Memo to Gina: Ostrich Opinion Objection

                                      

We’ve written in the past about ‘journalist’ Gina Hamilton, generally because of something she wrote in The Coastal Journal, which she headed some years ago.  You can read what we said here: http://othersideofbrunswick.blogspot.com/search?q=gina+hamilton

We just reread those items to remind ourselves what moved us to comment on her, and frankly, we’re impressed with how restrained we were in our comments.  She deserved far more in the way of a wire brushing if you think about her role at the CJ in those years.  No matter, it appears she got her just desserts.  Apropos that, one of the past items included this gem:

Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor of journalism in that by giving us the opinion of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
                                                        -Oscar Wilde

Gina, by her own accounting, has had a varied career, including these two positions:

• adjunct physics and chemistry teacher; University of New England; taught physics and chemistry lab courses and occasional lecture sections

• adjunct physics teacher; Bowdoin College; taught physics lab courses.

Given our recounting of her inability to deal with numerical facts with reasonable grasp, we can only say we’re more than astonished by the sloppy hiring practices of two local ‘institutions of higher learning,’ and in particular, an esteemed, very local, highly selective, small liberal arts college.

Al Diamon, a curmudgeonly media analyst if there ever was one, had this to say in July of last year about Gina and The Ostrich, where she now holds forth:

Bias? What bias? In early July, the Times Record, the afternoon daily in Brunswick, announced it had hired Gina Hamilton as a reporter covering Bath and Harpswell, as well as coordinating arts and entertainment news. Hamilton is the former editor of MaineToday Media’s weekly Coastal Journal, as well as the editor of the New Maine Times, a nonprofit website with a strong liberal bent. In addition, Hamilton writes a regular weekly opinion piece for both the Times Record and New Maine Times, which displays an obvious leaning to the left.

Nevertheless, Times Record managing editor Bob Mentzinger doesn’t have a problem with Hamilton’s dual roles, saying she’ll continue her column while adding reporting duties.

“There’s no overlap,” Mentzinger said. “She’s not opining on Bath and Harpswell .… There’s a pretty good firewall between what’s she’s opining about and what she’s reporting.”

Nor is Mentzinger concerned that readers will be confused by Hamilton’s shifting roles, saying they’ll have little trouble telling one from the other.

But will they?

To cite one possible conflict, New Maine Times has published several pieces critical of Republican Gov. Paul LePage’s plan to cut revenue sharing to municipalities such as Bath and Harpswell. While the Legislature reduced the size of those reductions, both towns will still feel some impact. Won’t readers wonder if Hamilton’s apparent opposition to those cuts in particular, and LePage in general, is somehow coloring her reporting? Isn’t there a danger this might reduce the newspaper’s credibility?

Hamilton says there’s no problem. “All of that stuff is economic analysis,” she said. “It’s not opinionated economic analysis. It just is what it is.”

Mentzinger may be comfortable with that explanation because he’s made the jump from journalism (city editor at the Kennebec Journal) to political advocacy (working on the 2012 U.S. Senate campaign of Democrat Cynthia Dill) back to journalism, seemingly without ethical qualms. Although I notice he doesn’t mention his gig with Dill on his LinkedIn page.

Probably an oversight.

We need to point out that Mentzinger was recently canned by The Ostrich. And that the Ostrich web page has a button for ‘Paul LePage,’ but not ‘Eliot Cutler’ or ‘Mike Michaud.’  So ‘coloring reporting’ and ‘credibility’ are lingua franca non-grata at the local rag.

                                 

Demonstrating their commitment to staffing excellence, whoever owns/manages the Ostrich quickly promoted Hamilton from her lowly beat reporter stature to opinion page editor, where she spearheads the attitude formation mission of the so-called newspaper.  Given Mentzinger’s departure, she likely thinks she’s in the running for the Managing Editor post.  If you haven’t already cancelled your subscription with them, that should do it.

                               

Carrying on for others, Gina continues the habit the old bird has of publishing editorials written by one who doesn’t even live in our perfect little community.

While she reminds un in many ways of former Opinion Editor Claire Bastien from the last century, at least Claire was a town resident.

           

Speaking of Gina’s opinery, this past Wednesday, April 9th, she ran an editorial entitled “The Train in Maine.”  We have a number of objections to what she wrote, not least of which is protecting wetlands over protecting established neighborhoods.  And a liberal dose of “it’s your own damn faults, you idiots.”

But rather than bore you with our usual diatribes, we have something different today.

Dennis Bailey, a consultant employed by the Brunswick West Neighborhood Coalition, wrote back quickly to Gina with a direct and well articulated challenge to her editorial.  He’s given us permission to run it verbatim here, and we are, with gratitude.

To the best of our knowledge as of this moment, Gina has not responded, nor run Dennis’ item as a commentary.  Lucky for you, there’s another way to get the Other Side of the issue.  Dennis makes it pretty clear which statements of hers he’s responding to, so his work stands well on its own.  (If you want to read her original item, you’ll have to find it elsewhere.)

Here is Dennis Bailey’s memo:

Hi Gina,

I’d like to talk to you sometime about your recent editorial “The Train in Maine.” There seems to be a lot of information and facts that are either being ignored or misunderstood.

Perhaps the most egregious line in the story is near the end where you write that the Brunswick West neighborhood "had every reason to expect train facilities in their backyards.” Really? How?

If you check the records, you’ll find that all tracks except the Mainline, one relatively short freight rail siding and one very short spur were removed from the “Marshaling Yard” more than 25 years ago. All buildings were removed in the same time frame. Many years prior to that, passenger rail service had been discontinued and freight rail had severely diminished.

Only 550 carloads were carried on the line in 1983 compared to 3,300 in 1982 (this is from a Times Record article 7/24/85). With these kinds of facts, what any neighbor could reasonably expect is that trains were going the same way as the Dodo bird.

On top of that, the area in question was zoned by the town as a Mixed Use 2 Zoning District. The town, through it’s political process, had determined that large, industrial buildings are inconsistent with the Brunswick West location, which had been earmarked for mostly residential housing. The largest building permitted in this zone is 20,000 square feet, but as you know the proposed MLF is three times that size.

I don’t know if you’ve ever bought property, but I have, and one of the first things I do is to check the zoning and see what is permitted in the area. This usually gives me a relative sense of security knowing what I can expect to be built around me.

So to say that the neighbors “had every reason to expect train facilities in their backyards” means that they should have known that passenger rail service would be revived after it had long been discontinued, that NNEPRA would be created, that it would claim pre-emption status so it would not have to comply with local zoning laws, and that a huge industrial facility would someday be built in their backyard to service trains that didn’t exist at the time.

I know most of the members of the Brunswick West Neighborhood Coalition, and I haven’t met anyone yet with clairvoyance this keen. To say they should have expected a noisy, smelly industrial facility the length of two football fields on abandoned property outside their bedroom windows is like telling someone who moves next door to a gas station they should have known that an oil refinery would be built there someday.

There are other points in your editorial that display the same faulty logic. You summarily dismiss other possible locations for the facility, probably based on the consultant who was hired by NNEPRA to examine alternatives.

You should know that NNEPRA entered into an agreement to acquire the Brunswick West property BEFORE it engaged the consultant to do the analysis (this is well documented), which throws serious doubt over the report’s objectivity. The alternative sites have yet to receive a truly independent analysis (one of the reasons why a full environmental impact study is needed).

Also, your editorial suggests that the expansion and success of passenger rail service to and from Brunswick is somehow dependent on the construction of the MLF. Really? You should perhaps talk to people who work for AMTRAK (not NNEPRA). I have, current and former employees.

Many of them believe that Brunswick is the worst location for a facility of this type, for a variety of reasons that you may find interesting. It was originally planned for Portland but was moved to Brunswick for reasons we believe were mostly political. Seems odd that a facility that promises all the jobs and economic advantages that you claim would be unwanted in Maine's largest city.

What’s more, the success of passenger rail service is, or should be, dependent on ridership. Like any business, expansion should occur when demand warrants it. Have you looked at the actual ridership figures for the Brunswick line? Not the PR fluff that NNEPRA puts out but the actual daily and monthly ridership figures? We have, although it took a FOI request to get them.

What they show is that 90% of the time the train to and from Brunswick is below 10% capacity. 90% OF THE TIME. In other words, a train that can hold up to 300 passengers barely contains 30 on most days. Some days it’s even less. Some runs it’s none at all.

So explain to me: how will building a huge layover and maintenance facility for $12-$15 million in (mostly) federal funds to service these (mostly empty) trains expand the use of passenger rail service? How in the world will more people be convinced to utilize passenger rail service that they are not now using just because there is a gigantic layover facility nearby?

What’s the connection? I’m sorry, I don’t see one. And shouldn’t the justification for expanding passenger rail service and adding routes come AFTER the trains are unable to serve their current passengers? It certainly would in the private sector, but obviously a highly subsidized enterprise like AMTRAK operates under different rules.

Look, everyone loves trains. Who doesn’t? Even the members of BWNC love trains. They’ve got no beef with trains going by their house a few times per day. None at all. But having watched this issue unravel over the last year and seen the many serious and very legitimate concerns (for the community and the state, not just for the neighborhood) that have been raised and mostly ignored but the press, I’ve come to the conclusion that the news media have blinders on when it comes to passenger trains.

The usual skeptical scrutiny that the press gives most businesses is not applied to passenger rail and NNEPRA. Maybe reporters are just afraid of the facts, like they’ll be accused of killing Santa Claus. But I’ve known you to be an engaged and independent journalist, and I implore you to look beyond the spin that is being offered by NNEPRA and its advocates, and examine the real data and hard facts around this issue.

I’m happy to discuss this further at your convenience.

To which we say Bravo Zulu.  Which is probably why Ms Ostrich Opinion hasn’t bothered to respond.

If and when she does, we’ll let you know, but we wouldn't bet a Kuppa Kool-Aid on it.

Technorati Tags: Ostrich,Hamilton,Editorials

The Coastal Journal, Gina Hamilton, and Language Abuse

A casual glance at the Coastal Journal quickly reveals it to be largely the play toy of Gina Hamilton, the Editor.  She writes the editorials, a column describing her personal life, and the majority of the “analysis” and news items.  You might call it The Gina Journal most of the time.

The editorial stance is on the far left side, viewing government as one huge social agency and redistribution authority.  Private sector activities are tolerated as the means to fund government goodness.

Lately I’ve come to believe that Gina must be a blood relative to a former prominent congressman, Democrat Lee Hamilton of Indiana.  A number of columns by him have run in the CJ, and I’m not ready to believe that he just randomly selected the little paper from Bath that has an editor with the same last name.

On to the point of this post.  Gina is an archetypical liberal journalist when it comes to shading and abuse of plain English to serve her ideological purposes.  She tweaked me enough to write this item in her “analysis” of last week titled ‘The proposed budget and you.’

In it, she referenced a telephone press conference informing the press of “budget items that would affect the working and middle class.”  She then added that “since most people in Maine are either working OR middle class……”  Do you sense the disdain?

A quickie…on the Constitution

You all know how much I love The Coastal Journal, and its all purpose persona Gina Hamilton, a liberal feel-gooder of epic dimension.

I’ve had her “opinion” piece of July 1st in my stack for two weeks now, and it’s time I make appropriate disposition.  She titled it “The Declaration…or the Constitution?”

If you ever wanted conclusive proof that our population is loaded with folks who can’t see any value or purpose or structural merit in founding principles or similar constraints upon our government, Gina is here to make the point.

To begin with, Gina asserts:

The Declaration of Independence was essentially a call to arms, and carries no force of law.  For instance, although the Declaration refers to a ‘Creator’, the Constitution makes no such reference, and indeed, establishes a strict wall of separation between church and state.

A call to arms?  Fine.  But ‘a strict wall of separation?’  Poppycock, balderdash, and folderol. 

The clear language of Amendment I says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….”  The words ‘strict,’ ‘wall,’ or ‘separation’ are nowhere to be found.  Except in the imaginations of those who find the constraints, well, too constraining.

Next, Gina lets us know that she finds our founding principles lacking in literary merit:

it was the dry, pendantic (her spelling) language of James Madison’s Constitution that we live with today and which truly forms the basis for our grand experiment.

But worry not. as Gina tells us:

the Constitution is a living document that should and does reflect the changing nature of America’s evolution and growth as a society.

In other words, no matter what you think the Constitution embodies, it is no more binding or permanent than is the makeup of your compost pile or tomorrow’s weather forecast.

As a matter of fact, Gina expects that:

The Court that will be seated in October will make many important decisions, just as former courts have done, and will share in the role of driving American society forward.

As you can tell, Gina is convinced that the role of the Supreme Court is to enact progressive social policy.

So what lesson do we learn here?  First, Gina should rename “The Coastal Journal” as “The Coastal Progressive,” since it is her purpose to use the weekly as her personal ideological manifesto.

Second, before she writes, Gina should learn to read, and more important, comprehend what she reads.  And teach her son and heir to do the same.

From all indications, she has not yet reached that milestone.  La Dolce this or that and other cutsie gimmicks notwithstanding.

Technorati Tags: Coastal Journal,Gina Hamilton

Sunday bits and pieces…..

                                      

Local Personnel Changes:

                                                

We note, apparently, that Gina Hamilton and her smiling, cherubic face are no longer with The Ostrich.  During her tenure at the much revered ‘paper of record’ for the Brunswick area, she seemed to be working her way down the organizational ladder at a furious pace.

Gina, judging by her history, is adept at talking herself into a job, but inapt at talking her way into holding on to it.

We could say we’re going to miss her, but we have our journalistic integrity to protect.

The NOTWIUN Opines Amiss:

                                   

If you’ve been a reader of ours for awhile, you may remember that we had another name by which we called The Ostrich.  That name is The NOTWIUN, which is an abbreviation of The Newspaper Of The WIllfully UNinformed.

We coined that term in response to an editorial they ran sometime ago accusing certain members of the Town Council at the time of being willfully uninformed on a subject related to base re-development.  No doubt we asserted that it was the editors who were willfully uninformed at that time.

                                         

And we were reminded of that sentiment yet again recently.  Whether they are willfully uninformed, or willfully mis-informed, we’re tempted to say, is a difference without distinction.  As we thought about the difference though, we’ve decided to go with mis-informed, because they have in all likelihood been chugging the Kool-Aid shooters served up by the All Aboard Brunswick gang, the Brunswick Downtown Association, NNEPRA, TRNE, and assorted other train idolaters.

In the week just passed, the current editors showed just why they are as we have called them.  They decided to lecture us all on the DEP SWPA Hearing subject, which is easier, we suppose, than actually investigating the subject and reporting on it.  They went with the worn-out talking points that have been foisted on low-information readers, and did their best to keep them that way.

                           

Lettuce assess a few of the shroomier passages:

NNEPRA simply needed to re-submit its application. Instead, it’s jumping through all of these extra hoops to make sure those who are outraged that a maintenance facility would be built — on the train tracks that were located behind their property when they purchased their homes — can say no more about being left out of the process. To ensure there will be no further delays in getting on with building the building.

Actually, two things jump out at the discerning reader.  First, the ‘property behind their homes’ was zoned for 20,000 sq. ft. max structures, roughly 1/3 the size of the proposed NNEPRA facility.  Leave it to the federal government to declare themselves exempt from virtually all municipal and state law and regulations. 

As to ‘simply re-submit,’ inferring a carbon copy of the original, even the briefest of discussions with someone informed on the subject would have made clear that the absence of notification allowed numerous shortcomings and inadequacies to make it into the process.  Due diligence and rigor were not hallmarks of the original; those who challenged the application did their best to see that the revised submission speaks to the public trust issues involved when a state agency submits an application to another state agency.

The hearings taking place tomorrow should only deal with stormwater, and passionate arguments about the other aspects the facility should be left at the door. Surely there will be those who will extoll the virtues of what the facility will mean for Brunswick and the Downeaster: Increased rail service, ending the idling of train cars on the tracks, and saving money from dead-head runs and personnel shuttling are among the favorites touchstones for those in favor of the project.

We trust the editors will soon scold the hordes who came to speak in support of the permit, and spoke never of stormwater, but only their mystical belief that trains are a wonder upon our lives.  Said supporters either could not find their way to the repeatedly published guide-lines for testifying at the hearing, or simply knew that adhering to them would leave them with nothing to say.

Just as surely, there will be those who show up to demonize the proposed facility, offering criticisms about how the Downeaster isn’t cost effective or reliable, and the excessive noise, emissions and decreasing property values that will result if the terrible MLF is built.

Opponents of the permit, on the other hand, scrupulously adhered to the guide-lines for testifying, offering substantive and well-researched commentary on various aspects of the permit application.  We expect no recognition of the difference with supporters, because that would put the editors in an objective, informative box, the sort with which they are unfamiliar.

           

Worse, they’d be upsetting the beautiful people, local immortals, elites, and selected members of the unhinged fringe.

Though those in opposition will likely not listen to these words, the time has come to move on, to accept that the facility will — and should — be built.

Based on what, we might ask.  The editors certainly haven’t illuminated the subject in any real sense, which means all they are left with is emotion and opinion, each of which aligns with the local cognoscenti and down-towner attitude mentors.  Those especially with New York Times and Washington DC sensibilities.

Change isn’t always the easiest thing to handle, but in this case it is inevitable.

The final irony in the item, which, we could argue, captures the plight of The NOTWIUN.  Or so we would fervently and defiantly wish.

               

A question or two on the post of yesterday:

In thinking about the items we posted from Ms. Johnson and Mr. Dunbar, we couldn’t help but wonder how they factor into the Downeaster ‘ridership numbers.’  Not to mention how many times the latter found himself Shanghaied south of Brunswick by the vicissitudes of winter as they unfairly visited themselves upon the helpless train.

Charles says he made 71 trips in the last year, though he doesn’t say how many of those trips his spouse came along with him.  Still, think of the possibilities.  Do his trips count as a total of 71 in the ridership for the year, or 142 to count each direction?  How about all the stops in between, say Portland and all the other major depots along the way?  Does Dunbar add to the ridership tallied at those stops?  In both directions?

Now add his wife into the mix.  The possibilities for statistical and enumerative mischief are mind-boggling, all fundamentally due to one patron of the train.  The important point to note, of course, is that Charles and his spouse travel south to benefit the economy in larger and more exciting locales, thereby depriving the local economy of that stimulation.

What will it take in the way of unknown visitors from away to simply offset his and Ms. Johnson’s travels?  Only the shadow knows.  But we continue to believe that in such situations, economic stimulus from individuals tends to flow from the more remote, unexciting locales, to the more urban, culturally blessed, and exciting locales.

We have no criticism of either’s affinity for travel and spending their hard earned resources wherever they wish.  But we have plenty of criticism for those who fail to recognize the ‘giant sucking sound’ when discussing economic ramifications of The Downeaster.

 

As we said, it’s becoming clearer and clearer why no-one in an influential position will allow or endorse an objective probe into such realities. 

                                   

Even those who held leadership positions in Economic and Community Development….and should be most committed to evidence based decision making, rather than political expediency.

We can dream, can’t we?  And maybe if a few more did, it might change things.

Or not.

Technorati Tags: Ostrich,Brunswick,NOTWIUN,Economics

Changes at the Coastal Journal

Gina Hamilton, long time editor and primary writer, analyst, and opinion scribe at the Coastal Journal, has changed careers.

An article in the Portland Press Herald describes it thusly:

Gina Hamilton, former editor of the Coastal Journal, a weekly newspaper based in Bath, is owner and editor of the New Maine Times, which will also be published weekly.

The business model is non-profit:

The publication has filed paperwork to be registered as a nonprofit….seeking funding through foundation grants, corporate underwriting and reader contributions -- readers may be asked to subscribe online for an annual subscription fee of $35.

Most foundations in this day and age have political/social agendas, and seeking grants from them suggests alignment with those agendas.  As to corporate underwriting, who knows what baggage that will carry with it.  Regardless, it’s safe to say that the new offering will not be free as a bird when it comes to editorial leanings.  And anyone familiar with Hamilton’s work would expect nothing less than a significant leftward slant.

Who knows, maybe that’s why she’s doing this.  It could be those in charge at the CJ would not grant her even greater latitude to head that way, so she took her golden kleenex and headed out to find ‘creative freedom.’

Now as for that $35 online subscription fee, we must admit it has some appeal.  We’ve been operating as a certifiable non-profit since inception.  If we can bring in the shekels and still carry the cachet of non-profit altruism, what’s not to like?

The Ostrich has been going the route of a ‘non-profit’ for some time now, including the tax status that affords, and the New Maine Times is following in their footsteps.

So what are we, chopped lobster tomalley?

 

Technorati Tags: Coastal Journal,Other Side

What are they smokin’ at the Coastal Journal??

Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor of journalism in that by giving us the opinion of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
                                                        -Oscar Wilde

I’ve made sport of Gina Hamilton and The Coastal Journal on more than one occasion.  And in each case, I thought it was well deserved.

Every now and then, I feel inspired to cut her and the CJ some slack, which, it turns out, must be an omen.  Next thing you know, here comes a hanging curve ball about 12 inches in diameter, traveling just fast enough not to hit the ground before it crosses the plate.

Gina is a one girl journalistic band: editor, columnist, editorial writer, policy and economic “analyst,” and anything else that she feels moved to undertake.  Under the circumstances, we should expect her to exhibit some basic competencies, and she should expect even more of herself and her publication.

As a multi-degreed engineer, I learned early on in a variety of classes that there is something called a “test of reasonableness.”  It’s an instinct you develop, an intuition, that allows you to assess whether the answer you have calculated to a complex problem is, in fact, ‘reasonable,’ as distinct from ‘correct.’ 

If the answer does not seem reasonable to you, chances are very good that you screwed up somewhere.  Generally speaking, we’re talking about magnitudes, not accuracy.  $10, $1000, $1,000,000.  That sort of thing.

Let me give you an example or two.  If you go to lunch at McDonald’s and pay with a $100 bill, and you get $47 in change, you don’t have to do the math to know that something is wrong.  The change amount is not ‘reasonable’ on its face.  Or if you go to buy four new tires for your car, and the bill is $119, most of us would know immediately that the figure is wrong, even if we choose not to tell the employee.

Based on her “Drug policy and immigration control” editorial in this week’s edition, it’s clear that the otherwise cute and perky Gina suffers from  RID (reasonability instinct deficiency.)  And the magnitude or the errors in this week’s offering are sufficient to render her unqualified to engage in economic policy analysis on our behalf. 

A few tidbits….

We’re currently pre-occupied with other things, and we live in a ‘target rich environment’ for those of us who like to ‘post’ on various incongruencies in local affairs.

So cut us some slack for this very short and hasty post.

Item 1:  a reader called a while ago to report that the flag flying in the town mall, which we assume is the responsibility of municipal government, is tattered and due for honorable disposal and replacement.  As the reader said, if we can spend $60 million or so a  year on what goes on around here, including $35 million or so on schools, can’t we find a way to replace this flag with honor and decorum, at a cost of say, $100?

We bet that loyal citizens would gladly chip in to buy a new flag.  Just for the pleasure of seeing the current one taken down and the new one hoisted.

We told the reader we’d stop by tomorrow and take a photo of the tattered flag and post it here.  We hope we remember to do so.   We owe that to you.

Item 2:  Given the departure of the latest Managing Editor, we’re wondering why we haven’t heard from The Ostrich regarding his replacement.

                                                          

He was, as we see it, a small man.

And we sincerely hope that Gina Hamilton, currently the opinion page editor at said head-in-sand media outlet, is not in the running for the job.  Btu given their apparent death wish, she may well be the pick.

Mentzinger left the local fray with a mournful statement, which we linked in an earlier post, about the business challenges facing a small town newspaper.

It caused us to think back about the circumstances that pertain.  We concluded that HAD The Ostrich truly focused on serving the community in the truest sense, they might have been able to rally town support to keep them alive and viable business-wise.

But the truth is that Bob Mentzinger ran the paper to serve his partisan agenda, not the town.

Gina Hamilton did the same thing when she ran the Coastal Journal, and eventually found herself ‘seeking new opportunities.’  She’s doing so now on the opinion page.

We have no sympathy for either, especially since they both seem genetically incapable of learning from their experiences.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  It turns out we’ve learned from their experiences even if they haven’t.

Technorati Tags: Brunswick,Ostrich

New directions & palace intrigue

 

Two days ago, that being Friday, February 7th, the Ostrich led with a front page, above the fold article entitled “Councilors, developers decry ‘secret meeting’”, written by Bob Mentzinger, identified as ‘Times Record Staff’ in the byline.  As chance would have it, we had written about Mentzinger just the other day.

He responded with this comment, using the pseudonym ‘PemWhataName,’ a particularly mature nom-de-plume.

Real easy to trot out lies and slander when youre an anonymous blogger hiding behind a psuedonym. At least some of us are accountable

Mentzinger, as we told you, is the current ‘managing editor’ at the Ostrich.  Just today we learned that Gina Hamilton is now the editorial page editor at the same publication.

Gina is just another example of the musical chairs phenomenon in Maine’s print media.  Not too long ago, she was the top dog at the Coastal Journal.  Somehow she just sort of disappeared from that slot, and the CJ is now on at least the second generation of replacement for her.

She used whatever editorial discretion she had in that role to make the CJ a thoroughly progressive weekly, drawing often upon her uncle, former Congressman Lee Hamilton, to provide ideological rationale for her point of view.

When the CJ no longer felt the need for her services, she drifted around looking for other purpose.  Apparently, the music stopped when she was hovering over the Ostrich chair.  Unless Gina has moved into town from her ‘Turning Tides Cottage,’ she joins the list of Ostrich op-ed page editors with no personal stake in Brunswick town affairs and governance.

Speaking of which, let’s get back to Friday’s top of the fold article.  Here are the opening words:

Town Council Chairman Benet Pols held a closed-door meeting with an engineer and two developers asking them to reconsider their plan to build a road at Cook’s Corner.

The Jan. 29 Town Hall meeting — confirmed by two participants who said they had not been previously notified of it — rankled some councilors, who said it’s not their job to approach applicants who have official business before the town.

The article is just a shade less than 1500 words, far longer than just about anything we can remember.  That’s the equivalent of two full length commentaries on the opinion page.

Long-winded bloviator that we are, we thought about discussing the article and it’s assertions and innuendos at length.  But then we realized we might come at it with a series of questions.  So here they are.

• Since the subject meeting occurred on Wednesday, January 29th, why did it take until Friday, February 7th to report on it?
• Who is it that contacted ‘Times Record Staff’ Bob Mentzinger to report on the meeting, and provide enough information to ignite his interest in the story?
• Why did this story take ten days to make the news?
• Why was Mr. Manager on vacation on the day the story appeared?
• How does the story relate to the special town council meeting scheduled for this coming Monday, February 10th, to discuss Mr. Manager’s severance and release agreement?
• Has councilor Jerry Favreau retired from his designer job at BIW, or did he get a call from someone to suggest he should leave his desk and come to the Town Hall to check his mail at just the right time?
• Could Council Chair Benet Pols be an instigator in not asking Mr. Manager to not resign?
• If a Council Chair, say Benet Pols, chooses to engage in a discussion with local developers, does two other councilors showing up in the middle of that meeting turn it into a public meeting in violation of state law?
• If the two other councilors were not originally invited to that meeting, how did they find out about it?
• Why did Council Chair choose to meet with Jim Howard and George Schott?  Could he have been inquiring about the role of Mr. Manager in prior discussions and negotiations in recent years?
• Could what he learned in these discussions have led to the call for a special meeting this coming Monday to take further action regarding Mr. Manager’s tenure with the town?
• Is it possible that Mr. Manager may have had more than an administrative interest in the development plans of Howard and Schott?
• Does Councilor Watson have a clue?
• “I felt it was very disenchanting — and I’m being nice — to think that a fellow councilor would hold a closed-door meeting on things that are vital to my district,” Watson said.
• Do the words in this passage reflect the opinions of the principles in the meeting, or of those who somehow came into things ‘later’ because of serendipity, or more likely, a call from ‘someone?’
• For their part, the developers — Jim Howard, president and CEO of Priority Real Estate Group, and George Schott, CEO of Schott Development — were “upset” by the meeting, and by Pols’ request, according to two officials who participated belatedly in the meeting.

                 

• Note how the following passage is loaded with non-specifics; if this is the current standard at the Ostrich, what else do you need to know?.
• Participants in the meeting weren’t necessarily against Pols’s proposal, but they were miffed at the vehemence with which he advanced it.  One participant called Pols’s demeanor “patronizing,” “condescending” and “very dismissive” of the developers’ concerns — chiefly, that the project currently on the table be pursued, as it had the best chance of leveraging business development in Cook’s Corner.

                                          

• We’re not here to defend Pols.  None-the-less, if you read the article carefully, you see no direct quotes from Howard or Schott.  The accusations of improper or illegal behavior all stem from ‘'unnamed participants,’' who we take to be Dave Watson and Jerry Favreau.

                                     

• Both are on the record as not supportive of Mr. Manager’s non-resignation.  So we wouldn’t be surprised if you were to be suspicious of their role in this ‘intrigue.’
• We are impressed with their final words on the subject:

On the role of Town Council chairman, Watson — who has represented District 1 for the past 12 years — said “they are not, and should not, be acting as town managers, admninistrators, or anything.”

The role of chairman, said Watson, is to run meetings and establish an agenda for meetings.

Favreau agreed. “The process is broken,” he said, and he promised “I’m going to be vocal” at upcoming forums in which the road is discussed.

The last passage in the article is this:

One of those forums — a Town Council workshop on the project slated for Monday, Feb. 10 — is being postponed, Pols said, because of other pressing issues, such as the selection process for hiring a new town manager.

We can only wonder what lies ahead.  Rot, deterioration, and finger pointing. we suppose.

And then there’s The McLellan.

Technorati Tags: Brunswick,town council

Another Side of The Other Side

Every now and then we amaze ourselves.

Or perhaps scare ourselves is a better way of saying it.

A post two days ago, on Wednesday June 24th, contained this passage:

The Local Ostrich of Record

As news junkies and intellectual elites know, the New York Times has for many a year been referred to as ‘the newspaper of record,’ whatever the hell that means. 

We believe we have a number of devoted souls who simply can’t get by without their daily dose of the “Gray Lady,” withered as she’s become.  Not that the rest of us aren’t showing our age.

In a local sense, we believe a declining yet still notable number of willfully uninformed consider the Ostrich to be ‘the newspaper of record’ hereabouts.  Surely the editors do as well; how could they come to work each day if they didn’t?  (PS: when can we expect the next change ‘at the top?’)

Those last parenthetical words were a jesting ‘throwaway line’ in our general scheme of things.
So color us shocked, shocked, we say, when we came across this item in today’s edition of The Ostrich:

Swinconeck named Times Record managing editor

Starts duties Monday
The Times Record
JOHN SWINCONECK BRUNSWICK

Fifteen years ago, John Swinconeck got his start in the newspaper business as a freelance writer — for The Times Record

Starting Monday, June 29, he will lead the newspaper as managing editor, having spent a little more than the past year serving as a reporter for The Times Record.

“I’m excited for John to take on this role, as his passion for the business and the Mid-coast region has impressed me during the last year,” said outgoing Managing Editor Rob Montana. “The quality of his reporting is excellent, surpassed only by his commitment to community journalism and telling the stories of the people here.

Wow; it wasn’t too long ago we visited The Ostrich offices off Industry Road to meet and welcome Rob Montana, who moved here from upper New York state with his family to take the lead editorial position.  Now he’s being replaced, and with no mention of what lies ahead for him.  Time will tell if this is a blessing for him, before the publication goes under completely.

We hope John finds things to his liking and does some good for what’s left of a ‘once proud’ newspaper.  He joins a long line of top editors there, each of whom hasn’t lasted very long.

Names that immediately come to mind are these:

Rob Montana (most recent)
Gina Hamilton (maybe not top job, but she thought she was)
Bob Mentzinger
Jim McCarthy
Rob Long

and who knows who else.  As we recall, the last two flip-flopped between ‘top-dog’ status.

All this turmoil makes us paranoid about what may lie in store for the top spot here at Other Side.  We’ve had the position for a coon’s age in journalistic time, but we haven’t noticed anyone lurking outside our door waiting to take over.  Our life-long working relationship with the publisher has been largely cordial, but that can be a curse as well as a blessing.

So make sure you watch the headlines.  In today’s news climate, heads can roll without warning.

Yeah..that’s in bad taste, but let’s face it; it’s true.

Sadly.

 

Technorati Tags: The press,The Ostrich,Other Side

“This and That” – May 1, 2010

A brief collection of items worthy of your awareness:

Traditional Media Circulation Continues To Slide

According to “media-mutt” Al Diamon, Maine’s established print media are continuing to lose circulation.  While the Press Herald and some others have declined to submit their recent figures, those that have show a consistent loss of readership (paid, at least.)

Brunswick’s revered Ostrich continued to demonstrate the wisdom of editorial policies that cater to less than half of their potential readership.

The Times Record in Brunswick was no exception to the trend. It went from a daily circulation of 8,673 a year ago to 8,091 now, a loss of 6.7 percent. The weekend edition dipped from 10,366 in 2009 to 9,583 in 2010, down more than 7.5 percent.

For the rest of the story, look here.

Public Sector Getting Rich on the Backs of the Middle Class

Got your attention there, didn’t I.  Regular readers know we’ve reported on the excesses of “public sector” unions before.  You may want to grab your ankles, or at least your knees, before you read further on this report though.

A periodical that we subscribe to recently carried an article that included this citation:

In Contra Costa, California, the final salary of one fire chief, 51, was $221,000. He was given an annual, guaranteed pension of $284,000. Another chief, 50, whose final salary was $185,000, got a pension of $241,000. Credit the Contra Costa Times with uncovering this.

You can read the entire article here.  And check out a referenced source here.

Too bad you didn’t take that job as a California fireman when you had the chance.  And 250 million Americans are thinking the same thing.

Coastal Journal – Government “Rescues the Economy”

Is your back hurting from bending over to absorb the last little snippet of good news?  Poor you; you better get used to it.

The Coastal Journal, which as we’ve opined before is the vehicle by which Editor Gina Hamilton earns a living while spewing collectivist and liberal orthodoxy, carried her “analysis” of the Obama administration’s plan for “Rescuing the economy” here.

I’ll spare you the gory details, other than to report that her review of the plans includes intentions to create a lovely array of new government agencies to oversee and improve our lives. The items below combine the “best ideas” of the house and senate versions of the bill.

Consumer Financial Protection Agency: Creates an independent agency with scope over financial products such as deposit accounts and loans.

Systemic Risk: Creates a new agency, called the Financial Services Oversight Council, which identifies threats to the stability of financial markets.

Investor Protection: Strengthens the SEC, and orders a study of the securities industry that will identify needed reforms.

Insurance: Creates a federal Insurance Office that will monitor all aspects of the insurance industry, including identifying gaps in regulation. (Or, if you prefer: Creates an Office of National Insurance in the Treasury Department to monitor insurance industry issues, coordinate international issues, and provide information and recommendations.)

Credit Rating Agencies: Creates the Office of Credit Ratings in the SEC.

Well!  I hope you feel better, because we certainly do.  How could we not when our aristocracy plans to create so many new agencies to look after our interests?  In all likelihood, the new government jobs will knock a tenth of a percent or two off the unemployment rate.  How could this not be good for us?

And now you know the Other Side of the story.

Technorati Tags: press,government,unions