More on the mistrial and new faces in Newport-Mesa

TONY DODERO

So are you ready for some more fireworks?

No, not the fireworks that are set to go off at the Dunes tonight

or those safe and sane types on the streets of Costa Mesa.

I’m talking about the second coming of the Haidl trial and all the

lurid and graphic details that come with it.

At least that’s what we’re going to get as the district attorney’s

office appears undeterred in its case against three teens, one of

them the son of Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl, accused of gang raping a

young girl in his Corona del Mar home exactly two years ago.

But if reader reaction to the first case, which ended this week in

a mistrial after the jury deadlocked, is any indication, many of you

would rather take a pass.

Several readers have called to express their disgust at the vivid

details of the story; one even told my boss that they just weren’t

letting their children read the paper during the trial coverage.

It’s a difficult decision for us on how much to cover and how much

not.

Still, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Tell me if you thought the Daily Pilot coverage of the trial was

useful. Did you think the details too graphic or not graphic enough?

Do you think we played the story too big or not big enough?

Drop me a line and I’ll discuss your comments in a future column.

My contact information is below.

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I have more news to share with you on the staffing front.

As I mentioned in an earlier column, we have hired a young editor

named Ryan Carter as an assistant city editor. Carter has been

editing and planning the pages for our Forum page and feature copy.

But that’s changed now.

We have added on a new editor, James Lee, who will now handle the

features in the paper, including columns like Best Buys, theater and

society and our weekly Happenings arts and entertainment section that

runs on Fridays.

Carter will continue to edit the Forum copy and will also edit

news stories for the Pilot and our sister paper, the Huntington Beach

Independent.

Carter comes to us from Glendale, where he was a politics and

business reporter for another sister paper, the News-Press.

He’s a UCLA graduate (hear that Paul Salata?), who started off

more interested in music than news writing.

“Journalism was never really in the cards in my teens,” said

Carter, who was born in Santa Monica and raised in Van Nuys, wherever

that is. “I was brought up playing tennis, which I still teach, but

was partial to playing drums. For a time, high school took a backseat

to playing in a rock band. The band thing never panned out, though I

still play drums with a guitarist friend.”

For Lee, this is a return back in time. That’s because he’s an

Anteater.

That’s right, he graduated from UCI with a bachelor’s degree in

English and worked for five years as a sports reporter at the

Riverside Press-Enterprise, covering the WNBA for three seasons.

“It’s an honor to be able to work in the same area where I went to

college, though I can’t seem to find any of my old stomping grounds

anymore,” he told me. “Considering how much has changed in the last

decade, I’m sure it’ll only take me a few years to find them all.”

He joined a newspaper with our parent company, the Los Angeles

Times Community News Division, in 1999 as a sports reporter and

worked there in a number of capacities until coming to the Daily

Pilot last week.

He was born in Santa Clara and grew up in Los Altos Hills, next to

Stanford University he points out, and is married to Danielle. They

have a 4-year-old son Jimmy and another on the way.

Here’s wishing them well and hoping the readers treat them with

kid gloves and help them get up to speed on all the Newport-Mesa

issues.