Losing the News, Part 2

The response to yesterday’s announcement of more layoffs at the Star has been significant, and almost uniformly mournful. Comments on Facebook, responses to posts on this and other blogs, and on the Star’s own site have generally reflected the fact that communities all over the country are in the process of losing something valuable, and that these latest cuts are simply one more step toward the inevitable loss of news geared to the general public.

At risk of sounding like the old person I am, I remember growing up in an environment where local papers focused on (largely local) government, along with local crime and information about area schools, public improvements and the like. Pretty much everyone read the paper. The reporting wasn’t necessarily great or insightful, but it had usually been fact-checked and proof-read. Those of us who needed more depth in areas of interest supplemented that basic news source with more specialized publications, but even when we disputed the accuracy of this or that report in the newspaper, we all shared that “baseline.”  Newspapers provided a common starting point for further inquiry and conversation. The demise of a common source of information may well be one reason why Americans increasingly inhabit different realities.

Even more consequential, I think, has been the loss of investigation and context, as the remaining reporters are increasingly required to produce more stories more quickly. For the past several years, observers have bemoaned the transformation of reporting into stenography. Instead of simply reporting that official A said X and official B denied that X was true, reporters used to investigate the matter at issue, and tell readers who was telling the truth and who wasn’t.

Let me use a couple of local examples to show how important that last step is.

In our local Mayoral campaign, Mayor Ballard says that crime in Indianapolis is down. His challenger, Melina Kennedy, says it isn’t. How many of us are in a position to access crime statistics, ascertain the credibility of the source, and decide who is correct?

When the Ballard Administration negotiated a fifty-year agreement allowing ACS to manage the city’s parking meters, the agreement passed the City-County Council by a single vote. Ryan Vaughn, the Council President, voted for the deal; had he recused himself, it wouldn’t have passed. Vaughn is a lawyer with Barnes Thornburg, the firm that represents ACS. The Star dutifully reported the accusations by several people that this vote was improper–that Vaughn had a conflict of interest and should not have voted on the matter. And it dutifully reported Vaughn’s (convoluted) “explanation” of why there was no conflict. That was it. No analysis; no checking with the Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission or ethics experts from the local law school. Just “he said, she said.”

For that matter, Indianapolis citizens would have benefited from actual reporting on the terms of the contract, the relationships between ACS and local political figures, and its performance elsewhere. We would have benefited from knowing how many other municipalities manage their own parking and how many don’t, and how the income realized differs under the two scenarios.

The press used to give us that sort of information. It allowed us to draw our own conclusions, to make informed decisions about public policy, and decide which politicians to support. It hasn’t performed that service for quite a while, and things clearly aren’t going to get better any time soon.

Comments

Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights?

The title of this post is the title of the textbook I plan to use in the fall, in my class on Media and Public Affairs. Unfortunately, the message it conveys–traditional media is dying–gets truer every day.

Yesterday, the Indianapolis Star announced that 60 employees were being let go. This is in addition to prior downsizing that has already resulted in a newspaper hardly worth the name.

Of course, the Star is not alone; its parent company, Gannett, has cut jobs across the board (while awarding its CEO a bonus of 1.25 million and doubling his salary just last March).

Without going into my usual rant about corporate ownership of the media, and the huge, unnecessary debt acquired during those acquisitions, let me simply share a personal anecdote that illustrates what’s wrong with trying to “save” newspapers by cutting staff.

A couple of weeks ago, I went online, and finally stopped my subscription to the Star. Someone from the sales office called, and offered me a discounted price if I would continue my subscription (clearly, they need to be able to show advertisers numbers–they’d probably have given it to me free if I’d asked). I said thanks but no thanks, at which point the salesperson asked why I was discontinuing the paper after so many years. I explained that I no longer found much worth reading in it–the paper was thinner every day, the proportion of actual news to “human interest” and “how to” stories was unacceptably low, and coverage of local and state government had become totally inadequate. With respect to national news, by the time the Star ran the few items that still made it into the paper, I’d already heard or seen them.

In short, there is no longer any “there” there.

Cutting staff will simply exacerbate this vicious downward cycle, and hasten the day that the newspaper simply ceases publication. When that day comes, I am pained to admit that there will be little of value left to lose.

The bigger question is: what will take its place? How can we rejuvenate journalism? There are more and more outlets–web sites, blogs, cable TV, radio–offering various kinds of information of widely varying quality, but there is on balance more noise, more celebrity gossip, more emphasis on sex and scandal, and less and less actual news. The question–to which we seemingly have no answer–is “who will watch local, state and national governments? Who will tell us the things we truly need to know if we are to be informed citizens?

What will happen when the last reporter turns out the lights?

Comments

TIFS as Crony Capitalism?

I’m on the mailing list of the libertarian Cato Institute (and the Republican and Democratic parties, among other strange bedfellows). I am fond of Cato–not because I agree with them on very many issues, but because–unlike the Republican Party–they are intellectually consistent. So I was very interested to receive a (snail mail–no link) report titled “Crony Capitalism and Social Engineering: the Case against Tax-Increment Financing.”

For those of you unfamiliar with TIFs, the concept is fairly simple. In order to induce development of projects that would not otherwise be economically viable (sometimes called the “but for” test, as in “but for the economic assistance, the project wouldn’t be built), the municipality caps the property taxes at the rate being paid prior to the new development, and plows the added taxes into the development for a period of time, in order to bridge the gap.

The Executive Summary makes several points:

1) By diverting the “extra” tax dollars generated to the project, those dollars are lost to the schools, libraries, fire departments and other urban services. In a sense, those services are also subsidizing the development. (To which proponents of TIF financing would respond, yes, but if the project would not otherwise get built, and if the abatement ends after a reasonable period of time–after which those urban services do receive the extra income–everyone benefits.)

2) Studies have shown that cities are not really applying the “but for” test. Many of these projects would have been built without the extra help. (Whoops!)

3) The new developments impose added costs on schools, fire departments, etc., so other taxpayers are either subsidizing the added burden imposed by the development until such time as the abatement ends, or getting reduced services during that time.

4) No matter how well-intended these programs, officials will often give in to the temptation to use TIFs as a vehicle for crony capitalism, providing subsidies for developers who in turn provide campaign funds to those same officials.

The Cato report has other problems with TIF financing, primarily because it is often used to support denser in-city developments over suburban low-density ones. In my opinion, that’s an argument FOR rather than an argument AGAINST–as the techies might say, that’s a feature, not a bug. But it is hard to argue with their other criticisms.

This is what makes policymaking so difficult. If  TIFs are used as originally intended–and used selectively–they can be a very useful tool.  When I was in city hall, in the early days of their use, I was a proponent. But at that time, TIFs were being used by urban governments to level the playing field–to compete with the lower costs of suburban development. Over the years, the tool has been adopted by smaller bedroom communities like Carmel and Greenwood–and developers have learned to play “let’s make a deal,” in essence turning TIFs into bargaining chips. One result has been that the “but for” test is history. And when the “but for” test was gone, so was the original justification for the program.

Unfortunately, selective use of TIFs has gone the way of the “but for” test. Here in Indianapolis, if news stories are to be believed, the Ballard Administration is proposing to turn the whole urban core into TIFs. (Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit. But not much.)

It’s just further evidence that the Cato report is correct when it notes that TIFs have “become a way for city governments to capture taxes that would otherwise go to rival tax entities such as school or library districts.”

Comments

Appreciating Our Assets

My husband and I just returned from the Phoenix Theatre’s production of “Avenue Q.”

We had seen the show on Broadway a few years ago, and thoroughly enjoyed it, so we had a pretty good basis for comparison–and this show was every bit as good as the production we saw that night in New York. The singing, acting, stagecraft–all were absolutely first-rate. It was just a great show.

Sometimes we forget how much talent we have right here in Indianapolis–and how important it is to support our local cultural assets. The Phoenix was the first local professional theater to produce cutting-edge new plays and emerging playwrights, and it has consistently been intellectually provocative and technically excellent. The IRT, another important community asset, provides more mainstream fare, and over the years both theaters have been joined by several others–not to mention various other performance venues.

City leaders talk a lot about the importance of science and technology to economic development and the local economy, and it is undeniable that efforts like Bio-Crossroads and Internet II are vitally important to growing our city. But a flourishing arts community is equally important. A vibrant arts community–galleries, theaters, festivals, poetry readings, Fringe festivals–contributes to a good quality of life, and that in turn appeals to what Richard Florida calls the Creative Class, which in its turn contributes to job creation and economic development.

On a more mundane level, world-class entertainment helps fill local bars and restaurants and generates foot traffic for retail venues. (Studies suggest that those who patronize the arts add much more to the local economy than do those who attend sporting events–although public support for the latter is many times the support we give the arts.)

The Phoenix was sold out for the Sunday matinee, and evidently tickets are going fast. If you are lucky, you might still be able to see this fabulous performance of “Avenue Q.”  And if Indianapolis is lucky, we will continue to attract people like the Phoenix’ founding director Brian Fonseca–people who enrich our community and add immeasurably to the quality of our urban life.

Comments

Plotzing

Yesterday, Dana Milbank’s column in the Washington Post began as follows:

The Israeli tabloid Yedioth Ahronoth came out on Wednesday with a shocking report: Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann would join Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) at Glenn Beck’s rally in Israel in August.

It turned out that much of the report was wrong. The three candidates quickly said they had no such plans – a sensible decision. Beck’s hateful shtick encouraged even Fox News to end his show later this month. But, incredibly, another piece of the report was true. “I’d love to participate,” Lieberman confirmed when The Post’s Felicia Sonmez found him in a Capitol hallway. “It’s just going to be a rally to support Israel and the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

Never mind that Beck, a Christian Zionist, supports Israel because the return of Jews to that ancient land is a necessary condition of the Rapture, during which Jews who refuse to accept Jesus and convert will be consumed by fire–a biblical prophecy with which Lieberman might be presumed to differ.

Milbank noted that Lieberman’s willingness to make common cause with Beck made him “plotz” (a word that very roughly translates into “‘become agitated.” The full meaning of “plotz” is probably appreciated only by those of us with Jewish mothers and grandmothers).

Milbank was astonished that Lieberman, who wears his religion on his sleeve,  would embrace Beck, one of the country’s most prominent anti-Semites. He failed to understand that what Lieberman and Beck share is far more than unwavering, uncritical political support for Israel. Both men lack any hint of self-awareness. Both are supremely confident that they own the Truth and have a duty to lecture everyone else about that Truth. Both engage in smarmy self-righteousness. Both are narcissists.  Both, in a word, are zealots–blinded to any worldview beyond their own and utterly convinced of their own moral superiority.

As the character of Yenta in Fiddler on the Roof might have put it, “It’s a perfect match!”