reporting, while having its place, is part of what led to the rise and establishment of the alternative press, and Hoffman’s story is a perfect example of why we need it.

Without their hands tied by rules that don’t always apply, the Weekly and Hoffman were able to tell a compelling tale of not only Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers in Boise, but also the story of how Irving and his followers operate. Exposing the secretive nature of the gathering, Irving’s unwillingness to allow people who disagree with his views to debate him openly, and the attitude of his followers was a story that needed to be told.

But the account of how Daigle became a part of the story by choice, then struggled with the wisdom of her decision; the admission by Hoffman that he was initially upset about what she did and that both of them wrestled with the right way, if any, to publish the story, is as remarkable as the reporting about Irving. Rarely are we on the inside of that process, and the careful and raw honestly with which Hoffman and Daigle came forth is both a treat and a gift.

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.