Shakopee Valley News - Police and Courts - Comments

Barack Obama wrote an Op.Ed.

goldengopher — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:51:25 -0500

Barack Obama wrote an Op.Ed. article in the New York Times, when John McCain submitted his own Op.Ed. article, the Times refused to publish it.

2008 - the year unbiased media died.

Thanks for the reply. Like I

NiteShield — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:48:44 -0500

Thanks for the reply. Like I said, I do hope the story gets followed to it's conclusion and doesn't get lost in the mix. I'm sure that the case is bieng/has been investigated and more will come to light.

As to the previous posts on this article, race, P.C. etc I found the below listed post interesting.

Submitted by arthurvandolay on July 18, 2008 - 2:01pm.
If you had that info prior to writing your article would you have put it into your story or not? I believe that race should either always be included in a story or never. One or the other.

More often then not I believe that media outlets pick and choose when they'll mention race.

The media also does this when it comes to political scandals. When Larry Craig was doing his thing in the Minneapolis airport...the media made sure to paste a big "R" next to his name indicating that he was a Republican.

However....when the first articles started coming out about Elliot Spitzer from New York I noticed that the article failed to mention that he was a Democrat until like 7 paragraphs down in the article. And even then it didn't specifically call him a Democrat rather it mentioned something about his "Republican nemesis" which would pretty much mean that he's a Democrat. Why in those early articles was the giant "D" left out?

Sorry, yes, the Scott County

sfiecke — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:51:09 -0500

Sorry, yes, the Scott County Courthouse. We had the information in the story that appeared in our print edition last week (the Web story was an earlier version of the article). At the courthouse, you can look people up on the court calendar.

Scott County

NiteShield — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:33:23 -0500

Scott County Courthouse?

Where have you been following the info from? I must not be looking in the right places.

The first of their court

sfiecke — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 09:17:10 -0500

The first of their court appearances starts next week.

Have followed the blogs on

NiteShield — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:38:02 -0500

Have followed the blogs on the Valley Fair beatings on other sources and finally found this one, more local as I live in Shakopee.
Missed it on the news when it happened and just started hearing about it early last week on talk stations.
Understand that the 8 males went to court and of course made bail. Don't know if I just haven't seen it but what court, Scott or Dakota County? So little followup from what I've seen.

who is the new fire chief

PAT T LAND — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 01:01:26 -0500

who is the new fire chief

Journalists don't generally

sfiecke — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:10:56 -0500

Journalists don't generally mention race for shoplifting or for other crimes, so I don't understand why people think we should have mentioned it for this story. I would only mention race if it is applicable. Life for instance, if the police are looking for a suspect, obviously I would have to describe what they look like, or if the crime appeared to be racially motivated, it would be relevant to mention the races of those involved. That said, we generally run the mugshots for serious crimes if they're still available (I believe these men were already out of jail by the time of our story and we didn't have ready access to mugs for the story), so obviously readers would figure out the race on their own. I don't think it's our duty to point it out.

Thank you Nicks mom, you and

kidjon — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:32:31 -0500

Thank you Nicks mom, you and your family are in our thoughts and prayers.

I dialed 496-8200 and then

arthurvandolay — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:01:31 -0500

I dialed 496-8200 and then pressed 3 to talk to the receptionist. The receptionist had to transfer me up to someone else whose name I didn't catch. When I asked that lady for the race of the victim in the Valley Fair beating she told me that the victim was the same race as the perps.

Perhaps they don't HAVE to disclose it, but she did.

If you had that info prior to writing your article would you have put it into your story or not? I believe that race should either always be included in a story or never. One or the other.

More often then not I believe that media outlets pick and choose when they'll mention race.

Anyway...I'm done venting for now. Good day. :)

Who did you talk to at the

sfiecke — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:15:02 -0500

Who did you talk to at the courthouse? I haven't seen the racial identification of the victim anywhere in the court documents. In fact, I'm not sure they even have to disclose such information.

SFieke is actually correct.

arthurvandolay — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:35:31 -0500

SFieke is actually correct. Originally I felt the exact same way as "transplant" about how this would be called a hate crime if this story was about 7 white guys beating up a black dad. ...but I went ahead and called the court house and learned that the victim was also black.

Does anyone know why they leave this info out of articles now-a-days? Does it have to do with society being overly PC?

Anyone who reads this, I

Nicks mom — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 20:53:35 -0500

Anyone who reads this, I want you to know, although it is sad. We are not angry, vengeful, or tormented. We know in our hearts what will be, will be. No amount of anger or hate will change this. When we heard about all this, we decided that we would not tie hate or anger to Nicky's memory. I can't tell anyone how to feel, nor is it my place to judge, but I hope you will remember Nick with good memories and kindness.
God Bless-Nick's mom

Well, I'll say this about

Pat Minelli — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:08:22 -0500

Well, I'll say this about Valleyfair: There are a lot of arrests, but to me, that means the park's security is tight. When you attract that many people, especially teens, over the course of the summer, there are some who are going to try to pull something.
To the park's credit, security keeps a sharp eye out for monkey business and hustles the perps out of there and into police hands. It's always been like that, and to me, I feel better sending my kids there. Security is mostly out of sight, but they are well-staffed and on the lookout for troublemakers.

Very sad, another young life

kidjon — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:44:31 -0500

Very sad, another young life taken due to a drunk driver.