annie wrote these comments: Hmmm! What's important - what's not?!?
BYLINE: CREDITLINE: HEADLINE: Why reporter wasn't at Park Board meeting
The Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board named Jon Gurban superintendent at about 7:30 p.m. Dec. 17.
City Hall reporter Rochelle Olson, who on occasion has stretched her assigned terrain to cover the board, was not there.
She found out the next morning when board members called her at home.
Result: On Dec. 19, two days after Gurban's naming, her story appeared on the front page. Even so, the Star Tribune owned the story. No one from the media was at the board meeting.
It was the board's last meeting of 2003, and followed by a few days withdrawal of both finalists recommended by a search firm for the superintendency.
There was a hint, if not a premonition, in Doug Grow's column the day before the board met: "The Minneapolis Park Board is going to huddle Wednesday evening in an effort to answer the profound question: Now what?"
But reporter Olson's supervisors didn't grasp the possibility that a new superintendent might be named that night.
Olson had. She made her case for the assignment to supervisor Cathy Riddick. That meant overtime, and she said she was turned down.
"The desire to avoid paying Rochelle overtime pay is true -- partly," said Joe Williams, assistant managing editor-local news.
He said the overtime to cover a number of major breaking stories in the last 90 days -- Saddam Hussein's capture, Dru Sjodin's disappearance and Stephen Porter's accusations of police abuse, to name a few -- had come at a price.
"I decided Rochelle should not go to the meeting because the information I had didn't seem to merit paying time-and-a-half and tying up her evening for a routine story -- not because the paper is being stingy and shortsighted.
"Riddick seemed to agree; neither she nor Rochelle tried to change my mind."
Williams added, "Hindsight is 20-20; knowing what we know now, it seems like a no-brainer to send her to the meeting."
Comment: Readers had been alerted by the newspaper to an important vacancy in area government. They had every reason to think the Star Tribune would keep them advised in a timely way. They were shortchanged.
Parker Hughes ads
Eric Knox questioned the simultaneous publication of the investigative series about the Parker Hughes Cancer Center and the center's numerous full-page ads.
"Can the reader assume that the advertising and news departments are separated to a degree that confidence can be placed in the investigative report, and that, in fact, a 'whitewash' for a favorite customer has not occurred?
"Would an ad from one accused of bank robbery claiming innocence be accepted?" he asked.
Parker Hughes has run about 10 full-page ads. The cost can range from $12,000 to $17,000 a page weekdays, depending upon rate schedules, to between $22,000 and $26,000 on Sundays.
Comment: Advertisers, including a person accused of bank robbery, should have the right to make their case if they desire, so long as their copy and photos meet the newspaper's standards on taste, libel, pornography, etc.
Naming the judges
The Minnesota Court of Appeals issued a Dec. 16 ruling that the Metropolitan Council did not exceed its statutory authority when it required Lake Elmo to conform to the council's order that it develop more intensively.
The item said Judge Gordon Shumaker wrote the order for the three-judge panel. The court's order identified the other judges, Terri Stoneburner and David Minge, but they were not named in the Star Tribune story.
Comment: It should be automatic in stories of judicial action by panels that all members are named.
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Annie Young Stand Up ~ Keep Fighting
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