Left In Lowell

This has been a strange week and it just got even stranger.

Anyone remember M.K. Guzda? You may recall, in her brief stint at The Sun, she ushered in an effort by the paper to expand outreach (meaning revenue) into new, newer, newest media. For most of us, that means The Sun staff popped up on our Facebook pages. Honestly, I’m glad of it. I don’t buy the dead tree version. Hell, I don’t buy any version. But, bits of it come to me, ever so conveniently, on my FB page.

So, as it were, our young man about town, the intrepid Lyle Moran, posted his version of the flailing over at the Pollard Library on his FB page. As me and Lyle are what FB calls “Friends,” it came to me. Sweet! It just so happens that I have an opinion on the matter, so I slapped my digits against a keyboard and poof! It’s kinda like Topix, but with less zipperheads. I left a comment:
Note: Remember the date references are relative to the time I made the copy.

Thursday at 10:44am John ‘Jack’ Mitchell
So, a Library employee gave the IM’s to the Sun, directly? Or,maybe to a City Councilor, who gave them to the Sun, directly? Somehow the proper “conflict resolution” chain was skipped and the Sun was brought in. If the messages where not “hacked” out of a computer, they still went public.

Suffice to say, my comment was not arbitrary. I’m taunting the Sun and their sources. What’s going on in the library? I don’t really know. But, I deduced that someone on the inside is working the matter from the outside in. The Sun, it seems, is more than happy to oblige.

Lyle Moran offered his opinion:

Yesterday at 8:21am Lyle Moran
Hi Jack. Librarians have gone to their supervisors in the past and been told to keep quiet so the perception is that all is well at the library. They then went to the council and were then reprimanded for doing so. Since the library director can not bring peace to the facility, it is now up to the manager to do so.

Yes, it is his opinion. It might vault to the level of a theory, but his concept of the matter is certainly not a “fact.” Which is unfortunate, as reporters are sorta stuck with sticking to facts. Bear in mind, this conversation is not occuring on Lyle Moran’s personal FB page. This FB page is part of his work, so he is beholden to the mores and values shared by his peers. This fact, did not escape the City Manager, who took the opportunity to tell his version of things:
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