What happened Friday evening

Last Friday evening, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, spoke at the ballroom at Meadowbrook Park in Bascom, along with a cadre of candidates for U.S. Senate and politicians-to-be. The fundraiser was put together by the Seneca County Republican Central and Executive Committees. The A-T announced this event in our pages about a month ago, it received a modicum of coverage elsewhere, and we reported about it twice last week.So, naturally, readers were surprised not to see any coverage of the event in our newspaper after it occurred.Here's what happened.I went personally to the fundraiser Friday evening, camera in hand and notebook in pocket. The plan was to take a few shots of anything newsworthy happening outside the event, of which there turned out not to be much. I talked to a few protesters set up outside the door, was accosted by someone who called The A-T "nasty" and chatted a very little bit with one of the campaign staffers stationed outside. Nothing I could base a story around.I hadn't planned to go inside the ballroom, because the speeches themselves didn't hold a great deal of news value for us. Being a locally-focused paper, it's too early for us to be chasing around candidates for next year's state elections, and there wouldn't be an opportunity to interview any of the speakers. All that I could've gathered for the paper would've been prepared remarks, the gist of which anyone can gather with a simple visit to any of the speakers' websites. But before leaving, I decided it might be good to include a photo of the ballroom in the paper, to give our readers a visual of the crowd that had assembled, so I walked inside.Immediately someone at the door saw my camera and said hello. I introduced myself as someone from The A-T and said I was hoping to take a couple of photos of the crowd and then I'd be on my way. The doorperson told me to wait a moment and went for an event organizer. A representative of the Seneca County Republicans then came up and told me I had to leave, that I wasn't allowed to be there because of the critical articles we had published earlier that week about the event. Though being kicked out of any event is frustrating, I walked away, and I didn't take it personally. After all, it was technically a private fundraiser which required at least $50 to get in the door, and The A-T hadn't purchased a ticket. As I was being shooed away, the representative of the county Republicans mentioned something about a falsehood in our reporting. I understand that this can be maddening when it occurs — we're certainly not perfect, as no journalist or human being is. But we have yet to hear back from any of the event's organizers, after multiple phone calls and emails left over the course of a week. We reported the one response we did get, after a week of radio silence, and the response happened to come from a trusted source whom we have no reason not to believe. If I could go back, I wouldn't change a thing about our coverage. The residents of Seneca County needed to know that an event of that political magnitude was taking place, and I still believe the story that must be out there somewhere about how Greene was gotten for the Bascom fundraiser is likely an interesting one, for readers of all political persuasions, though its mysteries remain for everyone beyond those who brought her here.I only hope these kinds of mysteries don't continue to linger, or fester, in our local politics. Whatever happens, we will continue to report what we see and find to be true, as close to that ideal as we can possibly get. Bret Nye is community editor of The Advertiser-Tribune, Tiffin, and Review Times, Fostoria. He can be reached at bnye@advertiser-tribune.com or bretnye@reviewtimes.com.