"All of these journalists and their newspaper/broadcast outlets would have published Zera Starchild’s story..."

Paul Mann is no longer freelancing for the Mad River Union.

Text of his resignation letter: 

October 31, 2017

Dear Jack:

    Gwen Ifill, Ed Bradley, Joy Reid, Clarence Page, Carl Rowan, I.F. Stone, Edward R. Murrow, H.L. Mencken, Lincoln Steffens, Upton Sinclair:
    All of these journalists and their newspaper/broadcast outlets would have published Zera Starchild’s story: that of an African-American woman living in an historically lily-white and genocidal region of rural America, where the press is white-owned, white-managed and white-edited; where the political elites and non-governmental organizations are white; where the police departments are white; where the business community and the Chambers of Commerce are white; where the highest-ranking university leadership is white.
    In notable contrast to persons who have spoken out at times with bitter recriminations at Arcata’s special meetings on student safety and race, Ms. Starchild provided fresh insights in measured tones in her interview with me about what it is like to be black in Humboldt County.
     Articulate, perceptive and forbearing about white fears, she engaged in no invective, expressed no anger and voiced empathy for the dreadful perplexities of race relations. She shared enlightening observations about what it means to live a constrained racial existence in a predominantly white, hinterland society and economy. Certainly she was spot on in identifying “implicit bias” as a euphemism for racism.           
    At the outset, Jack, you asked, “Will the story shed light?”
    Ms. Starchild told the truth.
    An evenhanded, mature black woman of deep feeling, she shared her truth without rancor, without accusation, without self-indulgence or self-righteousness. 
    She was brave in accepting my request for an interview. It was one of her first steps in entering the public forum after the death of Mr. Lawson.
     You have denied our community important knowledge of this truth. I consider your refusal to publish her story the suppression of dissent.
     I see it—and I feel it—as an incomprehensible slap in the face to the best traditions of American journalism, as personified by the distinguished reporters cited above, African-American and Caucasian alike.
     Accordingly, please accept my resignation from the Union with immediate effect.

Jack Durham's final response:
(there were several emails exchanged between Paul and Jack)

"Dear Paul,
I’m sorry that it came to this. I won’t bother re-litigating my reasons for not publishing the article, other than to repeat that Ms. Starchild has a standing invitation to write a guest opinion for the Mad River Union. This would allow her to express her opinions and share her insights without them being filtered by a white person.

It’s been a great pleasure working with you and I wish you the best. – Jack"

Paul Mann:

"John, these are the links which document that the MRU allowed  me as a white reporter to cover three persons of color: Elijah Chandler, Sofia Pereira and Tina Sampay:

http://www.madriverunion.com/eyewitness-alleges-police-emt-racism-2/ 

http://www.madriverunion.com/arcatas-vice-mayor-deplores-racisms-role-in-killing-2/."

"MRU turned it down twice, first as a mainbar, then as a sidebar, which I had shortened  by about 175 words. I offered to scrutinize the article paragraph by paragraph with Jack Durham in person, to pinpoint the content he considered to be objectionable, but he did not accept."

If you are not familiar with Paul Mann , here is his bio:

Paul Mann is a former foreign affairs correspondent who covered the White House from 1982 to 2002. He also reported international security affairs from the Pentagon, the State Department and Congress, including the Gulf War of 1991 and the 9/11 attacks. An author and a guest lecturer at Georgetown University, Mann was educated in White House decision-making at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He wrote for several magazines, including Military Science and Technology, Congressional Quarterly and Aviation Week & Space Technology. His reported overseas from Canada, Russia, Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, Northeast and Southeast Asia and South America. In the 1990s, The Washingtonian magazine named him among Washington’s Top 100 journalists. A former Congressional staffer, Mann was a weekly on-air correspondent with WTOP All News Radio in the nation’s capital until 2002, when he retired and moved to Northern California.       

Paul Mann also contacted the North Coast Journal and Lost Coast Outpost to publish this story.

Both Thad Greenson and Hank Sims replied; Thad said he was unwilling to run a story based on one person (as unrepresentative), although he said he found some of Ms. Starchild's insights interesting. 

Hank labeled her comments "pretty sweeping" and said he wouldn't accept the views of just one person, as unrepresentative. He said Lost Coast Outpost does not fund freelance articles. 

I asked him to reconsider and volunteered to provide the story for free; he did not reply. "