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The Buffalo News in Transition

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The Buffalo News

Photo by amstefano988 on Flickr

Margaret Sullivan, the Buffalo News’ editor-in-chief, announced on Monday that she would be leaving the News this summer to become the New York Times’ “public editor” – a position formerly known as “ombudsman”. I wish her well in her new position. 

It does, however, raise some questions about the News. The Buffalo News performs a valuable public service, and it’s Buffalo’s only daily newspaper.  What does a public editor do, exactly? 

“The role of the public editor is to represent readers and respond to their concerns, critique Times journalism and increase transparency and understanding about how the institution operates,” the media group said in a statement.

“With the vast changes in journalism in recent years, the new public editor will seek new avenues for that mission.”

Sullivan will continue to write a print column, “but she will focus on a more active online role: as the initiator, orchestrator and moderator of an ongoing conversation about The Times’s journalism,” the statement said.

That will include a blog and Web page on NYTimes.com, along with an active social media presence.

Given that New York is a three-daily-paper town, the residents of the city get choices in terms of the type of paper, coverage, and editorial voice they want. The Times transcends that, however. It’s the closest thing we have to a national daily paper of record. The Buffalo News is shrinking. It regularly trumpets that it remains “profitable”, but in the past 10 years or so, it’s lost an entire roster of talented writers, and its online efforts are sometimes successful, sometimes bizarre, and inexplicably unintegrated with the more youthful and vibrant Buffalo.com outlet.

To this day, Sullivan misapprehends what the Buffalo News is in this new media environment. The News is poised to erect a paywall because it believes that it is in the newspaper printing business rather than the journalism and information business. It will be charging 99 cents to obtain online something that costs 75 cents to buy in paper form; that’s 99 cents for something that’s free to distribute versus 75 cents for something that involves paper, ink, trucks, and a wide distribution network. That’s fewer eyeballs looking at the content, looking at the ads accompanying that content.

I don’t get it. The paywall, and its regressive, absurd pricing structure, further cleave the paper from the community it serves. No one wins – combat decreasing physical circulation by decreasing online circulation?  That’s the job qualification for a public editor? Chats that Sullivan has hosted at the Buffalo News’ website revealed nothing along the lines of a public editor role, merely defense for the alleged impartiality of certain columnists and coverage. 

We’re reminded that the News remains profitable; that Papa Buffett remains supportive. Profitability is maintained despite a drop in circulation, because veteran writers would rather take a buy-out than stick around. The News prints lots of things for a fee on their state-of-the-art machinery, including the New York Times.

But Sullivan’s new job – why exactly doesn’t a one-paper town have an ombudsman? Isn’t the News’ duty to its readers somewhat higher, given that there is no print competition? Or is that duty alleviated because of occasional criticism or analysis from online competition like Artvoice, Buffalo Rising, or Investigative Post? 

After all, most people buy the News for the coupons. The coupons. Isn’t that a damning indictment? Doesn’t that discourage the talented writers who remain at the News, who have been recently placed in new, high-profile beats, or sent out to report on goings-on in suburban town halls, muscling in on the Bees’ turf? How long did Janice Okun stick around expounding on the relative pros and cons of booth dimensions? How many more times will Bob McCarthy repeat his patent bullshit about Chris Collins being scandal-free and fulfilling all the promises? How many more times will Donn Esmonde – nominally retired – write glowing profiles of the newest and best thing said or done by the Elmwood intelligentsia? 

It will be interesting to see how the Buffalo News changes after Sullivan’s departure. Change is inevitable because I don’t think the paywall is going to fix anything. I also believe that the News is in the business of journalism, not in the business of printing a paper. It should be spending money and using resources to create a 21st century newsroom and a product that is less reliant on coupons and gimmickry, and better integrates itself into the networks of people, groups, and neighborhoods that make up WNY. 

The internet shook the newspaper business to its core.  Very few, if any, papers, have adapted well to that shift to the new media landscape. Sullivan kept the paper afloat under monopolistic market conditions. Buffalo.com is unable to integrate with BuffaloNews.com – banner ads promote each in the other.  What is your opinion of the Buffalo News? Do you buy it? Subscribe? What reporters do you appreciate and follow? I enjoy the work of Tim Graham, Matt Spina, Denise Jewell Gee, Andrew Galarneau, Aaron Besecker, and Steve Watson, to name a few. 

You go to the Newseum in Washington, and you get the very real sense that it’s a museum honoring the relics of pre-internet news gathering and dissemination.  As people shift from paper to computer to tablets, the Buffalo News has been playing catch-up, oftentimes frustratingly so. We criticize the News because it’s the only game in town. Because it’s the only game in town, it has a duty to be better; more responsive, accessible, and transparent to the community it serves. 

Email: buffalopundit[at]gmail.com


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The Outer Harbor. Again.

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When I first started blogging about local issues in mid to late 2004, one of my first topics was the Outer Harbor. At that time, the NFTA was circulating three competing centrally-planned proposals for that land – the parkland proposal, the nice proposal, and what I called the “Elevator to the Moon” proposal, because it seemed to offer everything up to and including that feature.  I also called it Amherst-sur-Lac. (Of course, the NFTA picked that plan way back in early 2005. We’re still waiting.)  The Buffalo News endorsed it, as well. 

Parkland Edition

Mixed-Use Version

Elevator to the Moon Plan

The biggest problem with the Outer Harbor isn’t land use; it isn’t whether we lay a strip of parkland along the lake, or whether we turn the whole damn thing into little more than a seasonal festival grounds. 

The biggest problem is how contaminated that area is – and that’s not counting the fact that our self-perpetuating governmental, quasi-governmental, authorities, and public benefit corporations can’t decide who should own the land and control the process. It falls under the ECHDC’s jurisdiction, but is owned largely by the NFTA. Still. 

I’m not sure why the bus company owns land on the waterfront. Or why it should. Or why it hasn’t divested itself of it yet.  Or why it’s sat on it for 50 years. 

The contamination is longstanding and acute. It makes “what to do with the Outer Harbor” a moot question until millions of dollars are spent to fix it. 

Ultimately, what’s going to happen is a lot of finger-pointing, a never-ending process of public hearings, public “debate” over how the land should be used, and absolutely zero direction from Mayor Brown. We’ll probably have at least one or two lawsuits, and Donn Esmonde will periodically exit his semi-retirement to scold everybody, invariably supporting whatever group is first to court to seek injunctive relief. We’ll have the NFTA protecting its turf against the city, the state, and the ECHDC. We’ll have loads of renderings, 3D models, and maybe even a fly-through video presentation of what might be built there, but none of it will ever happen. 

10 years from now, the Outer Harbor will likely look largely as it does today because the primary goal of all these competing entities and interests is self-aggrandizement and self-perpetuation. It’s going to take initiative and motivation to pull together the money it’s going to take to turn that land into something that won’t poison anyone who spends more than a few hours at a time there, and money is hard to come by nowadays. 

Ultimately, however, it doesn’t matter whether the NFTA owns the property or someone else does. What ought to happen is that government involvement should be quite limited. A zoning plan with architectural guidelines should be drawn up, streets should be plotted and paved. Utilities should be brought to the properties, and a broker retained to market them. 

When it comes to projects such as this, Buffalo seems allergic to anything except a centralized plan, but what happens to this potentially valuable property ought to be left almost entirely up to the private sector. 

As for the parkland demanded by the Citizens for a 21st Century Park on the Outer Harbor, I don’t have any problem with direct waterfront access being preserved for the public, and don’t have a problem with a strip of parkland bordering whatever development takes place and the water. What I would be opposed to is any notion that the entirety of that property be turned into parkland.   

The Outer Harbor should someday be home to people and retail businesses that support residential city living. Access should be available by boat, car, and the Metro Rail should be extended south to the small boat harbor and Tifft Nature Preserve.  

This area has been patiently waiting for decades for someone to carefully restore it to a safe and attractive use. Maybe this time we’ll get it right. But I’m not holding my  breath. 

The War on Women and Mothers 2012

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So, the war on women. Right? There’s a war on women. That’s what the media are telling us, that’s what politicians are talking about, that’s what’s been in the national news for the last month or so. 

This is new? 

Those with economic and political power have been battling women’s rights for centuries. Hell, it’s only been about 100 years since women were given a constitutional right to vote throughout the country. The Equal Rights Amendment – which would have strengthened Constitutional protections against discrimination – was never ratified or enacted. As Mad Men will sexily remind you, it’s only in the last 40 or so years that it’s become common or acceptable for women to pursue a career outside the home.

It’s only in the last few hundred years that common-law countries stopped treating women as chattel. 

America was built on paternalism and puritanism, and this country still struggles with basic womanhood. Locally, it’s only a few months ago that local ruin-hugging ex-columnist Donn Esmonde incurred women’s wrath by expressing the icky feelings he gets when he sees women breastfeeding – naturally feeding their children – in public.  We had a locally-sourced gubernatorial candidate who routinely shared misogynistic emails with captains of politics and industry.  

 Mitt Romney is saying that President Obama has been really waging a war on women, because the 2008 financial meltdown – which predated his presidency – disproportionately affected women in the workplace. Politifact says that claim is “largely false”.

This year’s traveling vaudeville act of a Republican primary season revealed that the GOP still struggles with the concept of women’s rights. As usual, they scrambled to out-oppose each other on any form of abortion rights. It got so bad that a debate over contraception that people thought was dead, revealed itself merely to have been dormant, as Republicans pounced on a rule of general applicability that required even religious employers to include contraceptive coverage as part of their health care plans.

While the right wing presented this as a fight over religious freedoms – part of the “Muslim Obama war on Christianity” meme – it came across as a battle over chastity.  The Republican id, Rush Limbaugh, crystallized it when he called Sandra Fluke a “slut” and “prostitute” because she explained how the cost of contraceptives was prohibitive for many people, including students.  

Apparently, Limbaugh and his followers confused the use of female contraceptives with the way men use Viagra – as if Fluke was having so much sex, she couldn’t afford to take the pill each time. Again, it was semi-informed, ignorant men trying to control a narrative over something they barely understood. 

Yesterday, Arizona – the most tea partyish of the tea party states – passed an insane law that has nothing to do with science, health, or safety, but is called the “Women’s Health and Safety Act”. I remember 20 years ago, people would debate the morality and legality of abortion by discussing when life begins – conception? Viability? Some other time? Well, Arizona has firmly decided on “some other time” – namely, life begins at the end of the pregnant woman’s last menstrual period. The state will not only artifically re-configure nature itself, but will also attempt to bully and coerce women into not undergoing an abortion – a perfectly legal medical procedure that enjoys specific legal protection. 

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/KagroX/status/190591900334559232″]

And so we turn to Hilary Rosen – someone I’d never heard of before this week – who clumsily accused Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann, of never working a day in her life. Rosen has since apologized, and explained that her words were poorly chosen and she meant to underscore the fact that the Romneys lived a multimillionaire’s life and have absolutely no real-life understanding of the struggles that regular, middle-class people have. 

One could make the argument that Ann Romney’s laudable choice to be a stay-at-home mom is a “choice” that a great many American families don’t have the luxury to consider.  Just like most American families don’t have the choice to participate in the “rarified world of upper-level dressage“. 

The right pounced on Rosen, and much of the left establishment criticized her, as well. But the Catholic League – a detestable religio-fascist collective led by horrible person Bill Donohue – had this to say: 

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/CatholicLeague/status/190427506904539136″]

I don’t even understand that. Is Donohue criticizing adoption itself as being less than proper, natural motherhood? Is Donohue saying that adoptive parents don’t “work” in raising their kids, but that biological parents do?  Remember the story I wrote about the school assembly, where some Catholic cleric derided adopted kids as “sociologically unstable”? Why are Catholic leaders attacking adoption and adopted kids?  I think for Donohue, it has more to do with simple rank homophobic hate, as evidenced by this Tweet, from later the same day, which goes to this post from Kristen Becker: 

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/CatholicLeague/status/190059203518410752″]

Planned Parenthood said this: 

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/PPact/status/190551328555143168″]

Ann Romney wrote these Tweets: 

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/AnnDRomney/status/190262588163100672″]

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/AnnDRomney/status/190428549105188864″]

No, only some women get to choose their own path. A great many women can’t afford to do that. In the meantime, we ensure that people like the Romneys only pay a 15% income tax rate on their non-payroll investment income. Entitled? If Romney was a Democrat, Republicans would be deriding stay-at-home motherhood as just another socialist welfare entitlement program. 

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/KagroX/status/190554001295687681″]

Hilary Rosen took to Twitter to directly address Romney: 

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/hilaryr/status/190272145568440320″]

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/hilaryr/status/190272730128592896″]

The whole thing could be solved quite simply. If, as Romney says, women are “entitled” to make the choice, then they should be entitled to make the choice. If the Republicans are now suggesting that motherhood is real work, it’s time for the federal government to make funds available to supplement household incomes in order to enable every American family to make the same choice that the Romneys were wealthy enough to make. The median annual income for a woman working full-time in America is just over $33,000. The federal government should expand social security to give women a choice to claim annual stay-at-home benefits equal to that figure, with annual cost-of-living adjustments.  If we’re for school choice and vouchers, we should be for this. 

Obviously, that’s never going to happen – we as a society can’t even agree on whether or not people should have universal access to quality health care without the fear of going bankrupt. Michelle Obama wrote, 

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/MichelleObama/status/190469503161860096″]

There’s been a war on women going on for centuries. It’s still a big part of our society. I don’t think Mitt or Ann Romney are this generation’s catalysts for changing that shameful problem. 

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Fix the Fundamentals

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A Buffalo News story reveals one of the main reasons why the city of Buffalo bleeds people – it’s the schools, stupid.

That’s not to say other school districts are some sort of paradise, but the experiences the families in that article are neither new nor reasonable. On the one hand, you have parents who agonize over completing an application process and receiving snail mail regarding whether their kids will attend a particular school, and on the other hand you have parents who are ambivalent enough about school that their kids have half a school year’s worth of unexcused absences. 

The dysfunction of the Buffalo school system, and the tea party push to defund education nationwide couldn’t be more disheartening or damaging.  When compared to the rest of the world, we’re average – not the best. Time was, that’d have been unacceptable. Budget cuts, larger class sizes, and eliminating curricula isn’t going to change that.  

The school system shouldn’t be a 50’s era byzantine bureaucratic disaster, and the categorization of failing and not failing schools doesn’t do a damn thing for everyone. Every school should do well, and every kid deserves a chance – even if their parents don’t care. 

In an ideal world, Erie County would have a consolidated and unified school district, pooling resources from all communities to ensure an efficient path to an excellent education – if regionalism works for other government services (which I think it does), it works for schools, too. That doesn’t mean a kid from Springville will be bused to Tonawanda, but it does mean you don’t have as many labor contracts and administrative entities as you do municipal entities. This means you can do more with a larger revenue pool.  Every kid in WNY deserves the same shot at a bright future. 

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