The Crumbling Fourth Estate
If any of you watch 60 Minutes, you may be aware of the controversy surrounding Greg Mortenson, who wrote Three Cups of Tea and founded the Central Asia Institute, which seeks to spread educational opportunities for girls in Afghanistan. Greg has been accused of “telling some stretchers,” as a friend of mine put it, in Three Cups of Tea, as well as using the CAI as “his own personal ATM,” according to Jon Krakauer who recently published an online book, Three Cups of Deceit.
Greg and his family live right here in Bozeman, Mont. And a couple of my friends and colleagues have gone to Afghanistan with Greg to do work for the CAI. One of these friends is Karin Ronnow, who is also city editor for the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. Karin is currently getting a lot of unfriendly flack from national media watchdogs for having both jobs.
I’m not going to dispute there was a conflict of interest there. The point I want to bring out is that Karin is not alone in looking for work outside of her newspaper job. The newspaper industry’s financial woes are well-chronicled and those of us who still have jobs as journalists are damn lucky and damn few. Still, those jobs don’t pay very well and unless we are independently wealthy or have a spouse who makes a good living, we’ve got to look for outside work to get by. I know I do.
Potential conflicts abound for journalists who can’t afford to have just one job. Even if they work for Home Depot on the weekends, there is a potential conflict of interest — and there oftentimes isn’t the staff or the resources to put someone else on a story about a given reporter or photographer’s part-time job or boss.
Let’s realize that this isn’t just Karin’s problem. It’s the journalism industry’s problem. Publishers who care about their product as much as their profit are getting very hard to find. And that’s our problem as citizens if we want to have news sources we can trust.
The Fourth Estate is crumbling. This is just the most recent brick to fall.
Woman Of The Year
The Bozeman Chronicle’s Balance magazine recently named Ediltrudis “Edith” Reichmuth Woman of the Year. Edith is originally from Panama, has survived her share of hard times and maintains her youthful energy and vitality by volunteering all over the Gallatin Valley. I caught up with her for a quick portrait while she was manning the information desk at Bozeman Deaconess Hospital. I found Edith’s generosity inspiring.
One-Woman Show
Stacy Hostetter is a woman of many talents. She lives in Bozeman, Mont., and can take a bunch of untrained elementary school children and turn them into a theater company all by herself. Stacy writes, directs, makes costumes, constructs scenery — you name it. If it’s got to do with theater, Stacy can do it.
Except she says she doesn’t like to act.
I was lucky to get her to clown around in a few hats before teaching a class recently.
Great art in the Wild West
I love classical music.
So I was thrilled when the Montana Chamber Music Society asked me to make some pictures of world-renowned musicians Mike Reynolds, left, and Phil Aaberg. Mike is a member of the famed Muir String Quartet and Phil is an extraordinary pianist and composer.
Phil grew up in Chester, Mont., where he still lives, and Mike is from right here in Bozeman, Mont.
Who says we don’t have culture out here in the hinterlands?
Windy Season
This is the time of year when the weather in Montana changes fast. And the wind blows — a lot.
I was in Browning, Montana, last week and noticed this wind sock had seen better days. And no wonder, wunderground.com tells me that nearby Cut Bank, Montana, had gusts exceeding 50 mph during the week and a woman in Browning told me wind speeds had topped 100 mph. I couldn’t confirm that, however.
All I can tell you is that it sure was windy.
Frank Dryman
When Frank Dryman was 19 years old, he killed a man near Shelby, Mont. That was 1951. He was sentenced to death, then commuted to life. In January 1969, he was granted parole.
A few years later, he stopped reporting to his parole officer and moved to Arizona City, Ariz., where he turned himself into Victor Houston.
Nearly 40 years passed before a private detective — hired by the grandson of the man Dryman killed — found Dryman by the tattoos on Dryman’s hands and turned him in. At age 79, Dryman was returned to the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge. He’ll come up before the parole board again when he’s 85.
Meet Edd
Edd Enders is a fantastic painter living in Livingston, Montana. Like a lot of us, Edd has had his share of bumps in the road, which he talks candidly about in the current issue of Montana Quarterly, in a great story written by my friend Amy Stix. Edd has struggled with bipolar disorder for much of his life, but now his work as an artist is giving him the stability he needs.
You never know…
Doug Loneman and I run Montana Photography Workshops. Saturday we drove up to Great Falls to lead a photo walk and lucked into finding these two sisters who, unbeknownst to us, had decided to dress up and head downtown so a friend could make some pictures. They graciously allowed us to work too. Who was it that said, “It’s better to be lucky than good?”
Big moon
The moon, I’m told, is the closest to earth it has been in decades. Here it is rising above the eastern Montana plains last week.
Calving Time
Steam rises from a newborn calf in Winifred, Montana. This calf is literally seconds old.
Ranchers in different parts of the state calve in different times. Some like to calve in January and February when the ground is still frozen and the calves don’t get soaked in muck, others like to calve in the early spring.
Thomas Lee True West 