Brent Batten: Maybe only a few people read the Daily News

The venerable promotional slogan this newspaper used for years was obviously penned by someone who had never sat through jury selection.

There, on Wednesday, somebody after somebody announced they had not read anything.

Not anything about defendant Leo Salvatori, on trial for racketeering. Not anything about Renee Tolson, Robert Hardy or Paul Hardy. Not anything about former county manager Neil Dorrill. Not anything about ESPN founder Bill Rasmussen. Not anything even about former county commissioners John Norris, Tim Constantine or Tim Hancock, all of whom also have been defendants in the case. Not anything about the whole sorry Stadium Naples affair.

This after six years of coverage and 1,112 articles related to the failed real estate development that led to criminal charges against politicians and developers alike.

For a high-profile case, Stadium Naples managed to get under a lot of people's radar.

At one point, only two of 15 possible jurors brought in during the afternoon screening admitted to knowing about the case through the media.

The repetitive nature of juror questioning was such that even before Judge Stephen Dakan could finish the question, "Have you read or seen ..." the potential jurors would be shaking their heads.

"No."

"Nothing."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

At least at the Daily News we aren't alone. Other media's extensive coverage of the case has gone unnoticed by a sizable portion of the local populace.

Humbled journalists were left to come up with theories. "They're probably seasonal residents. They left for up north in 1996, and just now came back. Long seasons, up north."

And as if our absence from the lives of so many people wasn't enough, Dakan had to continually remind those who had heard about the case that whatever they'd seen in the media may not have been accurate. Ouch.

So if so many people have managed to avoid the blanket publicity the Stadium Naples case has garnered, why is the trial of Norris, who still faces charges including unlawful compensation for official duty after most of his co-defendants have entered pleas, being moved to Sarasota?

Prosecutor Michael Von Zamft was wondering the same thing Wednesday, until one of his assistants shook him.

This trial will bring even more publicity, and more importantly a verdict, that could sway the jury pool even further.

"It'd be fine if we could pick a jury now and lock them up," until the Norris trial in early January, Von Zamft said as yet another batch of non-jurors left the courtroom, excused not because they've already made up their minds but because they couldn't reconcile a three-week trial with their other commitments.

And in this country you can't lock people up for not reading the newspaper.

Not yet anyway. We're working on that.

Brent Batten is a columnist for the Naples Daily News. To contact Brent, e-mail him at bebatten@naplesnews.com.