Laurie Roberts continues her campaign against the county probate court
Roberts, the Republic columnist, has been exposing what seems to be a deep and systemic problem in how the local courts handle guardianship cases.
She’s detailed some odd stories (see “PHXated hearts Laurie Roberts”). What seems to be happening is that certain adults for whatever reason come under the guardianship of the courts. The court appoints a network of lawyers and caregivers to watch the person—but it’s all paid for out of the person’s assets. At a certain point, the assets are gone. The lawyers and caregivers melt away, and the subject ends up under taxpayer care.
Today she goes after judge Lindsay Ellis, who studied one such case Roberts had been reporting on — but delivered a blistering defense of the status quo:
In a take-no-prisoners 21-page ruling issued Monday, Ellis described the fees that put Marie Long into the poorhouse as “reasonable, necessary and for the benefit of the ward.” She blamed Marie’s court-appointed attorney Jon Kitchel along with Dan Raynak and Pat Gitre, attorneys for Marie’s sisters, for driving up costs, saying their “venomous” and “hateful” attacks on the trustee, the guardian and their attorneys forced the other side to defend themselves.
With Marie’s money, of course.
The opinion was lauded by Sun Valley Group, which withdrew as Marie’s guardian when her money ran out in November. Says Sun Valley’s CEO, Peter Frenette: “I am grateful for the court’s decision as it finds ‘there is no legitimate dispute about SVG or its performance of its duties as guardian for Long.’ The court confirmed that this has been an unfair attack not just on SVG but also the guardianship process.”
Roberts continues:
I, too, am grateful for the court’s decision as it proves my point all along which is simply this: the court that is supposed to be protecting people like Marie Long is doing no such thing. Instead, the court is allowing a cozy group of lawyers and fiduciaries who are appointed to help vulnerable people help themselves to a nice pile of cash — until the money is gone, at which time the “ward” is dumped onto the taxpayers.
Then the court approves the spending, in this case in a ruling I like to call “Ellis in Wonderland.”
6:37 PM
The Arizona Republic critiques the Oscars
We’re interested in hearing Bill Goodykootz, the Arizona Republic’s smart and hardworking film critic, give his perspective on the Oscars. Here he is, talking about The Hurt Locker showing in general and the moving and historic wins of Christoph Waltz and Mo’Nique in particular:
It […] meant that two actors no one dreamed would be holding Oscars during last year’s show were among the winners. And, in the end, no matter what the show is like, how much producers talk about reinventing the broadcast, how many ways they try to make it different, that’s the only change that really matters.
Hard to argue with that. The Oscars continue to evolve. You can make the argument that the last few years have seen the top nominee slates grow ever-more daring and open-minded, culminating in the last three years, in which the top awards went to, arguably, the most adventurous films of their respective years. (No Country, Slumdog and now Hurt Locker.)
Well, the Republic’s editorial page would disagree.
Yes, the Arizona Republic’s editorial page discussed the Oscars this a.m.
The page was quite peeved. You’re not going to be able to guess about what:
[Y]ou would think one would have shined a light on the fact that poor, heroic Farrah Fawcett was not included in the annual memorial of deceased movie people.
And, while we’re at it: What of Bea Arthur? And Ed McMahon? Despite mostly TV and live theater legacies, all three have film credits.
Bea Arthur and Ed McMahon!
You kind of get the feeling Arizona Republic editorial writers sit around at night and watch a lot of infomercials.
7:22 PM
Just when you thought the Arizona Republic couldn't get any worser!
Today it publishes a feature—complete with massive photo—on the cover of its business section about …
… Starbucks using a new cup size.
A. New. Cup. Size.
That’s what warrants a cover feature at the Arizona Republic.
As usual, the story itself is correspondingly insipid. Here’s the lede:
Phoenix-area coffee junkies who have grown immune to Starbucks’ maximum 24-ounce jolt now can boost their caffeine intake by 30 percent without loading up on extra shots.
The Seattle-based coffeehouse chain is test-marketing a new 31-ounce cup for iced coffees and teas in Phoenix and Tampa to determine whether customers are ready to supersize their caffeine.
For what is essentially ad copy for a corporation, it’s mighty fine prose. A graf later, looking for a little color to brighten up the story, reporter Max Jarman intrepidly finds a customer drinking from one of the new cups.
Turns out he was drinking decaffeinated ice tea.
Jarman doesn’t say what the drinks will cost, nor does he mention the nutritional issues. Extrapolating from info on Starbucks’ own nutrition pages, you can see that a 31-ounce Frappuccino will contain about 600 calories, and more than 100 grams of carbs.
As for the illustration, it’s a big picture of a coffee cup with a big ol’ Starbucks logo on the side. Some drawings to the right of the photo are a great example of the expository journalism a newspaper can provide its audience with, given some planning and just a tiny bit of creativity.
I think anyone looking at the result will immediately apprehend that a 31-ounce cup is bigger than a 24-ounce cup.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday over in the Living section, the paper has continued its fascination with psychics.
The hedline of the story is this:
Psychics see their popularity rising
Medium’s popularity a sign of public’s growing fascination with the other side
I suppose its relevant to mention that the story is about no such thing. It quotes one alleged psychic saying she was busy, but she never says she has more business than normal, and no one else does, either. (Indeed, she’s the only purported psychic quoted.)
The story does more than you’d expect by quoting a psychic debunker, but then, in an almost parodic descent into a rabit hole of journalistic over-objectivity, finds someone to quarrel with the debunker!
But Richard Mann, a professor emeritus of psychology and religion at the University of Michigan, says people have always expressed a connection with the dead….
Worst of all, the story is a wire piece from Detroit. It’s just amazing to think that an editor at the paper decided that of all the wire stories available that day, the crappy one about the psychics was the one to run.
Previously in PHXated:
5:49 PM
The living section at the Arizona Republic just ... gives up
As we’ve noticed previously, on a lot of days, the Arizona Republic living section will lack any locally generated copy. The front page will be a mishmash of wire stories about subjects that have nothing to do with Arizona or Phoenix.
Today there was a crappy little wire story about… dogs on Twitter. Well, that’s what it seemed, anyway, but it turns out it was just a junky toy from Mattel that basically just randomly posted to a Twitter account from a set of canned tweets.
The story seemed a bit samey to me. I poked around a little and found a wire story from two weeks ago about … dogs on Facebook.
3:50 AM
An odd land deal in Glendale
Another great story by the Republic’s Robert Anglen:
A controversial real-estate investor sold Glendale a piece of land for $6.6 million on the same day he bought it for about $5.5 million.
The land, which the city previously leased for a youth-sports complex and overflow parking near the University of Phoenix Stadium, was bought by the California investor and his wife from a Valley family on Dec. 21 and then sold to Glendale on the same day, according to interviews and property records obtained by The Arizona Republic.
The guy had a sketchy history:
Court records show that while serving as an elected member of the San Diego Board of Port Commissioners, [David Malcolm] was convicted of a felony charge of violating conflict-of-interest laws. He was working as a $20,000-a-month consultant to Duke Energy while helping the company win a contract from the San Diego board. He was sentenced to three years of probation and 120 days of work furlough, ordered to pay $260,000 in restitution and barred from holding elected office.
[…]
Malcolm was also investigated by the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office after he was heard on a tape recording urging someone to blow up a house and collect $1.3 million in insurance money. He said he was play-acting during the discussion.
5:41 PM
Just when you thought the Arizona Republic couldn't get any worse ...
… it shows a commitment to go to the mat and suck even more.
The lede story in the business section today, taking up nearly half of the section’s front page, is about how Heinz ketchup is changing the design of the little packets of ketchup you get in restaurants.
The photo here, which was online, can’t do justice to the massive one in the paper, an exciting action shot of ketchup being squeezed onto a hamburger.
Why in the world would a local newspaper with falling circulation run a wire-service story about a company with no local ties on the front cover of its business section?
2:59 PM
Speed camera nuttiness in the Republic
Many parts of the Arizona Republic are competently written and edited. Other times… you feel like a bunch of drunk lemurs are randomly throwing paragraphs together and putting them into the paper.
Today’s story on speed cameras begins:
New DPS chief criticizes speed cameras
The Department of Public Safety’s newly appointed director this week joined a growing chorus of powerful voices speaking out against the state’s photo-enforcement system.
In interviews this week, Robert Halliday said that the system should be restructured if it’s not scrapped.
You could be forgiven for reading that and thinking … Halliday is opposed to speed cameras.
He doesn’t seem to be.
Halliday’s actual quotes are sort of nonsensical at first, but a few grafs down it’s clear he’s trying to tip-toe through the overheated politicization of the cameras. (The yahoo vote in Arizona think it’s their right to barrel down the 51 in their SUVs at whatever speed they want.)
The "restructuring?
To Halliday, who had a 35-year career with DPS before retiring in 2008, restructuring would include reassessing where units are placed and installing some penalty to keep drivers from ignoring photo-enforcement notices when they arrive in the mail.
“This program costs a lot of money to put into place. You have a lot of revenue that is not being captured,” he said.
That doesn’t sound like a guy who is joining a growing chorus against the cameras.
The story then veers into an anti-camera talking point—that Janet Napolitano claimed they would bring in $90 milllion a year. In fact, they bring in $27 million, but it’s still $27 million in free money, right? That’s not an argument against the cameras in any case.
And as Halliday was explaining, the real issue is that the soft-on-crime anti-camera brigade in the legislature drew up the law in a way to make it easy for scofflaws to outmanuever the cameras.
The story today says that only 30 percent of the fines are being paid. Hmmm … what is 30 percent of $90 million?
Finally, the story buries the lede:
A vote could turn out to be photo enforcement’s saving grace, Halliday said, something that came as a surprise to the new DPS director as he made rounds at the Legislature this week. Halliday thought the public had lost confidence in the program, a notion some lawmakers tried to dispel.
“People are telling me that a good portion of the population believes in photo enforcement and wants to have it,” he said. “I’m being told . . . it’s kind of a 50-50 thing.”
That’s an impression you don’t get from the rabid anti-camera coverage.
To complete the story’s clumsy handing of the issue, it ends with Halliday trying to appease the anti-camera nuts:
On his return [from a trip to California], Halliday said, he saw three California troopers between his fishing spot and the Arizona border. Between the Arizona border and the Valley he saw five fixed and mobile photo-enforcement units, and no DPS officers.
“My preference is to have more patrolmen on the ground,” he said. “I would much rather have people stopping and talking to people.”
But that of course is the point: Arizona is out of money and can’t afford more patrolmen. The speed cameras control speeds and generate money for the state. And even if the state had more money, the patrolmen who are out should be spending their time doing more than passing out speeding tickets.
And in any case the entire discussion is moot because the state is in such dire financial straits that in just about any other urisdiction outside of the deep south it would be inthinkable for legislators even to conpemplate removing a 427 million-a-year income stream when they are facing bankruptcy.
2:29 PM
PHXations—Wednesday, January 27
How the Arizona Republic sucks, no. 434 in a series:
In the Northeast Phoenix zoned section, a story—stretched out, astonishingly, over two pages—about a Starbucks inside the Camelback Inn. A hotel that sells coffee. Stop the presses. It’s not fair to ridicule the reporter who wrote the thing. The real culprit is the craven editor who assigned it, and the other who published it.
AT&T says it’s upgrading its 3G network in Phoenix, PV, and Carefree and Cave Creek, Beth Duckett of the the Republic reports. The story details the new areas, one of which covers a major chunk of downtown—good news for iPhone users.
Readers may have noticed the PHXated’s redesign and reconstruction, these done by Steven Southard. The process disrupted the old RSS feed, but it works fine if you resubscribe.
At the RadiatePHX get-together at Hula’s Modern Tiki on Central last night, representatives of CityScape, the massive, nearly $1 billion mixed-use development at Central and Washington downtown, gave an upbeat overview of the project. You can read about it on the site’s site, here. The representative confirmed there would be a CVS pharmacy on the site. He said there would be a grocery, but couldn’t name the replacement for AJ’s yet. Finally, he did give this tantalizing hint, of a “surprise” “entertainment venue” overseen by a “local person.”
6:14 PM
A few notes about the Arizona Republic
Q: Who’s writing the paper’s Arizona Living section?
A: Not Republic reporters. Two days into the week, a total of nine feature stories. One was written by a Republic staffer. The rest were all wire stories, and lame ones at that. (“Facebook buds make workouts a bit easier.”)
On Sunday, there was a big page of things to do this week. Top item: John Mayer doing a VH1 Storytellers show. (I can’t link to it because it doesn’t sem to appear on the web.) It’s hard to be optimistic about the future of the paper when it seems like virtually no one working at the place cares about the substance of what they are publishing. A city the size of Phoenix and the best thing they can suggest doing over the course of the week is sitting on your butt and watching a routine basic cable show?
Our favorite story this week, however, was a strong Richard Ruelas feature Saturday about the frontier-day newspaper wars between the Republic and the Phoenix Gazette.
In a history of the Republic Ruelas noticed a funny story, dating from 1912, about how the Gazette was caught stealing news from the Republic, then called the Republican, which planted a fake story that the Gazette duly lifted. Wrote the Republic:
Lacking the enterprise which it boastfully claims and being utterly devoid of the commonest ethics belonging to the newspaper business, [the Gazette] has been brazenly and methodically stealing the news which The Republican has paid to have gathered and to publish.
Ruelas is one of the few people at the paper who does actual reported features. A week or so ago he did a long and fairly interesting reconstruction of an ineresting bit of rock ‘n’ roll arcana: Was Bono targeted for a shooting at a Tempe show back in 1987?
The year Arizona was consumed with controversy over Gov. Evan Mecham’s decision to cancel a state holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. was also the year that the Irish band U2 played four concerts here.
And dealt with death threats, according to the band. According to the oft-told tale, lead singer Bono would be shot while performing the group’s ode to King, “Pride (In the Name of Love).”
The band’s memory of this 1987 incident has appeared in various books, in magazines and in Bono’s induction speech when the band entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Ruelas skeptically pieces together various recollections to figure out how much of the story was true.
2:55 PM
More on "Kidnappings R Us"
The Arizona Republic reports this a.m. that kidnappings were down in the city last year—slightly:
Phoenix police anticipated a drop in kidnapping reports in 2009 compared with the previous year, though with 302 filed through November, the numbers haven’t decreased significantly.
2008’s total of 359 earned Phoenix the nickname “kidnapping capital” of the U.S.
The story, irritatingly, doesn’t answer or drops a couple of tangential issues readers would like to know the answers to.
One, the LA Times last year reported on the Phoenix kidnapping problem—basically one a day—and finished it with this disturbing sentence: “Police estimate twice that number go unreported.”
That would be about a thousand of these incidents occurring each year. That’s a mind-blowing figure when you consider that they are all taking place in a limited part of the valley. They aren’t happening at the Biltmore; that means that life in the less-swanky parts of town is correspondingly dangerous.
Two, the story doesn’t discuss the kidnapping rates in the rest of the valley or in Maricopa County as a whole. As I read it, it carefully makes clear the figures are for the city only. There’s no reason to think the kidnappings stop at the city’s edge. Based on crude population figures, we could expect at least double that number are occur in the county as a whole.
And here’s the depressing prognosis:
Phoenix Home Invasion and Kidnapping Enforcement investigators say they have dismantled dozens of small gangs involved in kidnappings and home invasions, which led to a small drop in the overall numbers.
“Dozens” of gangs dismantled … and the rate has gone down less than 20 percent.
7:00 AM
Are readers getting the information they need from local news?
One of the things I’m interested in journalismwise is the quality of local news. We all have the internets available to us now, so few of us are dependent on our local news sources for anything but local news, right?
At the same time, many of those local news sources, particularly the print ones, are quite vulnerable right now, given the state of the industry.
Part of the reason I pick on local papers so much is that, in this context—and please excuse my French—to keep printing the same shitty stuff you always did is to sign your own death warrant.
Here’s some examples.
One’s minor. You might have noticed how the Republic is reviewing the big stories of the decade, year by year, this week. There’s a list of national stories on the front page, local stories on the Valley & State page, biz stories on the business page.
It seem crazy to me the paper wouldn’t put the local stories on its front page. That’s the insight it has no other publication can compete with.
In what context is the idea “Boy, we think the tsunami was one of the biggest stories of 2004!” front-page news in a local paper?
All local newspapers are going to turn their interests sharply homeward in the coming years; the Republic is still acting as if it’s a prime source of national and world news for its readers. It’s not.
Put it in a fucking sidebar.
Here’s another example. The Phoenix Business Journal has a story plugged on its front-page today about retail sales in the month between Christmas and New Year’s:
Retail sales climb 2.3 percent
Retailers got some good news at the end of the holiday shopping season with sales up 2.3 percent from last year, according to figures released Tuesday from the International Council of Shopping Centers.
A few grafs down, the story cited similar figures from MasterCard. The trouble is that the story didn’t say what most national news stories on the topic did, namely that there was an extra shopping day in the period this year, which means that the actual increase in sales was only about 1 percent.
It’s a small thing, but in an information age, information matters. Why should I subscribe to the PBJ—which is supposed to be displaying some expertise in business issues—when even a casual reader of business news like me immediately spots deficiencies in its reporting?
The PBJ story gets worse. The second sentence of the story makes no sense:
The [council] described the increase as significant and said procrastination by holiday shoppers, coupled with a crippling Northeastern blizzard, proved strong for retailers.
Note that the council is telling us the increase was significant when in fact it wasn’t. And how was the blizzard “strong for retailers”? Am I missing something?
Another: In my Northeast-Phoenix-zoned local-news tab this a.m., there’s a story about … some crappy bar on Camelback. Here’s the hed and first graf:
Sip Tiny Tinis on big night out at updated HB Hanratty’s
HB Hanratty’s Pub in central Phoenix has started serving Tiny Tinis, 4-ounce pours for $4.
As usual, for some unknown reason the story doesn’t come up on AZCentral.com, though I noticed another story, here, that plugs the same drink.
The question, again, is why a newspaper wastes staff time assigning, writing, editing and publishing press releases.
(Not to mention the question of how this particular press release—about a bar on Camelback—came to be included in a zoned section devoted to northeast Phoenix news.)
7:00 AM
The Arizona Republic continues to be edited poorly
A short blurb the other day—I can’t link to it because it doesn’t appear to have been posted on the AZCentral web site—said “a portion” of the Arizona Canal at the Scottsdale Waterfront will be drained for maintenance.
The story never explains what that means. You can drain a lake, sure. But how do you drain a “portion” of a canal? If you block water from going into it you’re draining the whole canal. I don’t think you can just dam it up at some point, because the continuing flow would presumably cause flooding, right?
If by portion the paper means the SRP somehow walls off say half of the width of the thing to allow inspection while the water continues to flow on the other side, why doesn’t it just say so? Why didn’t an editor ask for clarification of a basic question?
7:00 AM
A kidnapped man is released
(Updated below)
A short story in the Republic says:
Miguel Romo, 59, left his home to run errands and pick up items for his daughter’s birthday party around 4:30 p.m. Saturday, Phoenix police Lt. Lauri Burgett said.
Several hours later his family was called by the kidnappers. They demanded money for his safe return, Burgett said.
The paper doesn’t say if they paid the ransom. Sigh. The reporters quote a police spokesperson but then write:
It was not clear if anyone had been arrested in the case.
Why couldn’t they just ask the spokesperson? Couldn’t he simply say yes or no?
I cite this story not just because of, again, the routinely poor editing at the Arizona Republic, but because of a meme circulating to the effect that Phoenix now has the second-highest kidnapping rate in the world after Mexico City. The statistic was apparently cited on a National Geographic Channel’s report on the drug war last night.
Folks tweeted the line, and I poked around to find a citation for it; it’s possible that this has been in the Republic a lot and I just haven’t noticed it. It has appeared in speeches by John McCain, so I assume it has a basis in fact.
The cites say that the city now has an average of nearly one kidnapping per day.
Update: Le Templar writes:
I believe the notion that Phoenix is the kidnapping capital of the U.S. began with this story from ABC News on Feb. 11.
The story appears to rely on official 2008 crime statistics from various cities around the world, but the exact sources aren’t clear.
A similar story appeared on the L.A. Times web site on the very next day as part of its extensive series on Mexican drug violence, citing unnamed local and federal sources.
Hope this helps!
7:00 AM
McCain dinged for robocalls
PHXated likes Dan Nowicki, the Republic’s political columnist, but thinks a note today on criticism against John McCain was incomplete.
A DC group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has filed an ethics carge against him for doing some recorded telephone campaigning against the health care bill. Wrote Nowicki:
CREW argues that the robocalls, paid for by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, violate a Senate rule.
McCain dismissed CREW as “a far-left group” and said the complaint is meritless.
“They might have a beef if I paid for it with Senate money or official money, but that was a political issue paid for with political contributions,” McCain said. “It isn’t any more complicated than that.”
a) “Violated a Senate rule” explains nothing. More on that in a minute. b) CREW isn’t a far-left group. It’s nonpartisan and fairly fearless. It’s a typical cheap shot from McCain that should have been put into context. c) McCain’s next comment—"they might have a beef if I paid for it with Senate money"—is exactly backward, which is why the bland description of CREW’s complaint didn’t help.
The issue is that it was outside money. Under Senate rules, he’s not supposed to be using lobbying money to, essentially, do his job, which is be a politician. That’s what the CREW complaint is about, which you can read here.
I don’t care one way or the other about the complaint itself; but the Republic should have explained the matter more fully.
7:00 AM
Which page of the Arizona Republic do you read?
Today, you could read page one, which contains the start of an in-depth Associated Press debunking on so-called Climategate. The story begins:
LONDON – E-mails stolen from climate scientists show they stonewalled skeptics and discussed hiding data – but the messages don’t support claims that the science of global warming was faked, according to an exhaustive review by the Associated Press.
The 1,073 e-mails examined by the AP show that scientists harbored private doubts, however slight and fleeting, even as they told the world they were certain about climate change. However, the exchanges don’t undercut the vast body of evidence showing the world is warming because of man-made greenhouse-gas emissions.
Emphasis added. AP says five reporters read all 1000-plus emails, totaling about one million words.
Anyway, that was on the front page. (Satisfied, Expresso Pundit?)
Now, since the Republic is a full-service operation, you could also read Robert Robb, on the paper’s ed page, who has been enraged about the Climategate emails for weeks. For example:
[L]eading climate scientists conspired to hide uncertainty in the data, prevent others from checking their work and suppress conflicting judgments.
Even before these revelations, there were reasons to be circumspect about what was known about the effect of industrialization on global climate. There is, first of all, the hubris of believing that human beings can concoct a series of mathematical equations in a computer model that fully duplicate the interactions within the earth’s atmosphere.
All three sentences are problematic.
(The last is the current denier talking point: “It’s all too complex to know for sure.” It’s also rhetorical gibberish: “The hubris of believing that human beings can concoct a series of mechanical devices that could fly a human being across long distances.”)
Anyway, today, Robb is back on the case again, this time muttering ominously about how the emails are a nail in the coffin of academic peer review.
There’s no reference to the AP story, just as in the past he’s never acknowledged similar assertions by most knowledgeable observers.
All of this is to get back to one of PHXated’s little hobby horses, namely the poor editing at the Arizona Republic. In a state like Arizona, of course there’s going to be an energetic little right-wing columnist who nibbles on the national blogs and regurgitates them for the less sophisticated folks on the home front. That’s Robert Robb.
That’s fine. But why doesn’t an editor push Robb a little? This sort of thing doesn’t seem to happen at the Republic much, so here’s a few sentences any busy op-ed editor at the Republic is welcome to cut and paste into an email to Robb:
Hey, Rob: Did you see the AP story we ran Sunday? 1800 words, pretty in-depth. You been banging on the emails as “deeply disturbing.” AP says not so much. Since you’ve been out front on this you need to address it one way or the other so readers don’t think you’re dodging it.
7:00 AM
The Arizona Republic lays into Andrew Thomas
After a new round of indictments of Andrew Thomas’ political enemies on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, the paper editorializes against the Dimmer Twins:
Even if it were possible for these elected officials to erect a wall between their politics and their crime fighting, Arpaio and Thomas already have botched that job hopelessly.
They have investigated as a criminal enterprise the construction of a new county courthouse they oppose. They have followed low-level county employees to their homes to conduct intimidating interviews. Indications strongly suggest they bugged, or attempted to bug, the county administration offices.
These are not the actions of justice seekers. They are the acts of venal, retribution-minded political actors with badges and guns.
7:25 PM
Another example of how AZCentral.com sucks
“Hey kids! Let’s go to Lake Pleasant! We’ve never been there before. Tommy—why don’t you look up the best route on the internets!”
“Great, Dad! I’ll look it up on AZCentral dot com! Why, with just a few clicks, we can get a map that shows us exactly where it is!”
“Terrific, son! What are you finding out?”
“It was simple, pops! Here we go!”
“Um, that looks a little weird, son. Why is it in Morristown? And where in the hell is Morristown?”
“Oh, Dad, you just don’t understand the web! AZCentral dot com has great maps you can manipulate to find out exactly where we’re going! Let me pull the map out a bit. It has to be right—it’s AZCentral dot com, ’Arizona’s home page’! Gimme a sec, Dad. Click … click … and—voila!”
“Um, Son, isn’t that Lake Pleasant way over there to the right, 60 miles away from the red arrow?”
[The child’s lower lip begins to tremble] “You mean, AZCentral dot com wasn’t right?”
[Hastily] Wait, Tommy, I can get us there. Just click on the phrase ‘Lake Pleasant Regional Park,’ though, so we can find out if we can fish."
“Daaaaaad!”:
[Child bursts into tears] “There’s nothing there!”
[Sorrowfully] "I’m afraid not, son. [Sigh] I thought it might be a few more years before we had this discussion, but we might as well have it now.
“Let me tell you what happened. You’d think that, with many decades of publishing in the state, the Arizona Republic would have an unparalleled storehouse of information about things to do in the area, including recreational activities. That would all be very useful to visitors to the paper’s web site, AZCentral dot com.
“But that would take a genuine care about serving readers. Papers like the Republic got out of the habit of thinking like that decades ago. In the internet age, it’s a lot easier to just put banners on the site about all the things to do in town, without actually providing the information folks might need to do any of it.
“The result? A supposedly local web site that can’t keep track of a goddamn lake fifteen- or twenty-square miles in size. You can see that no one at the paper ever looks at the results. It doesn’t even tell us if there’s a marina, if we can fish or swim, or what. There’s virtually no information at all, and the one bit of information it does have, the address, is incorrect.
“You see, son, this is why the daily press in America is in trouble. For decades they made millions with their local monopolies. Now, they have to be on the web, but their thoroughgoing timidity, internal lassitude and penny-pinching ways means they are singularly ill-equipped to compete in these new paradigms. Not to mention—”
“Uh, Dad?”
“Yes, son?”
“I’m bored. You always get a little wound up when we talk about stuff like that.”
[deep breath] “You’re right, son. Next time we’ll just use a good old-fashioned paper map.”
[smiles] “Aww, Dad!”
[Exeunt, pursued by a bear]
[Curtain]
12:14 AM
More bad editing at the Arizona Republic
The paper’s good run of strong Sunday stories peters out this weekend with a numbingly long recounting of the mercury spill at an Avondale High School last February. It struck me that there’s some news in the story, but it’s buried so low in the piece, and surrounded by so much of the Republic’s legendary ability to raise more questions than it answers in its reporting, that it’s easy to miss.
There are the little things that are irritating—like waiting eight paragraphs to tell us that the school is in Avondale, and then only indirectly, or waiting fifty-five grafs to tell us how much mercury was actually involved. (Two tablespoons’ worth.) Even the date on which the spills occurred is divulged clumsily.
To me, the meat of the story is who was to blame. Here is where the major fumble comes. There’s a classic “he said/she said” conflict as to whether the school’s teachers had or had not complained to administrators about hazardous chemicals.
The thing is, we know who’s right:
Police discovered that since 2007 teachers had warned district administrators multiple times, verbally and through e-mails, about hazardous materials in the school.
The he said/she said thing is classic lame journalism in the best of circumstances; here it’s positively buffoonish. The information that the police have the actual emails should be related first. Then it’s fair to get comment from administrators.
This is what I think should have been the lede of the story. (It’s possible the Republic has reported this all out before, in which case the story should have said something like “The Republic reported back in August that police say teachers had complained in emails about hazardous materials at the school, but we never bothered to report the allegations out.”)
(The paper’s online archives are so stingy that there’s no way to follow how the paper has covered the story till now.)
In any case, the lede should have been: “A Republic investigation shows that teachers at an Avondale High School complained repeatedly in emails to school officials on campus in the months before a mercury spill endangered children, shut down the school, embarrassed the district and ran up nearly $1 million in cleanup costs.”
But, of course, after telling us the police have emails talking about this key issue, the paper doesn’t tell us who sent them or who received them. These are serious allegations, but they are never addressed, and logical lines of inquiry are left hanging, like this one:
Superintendent Dudley Butts resigned in July with little public notice, saying it was a family decision.
Why didn’t the reporter contact Butts and every other ranking school official at the time for comment? The reporter quotes an assistant superintendent saying she hadn’t heard complaints from teachers, but that’s before we learn about the emails.
Again, I’ve been enjoying the Republic on Sunday of late, but this story was a colossal waste of time and effort.
12:00 AM
Joe Arpaio at the Cronkite School: The zoo approacheth
The Arizona Republic and KPHO have both posted stories about Monday’s live “Meet the Press”-style interview of Joe Arpaio at ASU’s Cronkite School of journalism.
Arpaio’s going to be questioned by three profs from the school at 7 p.m.
Both stories are pretty incompetent. The Republic story says that interest in the event will surely swamp the smallish school atrium where the interview will be held, so the school’s going to show it on a large video screen and stream it over the internet.
The paper doesn’t bother to tell readers where the screen will be, or what the web address for the stream is.
For the record, the video will be shown in the public mall just south of the Cronkite building, which is on the east side of Central Avenue between Polk and Fillmore.
The video stream will be here, according to the school.
The KPHO story is equally unhelpful; worse, it lets the sheriff natter on about how good he is with the press:
“There have been blips about some weekly newspaper — we didn’t give an answer to a request — but that’s been straightened out. But I think it’s great. If there’s anyone who has an open door policy, I think it’s the sheriff,” said Arpaio.
As anyone who reads the New Times knows, there are three inaccuracies in merely the first sentence alone. The KPHO reporter doesn’t bother to ask him about them.
The Republic story doesn’t mention that some students plan to protest the event; the KPHO story does, but neither note that local Tea Party activists are showing up as well.
PHXated’s background on the event is here and here.
12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic needs editors
I don’t mean the paper is hiring. I mean that they need people who know how to edit news stories.
The paper’s recent profile of new councilman Bill Gates is a classic puff piece. But even by those standards it’s empty. The reporter doesn’t bother to tell his readers how Gates happened to get onto the council, or even what district he represents.
We get passages like this, which I don’t think mean anything:
The Phoenix Mountains Preserve, which lies largely in his district, offers another opportunity for citizens to organize, he says.
“We can encourage people to get together,” Gates says.
And the reporter doesn’t bother to get a single outside person to comment on Gates.
All of these are elements an editor should make sure is in the story.
And consider this hedline from the Republic today: “NE Valley isn’t noticing any housing rebound.” The pleonastic, almost slangy “any” is something a copy editor should have taken out; it looks bad appearing on the paper’s web home page, which is where I saw it.
You have to read the story about seven times and wade through masses of statistics to apprehend the thesis, the significance of which is never articulated or discussed.
I think the point of the story is that northeast Phoenix is the most affluent part of town, and that in some way it may be a bellwether for an economic rebound. But no one is quoted to make that point or say whether that’s typical in housing downturns. And the story never explains what area of town, precisely, is under discussion.
Finally, there’s a news blurb on page two of the Valley & State section about how the city is going to take over a section of drainage ditch near PV Mall.
It’s a funny story, written in an oddly passive way:
According to Hasan Mushtaq, floodplain manager for the Phoenix Street Transportation Department, disputes have arisen over who is responsible for maintenance of the ditch. The City Council last week authorized the city manager to take over the parcels involved.
Emphasis added. The story never says what the “dispute” is. Read on and you find out that the assessor’s office says the ditch is owned by a local homeowners association—and that recent floods have flooded homes of that association because the ditch wasn’t kept clean.
Now, this could be a funny story. Reading between the lines, it seems like the association has been negligent and is now whining and trying to get the city to take over part of its land—and of course, you can imagine the howls we’d hear if the deal weren’t removing a financial obligation from the homeowners. Instead, it’s just another Arizona Republic story that raises more questions than it answers.
12:00 AM
The Republic doesn't always suck
As is the norm on Sundays, the paper puts some resources into a few strong stories.
The paper’s lede, nearly 2500 words by reporter Catherine Reagor, examines how shenanigans at county foreclosure sales are corrupting the process:
When foreclosure homes come up for public auction in Phoenix, a minimum opening bid is set and bidding is open to anyone.
At least that is the way it’s supposed to work.
But a Republic investigation into the daily public auctions held on the Maricopa County Courthouse steps and at some local law offices suggests a growing number of homes are sold for less than the posted opening bid.
Prices on some foreclosure homes are being dropped below the opening bid just hours or even minutes before the auction. Buyers aware of the “drop bids” scoop up the houses before other bidders know about the price drops.
There’s another good story in the living section: Richard Ruelas’ portrait of Don Logan, the Scottsdale diversity officer who got a bomb in the mail five years ago. It’s an engrossing look both at Logan’s personal history and also the almost absurd cruelty that nearly killed him in 2004:
[H]e got a strange feeling about the package. He shook the parcel, listening for rattling. Then he stood to the side, leaned the box away from him and cut the packing tape. He felt heat and saw smoke.
The seconds following the explosion are a blur. Logan remembers running down a hallway, feeling the hot sting of metal shards embedded in his forearm. He looked down and saw blood. Then he was outside, staring up at the sky, wondering what had happened.
Investigators later told Logan that if he hadn’t held the parcel at the irregular angle, the 2-inch-wide hole that was bored into his receptionist’s counter would have been in his chest. They also told him that he was a novelty; they had never spoken with someone who opened a mail bomb and survived.
A pair of white supremacist brothers, Dennis and Daniel Mahon, are set for trial on the murder attempt next year.
12:00 AM
Mayor Gordon floats the idea of a temporary sales tax
So reports the Republic. The mayor calls it a “emergency economic surcharge.”
The city is facing another huge budget gap—approaching $100 million, after the council already cut more than $250 million this year.
A good part of the story is given over to Republican officials nattering on against the idea of raising taxes.
No one says the what to me is the most salient aspect of the plan—that sales taxes are the most regressive type of levy, one that places a disproportionate burden on the poor and working class.
The coverage was similarly incomplete when the governor proposed her sales-tax plan during the state’s budget crisis this summer.
This is why sales taxes are unfair:
The poor and working class spend most of their income each year. Rent comes first, of course, and then after that, by definition, the vast majority of their money is spent on necessities—food, clothes for the kids, etc.
I say “by definition” because if you’re not spending what money you have on necessities, then you have discretionary income. Which means you’re probably middle class. Even if you exempt some necessities, the fact remains that poorer people spend all their money each year.
Every percentage increase in the sales tax creates a corresponding percentage decrease in the living standards of a poor or working-class family.
A one-percent tax on food is one percent less food for your family. And with an 8 percent sales tax already in effect in Phoenix, that’s a huge piece of a working family’s income.
Again, by definition, your higher-income families spend money on a lot of other things, things you wouldn’t call necessities. They save and invest relatively large percentages as well.
And let’s remember that the state’s fat cats have been doing swell the last few years, surfing a wave of real estate money and parading around in their tubby SUVs. (They also got an enormous slate of tax cuts from the Bush administration earlier this decade, a gift that keeps on giving, year after year*.)
Now, you don’t have to agree with this contention, though it is based on facts, is a widely accepted analysis of taxation, and contains a strong moral component.
But shouldn’t it be part of the debate? Couldn’t the Republic at least have mentioned it?
- From the NYT:
Those cuts will have saved individuals, and cost the government, $2.34 trillion, according to calculations the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan research institute, made for The New York Times. The Bush and Obama administrations have called the center’s past calculations reliable. Interest on the money borrowed to finance those tax cuts equals a month worth of income taxes paid to the government by individuals.
Emphasis added. In other words, almost a tenth of the money you pay the U.S. government each year goes to pay off merely the interest of the Bush tax cuts to rich folks.
12:00 AM
Arizona Republic circulation down 12 percent
New figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulation—the outfit that monitors newspaper subscription rates in the U.S.—shows that newspaper circulation plunged again this year.
How much? By more than 10 percent over the same period a year ago, on average.
The Arizona Republic’s circulation is now down to 316,000 and change. That’s a decline of 12.3 percent this year.
Some papers suffered even steeper losses, but in many cases this was due to the elimination of free copies, service to local hotels and other voluntary circ. pullbacks. I don’t know if the Republic has made any strategic moves like that that might have affected its circulation so severely.
What’s causing the paper’s circulation decline? Would love to hear from readers or any Republic employees what their theories are.
12:00 AM
Bad editing at the Arizona Republic. (Latest in an ongoing series.)
The decline of the American newspaper is being caused by many things, the collapse of the industry’s business model first among them.
But it’s also true that the editorial employees of the papers have brought some of this on themselves. How? Well, basically by not doing their jobs well.
There’s always a lot of talk about how newspapers are biased, a lot of which is overstated. What makes readers uncomfortable, though, is being left with questions after they read a story.
Given the resources at the paper’s command, and how much the reporters and editors are being paid, it’s not too much to ask to have them anticipate what those questions are, and answer them before the story goes to print.
That’s what editors do, and if they don’t readers start to feel that the paper doesn’t care about them.
Now, this didn’t matter when the papers held an effective monopoly on news dissemination. Today that’s not the case, and it’s all the more important.
I found a slew of examples just in a couple of days last week.
Consider the case of the professor associated with ASU, Elinor Ostrom, who won the Nobel memorial prize for economics last Monday. Every other paper in the country said that Ostrom lived in Bloomington, Indiana, and was a professor at the state university there.
The local papers, of course, played up an ASU connection—Ostrom oversees some sort of study center there—but didn’t bother to try to find out how substantive (or tenuous) the connection was. (Most national news outlets also noted that the economics prize is technically a memorial Nobel, which the Republic didn’t, but whatever.)
You can read this whole Republic story—in which we learn in turn that she’s a “part-time professor” and a “research professor” and a “faculty member”—and never get a sense of what Ostrom actually does at ASU. It leaves a subtle feeling that the Republic wasn’t giving us the whole story—probably because Ostrom’s role is pretty tangential.
Indeed, it wasn’t until Wednesday that we found out the extent of her involvement:
Ostrom communicates with ASU on conference calls several times a month and has come for three or four weeks in January for the past four years.
As for what she does, I read this …
Ostrom is the founding director of an ASU center incorporating a variety of disciplines that aims to guide policies toward more sustainability. It is the Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity, and it is in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change in the College of Liberal Arts.
…and still don’t know. A good editor would have asked that both bits of information be in the first story—and that the second should have been followed by any sort of tidbit that could give a layperson a sense of what it was her center actually did.
Here’s another example. You know about James Ray, the self-help guru who oversaw a sweat-lodge-ceremony-gone-wrong a few weeks back. On Sunday, the paper ran a story with this hedline:
Sweat-lodge leader mum about ritual Sheriff: Adviser refuses to describe day of deathsThe story began:
A spiritual adviser and self-help author whose saunalike sweat lodge ceremony left two people dead Thursday has left the state and is refusing to tell detectives what happened during the spiritual-cleansing ritual, Yavapai County Sheriff Steve Waugh said.
Sure sounds like Ray isn’t cooperating! Four days later, we get a followup, based on an AP dispatch, that contained this passage:
When an audience member asked Ray to describe what happened, he declined to elaborate, saying only that he has hired his own investigative team and is cooperating with authorities.
“We’re looking for answers,” he said. “I’m as frustrated and confused as other people are.”
That story leaves the impression that Ray is cooperating. Why didn’t the editor notice the discrepancy? Again, a reader gets a sense that people inside the paper just aren’t thinking—and not even reading their own paper.
Another example—a story in the Valley & State section about a lunkhead with some large dogs that were barking and bothering the neighbors. Things had escalated until there was talk of restraining orders and lawsuits; the story was all about how mediation solved the problem.
The story went on for an eternity but never answered the questions in any reader’s (and presumably any editor’s) mind: What’s the law about barking dogs? For those of us who know letting your dogs bother your neighbors is a misdemeanor, the questions continue: Why didn’t the police just enforce the law? Were other neighbors bothered? Why didn’t the reporter ask the dope with the dogs why he just didn’t stop them from barking?
According to the story, a mediation session solved everything by … making the idiot get anti-barking collars for his dogs. The mediation didn’t fix anything, it was just part of what read like a crazily incompetent and drawn-out process that should have been solved early on, by a simple enforcement of city law.
Finally, while editorial pages operate under different rules, the standards of rhetoric dictate that a persuasive argument is one that anticipates objections in the reader’s minds, and answers them.
It’s obvious that some Republic editorial writers aren’t familiar with that concept. Case in point: A recent editorial criticizing President Obama for going on the attack against Fox News. It was the editorial writer’s contention that that would only serve to draw attention to Fox:
Just why the president has opted to declare open war with Fox News is beyond explanation. By raising the network’s profile, Obama has all but guaranteed higher ratings for his nemesis.
Now, this sounds like a Republican talking point, but the issue isn’t whether you agree with Obama or Fox. Here again, a lot of questions are raised.
For one, I think anyone who thinks about this for more than a few seconds can see it’s precisely wrong to say the move is “beyond explanation”; obviously, there’s a strategy involved here. I’m not a big political expert like an Arizona Republic editorial writer, but it’s certainly possibly that this is part of the Obama administration’s moves to characterize the right as a bunch of prejudiced crackpots. It’s a plan the right has been accommodating nicely, and it’s not surprising the administration is taking Fox on.
More importantly, the editorial carefully doesn’t take a position on the issue on the merits; recently, for example, the Fox News gave the country wall-to-wall coverage of the tea-bagger rallies at the Capitol, but barely paid attention to an equally large gay march last weekend.
Whoever wrote that editorial had an editor; and that editor should have told the writer to address the issue of Fox News’ undeniable right-wing slant, and then discussed head on how a political problem like that should be handled by a Democratic administration—because that would have made the writer’s point more persuasive.
The unshakable sense you get from the Republic most days—most days, not all—is that some pretty basic journalistic norms are not followed. And that’s the fault of the editors. When the Republic starts facing the same end some of its fellows have, let’s remember that some of the employees there didn’t help themselves when they had a chance.
12:00 AM
Do psychics have PR agents?
It sure seems like it. Hard to believe a big-city newspaper would be receptive to a pitch from the tarot-card industry to drum up some business—but it’s even harder to contemplate a paper coming up with this story on its own:
When the going gets tough, Valley residents apparently go in search of the metaphysical.
Local psychics and astrologers say that while they’re seeing some decline in business as longtime clients cut back on discretionary spending, the recession is bringing them many new customers.
I missed this gem in the paper; it was brought to my attention by the blog Mediactive, overseen by ASU j school prof Dan Gillmor. Says he:
No newspaper, as far as I know, gives its pages over to self-described psychics. Yet the Republic’s story quotes several, along with the astrologers, with a straight face.
It even provides a helpful sidebar explaining the difference between psychics, astrologers, fortune-tellers and mediums (in each case with the same level of “here’s what they say, never mind what science says” logic). For example, we learn that a psychic is “sensitive to non-physical or supernatural forces and influences, able to see into the future and into the events in a person’s life. Often uses tools such as tarot cards, crystals or tea leaves.” Gosh, thanks the the deeper insight.
12:00 AM
Joe Arpaio's performance ...
… at a press conference yesterday found some reporters barely refraining from suggesting that the sheriff is getting out of control. The EVT:
“It’s all politics,” said Arpaio, who spent much of an afternoon news conference Tuesday wagging his finger, waving his arms and snarling at reporters.
Looks like the journos at today’s Joe Arpaio presser practically had to jump out of the way of the spittle flying forth from the sheriff’s kisser. As I suspected it would be, the whole show was an excuse for a tirade on the part of our spoiled lawman, a fit thrown by a puerile 77 year-old after someone took away his new toy and stuck him in a time out.
The Republic story, by contrast, doesn’t mention anything about Arpaio’s demeanor at the appearance. I can’t link to it because I can’t find it on the AZCentral site … it doesn’t come up when you search for Arpaio.
(I"m reading it off the rain-soaked terrestrial edition I got on my driveway this a.m. The Arizona Republic sucks at delivering the news in so many ways.)
The JJ Hensley story from before the press conference, however, has a weird little link to the right that gives you a slide show, apparently from the conference itself.
So I went to the AZCentral front page to hunt for it. A fiery Joe Arpaio press conference would be there somewhere, right?
I noticed a button for “”http://www.azcentral.com/news/“>Arizona News.” Aha! Here’s what I got:
Here’s a closeup of the story links:
Nepal … Anna Nicole Smith … Dinosaurs in France … and Saudi sex talk.
That’s Arizona news?
6:00 AM
Two more compromising Arpaio stories
The Republic fired two shots across the bow of Joe Arpaio over the weekend.
The first contains the incredible contention that the country sheriff’s office leases cars to get to and from work for more than fifty deputies, including Arpaio himself. Maricopa is a large county and perks for the top officials might be warranted, but fifty seems extreme. The charges seem to average close to $800 a month per vehicle:
The office will lease 53 vehicles – mostly expensive new sedans, trucks and sport-utility vehicles – at a cost of more than $500,000 this fiscal year, which began July 1. During this time, more than 1,000 deputies and civilian employees are being forced to take seven unpaid furlough days to help balance the department’s budget.
The story doesn’t really dwell on the inappropriateness of so many people getting the perk. The reporters, Craig Harris and JJ Hensley, focus on where Arpaio gets the $500K from:
The money comes from cash and assets seized primarily during drug investigations. Under the state and federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, police agencies and prosecutors can keep confiscated cash and sell assets for money to be used for gang prevention, substance-abuse education and fighting numerous crimes.
Although there are guidelines, law-enforcement agencies have wide discretion in spending the money, and there is little oversight.
The second story detailed how an exec at the car-leasing company Arpaio uses has been a donor to his campaigns, as have members of her family:
Shirley Garner, in charge of leasing vehicles to the Sheriff’s Office, donated $390, the maximum amount, to his re-election campaign last year, records show. Through one of her other companies, $1,500 was donated to a political-action committee that supported Arpaio but is now under criminal investigation.
The story says her husband has donated to Arpaio as well.
6:00 AM
Why does the Arizona Republic capitalize the words "white" and "black"?
The paper ran a recent AP story on the fallout of the Tiger Woods meltdown in the black community. Here’s a sample graf:
When three White women were said to be romantically involved with Woods in addition to his blonde, Swedish wife, blogs, airwaves and barbershops started humming, and Woods’ already tenuous standing among many Blacks took a beating.
(I can’t link to it because, as usual, the AZCentral web site doesn’t know what the paper prints.)
It got worse from there:
The darts reflect Blacks’ resistance to interracial romance. They also are a reflection of discomfort with a man who has smashed barriers in one of America’s Whitest sports …
“America’s Whitest sports”! Sounds like a variant of “American’s Next Top Model.”
Now, I know this style tic isn’t new. But to my knowledge it’s fairly unusual among major papers. Here’s a link to the original AP story on Tiger Woods, in which the words “white” and ‘black" aren’t capped, for example.
Now, despite the headline above, I know why the paper capitalizes “white” and “black.” While no serious news organization has ever done it, it became fashionable, decades ago, in some liberal and overly race-conscious circles to capitalize “black” in print as a sign of respect or pride when discussing racial issues.
Now, since Arizona has one of the smallest African-American populations in the country, you’d think this wouldn’t be an issue here. But apparently someone at the Republic decided, Yeah, we’ll capitalize “black”—but only if we capitalize “white” as well.
The years pass, and now it’s just another indicator of the paper’s lack of sophistication.
p.s. Why shouldn’t the words be capitalized? Because there’s no reason to. They aren’t proper names. Words like Hispanic are capitalized because they are derived from proper names. It’s just the way things are.
11:19 PM
Why is the Arizona Republic trying to bore us to death?
PHXated doesn’t understand how certain newspaper editors, as their industry crumbles down on their shoulders, just … give up.
Consider what I assume would be the half-dozen or so editors who have ultimate responsibility over page two of the paper’s “Valley & State” section. There’s Elvia Diaz, who is the assistant editor credited with oversight of the Phoenix news briefs section. I assume there is an editor to oversee that entire page of news briefs; and that that editor is topped by at least one deputy local editor, and then the top local news guy or gal.
That prestigious position probably still must report to some sort of assistant managing editor with oversight over local news; over that person is the managing editor, who in turn is answerable to the paper’s exec editor or editor in chief.
Anyway, here’s a sampling of what that group offered up to us the other day. I can’t link to it because, as usual, AZCentral.com doesn’t always know what the Republic publishes:
Community to host garage sale
PHOENIX— Residents of Kierland in northeast Phoenix are holding a communitywide garage sale from 7 a.m. to noon today.
This hot news story goes on for three more grafs, including this dulcet explanation of what a garage sale is, in case any mentally disabled people happen to be reading:
Neighbors will fill their driveways wth bargain-priced purchases ranging from furniture to clothes to chuldren’s items.
Everyone involved should take a moment to pat themselves on the back, for taking the time to research, write up, edit and print a little bit of news that under no circumstances could possibly give anyone a reason to subscribe to the paper.
PHXated’s previous breathless coverage of the paper’s intrepid news briefs editorial corps can be found here and here.
6:00 AM
Mayor Phil and his GF get into trouble
Turns out Mayor Phil Gordon has been dating one of his political consultants. The trouble comes because he’s been paying her for political work and has in the past nominated her to city boards.
Sarah Fenske in New Times has an in-depth story here.
Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon hasn’t needed to raise money since he waltzed to reelection in the fall of 2007, leaving a war chest stocked with $370,000.
Yet in the last two years, Gordon has paid his chief fundraiser big bucks all the same. Records show that Gordon paid fundraiser Elissa Mullany and her business partner, Cate Wunder, a total of $39,000 since January 2008. That’s a period in which the campaign hasn’t shown a dime of revenue.
Gordon says he’s been daing Mullany since his breakup with his wife; their divorce is not yet final. (Mullany’s married but separated too, Fenske says.)
It looks like the mayor had to put out a press release about the relationship after Fenske started nosing around. Here’s how the Arizona Republic plays it:
Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon on Tuesday asked the city attorney and a former Arizona Supreme Court chief justice to review his political ties to consultant Elissa Mullany, the woman he is now dating.
The request came after The Arizona Republic and another media outlet inquired about the relationship and whether Mullany was benefitting from any taxpayer dollars.
Note the lack of grace with which the Republic acknowledges its competition. My issue with this isn’t so much not naming the New Times as with the clumsiness. Good journalism should handle various issues consistently, and it shouldn’t leave obvious questions in readers’ minds.
A lot of stories are pursued by different news outlets at the same time. It’s appropriate to say, in those cases, “The mayor released the information after news organizations started querying the office about it.” But if they are going to note that one other outlet in paticular is doing the asking, the paper should name it.
Why did it not name New Times? Maybe it’s because Fenske had a lot more information.
The Republic trumpets its “review” of the matter … and shares it with readers in three paragraphs.
Fenske’s piece is 1500 words long, and more than forty paragraphs. And it has a lot of evidence of the positively continental attitudes of some of the major players in the story:
Mullany, who was then known as Elissa Peters, was divorced from her first husband, Aldon Terpstra, in December 1998. She married James Mullany five years later, in October 2003. She has two young sons.
A former City Council staffer, James Mullany now works for former Phoenix Mayor Paul Johnson at his development company, Old World Communities/ Berkana Townhomes. Thanks to an appointment from Gordon, he’s also on the city’s Deferred Compensation Board.
3:18 PM
How the Arizona Republic drives us nuts
Reason #42. Bad editing.
In too many stories, you just can’t figure out what’s going on based on the information the paper gives you. It’s the editor’s job not to let that happen.
Here’s a good example. Vernon Parker, the mayor of Paradise Valley, who might run for governor, has been accused of wrongdoing by the federal government and is now suing for $2 million in damages. Fine. But read this precis in the paper, emphases added:
Parker, who heads his private consulting firm, VBP Group LLC, was accused of using his political influence to obtain an SBA contract, the claim says.
The SBA Inspector General’s Office began an investigation into the contract. It later published a report on the agency’s Web site that said Parker was a federal employee with the U.S. Department of Agriculture at the time of the contract application, and that federal employees are prohibited by law from competing for government contracts.
[…]
“The SBA’s Inspector General’s Office accused my client of inaccurate financial statements and an untruthful application for certification. All of those allegations, save one, have been thrown out,” attorney Paul Charlton said.
The story continues for a half-dozen grafs, but never explains a) whether in fact Parker applied for the grant while he was working for the agriculture department, an easily acertainable fact; or b) which allegation hadn’t been thrown out.
The reporter, Ofelia Madrid, evidently talked to Charlton; why didn’t she just ask him whether in fact Parker was working for the department at the time?
6:00 AM
Newsflash: The Arizona Republic continues to be irritating
We’ve noted before that an increasing number of unnamed scribes are contributing copy to the paper, particularly in the Living section. (PHXated was a longtime arts editor, so is especially sensitive to that section’s work.)
Today, we noted with keen anticipation a refer at the top of the Living page promoting a piece about a Wallace and Ladmo tribute: “Fond Look Back. Party to mark 20 years since final episode of ‘Wallace and Ladmo.’”
But turning the page, we find it’s just a tiny little story, bylined “The Arizona Republic”—and that the party is the screening of a few old shows at the Valley Art Theater.
As Dwight on “The Office” would say, “Question: Will Bill Thompson or Pat McMahon be there?”
(Ladmo passed away years ago; as far as I know the other two are still around.)
Answer: I haven’t the faintest idea, because “The Arizona Republic” didn’t tell me one way or the other.
Of course, you can imagine that the paper is pretty strapped, staffwise, these days, and the Living section staff had a lot to do that day.
Except … The lede story of the section that day was an AP thing about Sonya Sotomayor. The second lede was a feature on Christmas books, from the Miami Herald.
Down below there was a phoner interview with a country singer named Sara Evans to promote a show in town, by Larry Rodgers … and a little recipe about how to make a “hot toddy.”
And that, along with the Wallace and Ladmo squib, was the sum total of the section’s work that day.
p.s.: As is usual, the story doesn’t come up through the AZCentral.com search box, but does on Google News.
7:00 AM
Who's writing what at the Arizona Republic?
Yesterday, the paper had a big spread on long-gone Phoenix landmarks—everything from Legend City to the Cine Capri to Caf’ Casino.
The byline? There was none. Just “By The Arizona Republic.”
In the Calendar section was a big full-page review of the new movie 9. The byline? There was none.
I assume it was Bill Goodykoontz, but what’s up with that?
p.s.: And why, after the paper has just printed a story about something called “Caf’ Casino,” does a search for the phrase “Caf’ Casino” not produce the story in the AZCentral.com search engine?
Ditto for “Legend City.”
And ditto for the “Cine Capri.”
And why, oh why, is the damn thing immediately accessible in Google News?
6:00 AM
Dramatic journalistic one-upsmanship at the Arizona Republic
A few days, ago, you will recall, we examined the news briefs of the Arizona Republic’s Valley and State section and found that no bit of press-release banality was too low for the paper to assiduously chronicle and waste newsprint on. (“Republic Watch: Another example of why newspapers are dying.”)
One item in the Phoenix news briefs column, you will recall, was the breathless accounting of the opening of a community-college cafeteria.
(“The Phoenix College Culinary Cafe officially reopens today for the fall semester. Lunch is served every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.,” the story began—and went on for another four paragraphs.)
After perusing the paper this morning, we are sensing a little office rivalry. Not to be outdone, the West Valley news briefs section sees the Phoenix one’s Culinary Cafe—and raises a student-run eatery!
Student-run eatery opensAVONDALE – Estrella Mountain Community College’s student-operated restaurant opened last week on campus, 3000 N. Dysart Road.
The cost for a three-course meal at Regions Restaurant is $8.95, plus tax.
The restaurant opens to the public from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays.
The brief goes on from there, but you get the idea. The important news is that Republic’s not-to-be-outdone coverage of community-college dining-room offers continues.
6:00 AM
Even an Arizona Republic basher would have to admit ....
… that the front page today doesn’t suck.
It’s symptomatic of the design changes so many papers have adopted that only four actual stories begin, or purport to begin, on that page. But they include:
- A long recap of the the legislative shenanigans that created this year’s budget crisis
- A look back at the economic meltdown, one year ago (This was technically a long blurb to an AP story, but it should count.)
- The lede, the first in a series by by reporter Pat Kossan at how some local charter schools are abusing the tuition tax-credit program
- And a splashy intro to the first of another series, this one on the underlying issues of the health-care debate.
3:49 AM
Why people don't subscribe to newspapers any more
Exhibit no. 371 in a series, from the Arizona Republic:
5 pallets of water are donated
SCOTTSDALE – The Greater Southwest Chapter of the Club Managers Association of America has donated five pallets of water to Arizona Helping Hands Inc.Terra Waldron – vice president and general manager of Desert Highlands, a private golf and residential community in Scottsdale – and her staff joined forces to collect two pallets of water for Helping Hands.
This was the lead item in the paper’s Scottsdale news column this a.m. It continued for five more paragraphs.
It’s bad enough that newspapers reprint press releases and sell them as news; do they have to reprint boring press releases? How did the writer stay awake while typing out those sentences? Who at the Republic thinks that people want to read stuff like that instead of actual news? Why, after the paper has gone through one recent round of layoffs, does the staff that remains have to spend its time doing things like this?
And finally, I used AZCentral.com’s search engine to try to find this story after seeing it in the paper. No matter how I searched for it, it didn’t come up.
Here’s the search for “Waldron,” for example.
I went to Google News and … it came right up, giving me the story I linked to above.
In other words, the paper’s web site doesn’t even know what’s on the paper’s web site.
6:00 AM
Republic Watch: Boring us to death
The Republic’s Valley & State section should be the heart of the paper. No one cares what the Republic writes about what’s going on in, say, Iran, but hey—local news is where the paper can shine, right?
So turn to page two of the local section, which, with all its little columns and squibs, should be where the paper’s crew of reporters get out there and dig us up some information.
Instead, here’s the hedlines and first grafs of the three capsule-news items today in the column for Phoenix—which is, you’ll remember, the fifth largest city in the U.S.:
Thrift shop’s fall season begins
PHOENIX—The fall season begins today at the Assistance League of Phoenix’s thrift shop. Bargain hunters will find used clothing, furniture, books and other items.
Phoenix College Cafe reopens
PHOENIX—The Phoenix College Culinary Cafe officially reopens today for the fall semester. Lunch is served every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.. Diners can select from a three-course prix fixe menu for $9.75 or a list of a la carte specials.
Beatitudes sets monthly series
PHOENIX—Residents can learn about organic gardening, specialty cooking, arts and culture at a free monthly series at Beatitudes campus, a continuing-care retirement community in north central Phoenix.
I can’t link to the items because they don’t seem to be in the Republic’s online edition.
Note that those are just the beginnings of these in-depth dispatches, which show us that the Republic will not be beat when it comes to breaking news from the realm of thrift-shop sale seasons, college cafeteria menus, and continuing-care retirement-community lecture series.
6:00 AM
Why newspapers are dying: A case study from the Arizona Republic
Your host here at PHXated has an interest in the media, and recently wrote a long article on the state of the daily press. The essay, “Five Key Reasons Newspapers Are Dying, and Why They Don’t Get Talked About Much,” was printed over two days in Splice Today.
After a day of radio silence, during which I thought no one cared about the subject (and even if they did I’d bloviated too long) a few folks noticed the article and started tweeting about it.
I was happy about the interest that resulted, because it demonstrated to me that serious subjects could still be treated substantively these days, and that people would take the time to read the result. For a few days, life was fun. I was interviewed by the Times and got some nice words from some people who are spending a lot of time figuring out the future of the industry.
Anyway, I just saw that I even got noticed by the Seeing Red AZ blog.
But neither they nor anyone else wondered about the identity of one major character in the piece, an unnamed paper in “one of the very largest cities in the U.S., … in classic flyover territory, a sociological light year away from a major media center.”’
Here’s part of it:
You can see the evidence of it [i.e., what I argue is the press’s thoroughgoing timidity and blandness] in the pages of virtually every daily in the U.S. I live now in one of the very largest cities in the U.S., but it’s in classic flyover territory, a sociological light year away from a major media center. Here’s a list of the headlines that appeared on a recent day on the front cover of the paper’s feature section, including both stories and news squibs:
“Wooden Memories”
“Test your hearing”
“Free burrito for teachers”
“Post office food drive”
“Fight Crohn’s and colitis”
“Mom and Estában”
“Healthful salsa non-guilty pleasure”
“Great gifts for teachers”The first of those—“Wooden Memories”—was the compelling headline of a big feature about folks who keep old wood-shop projects around the house because … they just can’t bring themselves to get rid of them.
“Wooden Memories”! “Healthful salsa”! It’s obvious from reading down that list of headlines that there was nothing there of remote interest of just about any sentient being. But that’s not what the paper’s editors were aiming for. The point is that there was nothing there that could possibly offend anyone.
Any editor who presided over such a sorry collection of non stories and journalistic Malt-o-Meal at a time when papers should have been fighting to make themselves relevant to readers should of course have been fired.
But, inside newspapers, that’s what is, paradoxically, regarded.
Indeed, the top editor of that paper just got a new job: He was stolen away by another well-known American newspaper, one of the ones currently facing bankruptcy and closure. You’d think a paper in that position would be fighting back. Instead, they turned to a guy who’d overseen the publication of sections like that.
6:00 AM
Big Indian art trafficking bust
Twenty-six people have been charged in three states, the Republic reports:
Using a paid informant identified only as “the Source,” agents of the FBI and Bureau of Land Management purchased sacred Hopi kachina masks, Navajo pendants, Pueblo pottery and other artifacts from more than two dozen figures in the Four Corners states of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. Court records say the civilian operative spent $335,000 buying more than 250 apparently illicit objects. Federal investigators estimate that four-fifths of the nation’s archaeological sites have been plundered by amateur collectors and professional thieves.
The story has some gruesome details:
At one point in the case, a federal affidavit says, [the defendants] took the Source to Native American burial grounds in Utah and dug up a skull.
“While digging, they uncovered human remains. . . . [one] commented, ‘Wish that fella had still been intact, the skeleton I mean,’ ” an affidavit notes.
You have to read very carefully, however, to notice this really isn’t “news”; one guy, from Mesa, was arrested—and committed suicide—back in June. It seems like the investigation paid off months ago and the Repub is just now getting around to looking at it in depth.
6:00 AM