Friday, February 19th, 2010...12:56 pm
If a Tree Falls in the Forest, Will There Be a Banner Headline in the Star?
For the last couple of years, it seems that any problem with Rio Nuevo or Downtown development has been heralded by an above the fold, front page story in the Star. So, you’d think that yesterday’s announcement that the final bit of money for a streetcar system would be similarly heralded as a success. After all, this grant of federal money would not have come if the city had not already laid the groundwork and spent its own money on a workable plan.
So, above the fold headline: State GOP looking to close its primary to independents.
If you want to find the story, you’ll find it on page A2, next to some photos of a UH-60 helicopter that made a visit to a Northwest side elementary school. The Black Hawk got as many column inches as an announcement about our city’s future. Not only that, despite the fact that Rob O’Dell, the usual reporter for such things, was at the event, the author of the piece was a student intern.
It is difficult to find on the Star’s online page as well.
Look, I can’t claim with a straight face that Downtown revitalization has been an unalloyed success. Far from it. However, when things go well and we even get national kudos for it going well, I don’t think it is unreasonable to expect our paper of record to note it with as much fervor as the failures.
4 Comments
February 19th, 2010 at 3:24 pm
Spoken like a true… candidate.
I don’t expect anyone in Tedski’s shoes to say it, but I will: the Star simply sucks.
Since its takeover by Lee Enterprises in 2005, the newspaper has offered a generous array of stealthy editorial concessions to its major advertisers; not the kind Frank Antenori wants to see on the editorial page, but the kind that actually changes community perceptions, in the Metro section. It’s reporting designed to manipulate and confuse people, and it works.
You can thank many individuals for this, but above all, the blame lies with John M. Humenik, the newspaper’s Editor and Publisher who came to the Star in 2005, shortly after the Lee acquisition.
Humenik sits alongside Don Diamond, Don Pitt, Jim Click, Buck O’Reilly, executives from Raytheon and numerous other power brokers behind the closed-door meetings of the Southern Arizona Leadership Council. The dues that organization charges aren’t cheap: what you get for your money is influence and access to those in town with the biggest bucks.
Why the new-in-town news boss of a financially struggling paper would avail himself to a private, influence-peddling millionaire’s club is a matter of speculation, but my guess is Humenik knows exactly what those boys want, and his newspaper needs their cash. What they’re getting for it from Humenik’s “new” Star, sadly, isn’t just advertising.
February 19th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
Is this the same streetcar money story that was above the fold on Thursday’s paper?
February 20th, 2010 at 10:17 pm
If the GOP closes its primary to independents they will get what they deserve. Voters aren’t dummies and they know how badly the legislature has screwed up this year, and if the GOP nominates the most nutty conservative in every race (which will certainly happen in a Republican-only primary) they will lose handily at the polls next year.
February 22nd, 2010 at 7:05 am
Love the headline.
I noticed the Star’s penchant for downplaying the successes of downtown and the City Council last summer when the 4th Ave. underpass opened. Hundreds of people came downtown in the August heat to see the trolley roll into downtown and to participate in celebratory events. As I remember it was difficult to even locate the 4″ story in the online version.
I also noticed that the recent GED rally didn’t make the front page of the print version.
The Star used to be a good newspaper but no more.