I want to comment on a few journalistic questions I see in the Strib's Rybak piece this morning.
1. Kazuba and Olson write, "While covering development issues in the mid-1980s, Rybak proposed to the Downtown Council that the business group create the job of development director and then suggested that he fill the position." Who says? There's no quote from anyone - not anyone connected with the Downtown Council, no party to the conversation...and worse, no response from Rybak himself. This is about as serious a conflict-of-interest allegation as you can make in our business: suggesting someone you cover give you a job...why the lame sourcing on a major point? What editor let that get through? A few paragraphs later, the story mentions that Bob Dayton approached Rybak to join the Downtown Council. It's unclear whether that info contradicts the Strib's earlier assertion (did Rybak suggest the job or did Dayton offer it to him?), or is later in the timeline? City Pages, which also reported on the Downtown Council stuff in a critical Rybak piece, provides a fuller account - and at least got the candidate's version: "Rybak's sunny view of labor relations is curious, considering that he was disciplined for conflict of interest in 1986 by Roger Parkinson, the same publisher he once met with monthly. At the time Rybak, who was working the development beat, was intrigued by an offer to become development director at the Minneapolis Downtown Council. According to Rybak, when he informed his editors of the potential conflict and asked to be put on a different beat, he was suspended--a punishment he still considers unfair. After his suspension, he was transferred off the development beat. Approximately six months later, he accepted the council's job offer." So the CP-by-way-of-RT sequence is: he gets offered the job, tells his bosses, they suspend him - unfairly, RT asserts, since he disclosed the conflict. As a reader, I'm not sure who's right after reading CP, but the Strib's retelling this a.m. seems un-sourced and thus unfair. 2. The Strib gets into Rybak's rocky relationship with his brother and brother-in-law. I don't know RT's siblings, so this is only a potential problem but... Strib reporter Deborah Rybak is RT's sister-in-law. If she is married to one of the brothers that RT is feuding with, shouldn't the Strib have at least acknowledged that someone on their staff is party to a dispute they felt important enough to catalogue in the newspaper? Again, I don't know if Deborah is married to the specific Rybak brother. I'm not alleging Deborah did anything wrong, if she is married to the brother in question, the paper would have a conflict-of-interest reporting on a matter involving a staffer and has a minimum duty to disclose. Of course, there's a much larger matter of a paper reporting on a former staffer who the editor (Tim McGuire) clearly doesn't like. The Strib absolutely has to cover Rybak aggressively, but they should also hold themselves to strict disclosure and fairness standards given this history. I don't think they did in the matters cited above. [Full disclosure: I'm managing editor of Skyway News, a nominal Strib competitor, and I voted for Rybak as a delegate to the DFL city convention in May before taking the Everyone, even journalists, has a vote. I've chosen to disclose my preference as a matter of personal accountability and do not believe revealing a preference that others keep private constitutes an inherent conflict. The good news is, you get to make up your own mind with this info.] David Brauer King Field - Ward 10 _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
