On Triad Stage and telling the whole story

1451 S. Elm-Eugene St. Box 24, Greensboro, NC 27406 Office: 336.681.0704

SALES KEY ACCOUNTS

Chris Rudd chris@triad-city-beat.com

AD MANAGER

Noah Kirby noah@triad-city-beat.com

CONTRIBUTORS

Carolyn de Berry, John Cole, Owens Daniels, James Douglas, Michelle Everette, Luis H. Garay, Destiniee Jaram, Kaitlynn

Havens, Jordan Howse, Matt Jones, Autumn Karen, Michaela Ratliff, Jen Sorensen, Todd Turner

IN A FLASH @ triad-city-beat.com

First copy is free, all additional copies are $1. ©2022 Beat Media Inc.

WEBMASTER

Sam LeBlanc

ART

ART DIRECTOR

Aiden Siobhan aiden@triad-city-beat.com

COVER:

Design by Aiden Siobhan

Photo by Kevin M @czykyoself t didn’t come as much of a surprise when the board of directors for Triad Stage announced via a press release that they were permanently closing the doors to its 20-plus-year-old organization on Tuesday morning. What was slightly more shocking was the local news’ coverage of the event, or lack thereof.

Ithe domino effect that led to Triad Stage’s closure on Tuesday.

by Sayaka Matsuoka

As you can read in TCB’s piece on the closure, Triad Stage was mired with financial difficulties that ultimately led to its demise. But part of that story is the fact that one of the co-founders of the organization and the artistic director at the time, Preston Lane, was accused of sexual assault and sexual misconduct back in 2020. That story was first reported by Jordan Green, who was senior editor of TCB at the time.

One could argue, nay, insist, that the incident played a crucial part in

And yet, none of the local news reported that part. Not the local TV stations and not our daily paper of record, the News & Record. In fact, the N&R’s piece was the shortest of them all. It wasn’t until Tuesday night that the daily updated their piece to include more context, adding the history about Lane. Yes! Weekly only republished the press release.

It’s hard to decipher why such a significant event would be left out of all of these outlet’s reporting.

In our world, errors of fact are the most egregious of missteps that a journalist can make in their reporting, but an omission of fact is a close second.

But that’s the realm in which we operate. It’s why we continue to write and report and put out papers.

My story took all of 20 minutes to write and put together. We weren’t the first, but we certainly were the most thorough. And that’s how we’ll continue to operate. Because if not us, then who?