Lewis & Clark Travails
Wall Street Journal Reporter Pilloried by Sensitive Montanans
By Jonathan Weber, 7-26-06
Wall Street Journal reporter Brooks Barnes was born in Conrad, Montana and grew up in Billings, so it came as something of a shock to him earlier this week to be raked over the coals by residents of his home state for being, to paraphrase, an arrogant, insensitive East Coast media elitist.
Barnes' offense was a front-page story about how the Lewis and Clark bicentennial has been a bust from a tourism standpoint. This is not news to anyone who has followed the three-year-long celebration, and Barnes' piece, which ran in the soft feature position known at the Journal as the "A-head", was a colorful but generally straightforward account of why the celebrations haven't worked out as planned and what it looks like when small towns prepare for a visitor stampede that never materializes.
In Great Falls, however, the citizenry was not amused. The Great Falls Tribune (owned by the Virginia-based Gannett Co.) ran a story saying that the Journal had made Montana "the butt of Lewis and Clark jokes among East Coast circles for the next 200 years." The Tribune piece complains that the Journal "picks on communities that poured money into Lewis and Clark events," and that it "goes on to mock Fort Benton's police for practicing crowd control drills..."
Barnes says the story generated more email than anything he's ever written for the Journal - no doubt due in part to the Tribune helpfully including his email address at the end of its piece. And the email wasn't pretty: "only a bitter moron would write article talking badly about people celebrating l&c" (sic), read one missive. Said another: "I think you are mean, small minded, and over critical. How dare you poke fun at a state and it's people that shared their beauty, culture and freindship with you just so that your ugly opinion could be put in the wall street journal. yuck you suck!!!! But maybe you did our state a favor anyway since it will keep ugly people and their ugly opinions (like you) out of our state since we don't want them here anyway!!!" And another: "You are a prime example of a person who is intolerant of others, and who thinks himself so special in this world that he tries to make himself feel better about himself by ridiculing others whom he knows little about."
"The Tribune piece had this insinuation that it was an 'East Coast' thing," said Barnes. He attributed the vitriol to a general distrust of big media.
Barnes was annoyed that Tribune reporter Chelsi Moy never called him before she wrote the piece. And here's where the ironies - or the incestuous nature of journalism, take your pick - really start to get thick. I know Chelsi from her days as a journalism student here at the University of Montana, and she is a good reporter and a very nice person. In fact, Chelsi was the recipient of a scholarship honoring the late Jeff Cole, a Journal reporter and Montana native who was a close friend of mine - and also a close friend of Barnes' boss, Journal media and marketing bureau chief Rich Turner.
Maybe East Coast media elitism is a contagious disease you can catch as soon as you move across the Hudson. Or maybe Barnes committed the sin that's gotten reporters in trouble from the beginning of time - he pointed out something that the people involved are just a little bit sensitive about.
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Comments
When the late Stephen Ambrose made the prediction that millions would visit the Bi-Centennial route - scores of towns like GF and Fort Benton scrambled to prepare for what was expected to be a huge rise in tourism. When the numbers didn't show, I think it's only a natural reaction as a journalist, to point that out - and point out that many of these communities may have over-planned. I know it was a no-brainer for me, when I was based in Montana at the time.
That said, I didn't see the article as it appeared in print, but, through your link, it appears to me that Chelsi was writing a pretty light hearted column about the Journal piece, no?
And, as far as irony goes, I might have everyone beat: I've worked with Kirk, Jennifer, Jonathan AND Chelsi.
And, even though I grew up near Great Falls, I've never gone to a Lewis and Clark event other than to cover it for the Great Falls Tribune, which is when I first met New West Travel and Outdoor editor Bill Schneider about 10 years ago.
Maybe I've been away from the Mountain Time Zone (South Dakota, actually) for too long.
Anyway, both writers seems to be fully capable of reaching their readers, with a good measure of crossover. My sentiments rest with Brooks Barnes' on-target analysis. It's been tough going for the L&C;promoters. Four years is a long time to keep a party going. People (but not Barnes) from populated coastal regions (especially the East) do maintain a "they're all frozen hayseeds" attitude about much of the High Plains and Mountain West. Such fools; they don't know much and are missing out on even more. But that might not be an altogether bad thing. I was in Missoula last week and could not help but notice the pinch from suburban development and lots of traffic. But we loved a lazy float trip on the Bitterroot, and time spent with family and newly made friends.
Keep taking care of things throughout the region. We'll do our part back here by telling the Lewis and Clark story to all who will listen. To keep things from getting much more crowded in your part of the world, we also will keep telling East Coast city folks that an appropriate christening gift for a newborn is a set of baby's first jumper cables.
We remain homesick somewhere in Fairfax County, Virginia.
I am the grandaughter of the long-time owner/ publisher of the Great Falls Tribune, Oliver Sherman (OS) Warden. Most of the decendants of the Warden family are living elsewhere now, but we still remember the days when OS and his son Robert made the "Tribune" what it was. To the extend that the "critical" article implied that Native Americans were not supportive, I can't disagree. When I lived in Great Falls, the Indian children from the reservation were segreated. I was criticized for making friends with a girl from the "Res". At that time, I watched as OS was made an honory Chief of the Blackfeet Tribe at the State Fair.
I was born in Washington D.C. My mother, from Great Falls, and father, from Missoula were so proud to have come from Montana. And I am proud as well that my roots are there. One of my cousins (2nd or 3rd) told me about twenty years ago that his goal was to get the Tribune back for the family. Pretty short sighted, but he was only 18 at the time.