The Community Word

I wouldn’t want to be a mainstream reporter these days. It was tough enough of a job back when I was doing it. These days, I sometimes wonder if it’s ethical to even offer college journalism programs, considering that newspapers are laying off reporters as profits drop. The newspaper industry blames the Internet for sucking up all the classified ad dollars. And then the Internet has given us blogs, which have proven to be quite a headache for the mainstream media.

There have been plenty of examples of these trends here in the River City.

In nearby Springfield, the well-respected State-Journal Register sent letters to staffers trying to induce them into taking early retirement. A few weeks after that, the publisher, editor and managing editor decided to quit, effective on the same date. Not that this has anything to do with the bloodletting, they assure us. It’s a development that should trouble Peorians, because both newspapers are owned by the same outfit, GateHouse Media, whose business model is designed around buying up all the newspapers in a region and cutting staff, regardless of the effect on quality.

Not that there hasn’t been some churn at the Peoria Journal Star already. Since GateHouse took over, more than a dozen staffers’ newsroom staffers have retired and moved on. None of have been replaced. Managing Editor Jack Brimeyer announced his retirement. Assistant ME John Plevka will take over.

And then there is the grief that blogs - including my own - have been giving Journal Star reporter Karen McDonald. The biggest story in the 18th District Congressional has been State Rep. Aaron Schock’s statement that he wants to U.S. to sell nuclear weapons to Taiwan. That story was broken by a columnist from the State Journal-Register, not McDonald, the J.S. reporter who was at the scene when Schock made the announcement. To make matters worse, what little subsequent reporting the JS did on the issue didn’t carry McDonald’s byline … except for a very routine story saying that Schock had announced her was no longer advocating selling nuclear weapons to Taiwan.

While the Journal Star virtually ignored this controversy, it was played up in newspapers across the state and on blogs across the world. Much of the coverage on the blogs (including my own) was very unkind to McDonald.

The end result was a week-long, juicy controversy that offered a ton of opportunity for voters to compare and contrast the three candidates for the GOP nomination - not to mention the Democratic candidate, who is unopposed - before the February primary election. So far, there’s not been not much difference among the Three Amigos of Schock, Jim McConoughey and John Morris on the issues, leaving it to voters to figure out for themselves who has the gravitas for the job. In what is a very rare case, the Journal Star Editorial Board blistered Schock with a comprehensive recap of the controversy, including details not touched by its own reporting staff.

November wasn’t a kind month to Schock, nor to the Journal Star. Hopefully, he’s learned a lesson. As outgoing Congressman Ray LaHood told WEEK: “Words matter.” If you are running for an office that can affect foreign policy, you can’t just spout something off to seem tough to your party’s right wing.

The Journal Star and reporter McDonald learned their lessons too, hopefully: The era in which a reporter can show up, transcribe a few quotes and dash off to cover other assignment are over. Reporters’ work is being fact checked and bias-checked, not only by competing mainstream media, but also by the blogs, which grow more influential with every passing election. And if the media keeps producing the kind of lackluster political coverage the PJS has been providing, look for more and more voters to be looking toward blogs to fill in the blanks.

A tale of two city departments

At the Nov. 6, City of Peoria budget hearing, city council members Bob Manning and Barbara Van Auken were very critical of the city’s inspections department. Manning wanted to know why some inspectors have hundreds of cases in housing court, while some have virtually none. Van Auken said this (and I’m paraphrasing): ‘Week after week, month after month, we have individual who do no cases at all. That cannot be a reality that there are no violations. I am suggesting with you we have a problem with personnel not performing. I would like for us to explore setting standards.’

Inspections director Kunski replied that they have made adjustments already by stopping warning notices for environmental and housing and limiting limited the number of warning notices an inspector can give in a two year period. Van Auken replied that there needs to be more specific performance standards based on the area of the city in which the zoning inspectors operate.

It’s funny, because I heard similar complaints during the budget hearings last year. I somehow do not think creating new performance standards will be high on the to-do list at city hall.

Compare this exchange with the words that came out of Peoria Police Chief Settingsgaard’s mouth when he gave his department’s presentation during the budget sessions. He brought up the subject of the so-called ticket quota. He makes no apologies for demanding that his officers turn in no less than ten traffic tickets a month. He recently informed officers that he wants to see similar ticketing done for “quality of life” violations. There is no reason at all that every single officer cannot come across ten obvious violations, he says. When should officers give out these tickets? Whenever they see them, and have the time to do them, and it doesn’t make them late to a call.

And don’t think for a moment that council members do not appreciate this attitude from the police department.

Pulling a Meigs

In case you missed it, the folks who want to rip out the Kellar Branch rail line (that would be the City of Peoria, Village of Peoria Heights and the Peoria Park District) lost again. They tried to get the Surface Transportation Board to kick Pioneer Railway off the line, thereby ensuring that the only operator is Central Illinois Railway, the company the city hired to operate the line and, one presumes, willing to so the city’s bidding and quit operating on the line, allowing the city to destroy it and build a walking/riding path.

A smart person would admit defeat and give up. The STB is never going to allow a working rail line to stop operating, leaving customers in the lurch, to let someone build a trail. But the people who really, really, really want a trail won’t give up - why should they, it’s just taxpayers who are footing the bill for constant appeals. So I fully expect there to be an appeal to the appellate court, not to mention endless pleading to congressmen and senators to intercede and made the mean old STB make a decision contrary to mission and let them build the thing.

But that’s not enough for Peoria City Council member Pat Nichting. More than any other member of the council, Nichting can be counted on to represent the interests of developers, especially those who operate in his fifth district. And as I’ve noted before, the fierce determination to ram this trail project cannot be explained simply as a desire for more walking and biking. If that was the real concern, they would be pushing for the Peoria Park District to maintain the trails they already have. No, it’s apparent that there’s money to be made by developing land alongside the trail, and the developers want the rail line removed. Period. They want no discussion of a trail alongside the rail line. They simply want the line removed.

This brings us back to Nichting, the developers’ pal. As of this writing, he was planning to bring a motion to the council calling for the city to just go right ahead and build the trail, regardless of the fact that the STB had ruled that it cannot be closed as long as there are customers using it. To quote the article:

“He said the city should consider a ‘Meigs Field operation,’ referring to when Chicago Mayor Richard Daley in 2003 ordered private crews to destroy a Chicago airport’s runways in the middle of the night.

” ‘There are options,’ Nichting, a trail proponent, said after learning that the U.S. Surface Transportation Board (STB), which has exclusive domain of the nation’s railroads, denied a request from Peoria and Peoria Heights to keep Pioneer Industrial Railway off the eight-mile line. ‘(The options) include litigation and possibly doing a Meigs Field operation. There one day and gone the next.”

Well, isn’t that just lovely? Not one month ago, the city was all up in arms about a small group of teenagers who were ignoring the law and walking down the middle of the road. Now, we have a sitting city councilman who is demanding that if the city can’t get its way legally, that it break the law in the middle of the night. Does Nichting think that should be an option when someone wants a zoning variance from the city and is denied?

Feh. Rail fans are all up in arms about this. I’m laughing, because it won’t happen. Oh, I’m sure, there are six votes out of eleven on the council to keep stringing the trail-supporters along by pretending this thing has a shot. But there are NOT six votes on the board in support of ordering the city manager to order anything remotely like this to occur. Even if the council were to order the kind of Meigs field strike that Nichting suggests, I rather doubt that City Manager Randy Oliver would follow that order. Losing one’s job is NOTHING compared to being arrested on federal charges.

And I am also sure that someone has sent a copy of this Journal Star article to the powers-that-be in the federal government, who are no doubt eager as Hell to lock up city council members who might conspire to demolish a rail line that the federal government has adjudicated what remain operational.