Rant spoken here

Warning: This could become a rant.

The discussion about Natelson's column at City Lights, referenced below, has taken a few odd turns. Some are now arguing that I am somehow guilty of a journalistic felony for even printing Natelson. I don't get that. The Outpost prints a range of opinions, including my own column, Clawson, Siegner, occasionally Todd Wilkinson and fairly frequent guest columns. Perhaps none of those is as reliably liberal as Natelson is conservative, but it strikes me as a fair mix. And Natelson's critics get free rein (see, for example, this week's letter to the editor).

I like Natelson not because I agree with him but because he makes arguable assertions that can be tested in the marketplace of ideas. Obviously, his interpretation of why certain schools have higher test scores is open to challenge. I would challenge it on certain points myself. But I think the evidence that small schools work bigger than big schools is fairly persuasive. And while I don't know much about the evidence that religious schools work better than private schools, it sounds like a credible argument to me. I have never attended a religious school, but I have taught at them, and I have had brothers who attended them, and it seems to me that those schools both attract and nurture qualities in students that cause them to be more successful in traditional measures of academic achievement.

The point is that Natelson lays his evidence out there, open to challenge and interpretation by anyone. To me, that's the job of an alternative paper: to present evidence and ideas not readily available in other media. It doesn't matter whether those ideas are conservative or liberal or somewhere in between. As I have argued before, notions of liberal and conservative in 21st century America border on the nonsensical. George Bush is arguably the most liberal president since FDR: big spender, big deficits, intrusive government, little respect for states' rights and an interventionist foreign policy that ignores two centuries of tradition. Yet he gets a pass from conservatives because he's a Republican. How does that make sense?

Real conservatives, like real liberals, don't fit easily into either party. That's why this paper gives a voice to people like Natelson and Molnar. And Hurdle and Toole. I like politicians who place principle above party at either end of the spectrum.

I don't want to paint the commenters at City Lights with too broad a brush. Some make legitimate points. But some seem to fall into the trap of simply demonizing people they expect to disagree with. I'm amazed when liberal friends say they never read Natelson or Molnar. I thought the whole notion of liberalism was that you listen to and consider all relevant points of view.

It all reminds me quite unpleasantly of the lack of uproar that greeted Wolfgang von Eitzen's deportation to Germany. We practically made a crusade of that story. It was, to my mind, about as clearcut a case of systematic government abuse as I have ever encountered. Yet my liberal friends, with few exceptions, didn't give a damn. Why? Because Wolfgang was, in their minds, a conservative crank whose rights need not concern rational people. The only people I saw speaking out and demonstrating on his behalf were conservatives. I wish I could say that they did it out of principle, but I suspect that if Wolfgang had been a socialist, they would have been silent, too.

When The Outpost says that we "will hew to no ideological doctrine and toe no partisan line," we mean that seriously. We don't choose what to print on the basis of how well it fits our preconceptions of what the world ought to look like. Natelson challenges received wisdom, even when it estranges him from his own party, and he is welcome here.

As long as I'm ranting, here's one final note for Tony, who chides The Outpost for failing to cover stories in depth: Tony, you're right, sort of. Obviously, we don't have the kind of depth I wish we had. But our cover stories often run more than 2,000 words and sometimes hit 3,000. That may not sound impressive, but with our news hole it's a huge commitment.

The Outpost's entire editorial budget wouldn't pay the wages of even one Gazette reporter. Yet we get our shots in. We ran a two-part story about the Crow tribal chairman's sweetheart deal with a local car dealership a full year before the indictments came down. No other media outlet even touched that story until the grand jury acted.

We printed a long story about a local prostitution ring months before participants were arrested and brought to trial. Although I can't confirm this because of the nature of criminal investigations, I have been told that our story helped spur prosecution.

We broke the story about financial irregularities at Commonwealth University. The story about a massive firefighters lawsuit against the city that was in this week's Gazette? The Outpost had it in January 2003. We broke the story about the county public works director accusing a county commissioner of malfeasance. We broke the story about a huge lawsuit by West End landowners alleging that the city screwed up a sewer project. We broke a statewide story about the Montana government going to India for computer support. That story made the front page of the Great Falls Tribune, with credit to the Outpost. It never, so far as I am aware, made the Gazette.

I could go on. Just a couple of weeks ago, Natelson pointed out that the Montana Supreme Court's recent habit of issuing decisions without giving their legal reasoning specifically violates state law. Have other media picked this up? Maybe, but I haven't seen it. In next week's edition, I plan to break another significant story that you have not read or heard anywhere else. I won't tell you what it is, for obvious reasons, but it will be there. And our coverage of the media itself, such as taking a critical look at Lee's recent purchase of the Pulitzer chain, will never appear in Lee Enterprises papers. Ever.

Obviously, with our tiny resources, we take shortcuts, and we get beat on plenty of stories. Heck, I do most of our reporting, and I have had to take two other jobs just to stay afloat. But Tony, you've got elite media credentials and, obviously, time on your hands. If you don't think we're getting enough good stories, how about submitting some yourself? I will pay you exactly what the publisher makes. Or, of course, you could sit around and bitch.