NO THEY’RE NOT exchanging racy comments. However, a Freedom of Information Act request uncovered 130 pages of emails between David Askins, the editor of a local news site called AnnArborChronicle.com, and Ward 1 City Council member Sabra Briere that showed over a six month period the editor revised/edited the Council member’s written materials later presented at Council meetings. He revised/edited materials which the Council member presented to the media as her own, shaped Briere’s constituent communications and was asked to give input on a memo between the Council member and the city’s CFO Tom Crawford.

In numerous email exchanges, the editor pushed his own views about public policy and even gave input on Council resolutions. In one particularly disturbing email Council member Briere asks Askins to tell her what had happened at a Council meeting the evening before, because she was unable to recall the particulars of the meeting, including much of what she said and heard.

The AnnArborChronicle.com news site repeatedly failed to acknowledge Askins’s behind-the-scenes exchanges with Council member  Briere in subsequent write-ups of Council meetings for the site’s readers.

Emails were sent from the Council member’s Gmail account to the editor’s business email address. It’s not clear whether the Council member was trying to avoid discovery, because each of the Council member’s emails to the editor included the disclaimer that her communications are subject to FOIA.

The editor’s emails included self-identifying as a member of the Michigan Press Association, a member organization whose primary mission is to lobby Lansing politicos on behalf of the news industry and sell advertising for members.

Email Exchanges Between Editor and Council member Come to Light

In April 2013 a Freedom of Information Act request was filed for emails related to the Kunselman/Kailasapathy resolution which called for City Council to impose term limits on the Board of the Downtown Development Authority.

Ann Arbor News government reporter Ryan Stanton posted a piece in April 2013 in which he caught Ward 1 Council member Sabra Briere talking trash about Ward 3 Council member Stephen Kunselman via email to Susan Pollay, Director of the DDA. Stanton also posted snippets of Briere’s emails in which she offers up advice on how the DDA could defeat the efforts of Kunselman and Kailasapathy.

Among the emails turned over by city officials was a March 30, 2013 exchange between AnnArborChronicle.com editor David Askins and Briere in which Askins suggests that: “the timing of the council’s meeting is ripe for a resolution asking financial staff to provide a report on the effect of establishing a new TIF district for Butternut and any other areas that might be suitable for the encouragement of future dense development. Cheers, Dave.”

Briere responds 12 minutes later: “Interesting thought. Do you think we should also place a resolution on the agenda directing the planning commission to reconsider zoning? On another note, here’s a picture of my compost—after saving all the food scrapings all winter.”

Links Emerge Between Email Exchanges and “Chronicling” of Local Politics

Three days after the March 30th exchange between Askins and Briere, on April 2, 2013, AnnArbor.com reported: “The council adopted a resolution Monday night that provides specific directions to the city’s Planning Commission regarding an upcoming review of the D1 downtown zoning — a process that got started in response to the highly controversial 413 E. Huron project….The resolution was sponsored by Council Members Sabra Briere, D-1st Ward; Christopher Taylor, D-3rd Ward; and Marcia Higgins, D-4th Ward.”

On April 10, 2013, Askins’s AnnArborChronicle.com site “chronicled” the debate concerning the resolution to instruct the Planning Commission to reconsider zoning, sponsored by Briere, but mentions nothing about the March 30, 2013 exchange between himself and Briere discussing whether the resolution should be introduced.

Jessica Williams is an education reporter with “The Lens,” the first online nonprofit newsroom in New Orleans. In response to a question about whether such an exchange might be crossing an ethical line, Williams writes in an email, “SPJ’s code of ethics says to avoid conflicts of interest, real OR perceived; and to avoid staging the news….

The idea of a reporter suggesting items to be placed on an agenda, unless it’s a question of whether that item should go in exec session or be discussed openly (And even then, I would write about the fact that they asked me), is shady.”

Sabra Briere was contacted by email to ask if the March 30, 2013 exchange between herself and Askins was a singular instance. She never responded.

Likewise, David Askins was contacted and asked whether Sabra Briere habitually turned to him for his advice, and whether he was in the habit of recommending public policy to her. He never responded.

Finally, the Publisher of the AnnArborChronicle.com, Mary Morgan, was asked if she was aware of the content and extent of the emails between her editor (and husband), Askins, and Council member Briere. Morgan refused to respond, as well.

Josh Lederman is a White House reporter for the Associated Press. Lederman has a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, and also holds a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from The George Washington University. Lederman was one of several national news reporters who weighed in about the emails sent between Askins and Briere.

Lederman writes in an email about the exchanges, “You have an awesome story here. You should absolutely do a story about this. If the editor is writing about something he/she is personally involved in, there’s an obligation to disclose that information.”

A Freedom of Information Act request was filed for all of the emails sent between Askins and Briere between December 2012 and April 25, 2013. The emails revealed six months of almost daily communication between Briere, Askins, and to a much lesser degree Morgan, that is chatty, banal, bizarre, perfectly reasonable at times, and wildly inappropriate.

The AnnArborChronicle.com Pot Calling the AnnArbor.com Kettle Black

Before AnnArbor.com was shuttered, there was evidence of a testy relationship between the AnnArborChronicle.com, owned by Mary Morgan and David Askins, and AnnArbor.com. Morgan, a former business editor at the former Ann Arbor News, repeatedly lashed out at AnnArbor.com’s leadership as lacking integrity.

In June 2012 Morgan wrote a piece titled “Integrity—and a sense of place.” Her editorial begins: “I realize there’s a certain etiquette I’m violating in calling out the leadership of another publication in this way. What I hear on a regular basis about the community’s perception of the quality of reporting and editorial oversight at AnnArbor.com ranges from idle snark to complete outrage….”

The implication, of course, is that the AnnArborChronicle.com is different, that the site’s content is produced with a higher level of professional integrity.

Morgan’s high opinion of herself and her site has been fostered, perhaps, by mostly positive news coverage of AnnArborChronicle.com by national news outlets that were eager to cover AnnArbor.com and the community’s response to the loss of its daily newspaper. The “mom and pop” news outlet versus the media Goliath made for a great plot line.

Mary Morgan goes on to write in her June 2012 editorial: “I should pause here to note that my criticism of AnnArbor.com is not based on some self-righteous belief that if a mistake is made it must be because the reporter wasn’t conscientious. It’s not possible to do this job – or any job – without error. Even the most meticulous, conscientious reporter will screw up from time to time. We make our own share of mistakes.”

Morgan ends her editorial with this observation: “A newspaper – online or printed – can play a crucial role in reflecting and bolstering that sense of place, and in leading the community to an even better version of itself. But it can’t do that with a superficial, false understanding of the community it serves, or by misleading readers.”

Given the exchanges between AnnArborChronicle.com’s editor and Ward 1 Council member Sabra Briere, Morgan’s digs drip with hypocrisy.

Three months after she penned this editorial, in September of 2012, Mary Morgan and David Askins were featured in a piece by the Neiman Journalism Lab. In that piece, writer Michael Anderson reports, “Morgan, a former business editor for the News whose fashion trademark is a pair of typewriter-key earrings, said her ad sales pitch never includes attacks on then AnnArbor.com. But when the subject came up in our interview, Morgan didn’t mince words. ‘What’s happened here is clearly a train wreck in terms of journalistic integrity, ability to cover the community.’”

“Open For Suggestions”

The emails exchanged between November 2012 and April 2013 reveal Morgan and Askins editing and rewriting Sabra Briere’s constituent communications, including surveys. Morgan then Tweeted about the surveys and then posted the surveys to the AnnArborChronicle.com site—all without ever revealing that the site’s editor and publisher had helped Briere shape the survey questions.

On November 30, 2012 Sabra Briere writes in an email to Askins: “I created this survey…open for suggestions.”

In a December 1, 2012 email Askins extensively revises Briere’s survey text, “’construction downtown’ could become ‘quality of new downtown construction projects’” and “‘A new park for downtown’ might become ‘amount of public open space downtown.’ ”

Askins did the same in a widely-reported survey Briere did about public art after Ann Arbor citizens rejected a millage to fund the unpopular Percent for Art program.

In a December 1, 2012 email Briere sends Askins her survey statements and asks for his feedback. Briere writes: “Public art helps improve the economic and cultural climate of Ann Arbor.”

The same day, Askins responds via email: “REVISED Public art – however it’s paid for – helps improve the economic and cultural climate of Ann Arbor.”

Askins’s revised language is what appears in Briere’s constituent survey.

December 2, 2012, Mary Morgan posted this to her Twitter account: “Online survey about Ann Arbor public art funding – city councilmember @sabriere seeking input.”

Morgan neglects to mention that she and her husband had already taken advantage of an opportunity to give “input.”

On December 17, 2012, the results of Briere’s survey were “chronicled” by Askins in a lengthy write-up. Nowhere in his December 17, 2012 piece does Askins mention the fact that several of the survey statements were crafted by him, that Briere asked him to revise her survey statements, or that he and the publisher of the AnnArborChronicle.com had inserted themselves into the news they were claiming to objectively “chronicle.”

On December 30, 2012, Briere sent an email to Askins in which she writes, “I’ve attached a (very) draft memo that I intend to send to Tom Crawford tomorrow. I’ll bet you and Mary could add to it and I’d be grateful if you tried.”

On December 31, 2012 Askins responded: “You’ve done a decent job trying to elicit the information that’s needed in order to move ahead….Cheers, Dave.”

In March 2013, as City Council members struggled with the decision whether to listen to the City Attorney’s “advice” delivered in private, and vote in favor of a development at 413 E. Huron, Briere and Askins emailed back and forth about whether other Council members would vote to waive privilege and force the City Attorney to issue a written opinion on the matter.

At 6:45 a.m. on March 19, 2013 Briere writes: “Please don’t tell anyone <grin>. I barely remember last night. I do remember John Floyd speaking. What did he recommend? (I know he repeated himself a couple of times just to bring home the message.”)

At 7:45 a.m. Briere writes to Askins:  “That transparency thing. I wonder if other members of Council would go along? Would it matter especially considering the City Attorney recycles memos (we got one on moratoria in general), one from R4c, one sparked by some previous project.”

At 10:15 Askins responds. He writes: “Yes, the specific suggestion was: ‘Now that the vote has been taken, please won’t you share the legal advice on which the vote was based – give (sic) that several councilmembers indicated they’d relied crucially on it in their votes.’ Let me know if you think now might be the time for a council vote on waiving privilege. Cheers, Dave.”

Looking for Friends in All the Wrong Places

Much of the information Sabra Briere forwarded to Askins and Morgan would, in past, have been sent to Briere’s long-time political ally Karen Sidney. Almost immediately after she was elected to Council, Briere began sharing information with Sidney, a long-time supporter of transparency in local government.

Sidney, an attorney and forensic CPA, was in a unique position to interpret data, parse it and even dig up information—which she shared with Briere. Briere’s 2010 “white paper” on the city budget was researched and extensively shaped by Karen Sidney, who was happy to have the information made public. Briere gives Sidney no credit in the final draft. In it, Briere, a graphic designer, paints herself as an expert on the city’s budget—not to mention on the principles of accounting.

Emails between Briere and Askins suggest that, in an effort to have a “colleague” in whom she could confide, with whom she could scheme, to whom she turn to for advice and help, she turned to the editor and publisher of the AnnArborChronicle.com. They, in turn, encouraged the relationship, even when it crossed into the grey area of what constitutes unethical shaping of the news.

FOIAed emails between Sabra Briere and Ann Arbor News government reporter Ryan Stanton reveal a relationship that is more professional and typical.

Stanton sends Briere short, infrequent emails in which he asks for information, comments or clarification. He is polite, calling her his “go to Council member,” primarily because she responds promptly and sends along the information he needs. There are no musings.

There is no banter, and the emails show absolutely  no collaboration between Briere and Stanton on her surveys, Council communications or public policy. If the months of emails between Briere and Stanton serve any purpose, it’s to show just how far across professional and ethical lines her emails with Askins go.

“Leading the Community To A Better Version Of Itself….”

On the one hand, “chronicling” (copying down what was said) suggests impartiality. On the other hand, chronicling versus reporting protects politicos from irksome fact checking and potential embarrassment.

It should come as no great surprise, then, that many of the AnnArborChronicle.com’s advertisers are connected to local government and businesses with connections to John Hieftje. To figure this out takes a bit of connecting the dots.

The Michigan Theater advertised on AnnArborChronicle.com. Russ Collins, the head of the Michigan Theater sits on the Board of the Downtown Development Authority and was appointed by John Hieftje, who sits on the Board of the Michigan Theater.

The Ann Area Arbor Transportation Authority advertises. All of those Board members are appointed by John Hieftje.

The getDowntown program advertises. That program is headed by Nancy Shore, whose husband is Ward 5 Council member Chuck Warpehoski (endorsed by John Hieftje). Shore’s program receives almost all of its funding from the Boards of the DDA and AAATA.

It’s a tangled web, and in the middle of it sit David Askins, and Mary Morgan and their site AnnArborChronicle.com—openly chastising the ethics and accuracy of other journalists and accepting praise from readers and journalists alike for their objectivity and professionalism.

While the emails released in response to the FOIA requests don’t cover the period between June and September 2012, when Askins and Morgan slammed AnnArbor.com for its lack of “journalistic integrity,” it’s not hard to picture Askins, Morgan and Briere exchanging emails similar in content to the ones exchanged between November 2013 and April 2013.

It’s possible that while Askins and Morgan told reporter Michael Anderson that AnnArbor.com was a train wreck in terms of journalistic integrity, they were revising Sabra Briere’s council comments, shaping her constituent communications, and then writing about Briere’s comments, resolutions and constituent communications without coming clean to their site’s readership concerning their involvement.

The relationship between Briere, Askins and Morgan as revealed in the FOIAed emails represents just the kind of breakdown in newsroom professionalism for which the AnnArborChronicle.com’s Publisher Mary Morgan smacked around AnnArbor.com staff.

By refusing to comment on the email exchanges, Briere, Askins and Morgan leave many questions unanswered and their professional reputations sullied by six months of communications that beg for explanation and context.