If you’ve watched politics in Janesville lately, you know that there’s a proposal for a new fire station that’s both expensive (about nine-million dollars) and that would require the demolition of about a dozen residents’ homes.
The controversy over the station might have been mitigated, but the entire episode represents a succession of unforced errors of planning and communication. The Gazette, along with government, has fumbled its response to a waxing protest movement.
When I have written recently about the need for visible work (Show Your Work), and for critical thinking (Local Gov’t Desperately Needs a Version of the ‘Tenth Man Rule’), I’ve had towns beyond our city in mind (at least in part) when I wrote those respective posts.
(For the Gazette links below, all are subscription req’d.)
A quick recap:
1. Janesville’s Fire Department wanted a new fire station.
2. Janesville’s City Council met in closed session to consider construction options, in a meeting that the Janesville Gazette rightly suggested was a violation of Wisconsin’s Open Meetings Laws.
Not that they wanted any legal action, of course: “The Gazette or the district attorney could attempt to make the council pay for its illegal meeting, but that time and money might be better spent elsewhere.”
Diffidence or parsimony in the fight for open government is ill-becoming a serious newspaper.
3. Janesville’s Council went ahead anyway with the project.
4. The Gazette‘s editorialist told those who were disappointed (including up to a dozen homeowners who would lose their homes) that
Regardless, what’s done is done. Residents don’t have to like how the decision was made, but it’s time to accept it. Sometimes, thinking long term creates immediate pain. That’s the case here.
Honest to goodness, the Gazette‘s editorials are a daily example of what a tone-deaf editorial board looks like.
One would almost think that the editorial-page editor, Greg Peck, was trolling for any reaction, but there’s no reason to think he’s that shrewd.
5. Later, the Gazette ran a story implying that a local resident may have been targeted for selective fire-code enforcement because of his oposition to the fire station.
6. Local officials naturally took umbrage at the story suggesting they were targetting residents for punitive code enforcement.
7. Scott Angus, Gazette VP for Newsroom Operations, only days thereafter wrote a blog post disavowing his paper’s earlier suggestion of punitive code enforcement, and insisting that it was wrong to impugn the reputation of city employees.
8. The paper wants City Manager Mark Freitag to go ahead with the station, but they’re more-than-willing to cast doubt on his selection. (“It might be years before we know whether the council’s choice of Freitag was wise. Residents will never know, of course, what might have been under Winzenz because he didn’t get the chance.”)
(Freitag has no supportive, popular base within the city; members of the local business development group will not be enough to help him weather repeated controversies. Neither the paper nor any special-interest group will be adequate to bolster Freitag if local politicians turn against him.)
When the Gazette‘s editorial page flubs even simple facts about Whitewater’s politics, or when they use a former radio-host as a so-called reporter and he can’t even identify the correct state in which a proposed business is headquarted (Wisconsin, not Florida), they’ll not even run a correction or apologize for that low-quality work.
But when an official in Janesville complains, that paper doesn’t run a mere correction, it servilely and clumsily capitulates and runs in the other direction as hard and fast as it can.
They’ve no stomach for watchdog journalism, as watchdog journalism doesn’t whimper and scurry at the first word of official displeasure.
If that paper had taken a more demanding line with government – on this issue and others – they would likely have compelled a better product from the city.
I sometimes think that there must be a conflict at the paper between those who’d like to be a genuinely independent institution and those who want to hold government’s hat and coat.
Time and again, the hat-and-coat faction (assuming there should be anything other than that) wins.
When a paper refuses to demand legal consequences for open meetings violations, deprecates ordinary residents’ feelings about their homes, impugns protesters as ill-informed while publishing ill-informed editorials and stories about towns nearby, and retreats when adult officials take umbrage, it’s simply not a solid paper.
Janesville: where supposed movers-and-shakers, aided by its local paper, ignore each other’s mediocrity.
