On The Beach Blog

Updated 10/30/2008 - 12:23 pm

Southampton Press Western Edition reporter Jessica DiNapoli and I had a brief en passant conversation recently about what she and I did, the conclusion of which was that as a blogger I had the freedom to "editorialize" and as a reporter, she didn't.

Someone... Ms. DiNapoli, her Editor Frank Cos­tanza or her predecessor, Caroline Simson1 who now oversees The Press' 27East.com on-line edition... seems to have disremembered the critical differences between straight re­portage and editorial commentary.

While the story is about last week's Village Board Work Session, the headline reads:

Westhampton Beach quashes discussion on proposed religious boundary

A reader might think that Mayor Conrad Teller had with a heavy hand pulled the plug on a touchy subject and denied attendees the right to voice their opinions on the contentious eruv proposal.

(There would be precedent for such sus­picion; cf. the June 2007 Village Board meeting in which the Mayor cut off any public discussion of any substantive is­sues the week prior to Village elections.)

In reality, Quiogue resident nutburger Irene Barrett had spread the rumor that the Trustees would be discussing Hampton Synagogue's eruv request, and caused a larger-than-usual-for-this-time-of-year number of people to show up.

(Activist Jackie Sprotte had driven out from Garden City for this non-event, and a case can be made that she should bill Ms. Barrett for her gasoline costs.

No one can accuse OtBB of being a big fan of the present Village administration, but fairness is always an objective, and materially mis­characterizing the contents of a report with a pejorative like "quashes," is over-the-line.

(Not that I didn't have an even more hor­rendous example of an editorializing head­line early in my journalistic career!)

Bad 27East.com! Bad! Bad! Bad!

Elsewhere in the news...

I see by the paper that the municipality has finally made a response to Westhampton Beach Associates LLC's $25 million 1983 action against Westhampton Beach and numerous individuals in Village government.

Even before attorney David Arntsen's motion to dismiss federal civil rights lawsuit, it cer­tainly seemed that the Muchnich's action filed by Andrew J. Campanelli, was without merit and nothing more than an attempt by the de­veloper to extort more favorable conditions of approval out of the Village, or in the alterna­tive, recoup some of their costs for an applica­tion that, even with full municipal approval, is no longer economically viable.

As noted in last week's item about East End Independent's critical views of Rabbi Marc Schneier and the eruv proposal:

"...confidence is high that there will be re­sponses from the Rabbi's faithful on next issue's Letters page."

There certainly was!

Clint Greenbaum, Rabbi Schneier's designated hatchet-heavy on matters eruvian, got feisty with Indy, and Indy got feisty right back.

Mr. Greenbaum, meet Editor Rick Murphy. Mr. Murphy, Mr. Greenbaum. Go to your corners.

Meanwhile, the Western Edition Letters page is all over The Press for last week's editorial sup­port for the eruv.

The correspondents' real pique seems to be less for the support of the Synagogue's request, then the language used to condemn the opponents of the eruv.