| |  An open letter to the Herald-Trib: Getting a clue doesn't mean printing "Ed Martin in the library with a candlestick"
Clean up your poo, please
-- John Patten, 05/02/08
-- jpatten@veniceflorida.com Got a comment? Make it here.
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The following text was sent to the Herald-Tribune and to city council in a somewhat altered form. I am now in hiding at an undisclosed location. The door is closed and locked. If you knock on it, I'm not coming out. -- JP<prefatory.disclaimer>
I'm not cheerleading for the mayor, I am cheerleading for accurate reporting. I am still not happy with the free speech / redress government issues that Hizzoner and I have, and I will not blink in my opposition on that issue. Hopefully, he will not make that mistake again, but if he does, I will go for his throat. That's been very public and I've written several articles on that issue, so it's pretty clear that I will not give Hizzoner a pass if I think he's done something wrong. We clear on that?
</prefatory.disclaimer>
Two things that we both missed
Two things that I wasn't aware of until a conversation with Hizzoner last night. I totally missed this. So did you guys at the Herald-Trib.
First, it wasn't one citizen plan -- there were two separate plans by two separate groups, although the plans ended up looking remarkably similar. Schmieler and his guys at VABA came up with one, Rafferty and Co. came up with another. Schmieler gave his drawing and cover letter to the mayor on March 4, Jim Marble delivered the other one on March 5.
I missed that and so did you, but it's clear in the first video clip in a previous story published on Venice Florida! dot com. There's a whole chart there, item after item, of what went wrong with the Herald-Trib's reporting on this story, BTW. Fact check it, blast back if I'm wrong.
Secondly, there was no "surprise" -- The mayor told council about all of this prior to his Washington trip. That's on yet another city council DVD that is floating around my house that I haven't looked at yet. Marty would have known about it. As to why he didn't get copies, call it a dumb oversight, but he clearly knew about them and could have asked for them at any time, or he could have simply walked across the hall to look at the copies that were in council's office space. If it was a surprise to Marty, it was a surprise by his own refusal to look at them or ask for them, as he clearly knew about them (council meeting prior to Washington trip should bear this out according to Hizzoner, and so far everything he has told me that I have fact-checked has turned out to be true). | From the Mayor's blog, February 2, 2008 (link) "I have been informed recently that groups of citizens interested in the airport, representing a cross-section of stakeholders have been meeting and working cooperatively to develop a layout plan which meets the citys wish to have a plan that provides safety for pilots, does not place residents of Gulf Shores in a Runway Safety Zone, and has minimal impact on the Lake Venice Golf Course. The results from this planning process would be given to an expert firm, perhaps MEA, should council agree, to add technical review from certified experts.
"It is important to note that the city is not directly involved in this process and has only informal reports, not an agreed upon plan or strategy. This process might not result in agreement. "My own goal has been to encourage cooperative efforts on the airport and avoid as much divisiveness as possible, so I am cautiously optimistic. I would like to have the City present the FAA with a plan with broad support. Marty Black and I have plans to meet with FAA officials in Washington as part of a multi-purpose trip and should we have something more concrete about a plan, [then] a discussion of possibilities might be possible." -- Ed Martin, 02/08/08 |
In the videos that are online, Simmonds mentions that the docs were in council offices on the table, available for review. This is apparently prior to the Washington trip. Paragraph after paragraph, story after story
It's not just the Sunshine Law allegation. Herald-Trib reporter Kim Hackett got it wrong in paragraph after paragraph after paragraph. I like Kim Hackett, she's bright, she's articulate, she is professional in her demeanor, she's an all around good person, I can't say enough good things about her. I thought I was making good progress with her in backgrounding her in Venice history.
But...
On key story after key story, she has created imaginary facts that are often the exact opposite of what can be documented as really happening.
I took her to severe task on the Tramonto Vista debacle that she created (that pasting is still online), I could have pasted her on the CMU story, and now there's this.
As much as I genuinely like her, I am really tired of writing damage control stories because your paper goes ahead and publishes what is essentially fictional bullshiat. It's not necessarily damage control for city hall, but damage control for the true story. I've written about these topics and I've tried to do so knowledgably. When the NYT comes along and publishes bullshiat, it makes it look to the casual reader as though I am on drugs, so off I go having to rape and pillage to discredit severely bad journalism just to prevent getting the tag stamped on me. It seriously pisses me off and creates more work than is needed [note: the Sarasota Herald-Tribune is owned by the New York Times].
I had no intention of writing anything about the airport at this time, but I had to drop everything to follow you guys around because you let your happy but dopey Labrador shiat all over the neighborhood again. Ed Martin in the library with the candlestick
Now if I understand correctly from subsequent follow-up interviews that you've done in retracing your ground, you guys appear to be running around trying to find an obscure crime that will somehow fit the facts. You've already figured out that the Sunshine Law allegation was a crock of pickled fish heads (council members are actually allowed to talk one-on-one with members of the various city boards), but there's gotta be something you can hang this guy on. Do you have any idea how bad that could look if it backfires? And it will. Hey, he didn't violate the Sunshine Law, but look at the paperclips and pens Hizzoner has taken home! I had to retract a story recently. I got it wrong. Way wrong. I wrote bad things about a good cop and it turned out that it was undeserved. I didn't accuse him of a crime, but I did accuse him of negligently allowing my property to get destroyed, specifically a video camera that was crunched by that asshat Mike Vellucci (I think when someone deliberately destroys a $300 camera, you are entitled to forever refer to him as an asshat in print -- it's in the NYT style book).
But as later facts (that I really was initially unaware of) became known, it turned out that I was waaaaaay wrong. I cleaned up my own mess as best I could because it was the right thing to do and because I sure as shiat didn't want you or the Gondo doing it for/to me. I was not about to doggedly dig my heels in to back up what I subsequently discovered was a fiction -- that just leads to the embarrassing cesspool that you folks are wallowing around in. I farked up. So I had to lose some face. I was going to anyway, it might as well be by my own hand. I still have plenty of face left, by the way.
And you know what? Nobody jumped on me as a result. Oh, there were snickers and jokes and I'll have to live it down for quite some time, but that was gonna happen anyway. I'm not gonna waste time and emotion defending an indefensible story. Please clean up your poo
I cleaned up my mess. You folks have shiat all over this town on this story. Get out the paper towels and doggy scoops and clean up your own mess, not by trying to find a new crime to fit the facts, but by admitting that you seriously farked up.
John Patten is the editor and publisher of Venice Florida! dot com and had previously worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times. |
