Press Releases: Dodging Shots

Published in the Portland Phoenix

In politics, and with the media, it's the outcome, and not the intention, that matters. That's fortunate for Senator Susan Collins, who got lucky twice in the same week.

Back in February, "moderate Republican" senator Collins managed to strike $780 million designated for preparing for and fighting flu pandemics from President Obama's economic-stimulus package — all part of her efforts to cut Democratic proposals down to a size she could support.

When the swine-flu panic struck last week, Collins was a main target of critics from outside the GOP who labeled her budget-cutting efforts part what lefties call "the party of No's" campaign to gut Obama initiatives.

But as the mainstream media joined the attack, the senator was able to defend herself with two key points. There was a December 2008 letter in which she and other senators asked Senate leaders to add $905 million to the Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund, which is run by the US Department of Health and Human Services. And, during the stimulus-package debate, she'd actually come out in favor of flu-pandemic funding. She just wanted that kind of spending to go through the regular federal-budget process, rather than sliding into an emergency stimulus spending package.

Those moves, the kind of calculated bet-hedging political-speak that all elected officials spout, turned out to be a solid enough counter-attack that the mainstream folk gave her a little breathing room. During that time, nature took its turn to hand Collins a win (at least so far). The H1N1 (swine) flu pandemic threat appears to be smaller than originally feared, so we don't seem to need the millions of dollars she slashed — nor the millions she asked for and failed to get — after all.

If Collins had slashed pandemic funding and hundreds or thousands had been sickened or died, she would have been roundly castigated for her two-facedness. But since that hasn't happened, the media — but not the blogosphere — is allowing her to escape criticism for, in reality, failing to increase pandemic funding even a little bit.

This example illustrates one way the public can become more informed, not less, by carefully using both the traditional media and the blogosphere. Sure, the ranting bloggers didn't do what the pros did — call Collins's office and seek some answers — but they called attention to something needing further investigation, which the pros promptly provided.

What the pros found, when they took the bloggish outrage and made it (not Collins's action) the story, was that the senator's staff were already in backpedal-defense mode.

The crucially telling quote came in spokesman Kevin Kelley's hastily issued statement last Monday: "There is no evidence that federal efforts to address the swine flu outbreak have been hampered by a lack of funds."

Of course, a quote like that led to more criticism from bloggers, who noted that Collins hadn't stuck to her guns about increasing flu-pandemic funding. The latest federal budget added just $1.4 million in that area, and Collins (because she objected to other things in the bill) voted against the whole thing anyway.

It also led to an uncommon swipe by the mainstream press: the Washington Post's comment that "Collins and the others who led the fight to axe the flu money three months ago can only hope that doesn't change."

Whether or not it does, we can be sure that Collins knows that she is being more closely watched than she might be used to, and by people who are undeterred by the relentless "news cycle." Blogging watchdogs are more like hounds than shepherds. And only luck protected Collins this time.

Testimony before the Maine Legislature

Testimony before the Joint Standing Committee on the Judiciary of the Maine Legislature, on behalf of the Maine Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, with support from the National Freedom of Information Committee of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Maine: Why We Live Here

Published in the Portland Phoenix; my contribution to a 13-person group essay

I'll blame my sister. Sort of, at least. For a while, having grown up and gone to college elsewhere, and traveled a good bit, I had no home at all. My stuff was in a self-storage unit in Vermont (or in my parents' basement). I had been living out of a duffel bag and a backpack (or just a backpack) for 18 months when I stopped in Portland to visit my sister and some other friends who lived here. I was about to go back on the road for another six-to-eight-month stint and was talking about that prospect, when everything changed. The group ganged up on me and told me that since I didn't actually live anywhere else, why didn't I just live here?

(I suspect they planned this in advance, so well-coordinated was the approach. But they couldn't possibly have known that while on the road, I had so longed for a home, any home, that I had been sketching a house in my journal, just to explore the concept.)

I couldn't answer the question — I actually still can't — and so when I got back from that road trip I borrowed my sister's spare room and went apartment-hunting. Without boring any of you with the quotidian details, I've gotten married, bought a great house (from which I've been walking to work lately in the glorious sunshine), got a dog, found a job I truly love, and see my sister and her children all the time.

But as much joy and pleasure those facts bring to my life, I live here because it has become home. I used to think of other places I lived — Vermont, New Zealand, Antarctica — as home, and for a time, they each were. I carry pieces of them with me every day (even literally — around my neck is a piece of New Zealand jade).

Sometimes, I confess, I long for them. Of late, my faith in Maine has been a bit shaken. One of the biggest things bothering me is that some people are going around claiming — without having asked me — that somehow my marriage and every other marriage in Maine will suffer irreparable harm if we allow more people to marry. If our senses of mutual respect and personal dignity — not to mention outright practicality — are this disjointed and illogical, and if our faith in our own relationships is this weak, I worry what might be next.

But close-mindedness and selfish behavior happen elsewhere. Here, we have an expanded, and more complicated, interdependence. We let each other be, but we look out for each other, too. (A Vermont columnist once described it as knowing that while you and your next-door neighbor may never have spoken or waved after years of living side-by-side, she'll be the first person banging on your door if your chimney catches fire.)

It's spring now, so naturally I'm thinking about winter. It was early morning, and I was going to be late for work because I was digging like hell after one of this year's interminable blizzards, trying to clear the massive snowbank the plows had left at the end of my driveway, when a pickup truck zoomed in from out of nowhere (well, outside my hatted, hooded peripheral vision, anyway), and swiped the berm away in one go. I raised my arms to the sky, thanking whatever heavens had brought this godsend to my aid. It wasn't until the truck came back for a second pass — to clean up the remnants, which were easily shovelable — that I realized it was the guy who runs the business next door to my house. He rolled down the window and his dog's nose poked out. Vinny told me that the dog treats my wife had made and dropped off a couple days before had been quite a hit. I went back inside and told my wife to start making some more biscuits, because it looked like more snow was on the way.

In summer, it's much the same — I was walking the dog once in a local park, and passed a few other people. We said hello just briefly, and went on our ways. And then the dog just plain ran off. Gone. I searched everywhere, yelling, beseeching, pleading, in hopes that he'd hear me and come back. No dice. I had already called my wife to come and help me look when one of the people who had passed earlier came up to me and said he had my dog — his family had seen him running toward the road, and had caught him. They had him on a leash nearby. The relief I felt was the same as at the appearance of the plow: the purity of outright serendipitous good-heartedness from a totally unexpected quarter.

I am not for a moment saying that these kinds of small miracles — and that is the right word — don't happen elsewhere. I am, though, saying that the fact that they happen here so often makes me all the more sure that this is the right place for me.

Portland Phoenix The Best of Portland on WCSH's 207 (with Lone Wolf Documentary Group)

Aired on WCSH's 207

Press Releases: Naming names

Published in the Portland Phoenix

In last week's cover story (see "Fold or Float") I outlined what the Portland Press Herald has to do to survive — either under existing ownership or somebody new. It started with attracting and keeping readers. The task includes dreaming up new ideas and experimenting with them, to see what will work as a business model that can support good, solid journalism.

Any effort at survival should take advantage of the ample brainpower and ability already on staff — ideally, by naming the sharpest tools in the shed to what we'll call the Survival Committee. Here are the top five candidates, and a few ideas for a strong supporting cast.

• DIETER BRADBURY, who was briefly the paper's "online reporter" and handled video and audio with competence, if not a gift. With practice, he'd get better. With support from co-workers, the passable stuff he did in his abortive stint (before staffing cuts eliminated his position and sent him back to writing for print) would actually get some traction.

• JUSTIN ELLIS, the only person in the newsroom who shows any evidence of knowing how to blog or use the Web. He's also the only one who appears to have actually met anyone under the age of 35, much less imagined that they might read his newspaper.

• DEIRDRE FLEMING, the former outdoors reporter who now writes for the corporate-speak-renamed "How We Live" beat. She not only spent a ton of time actually in the out-of-doors while reporting, but found ways to sneak public policy into recreation pieces, and vice-versa, which made her pieces about waterways, in particular, must-reads.

• DAVID HENCH, a veteran cops reporter who has gotten some of the best scoops the paper has ever had, including jailhouse interviews with all manner of accused criminals, and even a few confessions. He's been too distracted lately, which has hurt some of his work (his initial response was to take the Portland Police Department at its word that it was a good idea to buy Tasers with federal stimulus money, but he soon came to his senses and started probing deeper), but his connections remain solid enough for him to really get into the grit of this city.

• TUX TURKEL, a longtime business and public-affairs reporter who appears not only to remember most of what anyone has ever told him, but to keep a list of interesting stories that develop over time and need to be checked in on periodically. Witness, as just one example, his close coverage of Portland's television-news market, which can be excused for its intermittency by its clarity and sense of history, even in short briefs.

Those five will need some solid help in other aspects of news coverage and presentation. And the Press Herald has those handy, too. Gregory Rec is one of the best still photographers in Maine (we'd love to see his picture-making eye applied to video); when he's both in high dudgeon and thinking straight, Bill Nemitz can weave great columns; and the Web-development crew (specifically Suzi Piker and Jeff Woodbury) can organize and lay out information online really well, as evidenced on the rare occasions when they've been allowed to break the boring-as-all-hell format of MaineToday.com.

The Survival Committee's first move should be to get rid of editor Jeannine Guttman, for the simple reason that she regularly — and publicly — fails to understand what readers want (see "Gender Confusion," February 15, 2008, by Jeff Inglis).

The paper can save itself, but only if smart, capable people are allowed to step forward and try bold ideas. Some of those experiments will fail, but some will succeed. And time's running out.