BRITT – A North Iowa media company punished their “reporters” and its top brass groveled and begged for forgiveness from the community and City Hall in Britt for apparently shoddy, unfair reporting that they deleted from their platform.
The City of Britt recently posted a letter from Coloff Media to their social media (see below). The letter is signed by Coloff Media President Jim Coloff and KIOW radio station manager Karl Wooldrige. In the letter, they admit that “several news stories” they published were shoddy in some way. They describe the content they produced as not “unbiased, balanced and fair”. However, Coloff admits that they deleted only one story off their platform(s) despite admitting to “several news stories” of bad quality in the first 9 words of this letter.
“Once we were aware of the most recent story that did not measure-up to our expectations, it was immediately removed,” Coloff and Wooldrige said, immediately after mentioning “these stories” (plural). After their deletion-fest, the pair cobbled together this unusual letter and and sent it to city hall in Britt, begging for forgiveness and promising to do better.
Coloff and Wooldridge blamed employees for this embarassment. They threw their own “reporters” under the bus, admitting “regret” at their poor performance while claiming that these employees “did not meet expectations”. They failed to mention who hired these characters in the first place.
Admissions of turmoil at Coloff are rampant in this apology letter. The reporting was so bad that these two men “made changes in our organization” and even took one character – AJ Taylor – out of Britt city business, but stopped short of saying he is fired. Taylor may be free to create more questionable content in some other community, perhaps. Lastly, they claim they are sending their “reporters” for “continuing education” – whatever that may mean – and these persons may face further “reassignments” and more “staffing changes”.
Finally, before their “apology” could even sink in, and after admitting their reporters and staff struggle to treat the community fairly and may lack the expertise to do so even if they tried, Coloff and Wooldridge then proposition folks to submit themselves to the mercy of Coloff news coverage by “letting us know about stories that should be covered” and be “guests” for “interviews”.
On February 7, NIT reached out to the members of the Britt city council and mayor for clarification on what stories or content or behavior by Coloff Media “reporters” may have been offensive or questionable or just downright wrong and mis-leading.
“Hello. Would you have any detail on why Coloff Media issued an apology to the City of Britt?” NIT wrote. “We have the entire letter here; it refers to apparent unfair coverage. What did they publish that caused an issue? We are preparing a story on the matter.”
Not one elected official from Britt responded to NIT questions.
The City of Britt’s website is “Built & Powered by Coloff”. Anyone can can go to the site and click a link titled “ADMIN” at the bottom and attempt to log in, gain access, and potentially add/remove/delete city data.
(TOP IMAGE via coloffmedia.com)
