Requiem

The obituaries have been written.

A moment, please.









Mkay. Moment’s over. Amanda McCarthy asks, rhetorically:

Why should you come down on a paper that Do delve into situations and stories to try and get to the bottom rather then print what it is told to print by some right wing organization.

Delving into situations…

Getting to the bottom…

Uh-huh.

Stephanie Porter reports in the final issue:

Jonesing for ...
Liberal leader used constituency allowance for travel, research, Labrador arts and crafts, golf balls and snowmobile repairs


The Independent gained access to Jones’ constituency allowance files from 1996-2004 under the province’s Access to Information Act, as part of the paper’s ongoing investigation into the spending of MHAs. Jones’ files were thousands of pages high — in spite of the fact many of the records were impossible to read or incomplete, particularly after 2000.

And Ivan Morgan in the penultimate one:

The flying Fisheries ministers
Rideout, Reid, Jones and Efford defend travel expenses

Four provincial Fisheries ministers spent just over $1 million of ministerial money in a 12-year period between 1996 and 2008, The Independent has learned.

Expenses include $11,000 on trips to Spain and Scotland for ministers and spouses, helicopter charters costing $6,000 or more, and thousands for booze and other expenses.

According to documents obtained under the province’s Freedom of Information legislation, former Liberal Fisheries ministers John Efford, Gerry Reid, Yvonne Jones and Tory MHA Tom Rideout spent the million on travel, entertainment, office supplies, liquor and wine, and other miscellaneous items such as phones, faxes and couriers — for themselves and staff.

[…]

The Independent did not request the expenses for PC MHA Trevor Taylor due to budgetary constraints.

Curious.

The Independent – or The Impecunious – had no budgetary constraints in obtaining “thousands of pages” of the opposition leader’s expenses.

And The Impecunious had no such constraints in going after those of former FishMins, including those from the previous government, and the persona non grata Tom — huckthoo — Rideout.

But The Impecunious had no budget to dig into the once-and-present FishMin Trevor Taylor?

The paranoid tin-foil-hat set who mutter darkly about a media outlet’s being “controlled by directing minds”, about printing “what it is told to print”, and about those who “hold the purse strings”, might equally mutter about The Impecunious’ curious omission in its last two issues… even though, of course, that omission had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Williams Government was, at the time of The Impecunious’ fatal illness, and at various points throughout its earlier history, the paper’s anchor advertising tenant.

“We have no intention of backing off”, Ryan Cleary wrote, “because advertising dollars — government or private — may be in jeopardy.”

This corner is enjoying no particular schadenfreude in seeing The Independent fold. Honestly. Flawed as it was — and boy, was it flawed — it was an outlet. More outlets, even bad ones, are always to be preferred over fewer ones when you’re a media junkie.

(Hands up, everyone who, as a kid, couldn’t wait for the next issue of Decks Awash. Huh. That’s what I thought.)

But hard-hitting investigative journalism — delving, getting to the bottom — is not what The Independent will be missed for around here.