A1: "City begins tower construction to eliminate communication 'dead spots'"

Another good use of the page-one photobox, featuring a dynamic photo and a fine straight-news story by Mirsada Buric.

Letters: Blowback

More reaction today for Bob Shimizu and Vic Hambrick. Also check out John K's collection of comments on the assessor stories.

Talk of the Town: "Developers must pay their fair share"

CV Town Manager Bill Pupo makes his case against the A1 story that bugged me on April 30. He implies in his second graph that the developer planted the story, and obliquely calls out the Courier for sloppiness. He then goes on to state pretty clearly the town's position.

This is the second time in recent weeks we've seen a municipal manager responding on the opinion page to questions the Courier should have answered on page one. Whether or not you trust the word of the bureaucrats, they should get their say up front in controversies involving them.

A1: "Charlie Orme, founder of famed school, dead at 88"

The page-one obit is usually reserved for true community leaders, and given his contribution to education in our area, I expect Charlie Orme qualifies. Teachers matter.

A1: "Liquor licenses continue to generate city debate"

Cindy Barks writes it pretty straight, but I expect your reading of this story will vary with your point of view on the issue.

I have a certain amount of learned sympathy for Councilcritter Luzius here, as I spent many years working to get a public board of directors to work in a more professional manner. There's a culture of slack that may be endemic to Americans generally, leading people to minimize the importance of process, precision and showing up on time. You can go overboard in the other direction too, of course, and that will be the other reaction to Mr Luzius here. But rather than arbitrary bureaucratism, I can see that what he's working on may be the good-ol-boy insiderism that we dislike in other areas. If you want your staff to act professionally, you need to be as sharp at the top.

Verde Independent: "Renzi, Hambrick could have dodged current spotlight"

Here's an example of how an editorial related to this breaking news can express disapproval while maintaining journalistic integrity and credibility. Contrast this with yesterday's Courier editorial.

Talk of the Town: "Day laborers deserve compassion, not persecution"

At last the Courier allows someone to stand up and tell the truth about the day-labor non-problem. Dennis Duvall writes with clarity and strength, an adult walking into what has been a kindergarten howl. How refreshing! The idea that the Council might reverse course and designate the Lincoln Street wedge as a day-labor sanctuary is over the top, but it also throws a high-contrast light on just how nasty this business has become.

Letters: Strip-mining Prescott

Steve Courteol and Boyd Johnson state the obvious in today's letterbox. We also have Ken Coleman desperately wanting to believe that there are two equal sides to the climate crisis, and Louis Peters complaining about the lack of curbside glass recycling.

A1: "Springer reported assessor concerns to attorney"

Joanna Dodder's third installment in the Hambrick-Townsend story focuses on what the Queen Bee knew and when she knew it, partially answering my question from Sunday . It looks like there may be a little buck-passing going on at the county building. Check those final quotes from Mr Hunt -- do you smell something?

A1: "Park West rezoning gets council approval"

Solid, balanced reporting on what happened in the meeting, with enough background to knit it together. Another cookie for Cindy Barks.

A1: "Local vets build area's first equine hospital"

I've patronized Prescott Animal Hospital and I think it's a great bunch of people. There's clearly a news story here, but I think Paula Rhoden or the editors may be a little too used to writing local-business puff pieces, and so got hold of the wrong angle.

The lead is in the fourth graph, where we learn that Prescott has "the first all-equine hospital north of Phoenix." Starting there, the story would have focused on the benefit to the community and less on the advertising value.

A1: "ERAU chancellor steps down, leaves legacy"

Standard inside-feature stuff.

A3: "Prescott Valley police arrest five suspects after assault probe"

Okay, today Ken Hedler turns in something more informative, following up yesterday's A1 notes dump on the brouhaha in PV. Take a look at the mug shots and you've got a pretty good idea of what motivates the mayhem.

This is becoming a rhythm. Fur starts flying, usually in PV, the reporter gets some of it but really has no idea what happened, and page one goes to press. In the next day or two the rest of the story comes out, and the followup usually looks completely different from the preliminary.

It seems the editors are trying to compete with local radio on breaking news, which is a mug's game. Better to hold the story until you can tell it intelligibly.

Editorial: "Hotel heiress getting what she deserves"

It ought to be immediately apparent to the unnamed Courier editor that this topic has absolutely no relevance to our community, and the prurient few who might be interested don't read.

Waste of space.

Cartoon: Afghan torture

"The torture of Afghan detainees continues."

Oh.

It's supposed to be funny.

I suppose I should feel better about our country imprisoning and torturing people without legal basis or protection for them.

Funny.

Assessing the assessor

Joanna Dodder adds some details and a correction to her previous good investigative work on the connections between Elise Townsend and Victor Hambrick. The unnamed Courier editor weighs in with the conclusion that Mr Hambrick is dirty enough to vote out if he doesn't resign. That might seem a bit intemperate to readers who favor innocence until guilt is proven. It also might seem a bit self-serving in that the editor favored Mr Hambrick's opponent in the election.

Guys, you have an opportunity to build some credibility here. Let Joanna do her job and don't screw it up with self-important tantrums.

Update, noonish: A thought: If the smell test is a proper criterion, why are the editors not calling for the resignation of Richie Rich Renzi?

Wiederaenders: "Hints give new meaning to Big 4-0"

Tim studies his moustache and adds a stanza to the Courier's paean for Gheral Brownlow. I looked for the "meaning" promised in the headline, but I couldn't find it. Don't fret, Tim, you'll know the midlife crisis when it appears.

Update, 9:20: Name fixed, thanks anonymous.

Jackson: "‘Crown jewel’ getting needed accessories"

Jerry turns in a pretty well-structured column celebrating downtown development. You can argue with his point of view, but he writes it clearly and with some style.

A1: "Asking for more"

Shari Lopatin gives us the perspective of PUSD teachers and school staff on the pay issue, with a little bit of excuse-making from an assistant superintendant and an informative sidebar comparing other nearby districts. What I hoped to see was some tracking of the money the legislature has been adding to school spending in recent years specifically, they say, for teacher pay. That gets into what's happening at the board and upper-administrative levels, of course.

A1: "Police arrest man hiding in PV home"

Ken Hedler's barricade story suffers primarily from hasty writing and absent-minded editing. Beyond the usual kitchen-sink rundown of the police reports, Ken talked to some of the bystanders, and that's good, but the quote from Jim Gibbons, for example, makes no sense. The whole thing just feels slapdash.

A1: "Crash victim remains critical"

On a slow news day you have to promote something to page one, and today the editor picked a standard police-blotter piece by Mirsada Buric. But it appears there wasn't enough in the story to fill the space, so the staff (Doug Cook?) doubled its size by adding some feature boilerplate about motorcycles -- little of which would appear to relate to this story.

Herron: "Shimizu's anti-gun control stance goes too far"

That's what I'm talking about, Al. Take a stand and write with vigor.

I like that he includes Ben's Email address as a reply contact as well, making a cute little statement.

Editorial: "Congress isn't concerned about the crucial issues"

Isn't it interesting how closely the "crucial issues" here track with Republican campaign talking points?

I have no doubt that the Congress would be working on truly crucial issues if it felt that the Current Resident could be persuaded to allow the legislation to become law -- crucial issues like: our broken health-care system; the climate change that threatens our economy, our food supply and, as in Kansas this weekend, our lives; our public infrastructure; our suspect voting system; pick your issue. As it is, the Congress is concentrating on the public issue that voters clearly agree is most crucial right now -- getting our troops out of Iraq. That is responsive representation, exactly what our system is designed to provide.

Does the editor simply neglect to mention that the single person most responsible for creating a "Social Security debacle" is the Current Resident, who is spending our Social Security trust fund in Iraq far faster than any previous administration has dared? Or is that a conscious choice?

But his real goal here is to criticize the extension of hate-crimes protection to the disabled and sexually different. He fails to understand the difference between a crime and a hate crime -- or perhaps he wants to make the reader dumber in that regard. It's really pretty simple. If you assault a black person, it's an assault. If you assault a black person because she's black and a prosecutor can prove it, it becomes a hate crime and additional penalty is applied. Saying "the government will prosecute crimes against certain classes with greater enthusiasm than crimes against every-day folks" with this is evil demagoguery.

This goes beyond opinion, folks. These are lies.

Letters: Property taxes

Kathy Lopez offers a clue to people who are up in arms about their property assessments. Turns out there's no reason to panic. Surprise!

The address she provides isn't what you really want, though. Here's a link to the actual presentation, in PDF format.

Why are the readers (in this case, I suspect, a county employee) doing the work the Courier should be doing to inform voters on this? It would be so easy! One might conclude that the editors are happy to have people ignorantly agitated about property taxes.

A1: "Holistic medicine for animals gaining acceptance"

I've met Todd Metcalf, he's a great person and very good at what he does. That doesn't make him news. Again, as in the piece below, also by Paula Rhoden, we have a puffy, uncritical profile more suited to a slick Chamber of Commerce magazine than a newspaper. I'd really like to know the thought process behind this assignment.

Then there's the headline, an assertion completely unsupported by the text. That's a high-school mistake, guys.

A1: "County health department provides services from womb to tomb"

This profile of Yavapai County Community Health Services by Paula Rhoden is done well enough -- for a magazine. I'm not clear at all what makes it page-one news. The public-information angle makes a certain amount of sense as a B1 feature. But there's exactly zero information from any outside perspective on how well the agency is doing its job or handling its budget, things voters need to know to evaluate this public service. I would like to know that the Courier is looking out for the community. Uncritical puffery bodes otherwise.

A1: "New Elks' manager brings the show back home"

Lorin McLain's introduction of Joe Place is meant to highlight policy changes for the facility intended to make a difference in its success. The answers are pretty vague, however -- not necessarily the fault of Lorin, of course.

I interviewed Joe last week, and information I got is at odds with some of this. I plan a followup with him this week for the Read It Here piece.

Now here's what really ropes me off: Why can't the Courier figure out how to write the theatre's name? People are so frequently writing this wrong, and the Courier should be helping, not making it worse. It's not plural possessive as we have in the headline (Elks'), it's not singular possessive as we have in the photo caption (Elk's), its a simple plural: Elks. This ignorant apostrophe-tossing is just ludicrous. Lorin apparently got it right, everyone else messed up.

Update, May 9: Joe has never conducted a symphony or managed a theatre. His relevant experience is entirely church-based, as a musician, music director and producer.

A1: "Magazine scammers back in Prescott"

This alert by Mirsada Buric is proactive, well targeted, well placed in the paper and, we hope, timely. I'd be awfully surprised if the tactics and target areas remain the same after this morning, of course, and if the reader is expecting a scammer to mention Walter Cronkite and she doesn't, the reader may decide to go along with the gag anyway. But what can you do?

A3: "Ayers takes over as county administrator at supervisors meeting"

Don't be fooled by the headline, the meat in this agenda report by Paula Rhoden is way down, where we find out that the county wants to spend another $42,000 of your money to further study what we already know about the Verde base flow.

Cartoon: Reining Him In

Surprise! -- reality. And you thought it couldn't happen.

A1: "County assessor had close ties to Townsend"

Joanna Dodder follows up on her April 22 piece, turning in what looks remarkably like some real investigative reporting. I'm liking this. I hadn't heard that the Queen Bee and Mal Barrett were involved in getting Townsend to back out of running for the Senate, and the connection to Assessor Hambrick is all new to me. So far it seems to be all about appearances, and small-town life inevitably involves a lot of cross-connections, but it sure doesn't pass the smell test. I have to wonder how many prominent people in town have known about this and kept quiet, which did no favors for Mr Hambrick, whether he's dirty or not.

A1 "Density, access highlight new plan"

Just what the people of D-H want: another new plan. In wandering this fog of numbers I find that the public open space along the riverbed offered in the previous plan has mysteriously disappeared in favor of a private park for the gated enclave. Who'd have thought?

Goodman: "Hypocrisy aside, morality programs not working"

Here is the second Goodman column in a row (the last was on April 25) that the Courier has run full-length and largely unmolested. It originally ran as "Hoisted on His Own Pizza" on May 3.

The following will be real inside baseball, so if your eyes glaze over feel free to move on. I'd like to highlight a few of the specific changes to the text, to illustrate what I mean by arbitrary edits and introduced errors.

Goodman: "A for abstinence, B for be faithful, and C for condoms only if you belong to a high-risk group that flunks A and B."
Courier: "A for abstinence, B for be faithful, and C for condoms if you belong to a high-risk group that flunks A and B."

Here it appears that the copy editor wanted to tighten the paragraph a bit to eliminate what we used to call a tail-break in my shop, half a word on a line by itself. This also helps fit the copy into the available space. The way to do this is to substitute a shorter word or eliminate one. The editor's blue pencil chose 'only,' a nice, short word. But it also removed an important nuance from Goodman's sentence. The editor could have eliminated 'George' a little earlier in the graph without harm. In context the specific choice seems to be an attempt to 'correct' Goodman's thinking.

Goodman: "Joining a dishonor role that includes anti-child predator predator Mark Foley and anti-homosexual homosexual Ted Haggard ..."
Courier:"Joining a dishonor role that includes anti-child predator Mark Foley and anti-homosexual homosexual Ted Haggard ..."

In this example we may have a similar tail-break situation, and again the editor could have elided "Randall" farther down for no foul. Instead s/he arbitrarily deflated Goodman's perhaps too-cute but nonetheless intelligible parallel construction in favor of gibberish. Perhaps s/he didn't understand the sentence.

Goodman: "The $1.5 billion that has been thrown into teaching abstinence-until-marriage has made no difference in delaying the onset of sex."
Courier: "The $1.5 billion Bush has thrown into teaching abstinence-until-marriage has made no difference in delaying the onset of sex."

The bosses have decreed that no passive construction shall be left unmolested, and the copy editor dutifully applied the blue pencil. But an active construction requires a subject, so s/he had to invent one, in this case "Bush." Perhaps Ms Goodman reserves her displeasure exclusively for the Current Resident on this score, but she didn't write it that way, and the change injects a nuance that she expressly avoided.

Goodman: "... abstinence-only earmarks on AIDS prevention funding are undermining success."
Courier:"... abstinence-only earmarks on AIDS prevention money are undermining success.

I have no clue why the copy editor made this change.

Editorial: "Hope for the best, plan for the worst"

The editor writes what no rational person will dispute. But what should we do about it? Close the forest early, maybe? The Courier could assist in moving public opinion to support an always-unpopular Forest Service decision. No position.

Letters: Guns are good, really!

You know the drill.

Coming: A new Courier site

Among the many cool people at yesterday's Blogfest I met John Kamin, the Courier Web editor, who told me that he's working on a new version of the paper's onlne presence that will refocus on the free site, eliminating the registration hassle and design complaints related to the subscription site. Soon we'll be able to see the entire paper unhindered in one place. I don't know that this was John's idea -- I should have asked -- but it's all good and warrants a special cookie. Good meeting you, JK!

John's put up some summaries and links to other local bloggers on his blog, and promises more. (According to my notes, Sadie is aka Sadira Conley.) Check 'em out.

Day of rest

I'm still bushed and brain-dead from last night's gig. I'll try to get some new stuff up after dinner.

Reagan: "Candidates are shying away from Fox"

Mike thinks that if you discover the game is rigged, you should not only stay in it, you're a coward if you walk away, nyah nyah. Did he have a previous career as a carney barker? I dunno. Blindingly stupid stuff.

Originally "Profiles in Cowardice" from Thursday, carried more or less verbatim with a couple of edits to stamp out the evil passive voice and make the piece look up-to-date.

Editorial: "Mass transit may not break the bank"

Sorry, unnamed Courier editor, Cindy Barks already turned this story in, and she wrote it better. What works is to consider stating an opinion before sitting down to write an opinion piece.

I know, it's as hard for you to admit you've been wrong all along as it's been for the Queen Bee, perhaps harder, since you've devoted so much ink to trashing the concept and the people who've advocated it for so many years. There's opportunity here, though, if you don't dawdle too long, to get out in front of the issue and help make it happen.

Letters: The hits just keep on comin'

Five short ones today: Lou Harris agrees with me that it was evil, Dorothy Williamson wonders what the parking garage is for if not this, Bill Sonsin warns that our Congresscritter isn't convicted yet (well, not much), Glen Brose nails the tried-and-true method we can expect to see used here to kill off bus service, and non-scientific type Don Wallace thinks Terry Lovell should get another 99 climate-crisis-deniers together and smack down Al Gore. (Here's a clue, Don: he can't.)

A1: "Surgery forces Brownlow to miss marathon"

This is a nice little love-letter for the former supervisor, perfectly suited to a very-small-town paper. I'm sure there are some people out there who think of GB fondly and long for a return to his reign as king of the Supes. No one should have to deal with cancer, particularly with our horrible health-care system. Not sure why it's page-one material, though.

Which reminds me, we heard awhile ago that Bob Bell was getting surgery, but not whether he got better.

More coming

Check back in a few hours for more, we're recording the show early today.

A1: "Death penalty trial is on track"

The death penalty can always be expected to cause a certain amount of breathless drama, and I wonder whether this was a factor in Mirsada Buric's court-beat story. The coverage is fine, I just tripped over the lead and fell flat on my face.

"The David Aggas trial scheduled for summer appears on track, unless the state settles his death penalty case stemming from ...."

On first read I took this to mean that if the state settles a death-penalty case, a trial of the same person on a different matter will not go forward -- which makes no sense. In this situation the writer's (or editor's) knowledge of what s/he means to say allows ambiguity to slip in. If I read it with extra emphasis on "settles," I can hear the intended meaning. The editor could have cleared this up quite simply:

"The death-penalty trial of David Aggas appears on track for summer unless the state settles his case, which stems from ...."

A1: "City looks to beef up recycling"

This story by Cindy Barks puzzles me. We have a contract with a company to take our recyclables at cost to us of $30 per ton. We put that contract out for a new bid and the same company wins it at $10 per ton. There's no indication in the story of whether the specification in the contract has changed. Excuse my cynicism, but it's difficult to believe that the company is giving up two-thirds of its revenue on this deal without some balancing factor.

When they removed glass bins around town, requiring us to take our glass to the transfer station instead, City staff created a recent history of arbitrarily cutting back on recycling services without public input. In covering this story, answering a couple of basic questions would either inform the reader of what we'll be giving up in the deal or assure us that we're not.

There's a cute juxtaposition of this story with a an evocative photo by Jo Keener showing PV residents dealing with tons of trash. Page-one irony, perhaps?

Editorial: "'Immigrant rights' is a true oxymoron"

The unnamed Courier editor gives himself a star today, apparently for throwing rocks in all directions at once. Big rocks, that don't fly far before thudding into the dirt.

We have a rock aimed at immigrants, lots of rocks for illegal immigrants (the editor forgets the difference), a rock for Dems, whom he thinks want "a ready-made dependent class" that can vote but can't vote, a rock for Republican labor exploiters, a rock for amnesty, another for people who don't speak English well enough for the editor to get his lawn done properly, a rock for the Feds for failing to employ the magic alien technologies they've been keeping secret that would seal the border, and a big fat rock for Thomas Jefferson, who held certain truths to be self-evident.

Luckily, no one was harmed.

Robinson: "Traffic-stop searches follow racial lines"

Again, we suffer some arbitrary editing and introduced errors, but today's non-right-leaning Courier offering, originally headlined "Pulling Over for Prejudice," is full-length and only lightly bruised by our editors.

I should add that it's not actually today's column, but rather yesterday's. Today's Robinson column is "Lost in the Fog With Commander Guy."

Letters: Smackdown Friday

Today we have three cogent responses to various letters and opinions appearing in the Courier, including one to Terry Lovell's April 15 ToT from an actual meteorologist. Editors, maybe Dale Meyer can write the balancing opinion we've all been anticipating for most of a month, since the expert you did ask is just not getting it done.

The fourth letter, from an unhappy customer at the ZZ Top concert, I could swear I've seen before. Is this a repeat?

A1: "PV police arrest three boys for arson"

I hope we all appreciate that three little kids with a lighter accidentally setting a bush on fire rates six inches of page one in our local paper. No snark here, I mean it.

A1: "Petroglyph fence to remain in subdivision plans"

Today's page-one photobox highlights what seems a good-news story on a subject of broad concern to Prescott residents. We couldn't save the Dalke land as open space, but we can at least hold back the bulldozers and put a little fence around some of the above-ground archaeological treasure that we know about.

I'd better stop there, I'm starting to get depressed.

A1: "Springer reverses course on public transit"

Now this is news: The Queen Bee inadvertently reads the proposal and discovers she's been wrong all along. Personal growth is a wonderful thing, innit?

Good work, Cindy, including the bit at the end from Norwood, who will be the real problem child.

A1: "Hampton Inn to come to ‘downtown’ PV"

Nice of the Courier to print this little promotion for the Fains -- they need so much help to make any money, you know. I do like the quotes in the headline, indicating a downtown only so-called.

This should have been in the Business section with the other press releases, guys.

A1:"Custom car show rides into town"

Nice to see some advance coverage of an old-car charity show. I haven't been tracking this for the last couple of years, but when I was doing this regularly we could always count on the Courier ignoring us, even with events that took over the square for a weekend. It's a press release, but it's got a picture and it's placed prominently, all good.

Coming: Dems back Renzi on DOJ probe

Via AZ Congress Watch (great work over there), today the Arizona Democratic Party issued this statement:

“Rick Renzi’s assertion that the Justice Department is trying to influence elections in Arizona is extremely serious and should be investigated,” said David Waid, Chairman of the Arizona Democratic Party. “Over the last two weeks, the FBI has raided Renzi’s family business and he has been fined by the FEC for violating campaign finance laws, Arizonans deserve to know whether these are legitimate investigations.”

Coming: Simon announces

I've just heard that Ellen Simon has filed for the AZ-1 seat soon to be vacated by Richie Rich Renzi. That's two so far.

Cohen: "Dick Cheney will lie, denying that he's a liar"

The Courier editors give us a truncated version of this Cohen column, headlined at Real Clear Politics as "Kucinich's Case Against Cheney." (It's from yesterday, but for some reason has yet to appear on the WaPo site.) For you scorekeepers out there, it's 297 out of 758 words, broken mid-paragraph. So again it's liberal-opinion-as-filler, but on the upside the headline is sort of intelligible and there's no editing inside to screw it up further. A very simple slashing.

Editorial: "Anti-day labor bill’s veto was political"

The unnamed Courier editor concludes that the Governor's intention is political. Apparently he has a stringer inside her head.

I'll give you what the Courier hasn't: the bill, which makes it a crime to stand in certain places with an intention. It does not, of course, provide any criterion for determining a person's intention in the absence of doing anything other than stand. Or maybe stop to light a cigarette. I'm not the lawyer Janet is, but this bothers even lowly old me.

The Courier editor likes this bill. I wonder whether he's actually read it. Perhaps he likes it because he can always tell what a person's intention is.

Talk of the Town: "Gun control proponents turning us into cowards"

Bob Shimizu, whom I know as a fellow jazz musician, runs down the standard talking points at length and with gusto, offering nothing you haven't read before on the Courier editorial page. His big idea: to address the big problem of mass killings by psychopaths, an event less likely to kill you than a lightning strike on a clear day, we should allow permit holders to carry their guns on campus. Presumably no permit holder would ever use it to hurt anyone.

More gunfights! That's what we need.

Letters: Twin rants

James Baker can't figure out why local lawnforcement can't enforce laws over which it has no jurisdiction, and Susan Patricks wants to give Elise Townsend a punch in the nose. The interesting bit is the correction related to yesterday's letter from Amy Reyes, citing an "editing error" -- was it Amy's error, or the editor's?

Cartoon: Absolut Yeltsin

I expect the Courier editors celebrate the demise of the Soviet Union, yet in a tawdry example of doublethink, they present the man who actually led that action, on the occasion of his death, as a bad pun on a commercial. Classy, guys. Knock a guy when he's dead.

A1: "April offers no relief as fire season approaches"

There's blessed relief from the usual fluff in today's page-one photobox, as Joanna Dodder provides an actual news story that should matter to everyone living here. Clear writing, good detail, Joanna gets a cookie.

A1: "Lowe's construction site raises concerns"

Cindy Barks paints us a picture of discomfited Councilcritters grilling the Lowe's representatives over the mess they're making. What I'm not seeing is any indication of whether the construction crews are doing anything that Council didn't approve. It reads a bit like a show for the complainers, but without that crucial bit of information, we can't draw a conclusion.

A1: "Two teens prompt two pursuits in stolen jeep incident"

As I hoped, Mirsada Buric turns in a followup on the pursuit story from May 1. Together the stories present an object lesson in reporting.

Both rely heavily on police reports, including raw tips from witnesses. I'll focus on just one example. One of those tips in the preliminary report describes the perps as men in their 20s. Once they're in cuffs we learn that they were both 15.

This detail colors each story for the reader. In the first we learn that adult criminals are lurking in wait to steal cars. In the second they are bored teenagers hanging around looking for a thrill. These are very different lessons.

This is why I characterized this and other details in the first story as 'clutter' -- not because I knew the story better than the reporter, but because they didn't tell the reader anything useful, and we could expect that most of them were junk.

A11: "Council tables vote on Monogram’s plans for Young’s Farm"

Doug Cook pulls together the relevant facts, but someone buried the lead.* The D-H Council tabled the decision, true enough: to the next council, essentially passing the hot potato. Maybe that's the smart thing to do, but I think it's an important angle, perhaps indicating just how controversial this development is. Since the Courier has taken an editorial position on this decision, it should be more circumspect in its news coverage of the topic.

* Yes, I know that journos love to spell this as 'lede.' All editors make style decisions, and this is mine, for me: 'lede' is elitist insider jargon, as yet unaccepted in standard dictionaries.

Coming?: Renzi speaks a puzzle

Found on Think Progress:

Yesterday in an interview with Phoenix’s KPNX, Renzi spoke for the first time since the FBI raid and said that he believes he is being smeared by the Justice Department. He refused to take any responsibility for the land deal, instead charging — without any evidence — that the leaks on the investigation were “lies.” He added that “to make that up and put that out means the Department of Justice was engaged in electioneering and that needs to be investigated.”

Does he believe it, or is he just flailing?

A1: "$500 rewards offered in search for 22 wanted felons"

I dunno what to think about this, it just feels kinda seedy. What do you think?

A1: "Locals come out strongly in support of Mesa Airline"

Cindy Barks summarizes the Council echo chamber about scheduled passenger air service. The missing bit is that Council hosted the same debate and made the same vote last time this came up, but the DOT went with the other guys anyway, so we might like to know why it might go differently this time.

Cindy didn't write the headline that gets the company's name wrong, so no blame there.

A1: "Election commission drops charges against Renzi"

This AP report, the main Renzi story across the mainstream media today, is a fascinating study in lipstick on a pig.

If you don't read too closely, it appears that Renzi has been exonerated of wrongdoing in his 'reporting errors' related to campaign finances. You might just skip over the $25,000 fine as some sort of incidental expense. That's a conviction, folks, but it's soft-pedaled in favor of another point of investigation that the FEC decided was properly sorted out.

There's a tipoff a few graphs in, where we read briefly about "another FEC matter' involving the DNC, clearly placed to help minimize the judgment against Renzi. Perhaps the reader won't notice the difference between a sitting Congressman, subject to House ethics rules, and a political organization.

There will be more on our Congresscritter.

A1 and Editorial: The Wal-Mart fine

Cookies all around.

On the front page under "Wal-Mart committee will pay $22,500," Ken Hedler puts together a clear and concise report on the settlement of the legal issue that's dogged the Wal-Mart support campaign since before the election, this time leaving out any backhand slap at the opposing team. The research exposes the facts of the matter and leaves them for the reader to analyze.

Following up, in "Wal-Mart 'disagreement' leaves many questions," the unnamed Courier editor moves that analysis forward, and puts a couple of pertinent questions for the future. While he reflexively asserts that the result of the election was foregone despite the hanky-panky and neglects to note the Courier's direct role in supporting that side of the issue, I think overall we can say this is how local-issue coverage should be done.

Letters: Questions, questions

It's almost a theme. Virginia Lewis asks the Courier to cover the local shortage of health-care providers accepting "Medicare alternative" insurance. Gary Sanderson asks about the letters policy related to out-of-state correspondence. Craig Farr asks why the Courier published nothing sooner on the Townsend Construction story, and whether there are other such stories on the spike. All good questions with no replies from the editors.

Meanwhile Amy Reyes responds admirably to questions about the PHS prom location. Good on her.

Talk of the Town: "Agricultural tax exemption is being abused"

Bill and Laura Fields seem to have done a pretty good job of research to support their thesis that ranchland tax exemptions are both unfair and widely abused. The writing's clear and to the point, making a good model for local-issue discourse. I plan to ask Rep Mason about this on the weekend.

Cartoon: White flag

Do the Courier editors really believe that Prescott needs more reinforcement of a talking point that only the Current Resident seems to believe? When both active and retired military, soldiers and officers on the ground, legislators on both sides of the aisle, diplomats, the intelligence community and the majority of Americans have reached a clear and public consensus that no good can come of continuing the illegal Iraq occupation, when the original public objectives of overthrowing Saddam and installing an elected government have been achieved and no other clear objective has even been put forward for consideration, how can one possibly characterize ending the pain as 'surrender'? Because you've got a specific political agenda, that's how.

Guys, you're trying to make your readers dumber again. You have much better stuff available from 'the right' that you could be using, and that goes for your editorial page as a whole. Look for cooler, smarter rhetoric and you may begin to win back some credibility.

B1: "Area teens learn about life’s pitfalls"

In the annual feature on Teen Maze, Derek Meurer talks with the organizer at length and describes what it's about. What's missing is any reaction from the customers about why they come, what they think of it, or whether it's effective. It's always looked to me like a colossal exercise in preaching to the converted. Is there any evidence to the contrary?

Coming: The story that keeps on giving

AZ Congress Watch links to two more angles on the Rick Renzi story today, one from Harper's and the other from Roll Call. At this rate the Congressman will soon need his own weekly supplement.

Letters: A spanking for the Elks, a cookie for the editors

Today's assorted mailbag brings us a nice bouquet of posies from a couple of recent immigrants fleeing commie-occupied San Bernardino, and a smackdown of Parker Anderson blaming the audience for not showing up at the Elks.

I've got that bone to pick with Parker as well, and if all goes well you'll see it in Read It Here pretty soon.

B1, Jackson: "The beauty of Prescott Pops Symphony"

Thanks for covering the Pops, Jerry. You're right about that rock.

Editorial: "Monogram's plan is worth consideration"

Walled enclaves good. More houses inevitable. Zombie say send more concrete.

A1: "Smoking ban unpopular at PV bars"

I'm so surprised. Nice little stroke in here for Brad Fain, though.

A1: "Police look for men who sped away in Jeep"

I expect there'll be a followup to this clunky police-report filing by Mirsada Buric, since it raises a few very pointed questions among those of us who remember the carnage left by a high-speed chase into Prescott from PV a few years ago and the official excitement about (and big money spent on) regional dispatch facilities. From a writing standpoint, the paper had all day to work on this one, it shouldn't read like it was dashed off in the five minutes before deadline.

O'Reilly: "Not sad to see Rosie leave 'The View'"

Bill looks into the mirror and anoints himself as an oracle. Carried more or less verbatim -- the odd exception being the Courier's deletion of 'Ms.' from his references to O'Donnell -- under the headline "Adieu, Rosie." If you're really bored, check out billoreilly.com for the columns that the Courier didn't carry, and speculate on why the editors find this one more interesting.

Happy Holiday

The first of May has a grand tradition as a holiday, going back millenia, due to its position more or less halfway between the solstice and equinox. Whether for you it's Beltane, Walpurgisnacht, International Workers Day, Labor Day or just plain May Day, live it up.

The US is characteristically odd one out on this because of the Red Scare, which moved our Labor Day to September, but it's still a sort-of-official day, as noted by The New York Times, "Law Day."

In keeping with tradition, President Bush has issued a proclamation inviting Americans today to “celebrate the Constitution and the laws that protect our rights and liberties.” It rings more than a little hollow, though, as he continues to trample on civil liberties in the war on terror, and stands by an attorney general who has politicized the Justice Department to a shocking degree.

The less committed a president is to the law, the more need there is for Law Day, which makes it a holiday whose time has come.

Coming: Yet more Renzi

Via AZ Congress Watch, today we learn that Grant Woods has either been pushed aside or jumped ship as Renzi's lawyer, the East Valley Trib is calling on the Congressman to pack it in, and the Daily Star has come out with an interesting angle on one of his land-swap deals. Tons o'fun. I'll watch for what gets printed.

Besides, 200 is a nice round number for posts in April.

Coming: Plugging the dike

I'm looking forward to the Courier editorial responding to Virginia Governor Tim Kaine's executive order today expanding background checks for gun-seekers. Place your bets.

Background on the Luer Rocket story

In comments this morning Steve LaVigne offers an inside angle on the story from April 24 and what had gone before, including a cookie for Jason Soifer.

"The Courier refused news about the rocket in September 1984. (We had the rocket right out front of their office!) The Prescott Sun got the scoop instead! 22 1/2 years later the Courier puts together an article! Jason did a good job and researched the article. It actually seems to have a small amount of meat in it.

"Interestingly enough, The original Courier incident in 1984 made me come to the conclusion that the Courier really wasn't interested in local news!"

Those were the days of Jim Garner, who'd been on the paper since the late '50s, and nobody on the Courier now was involved then, I expect. You gotta wonder whether the office culture changed much, though.

Followup, 11:20am: Steve tells me that the the Courier eventually carried the story because Jason Soifer happens to have a family connection to the rocket's history. I kinda figured it was something like that, as that's how things usually work in smaller towns.

Amster: "Glut of information leads to apathy and confusion"

The glitch in the headline on the free version is apropos. Randall nicely restates the condition of our world that psychologists and Alvin Toffler first predicted in the '70s. But to what end? I kept looking for some suggestion, again to make the voter smarter, but I can detect no call to action here other than a sort of vague 'get used to it.'

Randall (two Ls in your name this week -- where was the other before?), as the token local leftie we depend on you to speak to the local leftie consciousness on local issues. I know you don't want to be drawn into standard ideas of oppostion and conflict, but there's no one else who can say these things. Take a position!

Editorial: "Teaching girls to fight back"

In the anodyne of the repackage-page-one-plus-"this is icky" formula, we have a repackage of page one plus "I like this." Waste. Of. Space.

A journalist, on the other hand, might have made a couple of calls and come up with a quote from the public-ed czar about adding the program to the statewide curriculum, for example, or maybe a cost estimate and options for paying for it, in other words some contribution to the public discourse that makes the voter smarter.

Editor: You have to knock out a couple hundred words a day. It might go better if you treat it as an opportunity rather than a dull chore.

A1: "Statewide tobacco compliance operation kicks off"

Let's see, you take out a full-page ad on Wednesday warning businesses that you'll be checking on whether they sell a highly addictive drug to kids, then run teenage ringers on them for four hours on Saturday and you still get a kill rate of over 20%. Yet for some reason I'm not getting from Mirsada Buric's story that anyone thinks we have a serious problem here. Rather it reads like good news that PV retailers spotted the ad and tightened up. Sheesh.

We do get some stats on why tobacco is a problem that needs dealing with, and that's to the good. But it's all pretty light.

I'll look forward to reading about a compliance operation against the bars that flout the statewide smoking ban starting this week -- holding my breath, but not for the story.

A1: "Opinions on frontage road go both ways"

Honestly, you go to all the trouble of laying tons of new asphalt for them, and some people just complain, complain, complain.

Um, exactly what makes this news?

A1: "Developer pressing Chino on projects"

From Doug Cook we learn the litany of complaints from a rich developer, and it's certainly not outside the bounds of possibility that Chino Valley is doing him dirty, but I don't see that Doug went to town officials for the other side of the story on why they're demanding so much. What's up with that?

Again, Doug, it's 'leaching,' not "leeching." You need verb agreement in the subhead too.

A1: "Call for peace in Darfur"

It's interesting to watch how the bottom of page one has become the protester's corner of late. Leafy photo of the square + people with passionate views + homemade signs = not much, really, but at least the issues are getting out there. It's like a letter to the editor, but you get a photo too.

Courier editors: The Darfur problem stopped being 'purported' genocide when the US Secretary of State publicly identified it as such. Honest, this isn't just a hippie issue anymore.

A1: "Three new principals at helm of schools"

Not sure why it merits page-one treatment, but Shari Lopatin's piece on a changing of the guard isn't bad. Educators need more props, it's hard work for low pay.

A1: "CV area residents support property tax reform"

Every year people get up in arms about their assessments. I've seen many references to this in the Courier, but I've yet to see any numbers on actual changes in the taxes we pay, and Paula Rhoden's story is no exception. We're left to presume that the taxes go up at the same rate as the assessments, which ain't necessarily so.

There's also a suspiciously extensive description of Prop 13 that leaves out its strong negative effect on California's finances. Can we look forward to a Courier editorial on the evils of property taxes, or perhaps support for the next attempt to foist TABOR (cf here and here) on us via initiative?

A7: "Rep. Groe had drugs, alcohol in system during DUI arrest"

This deeply buried AP report details some legal trouble for one of our local radical rightists. If she's removed, it's unlikely that Lake Havasu will replace her with a Dem, but it's within the bounds of possibility that it'll be someone a little more, shall we say, sober, which would be a good thing.

Cartoon: Amateur

This is just evil.

Talk of the Town: "Make drivers slow down ­ legally"

Jody Knight makes a truthy legalistic case against photo radar enforcement, citing various court judgments, at least one of which (Minnesota) wouldn't appear to apply here. Fine, well, we have an opinion, but the Courier provides no indication of who Jody Knight is or her/his credentials for giving us legal advice.

Editorial: "Contact DOT with your say on Love Field's air service"

The Courier calls us to action on the burning issue of which corporation will be allowed to chow down at the public trough while providing luxury service to rich people. Ack.

I'd have been very happy to put in my two cents, but the DOT site gave me no joy from the Courier's docket description.

Editorial: "Four rules of firearm safety apply to all"

The unnamed Courier editor (guess who) intones the gun rules with religious fervor -- I'm reminded of Heston and the Ten Commandments -- to wag a finger at the VA security guard. He rails against the world he himself creates.

Update, 2pm: He's talking about this, Lefty, from Wednesday.

Update, 6:25am Sunday: Link fixed, I hope. That was odd.

Talk of the Town: "Human error, bad bins affect alley"

Mike from Pearl's Place details a series of whiny excuses for Whiskey Row businesses turning the alley into a stinking mess. Fine, Mike. Did you at least cc this to the City Manager?

There was a time not long ago when the businesses would have got together on this shared problem and made a solution happen rather than wait for someone else to fix it for them. At the very least they would not be allowing their neighbors and employees to make it worse.

Letters: Guns are good

Sorry, Marie, the only 'crying out for help' that Cho was doing involved more ammo. We can probably have fewer of them, but we'll never completely eliminate the dangerous psychopaths among us. And as long as we tolerate so many who think like Mr Brunstein here, eagerly awaiting the chance to personally save the world using his hip-mounted manhood, we're manufacturing them faster than we can medicate them.

Update, 12:50pm: Link fixed.

A1: "D-H P & Z recommends rezone of Young's Farm"

It looks like Dewey is going to get its gated enclave on the old farm. After all, "We can't stop growth. Growth is inevitable," chants a longtime Dewey resident, doing the mental yoga of bending his desire for "nice homes" around his rural nostalgia and through his lust for property value. Whatever.

Yo copy editors, y'all clearly need a refresher on verb agreement. I'm seeing way too many of these: "A vocal group of residents still oppose the plan, ...."

A5: "Napolitano: Time is now for action on climate change"

It just steams me that the position statements of our Governor on what will surely be the most important issues of our time wind up buried in a wire story on the Business page. What are they thinking?