Indianapolis Star – Page 2

Disappointing News

There are so many real problems in today’s world that it seems extremely petty to complain about this, but I see that The Indianapolis Star is negotiating with the Simon Company to move into the space previously occupied by Nordstrom.

The City has worked long and hard to get a critical mass of retailing in the downtown core. An adequate retail presence is necessary if we are to continue the residential rebirth downtown: these uses are co-dependent. We need enough people who live downtown to support retail uses, and we need retail uses that are convenient in order to attract downtown residents.

We’ve already lost the site of the former Borders to a bank. Now we are losing the Nordstrom site– a prime retail location that many hoped would be filled by a Macy’s or similar shopping destination.

When I first worked downtown, I was a lawyer at what was then considered a large firm (52). There were perhaps two places to have lunch; there was nowhere to shop. When I first moved downtown, there was no grocery. (What is now Marsh and was O’Malia’s was then an old and decrepit Sears Roebuck, with blue metal siding.) City officials and not-for-profit organizations have worked hard over the ensuing years to revive the core of our city, to attract a broad mix of uses, and to make it a place people want to live in and visit.

It’s worrisome enough that the soaring crime rate is once again making people hesitant to attend downtown events. If we lose the things that attract people downtown, that’s a double whammy.

This is just one location–albeit an important one–and obviously, Simon can do what it wants with its own property. But it’s disappointing–another lost opportunity at a time when Indianapolis lacks the political and civic leadership that over the years turned “Naptown” into a great place to live.

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The Ethics Challenge

The Indianapolis Star actually engaged in journalism yesterday, and the result wasn’t comforting: a lengthy story about DCS director and former Juvenile Court Judge James Payne. Payne abused his position and fought the professionals in his own agency in a case involving his grandchildren.

You can read the details in the Star, which devoted significant space to the story.

My question isn’t so much about the sordid accusations and depressing details of the Payne son’s divorce and custody battle. It is bemusement over the elder Payne’s indignant refusal to recognize his own ethical transgression. When I was in law school–and the Judge and I are roughly the same age–there was a mandatory course in legal ethics. Conflicts of interest and abuses of power were central to that course. But even if the content of law school classes has faded, the Judge has always presented himself as a deeply religious man; he has worn his Christianity on his sleeve. Isn’t there something about “do unto others” that might have alerted him to the impropriety of his behavior?

Governor Daniels’ office was quick to distance itself from the Judge, protesting a complete unawareness of his inappropriate involvement in the case involving his own grandchildren. I believe the Governor–after all, he has been unaware of half-billion dollar “errors” in his administration, too. But the Governor has a history of turning a blind eye toward behaviors that raise ethical questions–notably, hiring a well-connected law firm to represent the state in the IBM lawsuit. That firm represents ACS–yes, the same ACS that made out like a bandit in the deal to manage Indianapolis’ parking meters.

ACS was IBM’s partner in the huge contract to manage Indiana’s welfare eligibility operations, and (unlike IBM) wasn’t terminated when the problems with that privatization effort became too embarrassing to ignore. When reporters raised questions about the propriety of hiring ACS’ lawyers to sue its former partner, the firm defended itself by pointing out that it had disclosed its conflicts–in a letter that took seven pages to detail them. (Maybe I’m dense, but I’ve never understood why disclosing an impropriety makes it go away.)

It was all very cozy. All in the family, you might say.

The real lesson here, I suppose, is that we can’t depend upon any administration to police itself in order to avoid self-serving behaviors. We need watchdogs–real newspapers to report on our elected and appointed officials. It was nice to see the Star acting like a real newspaper for a change.

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Paywall Decisions

Last year, after 50+ years as a subscriber, I stopped taking the Indianapolis Star. My reasons were the same as those of the large numbers of other people who have decided to forgo the morning ritual–there is very little “there” there anymore.

The Star and other daily newspapers are in a death spiral, partially due to circumstances beyond their control, and partly due to really poor decisions about how to cope with those circumstances. By now, we can all recite the litany of change: the Internet brought other news sources to our fingertips, mostly for free; Craig’s List cost newspapers a billion dollars a year in classified advertising revenue. The existing business model simply disappeared.

Meanwhile, big chains like Gannett had gobbled up the dailies, paying inflated prices with borrowed money. Between the competitive changes and the massive debt, bottom lines suffered. So the new owners did what businesspeople do in such situations–they cut employees. Newsrooms have been decimated over the past decade. And the result was–duh!–less news. And with less news came less reason to buy the paper in the first place.

I stopped subscribing when I realized I could read the paper in less than five minutes. I do scan the (very poorly designed and proofed) website from time to time, in case there is actually local news reported. I don’t miss the diet tips, the pictures of someone’s kitchen, or the celebrity “news” and similar items reprinted verbatim from national sources. Such material is widely available. What I keep hoping I’ll find is actual reporting about Indianapolis and Indiana–especially informed reporting about state and local government. There hasn’t been much of that, unfortunately–and we are seeing what happens when a community loses its “watchdog.”

The Star is now instituting a paywall. The question is whether there is enough content left to merit a 12./month charge. At my house, we willingly pay for the New York Times, because the content justifies the charge. We’ve decided to see if the electronic version of the sad remnants of what used to be a real newspaper is worth even twelve bucks a month.

Stay tuned….

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News You Can Use

The Indianapolis Star has appointed a new editor, who is quoted in this morning’s edition promising “news you can use.” This catchphrase has come into increased use as newspaper readership has continued to decline–not just in Indianapolis, but nationally.

The problem is that no one completes the sentence. Those who toss off the phrase do not proceed to the important issue, which is: use for what?

In my opinion, the news citizens can use is information about their common institutions–including but not limited to government, and especially local government. Judging from what the newspapers are actually covering, however, they consider “news you can use” to be reviews of local restaurants, diet and home decorating tips, and sports. Not–as they used to say on Seinfeld–that there is anything wrong with that. At least, there wouldn’t be anything wrong with that if these stories were being served as “dessert” rather than the main course.

The new editor also promises an emphasis on journalism’s time-honored watchdog role. I hope that isn’t just rhetoric, but I’m dubious. Genuine watchdog coverage requires resources–enough reporters with enough time to investigate and monitor a wide variety of important government agencies and functions. The Star has experienced wave after wave of layoffs that have left it with a skeletal reporting operation, leaving the paper’s capacity to provide genuine journalism an open question.

What residents of central Indiana could use is a real newspaper. I’m not holding my breath.

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A Tale of Newspapers Past

It has become a commonplace for those of us who live in Indianapolis to complain about the lack of substance in the Star. I was recently rude enough–and it was rude and I shouldn’t have said it–to complain to Matt Tully about the lack of coverage of city hall. His defense was that the paper had covered the Litebox and Duke Energy scandals. True–but what about the multiple issues that haven’t been covered (or uncovered). After all, when a major daily paper has exactly four investigative reporters, there’s a limit to what they can do.

As I often (too often??) remind people, when I was in city hall, there were three full-time reporters and a couple of stringers covering city government. The Hudnut Administration would never have gotten the “pass” that Ballard (and Peterson) have. When I edited a book about the Goldsmith Administration, contributors got most of their information from contemporaneous newspaper accounts.

I thought about this again this morning, because our daughter Kelly told me she’d been going through some memorabilia–old newspapers she’d kept as reminders of important events–and was shocked by the difference between those old issues and the current, pale imitation that Gannett puts out. Not only was the paper physically larger, it was packed with information about city and county government, news of the state and nation.

Sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words.

As Kelly pointed out, it isn’t so bad with respect to national news, because we can access the New York Times and many other sources of national news online. But there is no local substitute for credible, fact-checked reporting. We have some thoughtful local bloggers who bring issues to our attention, but they aren’t reporters, and don’t pretend to be. So there’s a lot going on in our city that we don’t know about; there are details about the things we do know that would change our opinion of them (cases in point: the Broad Ripple garage evident boondoggle, the parking meter giveaway). Mentioning something is not the same as reporting on it. Reprinting or rephrasing a press release isn’t reporting.

I’m glad the Star reported on the Litebox fiasco and Duke Energy’s ethical lapses. But patting the paper on the back for two good stories is like giving your teenager a pass for five F’s because he got one A.

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