Missoulian and attendance drop

The Missoulian was recently properly berated in a guest column from a UM Foundation mainstay for the paper's unnecessary detrimental effect on attendance. Shortly thereafter, we awake to a headline berating the President's wife for her efforts to assist Jim Messina's group lend a hand with student recruitment. If you read the story it was clear, several paragraphs down, that there was no meat to the claim that she was accessing confidential information. As it turns out, the whole unnecessary story was the product of a sour grapes report from the highly bonused attendance guru who got canned.

Today the Missoulian, ignoring its own sensationalism, simply indicates that the contracting process should be proper. In fact, the previous sensational article advised that the UM Counsel was doing that all along. More importantly, today's editorial advises for the first time that it was Erlander that got Messina back on the project after the prior administrations dropped the ball on his offer to help.

The Missoulian's purported efforts to dig into stories for the truth would be best refocused introspectively. It would be nice for the editorial board to recognize the real issues and come clean.

I didn't pay much attention to the way that the Missoulian reported on Engstrom. Does it seem that they are more biased against Bodnar vs Engstrom?

"Funky Jim Messina" ain't gonna help enrollment. Football success did (before) and will again rebound enrollment and I don't think Jim ever attended a game as a student. He was a completely self-centered out-of-touch nerd/egomaniac and I guess that works in politics but not in the real world. I mean if he is volunteering his efforts, UM should obviously take it, but he's one of the most unlikeable people I ever met.