By John H. Palmer

Journalists tend to be a competitive bunch. We all read what the others do, and it helps keep us on our toes, and if we read things right, with a little footwork we sometimes get stories that others miss.

Getting a scoop is a lot of fun, and when the competition beats us, it’s professional courtesy to give them a pat on the back and say “well done.”

That is, until they call into question your own journalistic integrity. Then it’s gloves off.

I woke up this morning to find that one of our competitors ran a story about the Board of Education’s “stunning” decision after a 12-hour hearing at Town Hall not to renew the contract of a Staples High School soccer coach who was accused of being in an altercation with a player during a pre-season retreat.

So, a “scwoop,” if you will.

Except it wasn’t. We all knew going into yesterday that the school board was going to fire the coach, and I said so in my column Monday morning. We as an editorial team chose not to devote resources to have a reporter sitting in an auditorium all day and instead focus on other “ventures.” More on that in a second.

In the aforementioned “scwoop,” our journalistic integrity was called out when it was said that we claimed in our stories that the altercation was “physical,” as opposed to “verbal.” We were accused of erroneous reporting.

When you’re a news organization, it helps to actually show up at Board of Education meetings to cover them. That’s why we have an education reporter, Linda Conner Lambeck, devoted to the school beat, and so we stand by our reporting and defend our stories.

We did report on Jan. 17 that the student, Jonathan Costello, who came forward, said he was emotionally abused by the head coach and “physically assaulted” by an assistant coach. That is what he said at a Board of Education meeting, and his words are repeated in a document he submitted to the board and that his lawyer gave to us. That statement, too, was published and can be read at the end of that article. We attributed those allegations and in several follow-ups to Costello.

That’s called quoting a source, and journalists do it every day. Meanwhile, our competition didn’t do any follow-up stories to acknowledge the victim’s allegations. The only follow-up was a letter from the assistant coach – Harry Ocampo – denying all responsibility. For the record, we also ran that letter on Jan. 18.

We believe that everyone has a right to have their voices heard in a news story, even the victims. As much as I believe that teachers and coaches get treated unfairly at times by school boards and administrators looking to trim the fat and avoid liability, I also think the victims – in this case, a high school senior, should get his day in court.

Birds of a feather tend to flock together, as the saying goes. Well, a bunch of crows will tend to give you stories about a bunch of crows, when you yourself have been a crow for two decades. I don’t call that independent reporting. I call that a conflict of interest.

Dedicated news teams get their scoops

Meanwhile, while some chose to sit in an auditorium for 12 hours, shooting posed photos of high school students skipping school to wait for the Board of Education to deliver a verdict that was easy to predict, our award-winning journalists, several of whom are currently being recognized by the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists for excellence in journalism, were pounding the pavement Monday to deliver our own scoop.

As we reported in our story Monday afternoon, ROAN Ventures, the developer of the proposed “Hamlet” mixed-use project in Saugatuck purchased two of the Norwalk Islands and is planning to run chartered adventures from the expanded marina as an attraction for the development’s tenants and visitors.

This wasn’t so much of a scoop, as the story was there for the taking for anyone who paid attention. The actual island purchase occurred in 2023, but it was quietly done under the separate names of independent L.L.C.s, not an uncommon practice. Even a person who made a hobby of perusing the Norwalk Tax Assessor’s website might not have noticed the sale.

Our multi-talented and on-the-spot reporter, Gretchen Webster, took notice May 7 of a comment about the acquisition made by ROAN co-founder Rodrigo Real, who was a guest panelist at a roundtable discussion hosted by Westport Journal publisher Doug Weber about the future of Saugatuck. It should be noted that the discussion was attended by almost 100 people in the middle of the day on a Wednesday.

To some Westporters closely following the Hamlet application, the acquisition wasn’t a huge surprise, as it had been rumored around town, and even the Hamlet promotional materials had a map that touted the islands as their own. But our editorial staff wasn’t satisfied with merely reporting about the sale. I’m a Norwalk native, and I’m proud of that. I’ve kayaked and boated around those islands since I was a kid. In 2000, as a reporter for The Norwalk Hour, I wrote the paper’s first-ever Sunday feature in its 100-year history – a multi-page accounting of the people and history of those islands.

I wanted to know why ROAN bought the islands, and what they planned to do. I knew those islands were small, and working utilities aren’t allowed out there, so there were only so many things they could do. I wanted to know what they paid for them, and how the purchase would affect the Hamlet plan, ultimately.

Gretchen visited the ROAN offices casually and found Real happy to talk to us about the plans. Weber, consulting editor John Schwing, and I worked our various sources in Norwalk and Fairfield County over the weekend to double check our information. Our new photographer and videographer Mark Molesworth changed his schedule Monday morning to get photos of the Norwalk Islands quickly to illustrate the story.

We also listened to ROAN, and respected their side of the story and their rights as a business to make a profit at what they do. As much as some Westporters may not love the idea of the Hamlet, developers do good things for communities and they, too, deserve their voices to be heard.

This is what a dedicated news team working together can accomplish in a short period of time, and I am extremely proud of what we do.

When we get things wrong – and we will – I will be the first to stand up and take responsibility as well as take action to correct our mistakes.

When we do things right, and we get an actual good scoop because of it, I will also be the first to defend and celebrate our editorial staff for being the award winners that they are.

Thank you for reading and trusting us to be Westport’s only real news source.

John Palmer, a Norwalk native, is editor of the Westport Journal, and has covered community news in Fairfield County and Massachusetts for over 30 years. He can be contacted at jpalmer@westportjournal.com.