Group tries to put out fire heating calls for Sam Adams to resign

I hate acronyms. It seems there's an acronym for everything. But I heard about a group today that is just begging to be known by an acronym.

The realization came to me while watching the 11 o'clock news on KATU, the ABC affiliate in Portland. They were leading the newscast with the latest story on the scandal surrounding Portland Mayor Sam Adams.

The story prominently featured Hollie Teal, a supporter of Adams, who believes he should stay in office in spite of his admission that he lied about a sexual relationship he had with a young male a few years ago.

Hollie is working to rally support for Adams. She's started a blog, Sam is Still My Mayor, and a group on Facebook that already has 130 members.

In Teal's interview with KATU she gave the group of supporters an unofficial name. "We are the People in Support of Sam," Teal said. Seems an appropriate name to me. People in Support of Sam -- P.I.S.S. -- because Adams has undoubtedly pissed all over his political career.

I'm fascinated by the Adams scandal story, but the things I want to know aren't the things that are making the evening news, the morning papers or the media websites. I want to know the story behind the story. Rumors of Adams' involvement with the other man in this story were apparently circulating years ago, before Adams officially began his run for mayor. But I want to know what pushed it to the forefront now, after Adams was seated as mayor. I want to know what the conversations were like in the Oregonian newsroom, where Adams' partner works as an investigative reporter.

Sure, I'll check in periodically to follow developments in the story. My daughter lives in Portland, so how the city is run, and who runs it, are of obvious interest. But what I'm really interested in is finding links to the story behind the story of how this broke and the intrigue of how journalists and politicians are intermingled here, like the former Portland Mercury reporter who had been trying to track down the sex rumor and ended up on Adams staff.

Media organizations are good at aggressively pursuing a big, breaking news story and political scandal revealed (in this case, finally, as I understand it, by Willamette Week, to home Adams first confessed his lie). But I am particularly interesting in the story behind the story and how the story made its way to publication/broadcast/posting. Now some of those details are coming to light, like Willamette Week's story on why Adams confessed. I also find it fascinating when media report on the actions of other media. It is, surely, one of the benefits of having a competitive media environment with watchdogs keeping and eye on the actions of government, elected leaders and public servants.

So many media outlet are in financial trouble now, along with the economy, and journalists are among those frequently joining the ranks of the unemployed. One has to wonder how many competitive media market, or how competitive those markets will be, after all the economic dust settles.

This story is fascinating on so many levels. Yep, it's a real P.I.S.S.er.