[Mpls] Is the Star Tribune inept? Part 2

[Svattheriver]

  I am a candidate for the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board in
District 3. I recently joined the Green Party and sought Green Party
endorsement because I think the mission of the Green Party and the Mission of
the Park Board match well. But, I think the park commissioners should be non
partisan. This was problematic for DFL endorsement but was part of the
endorsement discussion when I was endorsed by the Green Party. I was
nominated at the DFL convention but respectfully declined.
I am a skilled and energetic neighborhood organizer with a strong vision of
what our parks and city should be. I think I would make a good commissioner,
but the purpose of this post is to comment on my conversations with Lou
Gelfand, " The reader's representative" for the Star Tribune. Please bear
with me as I retrace some parts of this that I have posted before.


In a previous posting on this list I have talked about the Star Tribune
coverage of  Park Board endorsements. The background of this is that I am
endorsed by the Green Party and I was trying to figure out why the paper
refused to report the recent endorsements of Mark Knapp, Fran Dassier and
myself. The paper was contacted and given press releases.

I contacted Lou Gelfand and he said he would get back to me about this issue.
He did not call back.
I again called him and he said that the paper has a policy of not covering
Park Board, School board, or Library board elections and that is why there
was no coverage. They only cover council and mayor races.
I told him that there was a problem with the logic of his answer. First of
all, Mark Knapp is a city council candidate for the 10th. Ward.
He said he would talk to the reporter and get back to me about this. He never
did.
I also tried to convince him that the Park Board election was of metro wide
interest and that it was in the public interest to know about candidates in
local elections. It also seemed bizarre to not only not cover important
issues but to have an actual policy about not covering local elections.

After I posted this discussion and maybe because of this forum's influence,
There was a mention of Mark Knapp's Green Party endorsement.

Part 2: After the DFL convention, the Star tribune wrote about all of the DFL
endorsed candidates for all the city elections including the Park Board
races. But did not mention any Green party endorsed candidates. I called Lou
Gelfand to ask about this, but after a week, he has not returned my phone
message.

I think that some of us neighborhood folks realize that Lou Gelfand's
presence as a reader's representative reduces the chance of real change or
improvement in newspaper coverage of important neighborhood issues. He is an
apologist and flak catcher with little power or influence. [Steve Brandt,
please correct me if I am wrong.]
He engages in aggressive stonewalling and makes little effort to look at
underlying causes of misinformation, mistakes, or slanted coverage. He often
makes things worse as he did in his strange apology about R. T.  and the
mayor's race.
                              Thanks, Scott Vreeland, Seward, Ward 2