Saranac Lake officials now require staff to report all journalist inquiries to management. Learn how this policy impacts transparency in the Adirondacks.
The Village of Saranac Lake has a new media policy: when a reporter reaches out to village staff, the staff is expected to tell management what the story is about, who the journalist wants to talk to, what they want to discuss, and whether the interview will be in person or over the phone.
Mayor Kelly Brunette announced the change, appointing the village manager and clerk as the designated spokespeople. All requests for interviews and information — on board actions, projects, or any other topic related to village business — now funnel through them first.
Brunette told the Adirondack Daily Enterprise the policy already existed in the employee handbook. The Enterprise reported it could not find any such policy in the handbook. There are sections covering social media, FOIL requests, and internal communications — but nothing about press contact. The mayor was asked to provide the relevant section but had not responded by the time of publication.
That gap matters. There's a meaningful difference between a communications structure — designated spokespeople, consistent information — and a prior-notification system that tells village management which journalists are calling, who they're trying to talk to, and what they're investigating before those conversations happen.
The Society of Professional Journalists has said that communication structures like this, while increasingly common in American government, are also "an effective form of censorship." The concern isn't that staff will be unavailable — reporters can still request interviews. The concern is that the request itself becomes reportable upward, and sources inside village government now know that reaching out to a reporter means management finds out.
For a village with active ongoing stories — a contentious budget process, ongoing infrastructure projects, questions about development — that's a real change in how accountability journalism works here.
This is exactly why this platform exists.
Tri-Lakes Town Square was built to be free, anonymous, and answerable to no one but the community. No corporate owner. No advertisers to protect. No press credentials to lose. No relationship with a PR office that can be leveraged or withdrawn.
If a village employee wants to talk to us, they can. We don't have to route the request through management. We don't have to tell anyone who called. New York's shield law protects our sources. Our platform protects their identity. That's not a feature — it's the whole point.
A government that monitors who journalists are calling is a government that needs to be watched more closely, not less. We'll be watching.
Mayor Brunette did not respond to a request for comment.
Update:
Mayor Brunette provided additional comments to the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, including citing the New York Conference of Mayors as the source of the policy and describing its purpose as "knowing who is talking to who about what." We have reached out to NYCOM to verify that claim. Read our follow-up coverage for the full picture.