Last Friday, Jan. 24, our Guilderland reporter, Elizabeth Floyd Mair, called Sindi Saita because we always try to get all sides of a story.

The state attorney general’s office had sent out a press release that day, stating that Attorney General Letitia James had stood up for customers harmed by Saita’s dress shop.

“Brides, prom-goers, and dozens of others paid for specialty dresses to ring in a special occasion, but, after saying yes to the dress, they were left heartbroken,” the attorney general said in her release. “Instead of creating some of the happiest memories of their lives, these women were forced to scramble and find other last-minute options. Today’s settlement was tailored to not only provide a refund to all those harmed by Apropos Prom & Bridal, but to also implement substantial reforms to the company’s business practices so that no woman is left at the altar without the dress of her dreams.”

Unlike most of the local media that reported on the story, Floyd Mair did not use that canned quote from the press release in the story we posted on the Enterprise website last Friday afternoon and are running in our print edition today.

Our job, as journalists, is not to promote the attorney general. Rather, Floyd Mair read the settlement papers and reported on that, which may be of use to our readers harmed by the practices in Saita’s shop. 

She also, as we noted, called Saita for her viewpoint. Saita said she wants to move forward in a positive way and asked The Enterprise to write the story in a positive light.

Since that is all Saita would say, Floyd Mair called Saita’s lawyer, Deborah H. Sheehan of Albany, for further comment. “Everybody’s going to get paid that ever had a complaint, and good will is important,” said Sheehan, adding of her client, “She’s trying to move forward and put this behind her.”

Sheehan concluded, “She’s been in business for over 30 years. This was a bump.” 

But it was more than a “bump” for customers who didn’t have the gowns they ordered for their wedding day, so Floyd Mair talked to one of those customers and included her viewpoint, too. She also included the viewpoint of the Guilderland landlord from whom Saita had rented space before moving her store to Latham.

Saita’s former landlord received a judgment against her in county court two years ago for more than $15,000 in unpaid rent but he told Floyd Mair last Friday that he has yet to receive any payment from her. 

“I think rather than refunding the money, she should be put in jail,” the landlord said, because of “all the hurt she inflicted on everybody else.” 

We realize this last comment was not the “positive light” Saita had requested Floyd Mair cast on her story, nor was the list of creditors she still owes. Week in and week out, people — sometimes in anger, other times, beseechingly — tell us that The Enterprise should be writing “positive” stories.

Our job, as journalists, is not to be a booster for a particular business, or school district, or town. Rather than serving one of these entities, we serve the truth.

When we are invited into schools to talk about journalism and are asked about the tools used by reporters, we sometimes surprise students who expect us to talk about electronic devices when we say: a mirror and a torch.

That’s a way of saying we try to reflect a community as best we can so it can see itself, and we also try to shine light in dark places that might otherwise not be seen.

Floyd Mair broke the story about Saita’s dress shop having problems in May 2017. She was shining a light on a problem that hadn’t been covered before and could provide useful information to people looking to buy expensive gowns.

The headline reflects the balance in that story: “Customers complain Apropos is too slow with gowns, owner says no.”

That breaking story led with the “F” rating Apropos has from the Better Business Bureau and also with praise from town officials on the work Saita does on the Guilderland Zoning Board of Appeals.

That first story outlines, from customers’ points of view — balanced with Saita’s explanations — the very same problems the attorney general listed last week: disorganization, and dresses that were not as promised or were late or ill-fitting, or never arrived.

The next year, in 2018, Floyd Mair covered Saita’s eviction from her Guilderland location; the foreclosure proceedings on her Guilderland home; and the story of an elderly seamstress, an immigrant from Italy, who had done painstaking alterations for Saita’s shop but had not been fully paid for her work.

One of our favorite thoughts about journalism is from Walter Lippmann: “The theory of a free press is that the truth will emerge from free reporting and free discussions, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account.”

We try in our first take on a story to be as thorough and accurate as humanly possible. That was true in Floyd Mair’s account three years ago of Apropos. Over the years, as people such as the seamstress or unhappy customers or the landlord saw the story, it was added to.

The picture that emerged was similar to what the attorney general’s office concluded in announcing its settlement. It was not easy for the reporter or the newspaper, hearing complaints about “negative” coverage along the way. But we stuck to finding the truth.

Many newspapers these days are stretched thin so reporters have come, more and more, to rely on press releases and press conferences to report the news. That kind of reporting has pitfalls because it can promote what an agency wants the public to see, and it projects that same viewpoint across all different mediums and platforms.

At The Enterprise, we strive to do our own investigations, often ahead of the pack, as with the story on Apropos. We have reporters on the ground in each of the towns we cover, eager to find the news important to our communities. We don’t assign stories or see news as “positive” or “negative.” 

You, the reading public, are our best resource. You can contact us whenever you come across something you think is newsworthy.

If you disagree with something we’ve published, write a letter to the editor. If we’ve made an error, we’ll correct it at once. If there is no mistake but, rather, a varying viewpoint, perhaps one we missed, tell us. We have an open forum. We relish the chance to explain why we have covered a story the way we have.

While on our news pages we strive to tell all sides of a story, here, on our editorial page, we express the newspaper’s viewpoints. Even here, we try to be fair-minded, not nasty, and to offer a solution after we’ve pointed out a problem.

You can help the truth emerge by being part of the free discussion. Join us.