The answer is blowin' in the wind

We've waited and waited and waited some more... months, in fact... after first hearing of this story, first in deference to the fact that the informant who provided it was also helping Sean Hoskins write a piece for the Chronicle and asked that - just this once - LawsWatch not scoop Mr Maslin's increasingly incoherent organ. Second, because we wanted to give Cr Ray Stevens the freedom to act without being accused of being in some way an agent of the blog and those supposedly behind it at the time.

But two months after we (along with a number of other people) first heard the story - still nothing in the Chron. And with Sean's departure, nor is there ever likely to be. Now a commenter has reminded us of the issue:

Why haven't the Chronicle published Herr Laws' emailed threats against Cr. Ray Stevens, I wonder. Laws threatened Stevens with Code of Conduct action. Ray was telling everyone who would listen. I wonder why he suddenly went quiet...

Now one man's threat is another's bombastic, overbearing, dictatorial, antidemocratic (Enough adjectives... Ed.) chest beating. But the facts as we know them are these. On January 11, Ray Stevens somehow managed to slip through the Chron's censors, probably because the editor was on holiday and no one else was available to pop round to Guyton St for instructions from the Spin Fairy.

The letter wasn't exactly supportive of the Mayor, especially the nonsense he'd been spouting at the time about Wanganui Gas. (Steven Palmer had a similar letter published, and hence he got slagged off in the ecol-i e-newsletter the following day).

The Diva then apparently threatened Cr Stevens with a code of conduct complaint, thus proving once and for all that he has no sense of either irony or shame. Watchers all over Wanganui were breaking their ribs laughing about this, and one thought to call Sean Hoskins, who called Stevens, who gave him the story.

While in any other town those events would be extraordinary enough, in present day Lawsville they're pretty much run-of-the-mill. Where things really start getting extraordinary is what happened next.

When another Watcher called Sean that afternoon to check on the progress of the story, our intrepid journalist started blustering about some other email correspondence with the Diva that had been forwarded to him by someone calling himself Zimmerman in which he (Zimmerman) was rude about the mayor, and the mayor was apparently rude about him.

Sean admitted he figured Zimmerman probably wasn't real (our Sean mightn't have figured out all the machinations of Guyton Street, but he knows his Bob Dylan). But said he was going to sit on the Stevens story anyway till he could confirm or otherwise the existence of this Zimmerman.

The now incredulous Watcher asked what on earth Zimmerman had to do with Stevens. It was obvious, at least to the newshounds at the Chron - they both had received unfortunate responses from the Diva.

So... just so we're familiar with Mr Maslin's newsgathering modus operandi...

1. Link together two unrelated stories, one of which is almost certainly false, on the flimsiest of threads.
2. Then hold back publication of one story till you can prove the veracity of the probably false one (a logic puzzle which could keep one busy for hours... oh wait, that was the point).
3. If step 2 fails, publish neither.

Then later in the piece, Stevens allegedly asked Sean to hold off till his lawyer checked the Mayor's message for defamation. And whilst any other news organisation would have said "no way, you gave us an interview of your own free will and we're running with the story, sorry", the Chron evidently obliged.

Watchers have been waiting... and waiting... for this legal opinion to come through and for Cr Stevens to confirm what happens next. But we're beginning to think this story is much like the Mayor's credibility - gone, never to return.

So just what is happening here?

What was the content of the Mayor's email to Cr Stevens?

Why hasn't the Chron run the story?

Why hasn't Cr Stevens pursued the matter? Even if the email isn't defamatory, if it's contents are as reported there are still questions to be asked about the Diva's methods of attempting to silence his critics on Council.

Oh... and who is Mr Zimmerman and how'd he know to gather together a collection of titillating emails right when Sean needed to be distracted from the Stevens story?

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