November 8, 2013

The Flint Journal | WJRT

Two newly elected members of Flint, Mich.’s city council were convicted of felonies, and two others have declared bankruptcy in the past. “We didn’t do good enough,” Flint Journal editor Marjory Raymer writes.

Flint’s council is “virtually powerless” because the city remains under the control of an emergency manager, Raymer writes. “We all know, though, that the state takeover will end eventually – and so we take very seriously our responsibility to inform voters.”

Flint’s WJRT-TV Wednesday reported on one candidate’s criminal past — Wantwaz Davis, who at 17 killed someone he said raped his mother. He made his time inside part of his campaign: “When they see that your life came from one point and is now in a better point, it gives hope and inspiration,” Davis told WJRT’s Autumn Perry.

I did a quick search on Davis’ name and found this story, about a successful lawsuit by a prisoner by the same, on the first page of results.

“We’ve been talking a lot internally about how and why we didn’t find out sooner,” Raymer writes.

Here’s what we know: We don’t ever want it to happen again and are developing a process to ensure it never does.

Developing new processes and procedures in and of themselves just didn’t quite seem like enough though.

We owed you more.

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Andrew Beaujon reported on the media for Poynter from 2012 to 2015. He was previously arts editor at TBD.com and managing editor of Washington City…
Andrew Beaujon

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