Also on today’s menu:
Hart Seeks Bolduc’s Arrest
No Distress Call Before Fatal Crash
Journalism Yesterday And Today
Rep. Ned Gordon of Bristol was the lead sponsor of a new law taking effect on January 1 that establishes a pilot program to allow qualified paralegals to assist clients in family court, landlord-tenant disputes, and domestic violence cases where the litigants may be unfamiliar with court procedures and are unable to bear the financial cost of legal representation.
The two-year pilot program will utilize paraprofessionals employed, retained by, and acting under the supervision of a member of the New Hampshire Bar Association to assist clients in three court jurisdictions: the 9th Circuit-District Division and Family Division-Manchester, 1st Circuit-District Division and Family Division-Berlin, and 6th Circuit-District Division and Family Division-Franklin.
In testifying on behalf of HB 1343 before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gordon said, “[U]ntil the 1980s, virtually all New Hampshire litigants in divorce and custody matters were represented by counsel, but for a variety of reasons — perhaps most prominently the cost of hiring attorneys — the trend of self-representation developed. Now 80 to 90 percent of the people who appear in our Family Division are unrepresented.”
Hart Seeks Bolduc’s Arrest
Joseph Hart, 37, a libertarian video blogger and occasional co-host of the FreeTalkLive radio show, has filed a complaint against Republican U.S. Senate candidate Don Bolduc, seeking his arrest. Police had arrested Hart on charges of disorderly conduct and criminal trespass after he approached Bolduc before the candidate’s debate with U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan at Saint Anselm College on November 2.
Ian Freeman, another libertarian activist and host of the radio show, put up a blog post on FreeKeene.com, with video clips from two angles of the incident in which Bolduc summons police and yells, “He hit me” several times. The video does not support Bolduc’s claim that Hart hit him.
In a telephone interview, Hart said, “I approached Don Bolduc and told him he sucked and he should not go to war and what happened next he was accusing me saying I hit him, but in reality, he elbowed me and then he continued to incite police and supporters saying I hit him.”
No Distress Call Before Fatal Crash
Neither of the two men in last month’s fatal plane crash in Keene placed a distress call before the aircraft went down, according to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board.
According to several witnesses at the Keene Dillant-Hopkins Airport, “the engine sounded abnormal, with the pilot exclaiming that it never sounded smooth during the entire time the airplane was on the runway or while airborne.” Another witness reported hearing “pop pop” noises as the airplane flew past.
The Federal Aviation Administration previously reported the crash of the single-engine Beechcraft Sierra aircraft which went into a building north of Keene’s airport on Friday, October 21. The two men killed in the crash were Lawrence Marchiony, 41, of Baldwinville, Massachusetts, and David Dezendorf of Townshend, Vermont.
Journalism Yesterday And Today
News organizations are operating with a diminished number of reporters amid shrinking revenues and competition from social media, but by sharing their stories, they are helping to address the need for accurate local news coverage.
That was part of the message from Mike Pride, a former editor of the Concord Monitor, and Daniela Allee, the Spanish news managing editor of New Hampshire Public Radio, during a panel discussion about the state of journalism today, sponsored by New Hampshire Humanities at the Rex Theatre in Manchester.
Radio, television, and cable satellite gradually cut into the mass audience that newspapers had enjoyed, and as circulation dropped, the media increasingly focused on how to attract and retain readers and viewers, according to moderator Kimberly Lauffer. “As the audiences started splintering, the ratings began to shrink, and people started doing more and more extreme things to draw more eyeballs,” Lauffer said, adding social media algorithms now drive what news people see there.
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