Editor's Note:This report is the proprietary property of The Grant County Beat and Mary Alice Murphy. It is prohibited to copy, quote from, take wording out of context, share on social media, email to others or any other use, without prior permission of Murphy and The Grant County Beat.
In late 2007, Mary Alice Murphy retired from her full-time job as a reporter/photographer/columnist at the Silver City Daily Press and began writing for the Daily Press on a freelance basis.
For two or three years before that, while still at the SCDP, and with the approval of the then-publisher, Murphy had begun, in her off time, to also write feature stories for the Glenwood Gazette and Range Magazine.
On September 9, 2008, an article, "Communications provider is hired by committee," written by Murphy, but without her byline because much of the article was about her, states "...the Implementation Committee of the Arizona Water Settlements Act planning process addressed a contract for the communications provider—Mary Alice Murphy, freelance reporter for the Daily Press ... The plan of work includes developing and maintaining a Web site; writing minutes and agendas for the Stakeholders Group and the Implementation and Technical committee meetings; community outreach; presentations; attending meetings..." The Grant County Commission paid her to maintain the site and provide minutes and agendas for a year or so and the ISC picked up the contract when it had funding available. Otherwise, Murphy was not paid and, at one point, members of the committees passed the hat to pay her to keep the website going.
The website www.awsaplanning.com was developed by Murphy. She maintained it and regularly posted studies, proposals, and other documents pertaining to the AWSA. The site provided public information to anyone wanting to know what was going on with the AWSA planning process.
After she ended her freelance work for the Daily Press, on September 4, 2010, The Grant County Beat—www.grantcountybeat.com —was up and running, and continues today, as you can see, because you are reading this on the site.
In 2012, the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission, which is a non-partisan state government agency, began developing its own website, nmawsa.org. Some information from the awsaplanning.com website was transferred, but not enough to please the Gila Conservation Coalition, who paid for a year of hosting and domain registration to keep the website going to allow enough time to pull all the information they wanted off of it. It was not maintained, except for the hosting, so Murphy was paid nothing to maintain it, only to partially recreate it, as it had expired. The website still exists, although it expired Oct. 13, 2014.
In 2013, the ISC approached Murphy to write up reports of meetings the ISC staff members attended, as well as those they could not attend. She used the same information she took notes on for articles in her own news source, which is in blog format. She accepted an agreement for payment, and reported to the public in The Grant County Beat, from the same notes, which she wrote up for the Interstate Stream Commission in a different format.
In early November 2014, after her paid agreement with the ISC had ended, she wrote an opinion piece in her own publication, supporting use of the AWSA allocated water. That set off a chain reaction of anger among people who disagree with her opinion, and evidently it began a campaign to discredit her.
A few days later, she received a phone call from an acquaintance, and he began what seemed like an interrogation. After she had truthfully answered, to the best of her memory and quickly available notes, she asked him why he was questioning her. To her bewilderment, he spoke of conflict of interest in accepting money from the ISC and writing reports while serving as a reporter, and then writing an editorial in her own publication and that he was writing an opinion piece for the Daily Press.
The true shock came the next day when people started calling her and telling her of the seeming smear campaign directed at her.
Murphy said: "I do not malign anyone or impugn someone's reputation without concrete facts. I would wish others would do the same."
And then, even friends with whom she does not share the same opinions, began to support her, which she said she humbly appreciates.
More dismay on her part, when a front-page article in the Daily Press continued the attack, even quoting her saying to the reporter that she was not news and had done nothing wrong (which she did say to him, but not for attribution). Moreover, the article included a quote from one journalism professor, who said it was a conflict of interest if she were a full-time paid employee, which she was not, but that she could say what she wanted on her own website.
Vindication or not, she prays the attacks cease. She sticks by her opinion, as it is her own, developed from life experiences and her common sense, well before she was paid by the ISC to prepare reports.