David Colburn

My Kansas hometown and my own personal world have been rocked this week by the news of a police raid on my former Kansas newspaper, the Marion County Record last Friday. Five police officers and two sheriff’s deputies took the paper’s computers, servers, and reporters’ cell phones. They also raided the home of publisher Eric Meyer and his 98-year-old mother, Joan (pronounced Jo-Anne), taking two computers, Eric’s cell phone, and photographing Eric’s personal financial records. The stress and angst were too much for Joan, who couldn’t eat or sleep that night and died the next day.
I can’t match the Kansas City Star’s Melinda Henneberger’s take on this, so I’ll borrow her words:
“Joan Meyer, 98-year-old enemy of the people, died in the line of duty on Saturday. A newswoman since 1953 and co-owner of the local paper in her hometown in central Kansas, she lived to see her Marion County Record, as well as her home, raided by police on Friday, for reasons that defied both law and logic. It is not hyperbole to say that this attack on the people’s right to know appears to have killed her.”
In an interview with the Wichita Eagle on Friday night, Joan didn’t mince words when describing the raid.
“These are Hitler tactics, and something has to be done,” she said.
Eric Meyer described the raid as “Gestapo tactics,” and neither Joan or Eric use those words loosely. Joan’s husband and Eric’s father, Bill, was a decorated World War II veteran who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and each is fully aware of what the words Hitler and Gestapo convey.
The raid effectively shut down the Record’s ability to publish and placed all of the confidential files and communications in the hands of the police. Such actions are reminiscent of Third World dictatorships, but unprecedented in America, where the freedom of the press is enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
And what was the justification for such a massive abuse of power against a small-town Kansas weekly newspaper that led to an elderly woman’s death? Well, as it turns out, the paper may have brought the raid down upon themselves for trying to do the right thing.
An informant had contacted the paper with information about a restaurant owner’s driving record, which included a DUI conviction in 2008 in which her license was suspended. The informant alleged that she had been driving without a license since and that the local police were aware of it but just turning their heads. The information included a letter to the restaurant owner from the Kansas Department of Revenue that included her driver’s license number and birth date. A reporter from the paper decided to verify the information provided by the informant by using that information to log into the DOR’s database to view the driving record herself.
The paper quickly decided that the intent of the informant was to try to draw them into a bitter divorce dispute and chose to do nothing with the information. But they did decide it was worth making the local police and sheriff’s department aware of it. The newspaper thought they should be aware that someone was claiming they were complicit in someone breaking the law. So, they passed along the information they had.
In response, the police didn’t say thank you. Instead, they asked for a search warrant for the Record for identity theft and unlawful computer acts. And while Kansas law says that identify theft must include intent to use the information to harm the individual, which was clearly not the case here, a judge approved the request, and the unprecedented raid was on.
That’s why Joan Meyer is dead. Not because of some great state secret or sinister plot, but because a reporter used a driver’s license number given to them to try to verify the accuracy of what an informant was alleging, and overzealous cops decided a raid was necessary instead of a more measured approach.
You’ve all heard of someone dying from a broken heart, and it turns out that’s an actual medical condition. The official name of it is Takotsubo cardiomyopathy. Takotsubo is a Japanese word that refers to a pot used by fishermen to trap octopuses. When the left ventricle of the heart is affected by broken heart syndrome, it changes shape to resemble the narrow neck and round bottom of the pot.
Broken heart syndrome can come on at any age and affects more women than men. It’s triggered by emotional or physical distress.
Joan had both. She was unable to eat or sleep after the raid, and the sight of police officers entering her house and taking her computer equipment was indeed traumatic for her, to the point of tears. Seeing officers go through Eric’s personal financial records would have been the ultimate invasion of privacy for her, and she would’ve been horrified. Her son and the newspaper were her whole life, and they were being trashed right before her eyes.
Twenty-five hours after the raid, as Eric was trying to get her to eat lunch, she died, most certainly of a broken heart. Of that I have absolutely no doubt.
I adored Joan Meyer. I’d known her most of my life and got to know her well when I worked at the Record. The Meyer family has invested over 70 years of their lives in that newspaper – it was surely as much her baby as Eric. She rightfully took great pride in a publication that has three former editors, including her husband Bill, in the Kansas Journalism Hall of Fame, and is consistently rated by its peers as one of the best newspapers in the state.
Joan was also an undeniable expert on local history, the last of her generation with such extensive knowledge. The things she could recall in casual conversation were amazing. As part of that interest, she took on writing the newspaper’s Memories column, combing through the archives every week all the way back to the late 1800s to find just the right bits of personal and community news to make her column the first thing many people turned to, including me. What was special about Joan’s column was the way she made sure her selections represented the many different families, groups, businesses and organizations of the community through the years – she wanted everyone to connect with something so that they felt included.
I could go on and on about Joan, about Bill, about Eric and the Marion County Record – I literally wouldn’t be here at the Timberjay without them. Be assured I’m mad as hell about what happened, a sentiment shared by newspapers and news organizations throughout the country that are outraged by this blatant and egregious violation of the freedom of the press. I hope with every fiber in my being the Record prevails in court, but it will be a bittersweet victory knowing that Joan won’t be there to see it. She surely didn’t deserve to go out like this.