Mayor takes complete control
08/16/03
Mayor Jane, there's your headline.
If I had been in the office yesterday when your press secretary, Celeste Glasgow, called to request just that wording, we might have kept this little bit of unpleasantness just between us.
But assistant metro editor Mark Vosburgh took Glasgow's call and he filled me in after I arrived. He told me all about how disappointed your office was that The Plain Dealer failed to include your picture in our coverage of Thursday's power outage.
I assure you, it wasn't a deliberate snub or anything personal against you.
To be honest, we and everyone else across the city had more pressing matters on our minds than remembering to celebrate your accomplishments: Fifty million people were without power. Hundreds of thousands of Northeast Ohioans were without water. Traffic was a dangerous mess at nearly every intersection. Uninformed, and lacking immediate communication, a lot of us worried about terrorism. We were in the dark. Literally and figuratively.
And your press secretary calls to demand face time for you?
I'm only guessing here, but I'd say you're putting too much pressure on her to generate positive media attention for you.
Otherwise, I can't imagine why Glasgow would do something so incredibly clumsy. Only a desperate administration would call a newspaper and try to order up good coverage. And only an amateurish one would try to dictate the wording of the headline. Glasgow was selling from an empty wagon.
Try this: When you do your job well, the coverage you crave will follow. In fact, if you get Cleveland running like a Swiss watch, your press office will look like a bunch of geniuses.
But that's not going to happen until you control issues like the convention center, lakefront development and so on. Until then, your staff does you a disservice by begging for positive stories, photos and headlines.
I've heard a lot of criticism from your press office directed at the newspaper lately. One press aide complains that The Plain Dealer doesn't quote you enough. Others whine that we don't publish pictures of you at ribbon-cuttings and other ceremonial events like the TV news shows do all the time.
Newspaper folks are more discriminating. A lot of stuff that your press office wants us to cover just isn't news.
I know your people are only doing their jobs. They want to put you in the best public - and political - light.
But that's not our job. Our job is to tell people what happened at 4:11 Thursday afternoon, why it happened and how to cope with it.
All we ask of you is that you help us get that information out, to make your staff available in a timely fashion. You know, like you promised to do when you were running for mayor.
Now, some of my colleagues were annoyed that your press people would complain about what was lacking in a newspaper that we were very lucky to have put out at all.
But not me.
See, Mayor Jane, I think you're a fine person and I have a fantastic relationship with your press office. So I'm trying to be the peacemaker.
It's all a part of my job here at Ohio's largest newspaper to do the dirty jobs that other reporters and editors refuse to do. I pulled a few strings and greased a few palms to get that positive headline into the newspaper.
You don't have to thank me. Just live up to it.
To reach this Plain Dealer columnist:
sfulwood@plaind.com, 216-999-5250
© 2003 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.