Unlike in Garner Case, Facts Won’t Be Secret

A friend of mine who worked for one of the city’s tabloids a long time ago once described the vast difference in the information he’d get from two columnists on those nights when they couldn’t get back into the office before deadline (in those ancient times before laptops) and so called in their notes to the paper’s rewrite desk.

One columnist offered precise details: not just the neighborhood he was calling from but the location; quotes from people who had both first and last names, as well as phone numbers where they could be reached in case someone on the desk had any questions about what they had said.