Lessons learned in Bolsinger case

This has been a tumultuous week at the Daily Tidings. It began the night of Jan. 25 with the news that Tidings editor Andrew Scot Bolsinger had been arrested and jailed in Salem on allegations that he had engaged in sex acts in 2000 with a 16-year-old girl when he was a teacher and coach at a small private high school in the Salem area.

That was followed by reports that Bolsinger had been named in numerous lawsuits relating to Ashland businesses that he and his wife owned or in which they had a partial stake. He had several court judgments against him for failing to repay business loans and for issues regarding lease payments and contracts. There also are reports that his businesses had failed to pay employees and suppliers.

The news of his arrest on the sex charges was stunning to everyone who knew him, as well as to those who only knew him as the editor of the Tidings. But everyone I've spoken with agrees he should be given his day in court. Bolsinger has been accused, not convicted, and his side of the story has yet to be told.

More problematic for us, and for people on the outside looking in, are the failed business dealings. These were Ashland businesses — in most cases local people who had invested in the businesses and local people who had worked for the businesses. It hit close to home and people expressed anger not only at Bolsinger, but also at the Daily Tidings and its sister paper, the Mail Tribune, for not reporting these issues earlier.

The truth is that we didn't know the depth of the problems until just recently. We had heard rumblings in mid-2007 that he was experiencing personal financial problems. Toward the end of the year, we heard the businesses were struggling.

In January of this year, we asked a reporter to look into the closure of one of those businesses, the Jefferson State Pub. We had heard that it closed down after a noise complaint prompted the cancellation of scheduled concerts, which cut into business and led to the pub's demise.

But our reporter found out much more. He discovered there were numerous court documents relating to the businesses and several people who said they were owed money — $25,000 in one case.

We spent parts of two weeks gathering information, court records and interviews. We also spent those two weeks debating where the line was between his and his wife's personal business and his job as the editor. But it became clear that this was a story that needed to come out.

And then the thunderbolt struck — the news of Bolsinger's arrest. I received a phone call that Friday evening that we were working on the story at both the Mail Tribune and the Tidings. We published the story on the arrest in both of Saturday's papers and a follow-up in Sunday's Mail Tribune (which Tidings subscribers also receive) that went into detail on the business issues.

Did we handle this the right way? Probably not and that's something for which I take total responsibility. In hindsight, we probably should have dug into this in more detail when we first heard of the Bolsingers' financial problems. This was new territory for us and, frankly, we were at a bit of a loss as how to proceed.

It is worth noting that we were the ones who broke the story on the financial issues and that both the Tidings and the Mail Tribune have aggressively covered the case in the past week. Even though we typically don't cover small business failures, with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, we now wish we had pursued it earlier. And we learned another lesson — it's not likely we'll allow future editors to be closely involved in outside businesses within the Ashland community.

For now, Bolsinger has been suspended from his job as editor. It's been a chaotic week for the staff here in Ashland, but they've responded professionally and done their jobs admirably. We've also brought in extra help to help keep the newspaper production on track.

Until the issues are resolved, I will be involved in assisting the Tidings newsroom in any way I can, brainstorming on news ideas and taking care of the inevitable paperwork that comes with any operation. Myles and the Tidings staff will take the lead on the news operation and I will help out wherever possible.

The Tidings has been publishing in Ashland for 132 years and has played an important role over those decades. We all want to make sure that even in the midst of these serious issues, we do everything we can to continue and strengthen that role.

Bob Hunter is editor of the Mail Tribune and currently assisting with news operations at the Ashland Daily Tidings. He can be reached by e-mail at bhunter@mailtribune.com.