IS IT TRUE? September 18, 2011 “Football Coaching and City Management”

1. Just two more days and the saga will come to a close………

2. Back to tease us Jack? Give us a hint please? Who will be the lucky company as you characterized it to be chosen “to go bankrupt in a few years by taking on a losing project”?

   • The Kunkel Group…….

     • Thanks Jack, we are all anxious to hear. Do you still think that winning this job is a bankruptcy sentence for the winning bidder?

       • 100%

3. Mayor Benjamin Bosse (born 1875-died 1922) is often quoted as saying ” When everybody boosts, everybody wins”. Although Mayor Bosse had ownership interests in 20 companies, was Mayor and also owned the Courier & Press, I don’t think he was including newspaper reporting when he said ” everybody boosts” !

   The CCO seems to be apologizing for its coverage of local government, which was referred to as “negative feedback”. What role does the media play in good governance ?

   “Good governance may be impeded by the blight of corruption, which disrupts
   the free fl ow of information, undermines accountability for decisions and
   discourages greater participation in the decision-making process. Ensuring the
   right to press freedom around the world, therefore, should be regarded as a
   priority. Journalism is essentially a discipline of verifi cation.”
   (source: United Nations Educational Scientific & Cultural Organization)

   I have never believed that sports analogies translate well to business, and they translate even less well to politics. When Coach Charlie Strong of UL Football lays in to his guys, he is laying the groundwork for a game in the future, in which super-fast actions taken at high speed will determine the winner. If those players bring the energy, are motivated and have the right focus, they can “make a play” and help their team win. Government and politics is almost the exact opposite. The “players” there attend multiple meetings, and have a slow, deliberative process which can take months or years to cause action to be taken. Government is not good at doing things fast (i.e., Katrina, the handling of the crisis on 9/11/01). Therefore, the analogy of Charlie Strong prodding his players and the CCO prodding the local politicians seems inaccurate.

   As an example, the actions of the Evansville Redevelopment Commission in the first two rounds of the downtown hotel were not fast, game condition decisions like in football. There were well-thought-out and deliberate attempts on the ERC members’ part to further a political cause. It didn’t occur to them in either round that their rubber stamp might come back to them due to an external force (i.e., banks that didn’t get the memo to go along).

   The Courier & Press has made a decision to heed Mayor Bosse’s advice, BOTH in their reporting AND on their Editorial Page. Local government can do whatever they want, and readers of the C&P will be none the wiser.
   As to the CCO, their “reporting” and “editorial” functions are really merged–as Editors are a welcome part of the dialogue each day as posts are made. If it were not for the CCO, the tiny segment of people in Evansville who have some glimmer of what is going on at City Hall would disappear, and that would be to the detriment of our City.

   CCO: may you find your voice, and stop feeling like you are providing “negative feedback” when back room decisions, no-bid contracts and rubber stamp commissions are the norm. May that glorious day one day arrive when we have a true and fully-functioning local government, but when that does occur, don’t praise them– simply acknowledge that they are successfully doing the job which is expected by the citizens.

   May the day never return when Evansville is a one newspaper town, and that one newspaper is a “booster” in all aspects. May the CCO continue to exercise the “discipline of verification”.

   beerguy

   • Thank you very much beerguy. We used Coach Strong much simpler that you are thinking. I was our attempt to get the idea that negative feedback leads to improvement across to the people of Evansville. It does and hopefully people will catch on. Maybe we can get Coach Strong to town next year for pep talks before City Council meetings. The pep talk could be “your town is so far behind the rest of the world that it can’t even see how far behind it is. This councils deeds, lack of deeds, and rubber stamping is the reason things are the way they are. Do you get it? Are you listening? Can you hear? You and all of your predecessors need a good kick in the butt for what you have let Evansville become. Now get your head in the game and get your butts in that room and pass a resolution that makes a difference.”

   • Perhaps a better analogy might be Pierre Salinger (EC&P), versus Seymour M. Hersh (CCO).

     Both men “informed” the public about John F. Kennedy and his administration. Salinger as press secretary, and Hersch in his book: The Dark Side of Camelot.

     Salinger, of course, was being paid by the people he was covering. Hersh, a Pulitzer prize winning investigative reporter, I believe was more interested in getting the truth out to the public.

     __

     • Press: are you suggesting that the C&P is actually being paid to write favorable stories and lob softball questions by the City of Evansville ? IS IT TRUE ? If it is true, now that’s one hell of a story !

       • Come on man, there is no way that the CP would ever be offered or take money to do that directly. All papers live on ad revenue. Now if a certain car dealer or two who are supporters of the Mayor threatened to pull ads for favorable articles or looking the other way when Snegal things happen that may have some legs.

         In all fairness the CP tarred and feathered Weinzapfel over the Homestead Tax Grab and even piled on to the CCO’s thrashing of the administration’s handling of the hotel and the McCurdy. They are not afraid to be the second paper in town to call a fool a fool or a snegal a snegal.

         Now without the CCO I am not sure that the CP has the horsepower to have figured out that the hotel and the McCurdy were paper tigers. I am also not sure that anyone over at the CP had ever heard the word vetting either.

         • Can someone explain to me the C&P’s fascination with this Howey fellow and his almost weekly drubbing of Mourdock?

           Why all the effort? Hell, I figured that the democrat vote for Lugar will put it out of Mourdocks reach anyway.

4. Good ole’ Downtown. Not to worry,
   No Matter what it costs, Old Downtown’s history as a Cancer on the Public Treasury is NOT in Jeopardy.

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