Attention, News & Tribune: "Politicos take liberties when it’s nobody’s job to hold them accountable."

"Those civic watchdogs make a difference to the bottom line."

Hence my recurring point. As newspapers like the News and Tribune become forever more oriented toward human interest stories and whatever bells and whistles impel web clicks, local government coverage devolves into stenography.

Straight up: The News and Tribune abdicates its civic watchdog role more often than not.

But you're saying wait -- this CityLab article is about newspapers that shut down; we still have half a local newspaper in New Albany

Maybe half. More like one-fourth. When the Tribune and Evening News merged, the main office was established in Jeffersonville, and I believe it's a foregone conclusion that the center of gravity shifted east with it.

Take solace. The return of the newspaper's cooking school, some sort of pet adoption scheme or even a Chalupa Walk surely lies just around the corner.

The Hidden Costs of Losing Your City's Newspaper, by Kriston Capps (CityLab)

Without watchdogs, government costs go up, according to new research.

When local newspapers shut their doors, communities lose out. People and their stories can’t find coverage. Politicos take liberties when it’s nobody’s job to hold them accountable. What the public doesn’t know winds up hurting them. The city feels poorer, politically and culturally.

According to a new working paper, local news deserts lose out financially, too. Cities where newspapers closed up shop saw increases in government costs as a result of the lack of scrutiny over local deals, say researchers who tracked the decline of local news outlets between 1996 and 2015.

Disruptions in local news coverage are soon followed by higher long-term borrowing costs for cities. Costs for bonds can rise as much as 11 basis points after the closure of a local newspaper—a finding that can’t be attributed to other underlying economic conditions, the authors say. Those civic watchdogs make a difference to the bottom line ...

Team Gahan's condiments are aligned and measured, and these trees likely are doomed by yet another non-transparent "beautification" plan.

It's another backroom design contract (HWC?), another campaign finance-loaded bid (Allterrain), and another non-transparent Team Gahan "fix."

Summers announces plan to "Walk the Walk" by enhancing car-centrism via the Market Street medians. We advocate nuking them to outer space.

In an e-mail, I asked David Barksdale a few questions.

He's one of three at-large city councilman who have the job of representing us all, even public housing residents, and he also is a member of the redevelopment commission as council appointee.

Lately he's embraced the role of de facto project manager for Jeff Gahan's sanitized suburban overlay for the historic downtown business district.

Which should remind us that there is a tendency among autocratic personality types to harness design and appearance toward the reinforcement of their personally pervasive patterns of grandiosity -- like the time Frank Burns explained to Hawkeye Pierce why he was having the ketchup and condiments measured.

"Well, if you kneel at the end of the tent and get the tabletop at eye level, you will see that each bottle of ketchup lines up behind the other, unless there's only one bottle of ketchup. Now the same is true of your condiments which, if you will note, are arranged according to height and popularity. There's your ketchup, your mustard, your relish, your mayonnaise, your oil and vinegar, your salt and pepper, and your sweet and sour gherkins all in a row."

In short, just like our anchor-laden crosswalks, beautifully doing absolutely nothing to protect walkers from drivers.

Where was I?

Oh yes, my futile e-mail to CM Barksdale.

It has been announced that there'll be changes made to the block of Market Street between State and Pearl, these coming without any chance for the public to see what's planned, or to provide input. Property owners and business people located on or near this stretch might like to be informed of these changes, don't you think? Are there any plans to accept input, or is it another trademark top-down diktat?

He is to be credited for replying, which is more than his favored comrades at Develop New Albany are capable of doing.

Hello Roger,

This is a NARC project and was discussed at the May 9 & 15 meetings..

Larry Summers is the lead person on it.

Dave

Unfortunately it's a lame, bureaucratically evasive reply, kicking the ball to the non-elected city engineer Summers, who I'd have asked in the first place had Summers not already blocked me on social media. What's more, I can't seem to find the city engineer's e-mail address anywhere on the city's web site, so in a return e-mail, I asked Barksdale if he had an e-mail address for Summers.

Pins drop, crickets chirp. To date, only silence. This closing comment recently was overheard during a curbside discussion of Gahanism in New Albany.

"Why do the folks on 'Mansion Row' get to keep their trees (which sport two lights each and underground watering as well) but the plebiscite have to endure Market Street trees cut down to 'improve the appearance’"?

A damned fine question. Good luck convincing the self-appointed community pillars to answer it, as they're busy confusing their own wants for the city's needs.

The guy's right; real journalism is the necessary antidote to our bullshitter in chief, whether his name is Trump or Gahan.

Forget party labels. As far as I'm concerned, they're interchangeable, and while the author's analysis of journalism's abdication of duty has more to do with television than print, it's easy to see how Jeff Gahan's ad expenditures in the News and Tribune have a magical way of shielding him from scrutiny.

Cutting to the chase ...

Truth and Lies in the Trump Era, by Charles Lewis (The Nation)

Real journalism is the necessary antidote to our bullshitter in chief.

... Yet Trump’s serial lying hasn’t brought him down—at least not yet. How is that possible? And what does that tell us about how to proceed?

The explanation begins with my own profession. If the press had been doing its job during the 2016 campaign rather than chasing revenues, Trump might well not be president today. Instead, a mutually beneficial symbiosis developed between candidate Trump and America’s media, especially television. The resulting news coverage—if one can call it “news”—obscured the fact that Trump had a habit of saying things that were spectacularly untrue. Perhaps the most egregious example was the media’s silence about Trump championing the slander that Barack Obama hadn’t been born in the United States and therefore wasn’t a legitimate president. Trump’s years of repeating that discredited, racist accusation was what attracted the initial core of hard-right voters whose support he later rode to victory in the Republican primaries. When Trump was shrewd enough to stop repeating it on the campaign trail, news organizations let him get away with the dodge instead of pressing him to explain himself.

Trump’s bravado undeniably attracted public attention, which in turn ignited the profit lust of TV networks. “It may not be good for America,” said CBS chief executive Leslie Moonves of the nonstop, uncritical coverage that his network gave Trump’s speeches, “but it’s damn good for CBS.” Candidate Trump received $5.6 billion in “free earned media…more than Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio combined,” according to a report by the data-tracking firm mediaQuant. That massive amount of free coverage—advertising, really—helped Trump gain an electoral momentum that proved unstoppable.

Trump also benefited from what amounted to a 24/7 cheerleading squad at Fox News, by far the loudest media voice during the 2016 campaign. (According to a Pew Research survey, 19 percent of all voters named Fox News as their main source of campaign news—well ahead of other TV outlets and even Facebook.) Not even the Access Hollywood video in which Trump boasted about grabbing women’s genitals seemed to faze Fox. Thus, a sizable portion of the American electorate heard little negative about candidate Trump and was inoculated against the critical news reported elsewhere. In effect, these voters were making their presidential choice on the basis of inaccurate or woefully incomplete information.

Beyond political ideology, a lust for profit has led hundreds of media outlets to downplay political news in general. Local TV, which is where most Americans get their news, has increasingly ignored electoral campaigns. Why? To compel the candidates to appear in commercials instead if they want to reach voters, thus generating millions of dollars for the stations. The last nationwide study of this issue, conducted in 2002, found that more than half of local news broadcasts “carried no campaign coverage at all.” Would anyone suggest that this scandalous record has improved over the past 15 years?

The role of a free press in American democracy, as stipulated by the nation’s founders, is to inform the people and hold the powerful to account. But much of the media has abandoned these ideals in recent decades. News has become a form of entertainment, while too many journalists are adversarial only about relatively trivial matters such as sex scandals, ignoring fundamental abuses of the public purse and trust.

A few questions our "community" newspaper wasn't there to ask at last evening's city council meeting.

24 hours have passed, and it's safe to assume there'll be no "community" newspaper coverage of last evening's city council meeting, unless a staffer recreates it, like the baseball announcers used to do in the studio with wood blocks and liquor bottles.

Newspaper ads? They're working for Team Gahan, all right.

In reply to my question about the presence (read: absence) of journalists at the council meeting, Mark Cassidy hit the center of the target.

Only one item on agenda so they wouldn't bother. Don't realize that you often "learn" more at those. True again.

Mark cites this case in point, last night.

Scott Blair spent roughly 30 minutes speaking about the sewer department purchasing the QRS property and the city then wanting to put a park on the majority of it. Blair had contacted the state board of accounts and that person told him it did not sound permissible. He received little support from the other council members. Al Knable seems particularly perturbed by Scott’s insistence on looking into this. Shane Gibson stood up and presented a bit of background on the purchase. He disagrees with the state board. Doesn’t understand how the state board could overrule a long term decision of the sewer board, this being the very possible need to expand in the next 10, 15, 20 years.

So many question, so few reporters. I'm just a lowly blogger, but will hazard a handful.

Why did the administration fudge these purchaser details at the time the Horseshoe Foundation fun-money grant was announced, thus perpetuating the notion (now conceded to be incorrect) that the QRS property was part of the foundation package?

Could it be because Team Gahan doesn't want to (a) delve into the state of the city's parks department finances (seen any water park numbers lately, anyone?) and (b) is even less thrilled about explaining to the public why sewer rates are going up even while there's spare thousands to throw at the parks department?

Didn't we decide the sewer utility shouldn't be using money for projects like campgrounds and walking paths?

And, if Gibson is correct (our breaths currently held to bursting), then how much sense does it make to expand the sewage treatment plant into the recreation area?

Who cleans the toilets then, the parks department or the sewer utility?

I hate to stomp all over Bill Hanson's raging self-delusion, primarily because it's too big even for my size 16s, but someone needs to say it: Newspapers exist to ask these questions.

But ya gotta show up to get in the game.

I repeat: You simply cannot convince me that the volume of ad revenue Jeff Gahan sends to Jeffersonville isn't a factor in decisions like this. Once again, I call on Hanson to show us exactly how much his newspaper makes on ads from muncicipalities -- all of them, not just New Albany.

No update, because the Chloe Allen case remains in non-transparent, bureaucratic limbo.

There are these ...

11/11/13
Is It O.K. to Kill Cyclists? (and for that matter, pedestrians).

5/19/15
Wrist slap: Run a red light, kill three kids -- hey, I thought it was green.

... and there is this.

07/19/16
The July 19 BOW: All Chloe Allen's family has is Keith Henderson's word for it. No wonder they seek more information.

Sorry to say, I have no further updates on this case apart from a few back-channel rumors.

It's nice to imagine living in a functional community, where bureaucrats are efficient and prompt, and media performs the vital task of checking and balancing. Where we live, Keith Henderson is the prosecutor and Bill Hanson runs the newspaper.

My pitchfork is oiled and ready. Anyone care to join me?

I wish Chloe Allen's family the best, and if anything solid comes along, I'll try to get it out there. As a pro bono blogger and agitator, I simply don't have the time and resources to investigate this whole situation properly. There are too many vandals operating behind veils of non-transparency, and not enough us.

All we can do is try our best, and maybe now and then, we catch a break.

It's been 311 days since New Albany had a beat reporter, but the News and Tribune seeks an expeditor.

Perhaps Nic Cage is available, but we know you're curious.

An expeditor is someone who facilitates a process. It is a position or role found within project management, construction, purchasing and production control.

Blah blah fucking blah.

The next time Bill Hanson rises from his seat at a fluff banquet to claim victory for the depth and reach of his CNHI franchise's new coverage, isn't it pie-in-the-face time?