What Is The News-Leader Trying To Do?
19 12 2007I’m still digesting the contents of the audit of City Utilities but I have to question the News-Leader’s posting of a document that lists city employees and the amount they spent on their purchasing cards. There is no information at all as to what was bought on the cards, the responsibilities of the employees or anything that can give a reader any idea why someone might have spent tens of thousands of city dollars on that card.
That smacks of lazy journalism and/or makes you question what the motivation is behind the News-Leader. Is it to present the whole story to us or just take parts of it to try and cause problems? If the N-L was responsible then they would have taken that list and found out what the money was spent on and why. To present this list as they’ve done today does nothing but put a list of employees under suspicion that they did something wrong.
That’s unprofessional and I thought our local newspaper had higher journalistic standards for themselves.
Aren’t government offices supposed to bid out contracts to get the lowest price for taxpayers? Credit card purchases might avoid this process depending on the purchase…
Yes it would have been interesting to see how many expensive meals were charged, but the list is a start. As a journalist yourself, why did you make this blog post instead of obtaining the information yourself? It seems like only someone who had done the digging themselves could be justified in labeling ‘lazy journalism’.
That could be true on the CC purchases but since we don’t know what they are or why they were made you cannot say these employees did anything wrong. With the audit release and accusations of improper activity, just releasing a list of names makes the employees guilty before proven innocent.
And as for your little insult, I’m not a paid journalist like the staff at the News-Leader. This is not “my job.” It IS their job. Unless you’d like to give me $30,000 a year to do this blog along with an expense report, office and equipment upon which to do it then your comment might actually have some validity.
Now, now…. didn’t you read the vampire story in the N-L?
If so, then why would you still think that they would have higher journalistic standards for themselves?
” With the audit release and accusations of improper activity, just releasing a list of names makes the employees guilty before proven innocent.”
I disagree. As I read it, the concern is there are TOO many purchase cards and tracking expenses is difficult. Reduce the number of purchase cards automatically tightens the reins on spending.
For instance, the guy who purchases auto parts for the city, from O’Reilly, AutoZone, wherever, has some pretty high expenditures and some pretty low ones also. But using “just in time” inventory (not purchasing a part until it is needed, in essence, letting the auto parts company be your warehouse) saves the taxpayer money.
Gee, I just said the city is doing something right.
Good job, Louise.
Anyhow, in my opinion, listing who has purchase cards and how much they spent is NOT an indication of wrongdoing.
Jim Lee
Well, that’s my point Jim. There’s nothing to say any of these folks did something wrong so putting a list in the paper the day of the audit report and part of discussions of possible wrongdoing on the city makes them guilty by association.
The News-Leader’s responsible course of action would have been to print what the money was spent on versus just one large number so that readers (and citizens) could see the expenditures and decide then if it was excessive.
Disseminating factual information to the public without editorializing is a part of what newspapers do, Jason.
The public gets to decide whether they think there is something wrong with so many (!) employees of C.U. charging in the amounts of money they charge.
Apparently, the News-Leader requested this information because someone thought their readers would find it interesting.
If there is something to defend, I repeat, *IF* there is something to defend then C.U. could certainly offer the information regarding what the itemized purchases were.
I’d suggest if you feel those who are listed as card-holders need to be defended that you invest your time in defending them.
It costs money to support people in investigating such detailed information as you would like them to provide to the public and certainly you can voice whether you, personally, think that such information is valuable or not but you don’t get to decide for every citizen of Springfield what information is important and what information is not, you get to decide for yourself and because you are a blogger you have the privilege of sharing that opinion with more people than most citizens of Springfield get to share their opinions with. That’s such an awesome thing and you should appreciate it!
I would suspect that each individual citizen of our city would have an idea about what should be covered in the newspaper and what shouldn’t and each individual’s opinion of what is important and what is not is valuable but I think it is valuable when newspapers offer such information so that citizens CAN have the opportunity to decide whether it is valuable to them or not. Why limit in any way information that is available???
It’s my opinion that one of the BEST actions a paper can take is in the publishing of facts.
What each individual citizen assumes or concludes based on the facts available is up to each individual citizen.
I don’t personally feel that publishing this factual document suggests right doing or wrong doing at all but if YOU think it does then perhaps you’d be the best person to investigate it. To me, it’s fairly meaningless and doesn’t either condemn or endorse the spending practices of any individual.
What it does do is cause people to question these charges, and who knows, maybe someone in the community will question it to the extent of looking into it and we’ll find out more information about it. That would be a good thing, wouldn’t it?
I get the feeling that some people think that information should be distributed in such a way as to avoid question or suspicion but, the way I see it, a certain amount of questioning or suspicion is not a bad thing and can, in fact, be very healthy.
Why, if you asked certain individuals who might be employed at the city if they thought the public should be made aware of the audit report they could have made the very argument you are making, that some people might assume wrongdoing where there might not be any. You are in a unique position to offer your opinion about such matters, do you think the community would have been better served if those who can’t understand and analyse the audit report as clearly as others can shouldn’t have had access to that information? I mean, it causes suspicion, it raises questions, this information disseminated in the audit report.
The bottom line is that people have opinions and they can’t all be controlled and none of us should want opinions of the people to be controlled. Give them factual information and let them ask questions, let suspicions be raised, if there is no wrong doing then through the process of asking questions based on our suspicions maybe we’ll all learn something!!! Oh, that’d be rough, wouldn’t it!!??
What are you afraid of?
I, personally, see no reason at all to get defensive over the publishing of this information.
“Disseminating factual information to the public without editorializing is a part of what newspapers do, Jason.”
Um…publishing what that money was spent upon so that readers can get an accurate view of the expenditures is not editorializing, Jackie. I’m sorry you can’t see the difference.
I trust readers will take the information for what it’s worth, Jason. If they have questions they’ll ask them. If someone wants to answer the questions they can.
I didn’t say that publishing what the money was spent on would be editorializing, Jason. I do see the difference but what you ask of the newsleader would be a very time consuming thing, and likely costly to the paper. Since you are so passionate about it, why don’t you look into it in your spare time? It would be a great service to the public.
Jason, I agree with Jacke.
Further, what obligation, as bloggers, do we have to our readers?
Are we journalists or are we commentators?
We are fortunate in that, as Jacke writes, “because you are a blogger you have the privilege of sharing that opinion with more people than most citizens of Springfield get to share their opinions with. That’s such an awesome thing…”
It also carrys a lot of responsibility with it.
That’s fine, Jim. You think that publishing a list of names of city employees next to articles of mismanagement without explaining what those employees spent money on isn’t unfairly implying anything and I do.
You’re right it does carry a lot of responsibility. That’s why I think we should be interested in the newspaper providing complete information so an informed decision can be made instead of a list that only leads to gossip and speculation. I would have thought of anyone you would have been favor of not having half the information released that could unjustly taint a city employee’s reputation under suspicion they were part of the mismanagement.
I don’t see why they have to give out the names of the people who aren’t supervisors in the newspaper. They could print how much each department spent and then hold that department’s boss responsible.
Doesn’t Sunshine Law say they can do that? They recently printed how much each county employee makes.
Wow, this really should have been on my radar screen earlier.
I posted the data. With the audit’s criticism of the City’s P-Card program, it seemed like the right thing to do.
We did the regular journalism. We looked at top spenders. We looked at major recipients. We explained how P-Cards were used to do jobs that, perhaps, should have been done through contracts. That’s not my judgment; that’s the auditor’s. Then we wrote stories about all of it.
A year ago, we would have stopped there. But I had ALL the P-Card purchases — many thousands of them. True, all I had was a name, a recipient, an amount and a date. But even that information is useful.
What justified it, to me, is Jacke’s comment: “I trust readers will take the information for what it’s worth, Jason. If they have questions they’ll ask them. If someone wants to answer the questions they can.”
Questions poured in. Some of them we had already thought of. Many of them, we hadn’t. We then went about answering as many as we could in a feature called “You asked.”
I’d be really interested in hearing back from you guys on this topic. I recently posted a criticism of this way of doing journalism on my staff blog, at http://www.news-leader.com/blogs/data/
If you don’t want to comment there, e-mail me at mwynn@springfi.gannett.com. I swear I’m a relatively nice guy.
And thanks for bringing this up, Jason. Reading your logic and the comments has been pretty dang informative.