Activist goes to the birds... and comes in swinging

On Friday, January 21, Debra Sprague entered the Village News office with a dead hawk in hand, accusing someone at the newspaper of placing the bird on a windshield at her house. I had already taken a call from a friend who told me that Debra said I was ‘the only one who would do that to her.’ I almost fell on the floor laughing. It’s not enough that I was busy preparing dinner for my family of six, answering homework questions, and providing taxi service for my children to their various activities after a long day at work, but I still had several hours of late-night computer work and e-mails to accomplish. Mind you, that’s on top of a rough couple of weeks because our office was completely flooded out during the heavy rains and we had to move everything and everybody to temporary headquarters while still meeting our normal deadlines. No, that wasn’t enough excitement for me — Debra Sprague thinks I had the energy to go hawk-hunting in the middle of the night, actually catch one (wow!), break its neck, and place it on her windshield. Really, could it get any better than that? Give me a break.

Anyway, back to what our office staff is referring to as ‘the visit from Bird Lady.’ Our employees were appalled. A customer was shocked. Debra was violently swinging the bird, making accusations about the Village News and saying, “You may have been able to break this bird’s neck, but you won’t get mine.” Does this sound like a normal, rational woman? This is just one of the many reasons why the Village News cannot ever begin to take this woman seriously or consider her a credible source of information. I’m kind of sorry that I missed the whole thing. I was too busy talking to the Sheriff’s Department and finding out what it takes to get a restraining order to protect myself from someone who I now believe presents a threat to me, my employees, and the business.

I have already spoken to my attorney to find out what documentation I need in order to file a harassment suit against this woman, after getting phone calls from people saying they witnessed her standing in front of the grocery stores handing out a letter blasting us and citrus plant property owner Larry Gabele, which she said we refused to print. In reality, we never saw this letter (printed in this edition) until after she passed it around the community. We never refused to print it. Are you kidding? People love reading this stuff! This is the first available edition to publish the letter since we have received it.

Our attorney has advised us to ignore Ms. Sprague, but because she has been so public I believe it is important to set the record straight for our readers, stockholders, fellow business owners, and community members, because one of you may be her next target.

The following are my responses to specific items in Ms. Sprague’s letter (printed on this page, below).

(Numerous calls have been made to your paper; rose-colored glasses)

• Debra Sprague has made several phone calls to the newspaper. Initially, we listened to her concerns, accusations, and purported ‘facts’ about the situation at the old citrus plant. In these items, it became apparent that Ms. Sprague developed her own version of the ‘truth’ and embellished tales, thereby destroying her credibility. It is not the practice of this newspaper to perpetuate untruths or half-truths. Some publications and TV news stations will gladly grasp the opportunity to create controversy by using unsubstantiated reports. The Village News refrains from that practice.

(Selectively printing the Sheriff’s Log)

• It is interesting that Ms. Sprague thinks we ‘selectively print the Sheriff’s Log’ — another of her false accusations. She sounds remarkably like another community activist who has falsely accused the Village News of the same exact thing. The Village News endeavors to print each and every item made available by the Sheriff’s Department. Our editorial associates have a routine weekly practice to gather that information in person. We print all incident reports made available to us each week. We, however, do not RUN the Sheriff’s Department. If the Sheriff’s Department does not have reports ready for us, which happens at times, we cannot help that. On those occasions, we print the statement ‘No information available from the Sheriff’s Department this week.’ It is also important to understand that there are confidentiality issues concerning some incidents and some reports are not made available to the press — i.e. domestic violence calls, etc. We know that the women who believe the Village News is censoring the Sheriff’s Log have spoken to the Sheriff’s Department and been told the truth of the situation. Why they choose not to believe it is anyone’s guess.

(Effects on tourism)

What are we now, the tourism police? We think the effort to bring more tourism to town is wonderful and we applaud the people working on it. It would be very healthy for the local economy, but as a newspaper (key word: ‘news’) we consider it our priority to report the news — good and bad. If it helps tourism, great. If it hurts tourism, we’re sorry about that. Residents deserve to know what is going on in their community.

(Advertisements: bread-and-butter-vested interest)

We hadn’t yet considered Larry Gabele as a potential advertiser. Hmm. Maybe we should send him a media kit. Thanks for the suggestion. We were just thankful someone finally had some concrete plans to do something with an old eyesore.

(Cover-ups; pressure from groups)

Guess what? We are happy with the article we published and stand behind it. We purposefully chose Sarah Bates to write it because of her stellar reputation in this town and her general understanding of our community’s interaction with the county. We were trying for months to do the article and the owners were reluctant because there was still so much red tape and permitting to overcome at the county level. No one contacted us or ‘pressured us’ to do the article. Believe it or not, we can come up with good ideas on our own!

Ms. Sprague, in relation to the many accusations that you present, we did follow up on them and, as usual, there was no story. Also, I don’t appreciate your disruptive visits and long, drawn out, nasty phone messages, especially the last one where you criticized our flood-ravaged office, saying that you “can’t believe we would leave it like that” and “this is the kind of thing that happens to people like you.” Again, I have to ask myself if you are out of your mind. I can only be grateful that you didn’t catch us pushing the water out of our office into the parking lot, because I’m sure we would have had a ‘cease and desist’ letter from the county after they were misled by you saying that we had toxic waste in that water. We’ve now come to expect that kind of behavior from you.

Please don’t ever call us again, visit our office, or harass any of our employees in any way. I would suggest working on your own issues rather than those of the citrus plant.On Friday, January 21, Debra Sprague entered the Village News office with a dead hawk in hand, accusing someone at the newspaper of placing the bird on a windshield at her house. I had already taken a call from a friend who told me that Debra said I was ‘the only one who would do that to her.’ I almost fell on the floor laughing. It’s not enough that I was busy preparing dinner for my family of six, answering homework questions, and providing taxi service for my children to their various activities after a long day at work, but I still had several hours of late-night computer work and e-mails to accomplish. Mind you, that’s on top of a rough couple of weeks because our office was completely flooded out during the heavy rains and we had to move everything and everybody to temporary headquarters while still meeting our normal deadlines. No, that wasn’t enough excitement for me — Debra Sprague thinks I had the energy to go hawk-hunting in the middle of the night, actually catch one (wow!), break its neck, and place it on her windshield. Really, could it get any better than that? Give me a break.

Anyway, back to what our office staff is referring to as ‘the visit from Bird Lady.’ Our employees were appalled. A customer was shocked. Debra was violently swinging the bird, making accusations about the Village News and saying, “You may have been able to break this bird’s neck, but you won’t get mine.” Does this sound like a normal, rational woman? This is just one of the many reasons why the Village News cannot ever begin to take this woman seriously or consider her a credible source of information. I’m kind of sorry that I missed the whole thing. I was too busy talking to the Sheriff’s Department and finding out what it takes to get a restraining order to protect myself from someone who I now believe presents a threat to me, my employees, and the business.

I have already spoken to my attorney to find out what documentation I need in order to file a harassment suit against this woman, after getting phone calls from people saying they witnessed her standing in front of the grocery stores handing out a letter blasting us and citrus plant property owner Larry Gabele, which she said we refused to print. In reality, we never saw this letter (printed in this edition) until after she passed it around the community. We never refused to print it. Are you kidding? People love reading this stuff! This is the first available edition to publish the letter since we have received it.

Our attorney has advised us to ignore Ms. Sprague, but because she has been so public I believe it is important to set the record straight for our readers, stockholders, fellow business owners, and community members, because one of you may be her next target.

The following are my responses to specific items in Ms. Sprague’s letter (printed on this page, below).

(Numerous calls have been made to your paper; rose-colored glasses)

• Debra Sprague has made several phone calls to the newspaper. Initially, we listened to her concerns, accusations, and purported ‘facts’ about the situation at the old citrus plant. In these items, it became apparent that Ms. Sprague developed her own version of the ‘truth’ and embellished tales, thereby destroying her credibility. It is not the practice of this newspaper to perpetuate untruths or half-truths. Some publications and TV news stations will gladly grasp the opportunity to create controversy by using unsubstantiated reports. The Village News refrains from that practice.

(Selectively printing the Sheriff’s Log)

• It is interesting that Ms. Sprague thinks we ‘selectively print the Sheriff’s Log’ — another of her false accusations. She sounds remarkably like another community activist who has falsely accused the Village News of the same exact thing. The Village News endeavors to print each and every item made available by the Sheriff’s Department. Our editorial associates have a routine weekly practice to gather that information in person. We print all incident reports made available to us each week. We, however, do not RUN the Sheriff’s Department. If the Sheriff’s Department does not have reports ready for us, which happens at times, we cannot help that. On those occasions, we print the statement ‘No information available from the Sheriff’s Department this week.’ It is also important to understand that there are confidentiality issues concerning some incidents and some reports are not made available to the press — i.e. domestic violence calls, etc. We know that the women who believe the Village News is censoring the Sheriff’s Log have spoken to the Sheriff’s Department and been told the truth of the situation. Why they choose not to believe it is anyone’s guess.

(Effects on tourism)

What are we now, the tourism police? We think the effort to bring more tourism to town is wonderful and we applaud the people working on it. It would be very healthy for the local economy, but as a newspaper (key word: ‘news’) we consider it our priority to report the news — good and bad. If it helps tourism, great. If it hurts tourism, we’re sorry about that. Residents deserve to know what is going on in their community.

(Advertisements: bread-and-butter-vested interest)

We hadn’t yet considered Larry Gabele as a potential advertiser. Hmm. Maybe we should send him a media kit. Thanks for the suggestion. We were just thankful someone finally had some concrete plans to do something with an old eyesore.

(Cover-ups; pressure from groups)

Guess what? We are happy with the article we published and stand behind it. We purposefully chose Sarah Bates to write it because of her stellar reputation in this town and her general understanding of our community’s interaction with the county. We were trying for months to do the article and the owners were reluctant because there was still so much red tape and permitting to overcome at the county level. No one contacted us or ‘pressured us’ to do the article. Believe it or not, we can come up with good ideas on our own!

Ms. Sprague, in relation to the many accusations that you present, we did follow up on them and, as usual, there was no story. Also, I don’t appreciate your disruptive visits and long, drawn out, nasty phone messages, especially the last one where you criticized our flood-ravaged office, saying that you “can’t believe we would leave it like that” and “this is the kind of thing that happens to people like you.” Again, I have to ask myself if you are out of your mind. I can only be grateful that you didn’t catch us pushing the water out of our office into the parking lot, because I’m sure we would have had a ‘cease and desist’ letter from the county after they were misled by you saying that we had toxic waste in that water. We’ve now come to expect that kind of behavior from you.

Please don’t ever call us again, visit our office, or harass any of our employees in any way. I would suggest working on your own issues rather than those of the citrus plant.