Mike Lafleur is leaving the Sun
For a few weeks now I have been hearing rumors that Michael Lafleur, the Sun’s Lowell City Hall reporter was leaving the paper. Today, I learned that it is not a rumor but a fact. He is the second major reporter to leave the paper in as many months. In April, Hilary Chabot, who covered the State House, moved to the Herald.
Lafleur will be leaving at the end of the end of the month and will attend law school. He joined the Sun in 2002. Given the state of the newspaper industry, I think this is an excellent career move. A law degree combined with his experience in journalism should give him a lot of flexibility and opportunities.
As for the City of Lowell, I think his absence will hurt civic life. Whoever the Sun assigns to the city political beat will require a certain amount of time before they establish themselves.
I always found Lafleur’s articles to be informative but it is his knowledge of the Lowell political landscape that I will miss the most.
On behalf of LiL, Mike, good luck and best wishes! And if the law school gig does not work out, we could always use an additional blogger. 
June 13th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Aw, M.L. was one of the good ‘uns.
And now, with the mass retirements at the Globe’s Sports department, we can expect the Sun to lose some staff there, too.
Bummer.
June 13th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Unfortunate fact of life in media in this city. When Paul Sullivan lead the charge to decertify the union at the Sun you saw the first big flight of top notch reporters leave. Now quality people can’t make a living as their families grow so they are forced to leave the city taking their talent with them.
I seem to recall a thread not too long ago commenting on the Sun assigning a “correspondent”…newspaper speak for freelancer…to cover the city council meeting.
If you think about it, when Sullivan died did the Sun replace him? No, they asked “guest columnists” to take up the slack. At first a novelty but they are still doing it.
Look for the Sun to continue using “guests” and “correspondents” and wire reports the quality of the content to diminish.
I remember when Sun Sports reporters actually covered the Red Sox, etc. I seem to recall that at one point Chaz Scoggins was President of the Boston Baseball Writers Association or whatever it is called, now it’s AP wire copy that we can read anywhere.
That’s one reason I was disappointed in Clark Smidt’s reply to Mimi’s 6th month review of WCAP.
I’m sorry to see ML go, but not suprised.
June 13th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
The Sun’s staff may not be as large as it used to be, but do not diminish the quality journalists who ARE staying.
June 14th, 2008 at 7:18 am
I disagree, loving. Whenever an experienced employees leaves a workplace thats one less mentor to the less-experienced, one less body of knowledge that can be tapped by others, one less specialist (yes we are all specialists in something work-related) to make the entire organization shine!
June 14th, 2008 at 10:38 am
loving: IF they stay. Seems to me that might be in question these days. I agree, there are many quality journalists still left, just fewer of them.
Not that I blame them for leaving, honestly. I couldn’t work for that sort of editor. For that sort of pay. Ug.
For those who are interested in seeing Left in Lowell pick up some of the slack left by the Sun’s coverage, please consider pledging some dough towards helping me upgrade the website so that we can elevate the voices of people to write about events and news stories they encounter out there. Mimi and I and our colleagues just can’t do it by ourselves, but a decentralized community driven site just might be able to. Any amount is appreciated!
June 15th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
With all these folks leaving, who will line my birdcage!?
June 15th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Mike was great for The Sun’s coverage of Lowell. He delved into the Cambodian community and covered it well. It is sad to lose his voice. Though he tends to be a little bias at times. Problem is The Sun has reporters that are not from Lowell that cover Lowell as its beat. There is no love or pride for the city with the string of reporters that are there now.
I know that Lowellita grew up in Lowell (aka Rachel Briere)but has not been able to let her voice into the main paper. With her knowledge of the city, attention to detail and eye for the real Lowell I would love to hear/read more from her. Not the Lowellita drek, which is entertaining and makes me laugh on Thursdays, but with stories of the people.
Now that Mike is leaving I think she should fill the gap. Maybe management has no faith in her…but the people that are true Lowellians do. Yeah she may not be able to cover meetings and budgets, but she can let the world know what Lowell means to the people who call it their home.
Good luck Mike.
p.s. and I hope that Chris Scott does not become the “Lowell reporter”
June 16th, 2008 at 8:03 am
So long as “love or pride for the city” doesn’t translate into “kissing certain people’s you-know-what’s” all the time, Sun Screen. All too often, we’ve seen that sort of coverage. No thanks…
June 16th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Yes, Mike will be sorely missed but Lowellita….ugh NEVER!!
June 16th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Speaking of coverage, are you the only blog in town “up and running?”
June 17th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Liz: both Richardhowe.com and jackiedoherty.org are hosted at the same place, and that place pooched some server migrations…a real bummer. I know both of them are working hard to get back up and running, and eventually everything will sort out. Meanwhile, Margaret has a username to post on LiL from way back (before jd.org) and she already knows she is free to use it while her blog is trying to get back on its feet. (Jackie would be free to post here too, but she’s headed out on a family vacation which I’m green with envy over!)
June 19th, 2008 at 4:46 am
Eleanor Rigby is dead-on in drawing a line between the now-sainted Paul Sullivan’s currying of favor with the paper’s buyers by leading the charge to decertify the union and the decline in journalism at The Sun. Journalists are normally a tough bunch to manage, they ask questions as a matter of course and consider it their birthright to scoff at nonsensical answers given by those who claim a haughtier place in the world — whether as pols, corporate executives or superiors on their own newspaper. The better the journalist, the tougher the questions and more deadly the scoffing. Low pay means the better questioners and scoffers don’t last long.
The Sun institutionalizes mediocrity. Anyone who makes a career of the Lowell Sun simply isn’t very good. The newsroom is organized like a frat-house. Where else in the journalistic world does the editor of a newspaper get financially involved with subordinates in ownership of race horses? Unfortunately, the only outside editor they’ve hired was more interested in kissing the rump of the owner thereby abdicating his responsibilities as a journalist and gleefully encouraging such things as special sections saluting politicians and a gimmick that turned the front page into a novelty to be bought and sold to anyone who deigns to plank down the required fee to have a special front page printed proclaiming “Joe Blow Promoted To Head Pickle Slicer At Burger King” (senior editors not only tolerated such a bastardization of the product, they actively participated in its birthing!!!)
There are talented Sun reporters who have been treated like doo-doo who have ended up laughing over their shoulders as they took jobs their former Lowell superiors could only dream about. Some of them you never really noticed at The Sun, because management is more interested in nurturing pledges to its frat-house than in nurturing reporters who take their jobs seriously.
Oh, and have you noticed how Kenny Wallace’s Saturday kissing the bum of his buddies has descended into total irrelevance? Apparently his influence in-house has waned so significantly that he can’t get a want ad in the paper without standing in the customer service line or phone queue, so where you once saw a Kenny column reference followed by all-out reporting on the subject, you now see no follow up to his increasingly inane encomiums to his childhood chums.