people

So the Statesman *finally* got around to mentioning Dr. Dickinson's disappearance in yesterday's edition -- peripherally in the context of the opening of his favorite play in Moscow. Intriguing that the story required them to present all of the major details of the disappearance -- since they had yet to publish any of them over the ensuing three weeks -- but managed to omit most of the usual details of a theatre opening (in fact, they barely managed to work in the title of the play!).

I've been lamenting the decline in the quality of the Statesman since the McClatchy acquisition, but this has got to be the worst example ever: Dr. John Dickinson, the sitting Moscow City Council President and retired longtime Chair of the U of I Computer Science Department, has been missing (following a presumed fall into the John Day River in Oregon) for a week and a half, and the story hasn't even received a *word* of coverage from "Idaho's #1 Website for News and Information." This is a person that literally *thousands* of people here in the Valley, and countless more throughout the state, know personally. Obviously, my heart goes out to his family and friends, many of whom I knew from my days in Moscow, and I certainly hope for his miraculous safe return, but that this story would receive so little coverage from the Statesman that I would only learn of it through an Alumni email newsletter is appalling and disturbing.