Monday, November 12, 2007

Where's the Journalistic Curiosity?

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4 comments:

Phil Marx said...

Many people accuse the Journal Gazette of biased reporting. I see some evidence for this, but the real problem is something else. I think their frequent lack of coverage for important stories and a disregard for in-depth analysis points to laziness. It's just too much work to do a good story.

Look at the way they handled the Libertarians during the election. First, they actually misinformed the voters by declaring there were no other candidates besides the Republicans and Democrats. After feeling pressured on this, they admitted there were other candidates, but stated that these candidates would not be interviewed because the J.G. felt they would not be elected. After more pressure, they finally covered the Libertarians in their special insert - just a few days before the election.

Way to go J.G. that's some performance!

We have over forty local blogs that cover mostly political issues. Combined, they do about as well as the paper does. Plus, there is never any opinion left out with this diverse group. I think that if someone had a good blog for sports, weather and business we wouldn't need the paper at all.

11/18/07, 1:26 AM
Jeff Pruitt said...

Dave,

You bring up several good points here and I'm glad a champion of North River development like yourself is viewing this with a skeptic's eye. In my opinion too many Harrison Square supporters failed to do just that and we will eventually pay the price for it.

I think the traditional media is simply waiting for the other shoe to drop here as the city isn't saying anything substantial about what's going on.

Let me just say that having state and/or federal taxpayers foot the bill to clean up property polluted by the richest family in Allen County is not only insulting but also undemocratic.

Sadly, it's exactly what I am expecting the Richard administration to propose...

11/19/07, 2:20 PM
Dave MacDonald said...

Jeff,

I'm afraid your concerns are well-founded. Greg Leatherman suggested on 11/2, "the testing being done on the OmniSource property puts the City way ahead of what it faced with the Bowser site, and as a municipality, the City can tap into state and federal funding for cleanup costs, to minimize any burdens to taxpayers."

I found this statement from the story interesting: "...If testing suggests a lot of cleanup will be required, that could drive down the sale price significantly."

So if in fact the price remains negotiable, wouldn't the City stand to get a better price with full knowledge of contamination factors? Why wait until the END of the option period? Boggles the mind.

Dave

11/19/07, 3:14 PM
Dave MacDonald said...

Phil-

I agree. The lack of coverage on these important issues is exactly the problem.

11/20/07, 12:15 AM

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