Lacunae in Newspaper Coverage --- The St. Augustine Record Is Stodgily, Steadily, Boringly Pro-Republican and Ignores Democrats

The St. Augustine WRecord likes to ignore Democrats. We don't exist in their minds.

Incredibly, when Barack Obama was elected President, the St. Augustine Wreckord the next day did not carry a front page banner headline. The Wreckord inscrutably buried the story inside. Every other newspaper in America (including other Morris Communications newspapers), had banner headlines.

Locally, Democrats get ignored by the Wreckord.

For the second year in a row, an active, open Democrat was elected to Chair the Anastasia Mosquito Control Board of St. Johns County.

Still, no word in the WReckord. Democrats don't exist in the WReckord's wacky Weltanschauung. The WReckord is acting more like a party organ than a real newspaper.

Democrat Janice Bequette was elected Monday as AMCD Chair. The WRecord didn't report it.

Last year, the WRecord never report the news when Demoocratic activist Jeanne Moeller was elected AMCD Chair, after working with Commissioner John Sundeman (and other Commissioners) to cancel the $1.8 million no-bid Bell Jet luxury helicopter purchase (even obtaining a refund of the $81,000 deposit) and adopt the first whistleblower empowerment/protection policy of any government agency in St. Johns County.

Today's St. Augustine (below) heaps praise on (Republican) St. Augustine Beach officialdom. The WRecord praises outgoing St. Augustine Beach Mayor O'Brien, whom soon-to-be-ex-City Attorney GEOFFREY DOBSON told he could not recuse himself from involvement in the proposed ban on beach house rentals (when the Mayor owns a motel and guest house in competition with beach rental houses).

When the WReckord writes about Republicans (like Governor-appointed Commissioner PHIL MAYS), it gets oleaginous and obnoxious -- all Republicans hung the moon and Democrats get marginalized.

The Wreckord's 2008 editorial endorsements were a joke -- it interviewed candidates but only web-posted their opening statements, then invariably endorsed the entrenched good-ole-boys -- from City Hall to Congress.

The WReckord's treatment of Democratic Congressional candidate Faye Armitage was reprehensible. REPRESENTATIVE JOHN LUIGI MICA bailed on the WREckord's debate format. So the WReckord provided discriminating "separate but equal" accommodations -- first interviewing Faye Armitage, then interviewing JOHN LUIGI MICA on another date. Though Faye Armitage was available on the date when JOHN LUIGI MICA appeared, the WReckord would not allow Faye Armitage to be in the same room with MICA. This violated the terms and conditions that all other candidates accepted without question. The WReckord gave JOHN LUIGI MICA a free pass, and a superficial endorsement that praised his earmarks and supposed moneygrubbing abilities (based on unsophisticated misapprehensions of how Congress works).

The WREcord covered the St. Augustine Beach Commission meeting where a new Mayor was elected. Yet the Record could not cover the Mosquito Control Commission meeting held a few hours earlier and just a mile or so down the road, failing to report the latest Democrat to chair a government board in St. Johns County.

The WRecord is becoming more like the Philadelphia Inquirer under the days of Walter Annenberg (later Nixon's Ambassador to Great Britain). Annenberg had a "s--- list" of organizations and people not to be covered. At one stage, the Philadelphia 76ers were on the list, and little or no news about basketball was published because the Publisher was mad at the basketball team's owner.

Surely the WRecord will want to write a really nice editorial now to make up for the large lacunae in its AMCD coverage, belatedly praising outgoing AMCD Chair Jeanne Moeller and incoming AMCD Chair Janice Bequette, both Democrats?

If not, why not?