As if his unfounded character assasination of Councilmember Zerby written in
the editorial section of last weeks MN Daily was not enouh, columnist John
Hoff continues to distort facts and lower the journalistic standards of our
only other daily paper here in Minneapolis. Several letters were submitted
to the Daily editorial board last to set the record straight and as of today
all remain unpublished. In fact, in response to readers pointing out
factual inaccuracies in last weeks column Mr. Hoff lambasted those neighbors
for challenging his fiction piece and took the opportunity to rip on CM
Zerby yet again.
What has this columnist to gain in his personal attacks of soon exiting
Councilmember Zerby? Who knows. I only know that Mr. Hoff is apparently
too shiftless to search his own paper's archives to see that there are no
less than 19 articles written since September 2003 (month of the fire which
killed three students) regarding the fire and addressing his concern that:
"There should be some kind of plaque or marker near the spot, so we dont
forget that some paid the ultimate price for neglect of housing issues."
The memorial "plaque" is about 200 ft north of my office door in Van Cleve
Park for a fire that occurred 2 doors down from my office door and it took
more effort to get that plaque than Mr. Hoff will ever know (or bother the
time to research in his own paper). The neighbors haven't forgotton the fire
and how Councilmember Zerby quickly responded to the neighbors concerns
regarding lax City inspections of problem properties, and how he demanded
more be done to avoid future tragedies. The institutional memory of the
editorial board appears to be now measured in nano-seconds.
I could care less about Hoff's motivations, but you would think someone with
a criminal record and not exactly a "traditional" student (pushing 40) would
not want to draw undue attention to himself and his hypocritical stances
(absolutely no inspections, I mean more inspections, I mean Zerby just
sucks). After all, The MN Daily is supposed to be a semi-legitimate paper
and not just a propaganda piece for narrow political viewpoints--what are my
state tax dollars helping fund again?
Additionally, I have no problems with people having negative opinions about
political leadership, but making things up soley to discredit and distort is
another thing. Then subsequently publishing these inaccuracies in a paper
that you have editorial control over (viewed by tens of thousands of
readers) is completely unacceptable. If we don't have journalists that try
to get the facts straight, then what do we have left in a democracy?--I
guess the web.
The articles links are included below for reference. The MN Daily (and
their editors) are available online at www.mndaily.com
http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2005/12/01/66391 (published Thursday 12/1)
http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2005/12/08/66516 (published Thursday 12/8)
Justin Eibenholzl
Armatage
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