Elko editor - Sacrificial Lamb?

By Dana Gentry

Thursday, May 29, 2008 | 3:21 p.m.

We hoped to bring viewers a phone interview today with Doug McMurdo, one of the associate editors responsible for writing the editorial in the Elko Daily Free Press about Jim Gibbons' alleged affair. When I phoned McMurdo from the control room he said he'd just been called in to his boss and had to sign an offiicial reprimand for the first time in his career. McMurdo apparently said too much in another interview, though he says his superiors declined to elaborate on what got him in hot water. Now, he says he's not sure he'll have a job by the end of the day. And we didn't get the interview.

One has to wonder if McMurdo really said something wrong (I heard much of the KNPR interview in question and nothing jumped out) or if the powers that be at the Elko Daily Free Press are having second thoughts about running the editorial. McMurdo's was just one of four editors' names appearing below the piece but it appears he may be hung out to dry alone.

I asked Dawn Gibbons' attorney Cal Dunlap to appear, but he declined. I also extended an offer to the governor to join us, since he complained no one from the Elko paper asked for his take. Something tells me the paper probably asked and got the same response I got - none.

Tomorrow - The man behind the company that makes up one half of the biggest merger in state history, Sierra Health's Tony Marlon, talks about the big deal, the future of health care in the valley and his legacy.