Tom Ryan's car (not involved with Zinck in any way)

The DN is reporting that the man who hit and killed Trista Zinck while driving drunk was sentenced to 5-7 years for violating his probation by having a beer at a Seabrook restaurant.
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I was just perusing Tom Ryan's blog and came across this post, that includes some reminiscences about the car he owned while living Newburyport. If you can call people slashing your tires and stuffing your tailpipe with insulating foam a fond memory.

It was the car I drove out to Plum Island and then to Maudslay, then onto Turkey Hill Road and back up High Street in a long loop when I would canvas the community before elections asking people how they were voting – now you know the secret of how I could predict races so easily in the city. It was the car I made the same drive around town with on the night Lisa Mead lost to Al Lavender before calling my father to tell him the news.

“You did it,” he said.

“No, Lisa did it to herself.”

See, here's my dilemma: I expect that, any day now, this (from first paragraph) is going to happen to me. Now that I'm a blogger and people know, or at least believe (and rightfully so), they can expect fairness from me, I'm getting all kinds of "dirt" told and/or sent to me.

People are dying for their stories to be told, but they are afraid to tell them. So they used to go to Tom Ryan, and he would put it in The Undertoad. I'm not saying all these same people are now coming to me, because they aren't, but I sure am hearing a lot of questionable stuff from people who want me to put it on here without disclosing where it came from.

Later today, a post will appear on here that has one main point but in order to make the point I had to bring up something potentially damaging to someone - something that should have been brought up elsewhere well before today.

I really wrestled with this one. This is, after all, a blog, not a newspaper.

I have to say, and Tom and I have spoken about this, that I made sport of his experiences as editor of The Undertoad in a story I did about him as he was leaving for NH. But I do understand better now.

Just reading the level of anger that (mostly anonymous) people get to on those comments on DN stories tells a story in itself.

And in that vein, and to get back to where I started, I think the DN should pull the plug on the comments on the Trista Zinck story. They are not doing anyone any good.