A month ago, apparently without doing a modicum of investigation, local Rotary Club President Alexandra Weisensale ejected NewsLanc reporter Matt Henderson from a meeting, where he was routinely covering weekly speakers, something that he had openly been doing for months.
Weisensale justified her action by saying that meetings were not open to the media except by invitation, which brought an editorial blast from the Intelligencer Journal / New Era who pointed out that they had been covering Rotary meetings without special invitations for years and urged that all media be treated the same.
Last week Weisensale acknowledged Rotary’s mistake in not inviting media to the State Candidates Forum, attributing the oversight to an apparent error or “miscommunication” among the committees charged with organizing programs and inviting the media.
Then a couple of days later Jeff Hawkes of the Intell devoted a column to the event, indicating he had attended!
We at NewsLanc don’t know what to make of all of this. It seems to us that Weisensale acted rashly and is unwilling to recognize her mistake and again open the meetings to all media as has long been national and local policy.
We at NewsLanc admire Rotary. We wish we could feel the same about Weisensale.
