City PR Too Big, Journalists Too Small

Rant time.

This city election improvement survey is a small thing but a significant thing. Not in the way Ottawa City Hall would like it.

There is no call for improving running elections from the public. Nobody cares. Better would be to design a program (not that the city would successfully do that) to increase participation. Instead they conduct a survey to change the colour of the pencils to make an X on your ballot.

No one asked for this. There is no problem. No need for a solution.

What a waste of time and money. Finding an answer to a problem that doesn’t exist.

Here’s what I see. There are way, way too many people in city media relations which, when it comes to getting information from journalists, is hopeless. They send out a quote by email and that’s it. Happy Town News completely controls the message. No follow up questions. No direct answers to questions.

I can’t remember a time when HTN actually got a human being to talk to me. Now part of this is laziness by journalists. It’s easy to copy-and-paste a quote from an email into a story. It’s lax not to demand more.

Show some nuts, mighty colleagues. When I came into the business, Watergate had just happened so every journalist was coming back to the newsroom with scandals at PTA meetings. You had to gear them down.

Now even the mayor decries the lack of journalists at media opportunities. When I was at city hall, there were media opportunities but you could also just walk with the mayor to a meeting.

At the province, if you needed former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty (and he was busy), his PR person would put her phone in his hand (with me on the phone) as he walked between meetings. Accessibility was seen as a virtue. People had the guts to talk to the media, which with me, wasn’t always a picnic.

Journalism was once a calling. It was not unusual to get home five days in a row at 10 p.m. Dinner was chocolate bars from the vending machine.

And when it was late and I was finishing, I knew a senior city executive would still be in the building working. So we’d go to the old Mayflower to have a burger and a milkshake. Guess what we’d do? Talk city hall and politics. Got home at midnight. Then do it again the next day.

It was not unusual to lose your weekend or a pleasant Sunday afternoon when a source called you with a great story.

And now we have journalists being registered at meetings. There’s no reason to be registered. Why not just walk in? That’s not a crime. We have staffers trying and succeeding to enforce unenforceable bans on recording at public meetings.

If you really want journalism to disappear, keep printing orchestrated pablum election improvement surveys that are make-work projects. Which staffer thought of this? Who thought it was a good idea? Who approved it? Who spent the money for it?  And in the end, the survey will be orchestrated to meet political needs.

Sort of like digging a hole in a road and then filling it up again all summer.

Here is one reason that people are abandoning traditional media.

Because it is boring. Stories don’t get broken. Wrongs aren’t righted. CBC wonders why the National’s ratings are declining. It’s dull, dull, dull. Try to watch it all without falling asleep. It should carry a disclaimer: “Do not watch while operating heavy equipment.” And I’m a journalist … I should be your prime viewer. Politically correct story after politically correct story after politically correct story. You can’t make people watch what the editors think is important to them. The viewers will just tune out. Give them what they want rather than what the editors and reporters want. Give them breaking news, not ideology. Exclusives. Work.

Now self-congratulation. We try to give people what they want when reading The Bulldog. All of us. We don’t have to do this. That’s how we went from zero to 186,000 page views a week in the worst media economy in history. This isn’t any comfortable place. We do our best to give you something resembling the truth. We have no advertisers to whom we cater like developers or car dealers. We use the Google Adsense service which scientifically gives you ads you want. Not a lot of money, less money recently, but it keeps us honest.

Now in the media there’s no fight. Just roll over and get fed treats.

And at city hall, control the message and give the journalists pablum for stories. They’ll happily serve it up.

Now is this rant likely to make me popular with my colleagues? Doubtful. I don’t care. The person I must live with is me and he’s a demanding little guy. Is this missive likely to make me popular among city staff. Not a chance. That’s not the point … coming as close as possible to the truth is what is important. Everything else is froth.

When I was covering Ottawa City Hall for the Citizen a lot of people didn’t like me. Others loved me because I broke stories … daily … more than daily.

They might not like me or like me. Didn’t matter to me. That’s their choice, not mine. But I’ll tell you what happened over time.

They respected me for my hard work, diligence and honesty. It’s respect I want.

Ken Gray

For You:

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Is Election Survey A Solution In Search Of A Problem?

Publish Or Be Damned At City Hall

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