The unnamed Courier editor stands up for those without cars and against the City bean-counters who've pulled their ride subsidies, anticipating that the state may not provide the accustomed major portion of the funds. Bravo.
I might be a little more enthusiastic if I hadn't been reading the same editor telling us for years that Prescott doesn't need public transportation. It leaves a tinny aftertaste, a bit like crocodile tears.
I don't care for Mr Server's clunky sports metaphors, but he has the facts right, and we see this point made so rarely that it's worthy of note. Here's some research to back him up:
The Wall Street Journal, in its "Monthly Economic Forecasting Survey: April 2006," conducted from Apr. 7-11, 2006, asked 46 economists this question: On balance, has the U.S. economy benefited more than it has been harmed by its current population of undocumented workers? Two of them answered that illegals bring more harm than benefit. The other forty-four agreed that they bring more benefit. There are many more good examples of balanced studies.
There is a lot of subtle spinning around this issue to watch out for. When you see someone reference census data about illegals, for example, bear in mind that the census will more often find those illegals who are easiest to find -- settled people with families. That inflates average family size, and subsequently inflates estimates of education costs. People who actually study this issue scientifically agree that the issue of immigrant cost to society is a boogeyman.
Some of my friends really don't get why I spend any attention or effort on the Courier. "Why do you bother with that rag? Nobody with any sense reads it anyway." I've found that last shot to be more on the mark than not. Newspaper circulation and readership is plummeting everywhere, ask anyone who knows, and in our current parlous economy I hear that Courier ad sales are in the toilet as well. Just stick a fork in it, it's done, right?
Well, I make an important part of my living by writing for a newspaper, so I have a direct stake in keeping newspapers alive. Beyond that, I truly believe that local papers are an important part of the glue that holds communities together. So whatever condition it's in today, it's worth saving and improving. No alt-weekly will ever have the kind of effect that a local mainstream daily can.
What ropes me off is that the people most responsible for keeping our local paper alive and healthy are doing such a poor job of it. Rather than respond to the changes in the industry brought by online content, they cling to outdated models and methods as the print edition slowly diminishes to convenient birdcage size. I can put that down to incompetence and failure of imagination. The nub of the rub, though, is that you can't hope to surf the wave of change if your content isn't up to it, and in that area, through incompetence, ego and disregard for the integrity and care that today's more sophisticated readers demand, the Courier editors and many others just like them are actively killing their own papers.
They are a threat to my profession and our community.
I can't fire them, I can't much hope to educate them, and after years of trying it's clear I can't persuade them. All I can hope for is enough readers demanding a better product -- good ol' market mechanisms -- to get them looking over their shoulders and trying to avoid the pain, like lab rats picking the food door that doesn't shock them.
Behavioral modification. -=zap!=- It's fun!
Today's experiment in automatic writing by the unnamed Courier editor scores about par with his handicap. What amuses me is that the Courier once again fails to acknowledge its cheerleading for the Lowe's deal, including the laughable (and ultimately frightening) engineering plans for both ends of that property. You helped make this happen, guys, and you'd gain some props for admitting it, doing more to help get it cleaned up, and using your editorial clout to help prevent future atrocities.
Here's another case where the story and the headline don't match. From the headline we expect to read about another scam going around. From the story we find out that our bureaucracy is specifically saying it's not a scam. Was this just a clumsy way of drawing eyes to an essentially boring story, or yet higher-order incompetence in the headline department, which has been the running away goofup leader this year? You call it.
Just to remind everyone, I don't care about sports, even when it's covered as news, although I'll also warn you that when you read about sports outside the sports pages it's probably because someone pays the paper a lot of money for it hoping to sell you something. I'm particularly skeptical about sports that involve the abuse of animals, and I just hope one day we will have evolved beyond that, or at least properly criminalized it.
It looks as though this Tobin press release went straight to print without so much as a glance by an editor, which I fear is pretty close to standard practice in the Courier office these days. You couldn't even get the Representative's name properly capitalized in the headline? Really? If I was Mr Maurer, I'd be looking for a better return on the Chamber's money than that.
The key question for readers: How exactly is this news?
Regular readers see these Courier-style infomercials frequently, but not so often anymore on the front page and rarely with so many smarmy poeticisms adding spittle to the advertiser's bootlicking. I recall the Courier's embarrassing paean to anti-artist Kinkade last year as well. Since other regular quarter-page buyers don't get this sort of attention, I have to wonder what this particular company has on the editors. Maybe they're just entranced by bad art.
I don't intend to write on everything that comes up, but the plan is to put up one of these every day so you can share what matters to you and point out what I've missed. When I get time, I'll add links to the piece you're referencing if you don't know how.
With one exception this blog has been off air for about a year and a half on the theory that the Courier's opening of a full commenting feature would make it directly accountable to readers where it wasn't before. So I gave that a good solid try, and while there is certainly more reader response going on now and evidence that the Courier editors respond to it, I've directly confirmed the rumor that they still refuse to respect readers enough to follow a consistent and reasonable comments policy. Instead they are maintaining the practice they've always followed with letters, and that is to edit them as they see fit, without regard for the reader's expression or even intent, and without admitting they've done so. That's against the rules and custom of modern journalism. So I'm back here, where at least I can say what I think needs saying without the risk of censorship or respins by second-rate hacks who've forgotten what integrity feels like. Welcome to Courierwatch v2, readers, you few but mighty.
My letter as submitted:
Editor:And as it appears in today's online edition:
I noted Councilman Lamerson's objection to the 'Happy Holidays' sign on City Hall in your story of Dec. 17, and I happened to take a look at it as I went about my business today. I feel compelled to offer my support for the decision-maker behind that sign and deplore the media-manufactured controversy that Mr Lamerson is abetting.
There is, of course, no 'war on Christmas.' I don't know about Mr Lamerson, but I've been seeing and hearing the 'Happy Holidays' greeting since the 1960s, and I'm sure it's older than that. What some people are worrying about now is the conscious choice to make the holiday period more inclusive, in the very spirit of community that is supposed to suffuse this part of the year. To contend against that and in effect declare Arizona's Christmas City as being exclusively for Christians is simply un-American and an affront to all of us who value religious liberty.
'Happy Holidays' is a perfectly appropriate sentiment to trumpet from the top of a public building in which decisions are made that should represent us all. A declaration of religious affiliation, however benign the intent, is clearly not. City Hall made a good decision.
EDITOR:
I noted Councilman Jim Lamerson’s objection to the “Happy Holidays” sign on City Hall in your Dec. 17 story, and I took a look at it as I went about my business. I feel compelled to offer my support for the decision-maker behind that sign and deplore the media-manufactured controversy that Councilman Lamerson is abetting.
There is, of course, no “war on Christmas.” I don’t know about Councilman Lamerson, but I’ve been seeing and hearing the “Happy Holidays” greeting since the 1960s, and I’m sure it’s older than that.
What some people are worrying about now is the conscious choice to make the holiday period more inclusive, in the very spirit of community that is supposed to suffuse this part of the year.
To contend against that and in effect declare Arizona’s “Christmas City” as being exclusively for Christians is simply un-American and an affront to all of us who value religious liberty.
“Happy Holidays” is a perfectly appropriate sentiment to trumpet from the top of a public building in which decisions are made that should represent us all.
A declaration of religious affiliation, however benign the intent, is clearly not.
City Hall made a good decision.
First, thanks to the unnamed Courier editor for mentioning that "Not every illegal who makes it across the border" is a cop-killer. It would have been nice if the quote were more on the order of "Vanishingly few illegal immigrants are cop-killers or violent criminals of any kind," but the truth on this issue would be a lot to expect.
OK, editor, you and grandstanding Phil Gordon want to exhort the country to "secure our borders," and you malign every elected official in this country by implying corruption that keeps them from doing it. In your world, that's logical. So do your readers this respect: show, in detail, how that job can be done, with numbers and engineering.
A whole lot of very smart people have been working on this problem for decades and conclude that not only is it not practical in economic terms, it's not possible, period. You think you're smarter than all those experts, fine: put up or shut up. I think you're blowing smoke up the asses of your readers just to keep them stirred up and fearful enough to keep voting Republican. Prove me wrong.
Carla Renak rails against the nanny-state idea of requiring her to maintain defensible space against wildfire. I'm with you, Carla, if I don't have to pay for the fire department to defend your home when the flames are coming.
This is the point. We have rules because people aren't sensible enough to be responsible with their freedom, and they wind up costing us all.
Hmm, nice juxtaposition. ON A1 we find that the challenger squeaked past the three-term mayor, and on the editorial page we have the unnamed Courier editor complaining that only 53% of voters were involved. Could it be that the editor figures that more voters would have changed the outcome, since obviously the result was the wrong one? Interesting idea, since most cities are ecstatic to see 30% turnout for off-year council polls.
I'll say what would choke the editor: Good job, Prescott voters. You're more involved than most, no thanks to your "Agenda of Excellence" paper.
The lead -- did Shari Lopatin really write this?
PRESCOTT – Sex, drugs, pregnancy, abortion. It sounds like the recipe for a film festival in New York or Los Angeles.
I was at the meeting because I live in the neighborhood affected by this issue. First I'd like to say that I'm pleased the Courier didn't feel the need to cover the excessive, racism-tinged ranting about the brown peril that we all had to sit through before Council could get to its agenda.
Cindy Barks' story focuses on the specific barrier on Prescott Heights Drive that focused discussion, but she apparently ignores the real issue that got Steve Blair hot and actually moved the Council to talk policy: that the advisory Traffic Control Committee was effectively setting policy on its own, and the barrier went up without input from Council or the city manager.
What's funny about this is that Blair admits that he and Council voted to set things up this way, assigning policy power to the committee by default if Council didn't object. They apparently didn't read the memo the TCC sent them, and everyone just did their jobs -- except Council, of course.
Cindy writes, "'When somebody closes a road down, it's not traffic calming; it's traffic closure,' said Councilman Steve Blair, who allowed that such measures had been 'a sore spot with me for a long, long time.'" Here she or the editor distorts what Blair meant. I remember him saying it, and the "sore spot" was the way the TCC is handling policy decisions. He doesn't like closing streets either, but let's try to keep the quotes straight. This concern will lead to a larger change than removing a street barrier, but the Courier story doesn't tell us that.
I just needed some time off. I'll try to get back into the rhythm here, but it'll probably be gradual. Thanks for hanging in.
In her second graph Cindy Barks mentions that water and growth dominated "much of the discussion," but coverage of these more important issues didn't make it into her story. Instead we get the non-issue of illegal immigration and the sexy-but-stupid idea of red-light cameras. Whether Cindy did this on purpose or not, or perhaps got a memo about it from the editor, it shows how editorial choices can insidiously influence the public discussion through omission and refocusing.
Cindy Barks again adds some good facts to supplement the responses of the Council candidates. I really don't get why these stories don't run together.
I just love how they all trot out the "willing seller" canard. Of course you have to have a seller, that's indisputable. It's just not relevant to the question. See, if it's a parcel that would qualify for open-space funding, it's by definition already open space and the City has no effect on the issue by trying to purchase it. The point of the funding is to acquire parcels that go up for sale to prevent development in important spaces. The question voters should be asking is: How many qualifying open-space parcels has the City failed to acquire that were subsequently lost to development?
PS, editors: The proper style for naming our community access channel is Access13, no space. I know: I named it. And I sent you style sheets twice.
The unnamed Courier editor comes up with a surprising scoop today: the revelation that "tens of millions of dollars" earmarked for New Orleans levees "in recent years ended up in politicians' pockets." That is one helluva story, and having it discovered and carried first by a small Arizona paper makes it Pulitzer material. I'm looking forward to the facts and substantiation on page one -- I'm just a bit puzzled because we usually run that story first.
Or could this be just another case of the editor using his op-ed space for a random rant more worthy of the breakfast chatter down at the Lone Spur? I guess it's a clue when he writes of "infrastructure" as a "fancy word."
Nutbar Cal responds to his own Bizarro interpretation of the Ignatius column yesterday, both pieces on something that matters not one whit to Courier readers. Do I detect a little media navel-gazing in the Courier editorial offices?
We have a commitment from the Governor to appear for at least a large chunk of "The People's Business" this week with Rep. Mason. You can look forward to some wide-ranging discussion of current state and local issues. That's Saturday and Sunday the 11th and 12th at 2pm on KJZA, 89.5FM.
If you can't get the show over air, contact me privately and I'll try to make you a copy.
This is just the sort of boring, factual information that voters need most to understand if they're to participate positively in our system. It's what a local paper is for.
This time Cindy Barks adds some practical meat to flesh out the issue framed in the candidate question, good show.
This is an inside-baseball piece of zero value to local readers. The editors could have run his column from last week, "Sept. 10 in Waziristan" (free registration required), but chose this instead. Y'all go ahead and tell me what that means.
Tim's got the right end of the stick today, but he fails to wield it with authority.
Yes, the public is unreasonably afraid of terrorism, and everyone needs to calm down. But Tim's analysis of why this is happening is a little soft, perhaps because his own industry carries so much of the responsibility, and the organization he helps manage is quite happy to sell newsprint on fear and facilitate official fear-mongers. So another opportunity for self-examination and positive change is wasted. If the Courier editors really see the problem here, they are in better position that most anyone in town to do something about it.
Parting shot, Tim: "UFO" is not a synonym for "alien spacecraft." If something is flying and the authorities don't know what it is, it's a UFO, that's the correct term. So the TV newscritters didn't report the "possibility of a UFO," they reported a UFO sighting. Failing to clarify this for your readers reinforces ignorance among those who don't know and undercuts your credibility among those who do.
Joanna Dodder has a big job to do here in informing the voters about the biggest, most acute problem we have in front of us. Her problem is that it's so eye-crossingly technical and has more characters than a Tolstoy epic. Hard reading, but important.
Cindy's doing a good job with it, I just think the assignment is wrong. Why do we need a summary of what the Courier editor thinks is newsworthy on the front page when back on A7 we have the actual full-length responses from the candidates?
We still have to deal with how the questions are put and the way that wedges the responses, but in my view the more direct the communication between subject and reader, the better. Today's readers (the few that are left), especially younger people, require a lot less media hand-holding.
The unnamed Courier editor is at least consistent. Again today he repackages the front page and says nothing. Hint: Assign the space to someone who cares.
The unnamed Courier editor reluctantly admits that Rob Behnke's failed initiative was a bad idea, falling in line behind the Chamber of Commerce and every City Council candidate. Too bad he fails to mention that on April 18 he was all for it. Typical.
He can't resist a jab at our hard-won rules on spending for open space, the elimination of which was the hidden agenda of the Behnke campaign, and scores a touchback.
Joanna Dodder does some good spadework on the quiet little water war going on between Prescott and Chino Valley. Most of what you need to know is between the lines.
Short version: Prescott city officials are finding themselves increasingly isolated in defense of their stump-headed arrogance, and if they don't get it together and start following proper procedures they could wind up wasting huge amounts of money for nothing.
Mel Oliverson puts his hand up as a proud member of our local self-appointed guardians of racial purity to address their acute PR problem. He shows just how big that problem is and how little he understands it by peppering his piece with disinforming fear sparks and codewords: "infectious diseases," "narcotics," "intellectual integrity," "ruinous effects," and "flood of illicit immigrants" in just three graphs, not to mention "the undesirable impacts on the long-term nature of our revered 200-year-old inherited culture" -- does anyone here have any doubt about what that means?
The Courier is doing its readers a service in providing Mr Oliverson a platform for showing his intellectual underwear, though I'm sure the editors see it rather differently than I do. Reading this further convinces me that there should be no tolerance in our community for these brownshirts, and eventually they will cause some serious trouble.
That's probably it for this week and most of next, I'm headed north for some R&R. I'll look in now and then for anything really egregious. Enjoy!
I guess Paula Rhoden's story on taxes reminded the unnamed Courier editor that he's still mad at Vic Hambrick. This was disappointing because from the lead I was thinking I might read that the Courier is finally ready to walk away from the Bush fan club. (I really don't get how the editor can write this stuff without having his head explode from the dissonance.)
Anybody see anything new here compared to, say, this*? I don't.
* Don't try to use the link to the original story, it's gone.
Part four features an unusually ugly photo of the councilman and a lot more quotes.
OK, remember back in April when we got our assessment cards and everyone was complaining about how taxes are going sky high? I wrote then that I wasn't reading anything about the actual pricing mechanism for property taxes, which vary from year to year at the whim of the Supes. Well, here it is at last, showing how all that gnashing of teeth was a little silly: tax rate down to its lowest in ten years. The Courier could have easily explained that at the time.
Of course, your property is valued higher than ever, so you won't likely be paying less. Still, the tax bite doesn't match the Courier's bark in its shameless attempt to disinform and stir up a 'taxpayer revolt' that would cost us all a great deal more.
Oops, did I say the Monogram saga was over? I don't suppose we can hope for a new script (Big Money gets its way, ragtag citizens group makes a stink, Big Money wins anyway -- you know, PV Wal-Mart, Williamson Valley, Verde River, etc.).
Maybe I should be selling peanuts in the stands. "GITcher goobers HEEERE!"
Hold the phone, we've got another ringer. So to speak.
Once again the Courier is trying to pass off extreme-right DC propaganda as coming from a local writer. The "Talk of the Town" slug means, um, what was it, Tim?
"LOCAL, LOCAL, LOCAL!"
Oh yeah, I remember now, thanks.
"Local" like the Heritage Foundation. By all means, look it up.
If you have any trouble parsing this BS, let me know, but I think anyone reading this probably knows the score on ethanol, on corn prices, and on ANWR. These bunnies just don't stop.
So far the Courier seems to have missed the declaration of another candidate to replace Richie Rich Renzi, this one sitting state Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick. Maybe something from AP will filter in, since apparently the Courier staffers are all too busy watching cops out the windows.
Update 11:30pm: Ah, here it is, only a couple of days late. Can we hope to hear about the other candidates now?
Yet more waste of editorial space. Note to the unnamed Courier editor: the top-left column is not your daily diary of non-events.
The third installment in Cindy Barks' series on Council candidates is free of untoward characterizations, very good. I know Paul is given to saying unusual things, but even so I have to think that Cindy got at least one quote that was better than "I want to get elected." Oh well.
I read right through this piece wondering when the unfortunately named Joanne Twaddell would get around to telling the story that rates half the front page, only to find no story other than a bunch of PVPD guys got up in jackboot mufti made a big show of trying to arrest an empty motel.
Then, at the very end, comes the clue: all this happened next door to the Courier operation in PV, and during the search police placed the offices "in lock-down" (oooh, how dramatic). Courier employees were involved, so we get a simple failure to maintain proper perspective on what amounts to nothing.
Joanne doesn't tell us who reported the shots in the first place -- a Courier employee, perhaps?
Franz Rosenberger gives us a nice lesson in framing the water issue.
John Perry responds to Al Herron's column on July 16 and staunchly defends his faith. Too bad he got Al's point backward: not that "faith in God leads to tyranny," but rather that would-be tyrants routinely use religion to advance their ambitions. In his way he reinforces Al's argument by demonstrating the common blind spot among the religious that allows them to be so easily manipulated. Moo.
Now here's the unnamed Courier in fine form, standing manfully in the arena of public opinion, muscles flexed artfully, demonstrating his champion finger-wag at an opponent who's chained to the corner post.
I'm thinking I'll send a case of Wheaties down to the editorial office. Someone needs to buf up.
I laughed out loud at this headline. World peace and mass transit. I mean, really.
In the weeds of the copy I get the sense that the editor read the A1 story, but didn't understand it at all.
This illustrates the downside of computers: you can take someone else's work, chop it up and spit it out as something new without passing it through any thought process whatever.
I'm a little behind, but I couldn't pass this one up. Someone, please, tell me what a 'plague of ambivalence' looks like. I feel like I'm reading Brautigan here.
The unnamed Courier editor gets a point for using for using 'fatuous' in a sentence (albeit a pretty clunky one), but loses it again for failing to note the irony.
It's not Mirsada Buric's fault. That headline writer has got to go. Grammar does actually matter. Here were your easy choices:
"Police arrest man, charge attempted murder"
"Police make arrest, charge attempted murder"
"Police charge attempted murder"
(Except they weren't actually police per se, they were sheriff's deputies. Ah well, details, details.)
These would have required just a bit more imagination:
"Attempted murder charge for Glendale man"
"Cafe shooting results in arrest"
"Glendale man arrested in BCC shooting"
"Abused bus passenger exercises 2nd-Amendment right"
OK, well maybe that last was over the top, but you get the picture. It's just not that hard.
Well. Republicans make a big show of addressing a problem, then fail to back it up with the necessary resources. I'm so surprised.
I've been reading that the McCain's Straight-Talk Express is wheels-off, in flames and over a cliff. Could it be, I dunno, his famed ego and arrogance, or might it be more about his talking about sober independence as he does nothing but pander to the extremists and toe the party line? What a loser.
The Courier started a series yesterday on our candidates for city office, and has so far managed two fouls off two pitches.
In yesterday's piece on Steve Blair, Cindy Barks is pretty careful to ensure that characterizations of Blair are left to the man himself, so the paper doesn't get involved in any qualitative judgment of what he's done. Unfortunately the headline writer tossed this professionalism out the window with glee. If you mean to quote someone, use quote marks.
Cindy chose a little drama for her lead today in the piece on Alan DuBiel, characterizing him as "persistent." I've seen him walking my neighborhood in the sun, and sweaty is not a good look for the man, so the adjective may seem inescapable, but it's still against the rules in a political piece.
No regular Courier reader will be surprised if the paper isn't completely circumspect about how it handles political candidates -- or even sitting officials. This time around, though, I'd like to be surprised at its professionalism.
What I've pointed to today are details many might consider niggly, but over time details build up in the voter's mind, and a monopoly paper's most important duty to society is to inform its voters properly, with facts, not bias. I intend to keep an especially close eye on campaign coverage.
I suspect Doug Cook is happy to file this report in hopes that the Monogram story is finally over and he can get on to something more interesting. Some analysis on how the plan has changed since it entered the approval process would be nice, but Doug seems to be touching all the bases with his quotes.
It would have been amazing if the council had approved anything other than standard California commercial development for that corner. The only questions were whether the town would let them leach wet waste into what's left of the river and whether people would be able to use the riverbank as a park. Maybe a last installment to sum up?
And our local representatives apparently don't care what our federal agencies think. As usual, we get a lot of talk and no action from those who can make a real difference.
I'm reading a little frustration into Joanna Dodder's piece as well, like she couldn't get a straight answer from anyone in public office here. You just keep after 'em, Jo, you're on the right side.
Tom Gilbert, who "bases his comments on 40 years of driving in California," offers a complete design for saving lives on 69, which seems to involve mostly traffic lights for the convenience of Diamond Valley residents. I expect I could come up with some sort of design as well, based on 35 years of driving all sorts of places. I don't imagine ADOT would take me any more seriously than they will Mr Gilbert. You see, Tom, the state hires people with actual training in traffic and highway design to do this sort of work. I wonder how you felt at ATT when amateurs were trying to tell you how to do your job.
In America everyone knows more about traffic than anyone else possibly can.
It wouldn't be a recognizable Courier Op-ed page without a little disinformation to play on the readers' fears and ignorant prejudices. This piece, featuring a guy on a beach towel who looks an awful lot like Iraq PM Nuri al-Maliki is particularly odd this week, after he publicly announced that it would be quite happy to do without American forces "anytime they want" and expressed that the our military is paying no attention to what Iraqis need as we shred them randomly in their homes.
Does anyone on this paper read the papers? Just askin'.
Nice. Totally reactive and reactionary, of course, but mostly harmless, and the water-pistol simile is sorta cute. Mercifully short, as well.
More meta: I notice the editorials are all there today under the Opinions tab on the free site. Good job, IT.
I've met Frances Barwood and I like her. She's doing the right thing in trying to get people talking sensible needs and vision over fears. I'm not sure that she's right in betting on the Monogram horse, though, and she seems to be saying that D-H should take what's on offer because the only alternative is worse. The thing is, a working, assiduous P&Z system will help make the thing as good as the law allows.
I'm sure there are some people hopping up and down over there because they can't have the farm back. But those are not the people who should get first dibs on the public mic, and they don't make or break the issue. Let's concentrate instead on what works best for both the community and the owner long-term.
I especially like Cindy Barks' lead here, which adds some historical context often lacking in these stories. As expected, Council has chosen the think-as-small-as-possible option, which will lead to a decade or less of patchy service that won't serve the needs of the community before it collapses and gets labeled as a pointless public boondoggle, thereby dragging down better ideas. The transit advocates are happy that something is happening at last, but the necessary vision and commitment to useful scale is nowhere to be seen. This will be a waste of public money, but not for the reasons its detractors assert. If you won't do it right, Council, leave it for a smarter group, who will.
Joanna Dodder covers a new report from the Sonoran Institute that further confirms what we all know about pumping the Big Chino -- that it threatens the base flow of the Verde -- and essentially (but not overtly) criticizes what we've allowed to happen over the last ten years. It's a good, clear story on what I'm sure is an eye-glazing document, and interested (non-working) readers should consider checking out the meeting tomorrow morning.
Here was an opportunity for some editorial context and analysis that could do some good. Tim even sidled up to it in his column, but ultimately only dropped a hint. We need to reject the false growth/no-growth dichotomy and start working with sustainability as the top priority, and the Courier should be out front on this rather than hanging back and worse.
Yup, there's a controversy in WV that's been in the news for years. The unnamed Courier editor is interested enough to fill the space, but not enough to actually take a position. Well, on the bright side, he's not disinforming the voters this time.
The only thing that make the piece entertaining is the headline writer struggling with the spelling of 'tussle.' Yikes.
Meta: Again today I had to run a search of the free site (on 'tussel,' fwiw) to get a link to the editorial. As of 10:30am today the only editorial under the Opinions tab is from the 14th.
Tim figured out that the water in his well is related to rain, and less rain means less water underground. Very good!
Parting shot: The 20-30-year drought idea is near the optimistic end of the projections, Tim.
Sunday plane crash claims two lives
Two crashes claim lives of Prescott residents
No particular complaints about the stories, but can we have a little more thought about the headlines? Or has the headline writer been replaced with an automatic cliche-generator?
And this on the free site
"Area finally gets some rain; storms bring lightning too"
is far better than the print version:
"FINALLY SOME RAIN AND THUNDER AND LIGHTNING"
Did Joanna maybe take matters in hand when she posted to the site? Heh.
I wouldn't normally have much sympathy for a columnist who turns one in built entirely of old quotes, but I like it that Al understands his place in the universe and gets (as I do about my own scribbling) that what he says on his own doesn't necessarily carry great weight. Quote juxtaposition is a tried and true method for drilling an idea into the reader's forebrain, and in this case its a big, entertaining dope slap to the dead-enders who still manage to find some tortured way of believing in the Bush junta. Would that the editors actually read his stuff.
Duh. So where has the unnamed Courier editor been for the past six years? Head down, grazing in a Fox News salad, that's where.
Meta: Why is this headlined differently on the free site and the print edition? And why, on the free site, are the editorials not showing up anywhere without doing a specific search?
You've got to be kidding: two thirds of the front page for a feature on last year's pop addiction. Imagine the reaction if Joanne Twaddell wrote a sunny, informative piece on cooking and enjoying meth. Once again our editorial team demonstrates its utter insensitivity to the import of its own actions.
Compare this with yesterday's A1 story and it's hard to avoid the conclusion that editorial ideas are distorting the news operation. The bias in the news story was blatant, and today's editorial confirms where that bias originates. The editor imagines himself as a revolutionary, and throws in with garden-variety mob-rule authoritarians playing comic-book cowboy.
It's a little sickening considering the very difficult issues our community and larger society will be facing before the current crop of editors retire to their walled communities and homeowner-association boards, where they belong.
Ha! I'll bet Ed McGavock thought Win Hjalmarson was dead too, so there'd be no one to rebut him. Speaking fluent bureaucratese, Hjalmarson dismantles the critics of his work with cold precision.
Shorter-term residents may not have heard about the Holiday Lakes swindle. It serves as a simple, direct example of what happens to the Verde when you open the taps on the Big Chino too wide, and Hjalmerson was there measuring the effect.
I'm sure the county P&Z commission appreciates the unnamed Courier editor's patronizing tone, but beyond that there seems to be no point to today's bloviation other than "See how smart I am?" Here's a nice pat on the head. Now go eat your vegetables, sport.
Sticker shock for whom? It seems to me that those of us on the loony left have been warning about this kind of risk for decades.
I read past the first couple of grafs and once again I can't figure out what the unnamed Courier editor thinks he's saying.
I'm sure the entire community was deeply concerned that the brownshirts, 'scuse me, yellowshirts, had splintered over different interpretations of the secret handshake, and equally relieved to know that the self-appointed guardians of racial purity will be collaborating to give every available brown-skinned day laborer a hard time. But it's a pretty shameful display on the front page of the daily newspaper of Everybody's Hometown.
For once I can agree completely with a Courier editorial headline. The immigration non-problem and the War on Some Drugs are both trumped-up political issues designed to get reactionaries elected, and should be taken equally seriously -- not at all.
But then I read the piece, in which the unnamed Courier editor leaps a huge logical crevasse from the county budgeting more money for drug interdiction to his pet peeve about scary brown people, and I gather he doesn't take these issues very seriously either. It's so slapdash it seems he scribbled it out while watching O'Reilly on TV.
If you don't care about it anymore, give the job to somebody else, man. This is pathetic.
Sheriff Waugh remains stuck up to his knees in the dung left behind by Buck Buchanan, and Mirsada Buric is doing a pretty good job of reporting the stink. Too bad it's got to splash all the deputies who aren't sex-crazed racist death-metal cokeheads.
Anyone else remember the president of Ironite publicly drinking his own fertilizer product to demonstrate its safety? Now he's gone (elsewhere, not dead, as far as I know) and the EPA is finally getting to work on what to do about the mountain of orange arsenic-laced tailings overshadowing D-H, as well as the mess left by Kuhl's, I gather. Maybe the new town can pump it all up as job opportunities.
Here's what you get when you don't think about the future. The future eventually shows up and we all get stuck with the check. Does this teach us a lesson that might filter through into an editorial?
I've often defended Council against criticism that they just go along with what developers want because they're stupid or evil-hearted. I still don't think any of that is true, but this particular decision is a bit disheartening, in that Council has the example next door of the proposed Fann development that it could be using to set the bar higher. And as usual the City Manager seems much more interested in paving than water, but I wasn't there.
All good work by Cindy Barks.
David Ignatius shills for the Bush administration by rolling out a standard talking point -- if we get out, there'll be a bloodbath! I guess half a million Iraquis already dead and who knows how many maimed doesn't qualify as a bloodbath in Ignatius' book. What planet are these people on, and where can I get some of that crack?
There was a civil war going on in Iraq long before the Bushites invaded -- the steady winners were just in charge of the government and had most of the firepower -- and there will be civil war there until the underlying issues are resolved. Our military involvement there is only making things worse, that's as plain as day.
But I'll look forward to the editors printing a proper rebuttal to this bonehead argument. Our town could profit from open and informed discussion of this issue. There's a national election coming up.
Originally headlined "A Consensus Waiting to Happen," July 12. (free sign-in newly required)
Oh, spare me. More glowering invocations of idealized cowboy culture from our resident wannabe, railing like a mustachioed melodramatist that this developer is acting, um, just like a developer. Puh-leeze!
We've been here before, of course.
You know what, Ben? A person's word has always mattered, and it's always mattered all over this country, not just the "West." You watch way too many cowboy movies on TV, it's time to grow up.
And your headline sucks.
I can't really blame Paula Rhoden for trying to squeeze this information into the form her editor wants, it should have been designed better. We wind up trying to read a spreadsheet without the gridlines, with bits about the actual effects that matter to voters sprinkled among the wreckage. Ack.
Al West disputes Paul Cloke's figures in his June 27 ToT on doubling times vs 100-year water assurances. Even so, West agrees that 100-year assurances are so much BS. So why argue? Perhaps it's his attachment to a false equivalency between developers and 'environmentalists.'
I feel like I just walked into the middle of a meeting. Robert Grossman, a retired DoE environmental engineer who apparently ought to know, says that the Forest Service hasn't done due diligence on the environmental impact of the proposed cement plant in Drake. I can see how this would be a knotty problem considering how hard up the local construction industry is for cement. He ends with the reasonable statement, "This proposed project either should conform to regulations or officials should stop it." My question is: which officials? Nowhere in the piece do we get a sense of what can be done about this or who would do it if the Forest Service sticks to its decisions. Who do we call, Bob?
The unnamed Courier editor recycles Friday's A1 story in the accustomed manner, but towards the end he applies some unaccustomed bite.
Skip over the first few grafs of weird-uncle story, skim the middle bit since you read it last week, and focus on the almost-last graf, in which he calls the mayor and Council "asinine" for wanting something prettier on Prescott's boulevard main entrance than an LA-style freeway.
Heh.
Derek Meurer writes, "With television, the Internet, and many other forms of electronic media vying for attention, it is hard for people to make time to read." I'm confused. I'm reading what he's written, but apparently from his point of view I'm not actually reading, because I have no newsprint in my hands.
I know Alan Foster for years and his work for decades, and I'm sure he never meant to imply that online reading is not reading, as Meurer does on his behalf. Rather, he was clearly talking about reading physical books. Meurer or the editor pretty well passed over that qualifying noun, leaving the impression that the Courier does not understand the meaning of the verb "read." (I could be a lot snarkier about that, but it'd hardly be fair.)
I'm a little tired of old media crying crocodile tears about how new media are causing the death of the culture. Newsprint makes me sneeze, and Email has done more to revive the daily practice of communication through writing than a hundred years of penmanship classes. Get over yourselves, guys.
Hmm. Vic Hambrick's campaign manager, Kathy Lopez, writes to protest the Courier's coverage, which first saw print on May 6 and tailed off over a month ago. Has the Courier been unusually slow to print her letter, or has Lopez been more than a little behind the curve on this? Jumping up and down about it at this late date only serves to keep the issue warm, and that better serves the Courier's editorial position than Hambrick.
Here's the story that should have been on A1 in place of the divorce feature. Of course, it has to be from AP because the Courier editors are not exercised to devote budget to the local angles of this important change in state energy policy.
This is the sort of thing that really affects all of us, now and more so in the future, and our local paper should be helping our community understand its implications and opportunities.
Paula Rhoden turns in what seems to be an installment in the Courier's continuing irregular series on county services that contrasts with the previous press releases and love letters in that she stays off the personalities and provides some substantial information. In fact it seems she experienced the divorce class, took notes and delivers most of the info the actual students get.
It's more like a magazine feature than a news story, probably rating layout on B1, and the Tammy Wynette reference makes me wince, but Paula gets a cookie all the same for assiduous public service on a tough subject.
Today's front-page photo box is an unabashed promotion of a commercial venture. It's particularly irritating given that the Courier largely ignored Terry Stone when he was showing free movies on the square with no commercial interest. But these out-of-towners looking for money from 'sponsors' get the red-carpet treatment. Typical.
Think business section, guys.
OK, Coleridge is a little cooler than Shane, but I still don't need a cultural cliche to start an opinion piece. I hope this is just a lapse and Randall's not being infected by the Courier's editorial stylebook.
Randall runs down a series of unhappy experiences related to water and ruminates on how it will feel to run out of it as we grow our communities into unsustainability. This is all good, though as usual I'd like to see less lamenting and more leadership to action.
Overall the structure isn't bad for delivering some good ideas. But let's not neglect the core craft here, and that's writing. That final mixed metaphor closes the column with the resounding thud of a falling elephant load.
Well, well, I come back to the blog from a little break and the unnamed Courier editor comes up with a piece so stereotypically hackneyed it might be taken for satire if not for its top-left spot in the layout.
Right at the top we have the standard gratuitous reference to a cowboy movie, in a lame attempt to illuminate a hack idea that the editor apparently mistakes for sage insight. This is of course in defense of the expanding production and willy-nilly distribution of deadly weapons for all, on the occasion of the birthday of the AK-47. For me this model designation instantly evokes pictures of African child soldiers, and of course in unmodified form it is completely illegal within the US borders, but that doesn't phase the editor. The local angle here utterly evades me. The editor sees these weapons as tools of freedom, missing entirely that they are far more often tools of oppression and hate. Is this really appropriate use of a small-town editorial column?
The kicker is that all the while the editor is intoning stentoriously about the virtues of this death device, he lets slip just how much he knows about the subject by consistently misspelling "Kalashnikov." Way to go, man.
You won't find any "ripple effect" in the copy, that comes from the headline writer, who just couldn't resist.
I'd like to give the unnamed Courier editor some props here, as it appears that flying-brick-obvious reality may at last be bubbling up through cracks in the floor of the editorial suite. But then he applies witless characterization, apparently attempting to deprive all involved in the issue of public credibility, undermining the reader's hope for positive change.
No, no one involved wants to "stop growth cold," and if the editor had been paying attention he'd have seen that in the recent public comments on the proposed new Fann development near the airport, where the developer seems to be sincere about doing things differently. Similarly, there's no "camp" advocating growth at any cost, though Carol Springer would be happy to assemble one if she could find enough halfwits to carry her flag.
This sort of characterization says far more about the editor's lack of interest in what's really happening than the progress we're making toward solving our water problems. It's good that he's finally starting to connect the dots on a picture most of us have understood for a decade or more, and I invite the editor to start showing up at the meetings and listen. He's way behind the curve.
Paul Cloke turns in a geeky but pertinent perspective on what the current growth numbers would really bode for the future if they were to continue unchecked. It might have been useful to use the word 'sustainability' in here somewhere, but I'm sure it'll occur to anyone with the fortitude to slog through his prose.
The juxtaposition with today's editorial is interesting.
Every year at this time we get daily features on Prescott's annual indulgence in animal domination. As I've written before, I don't do sports coverage, I just wish this craven pandering to commercial interest was wasting space in the sports section rather than page one.
Cindy Barks covers what was pretty clearly another dull meeting where the Council spent valuable time teething over information it's had for years. This gives me the old sinking feeling, that once again they'll take a visionary concept with huge potential and compromise it into meaninglessness and waste.
I've said it before: you don't build mass transit in baby steps. Extensive routes, hours and frequency are necessary to success, and the best way to sour people on the idea is to make them pay for something they can't really use.
I have to give the unnamed Courier editor some points today for applying himself a little more than usual in terms of original writing, timing the issue properly for voter effect and avoiding any mention of cowboys or dated pop culture. Hooray. But he loses points again for trying to make voters dumber.
His use of charged buzzwords in place of thinking is obvious. Less obvious is his employment of poll numbers to support his preconceptions. A more nuanced and reliable analysis is easily available from the Pew Center, directly contradicting several of the editor's core points. The overall point that most people say they don't like the bill is true as far as it goes, but not because they have a considered understanding of the issues or the bill.
Here the editor is fulfilling only his chosen role as part of the right-wing echo chamber, where he should be getting past his personal prejudices to serve the interests of the community. A personal, bylined column is fundamentally different from an unsigned editorial in this regard, and this piece should have come with a byline.
Cindy Barks covers the basics pretty well, but I can't help feeling that something's missing from this story.
We have the major business players supporting a two-percent bed-tax rise to allow for more tourism promotion. We have an apparently small group of hotels resisting, and Councilcritters compromising as a result, probably in part because of ideological opposition to taxes.
What's bugging me is that if City-sponsored promotion is making the Chamber happy, why are some hotels not happy? Might there be some favoritism going on in the promotions? If investing in promotion is working, why don't the Chamber members just get together and invest the money that Council now says it won't extract in taxes? Might the tax regime be creating a market distortion that some businesses can use to advantage over others?
I'd like to see more on this.
Anyone who's watched Tom Staley on the PUSD board will not be surprised at this story, in which his hot-headedness gets a little out of hand. This ran him straight into conflict with the ridiculous over-cautiousness of our lawnforcement policy today, in which overreaction is not just tolerated, it's required. Mirsada Buric went beyond summarizing the police report to get comments from Staley, all good. The recording of the 911 call on the free site is welcome too.
