Peter Guinta, St. Augustine Record Senior Reporter
"Wrong Way" Corrigan
Yesterday, the St. Augustine WRecKord sent its "senior reporter" to cover the Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County, discussing its five-year plan and a report by two consultants. (More later).
The distinguishing features of the WRecKord's coverage last night:
1. The "senior reporter" arrived late.
2. The "senior reporter" took few notes.
3. The "senior reporter" sat impassively, bored, and appeared to fight off sleep and even nod off on one occasion.
4. The "senior reporter" left early, after a recess.
5. The "senior reporter" said to one Mosquito Commissioner that he found the meeting confusing.
6. The "senior reporter" asked no questions to clear up his confusion.
7. The "senior reporter" spent little time reading the written materials he requested.
8. The "senior reporter" drove his vehicle out of the AMCD property, making a right turn upon leaving the AMCD property, with his vehicle making a metallic sound as it ran against the AMCD fence gate.
9. The "senior reporter" acted as if he should have had a sign on his forehead saying "I'd rather be sailing."
10. The "senior reporter" showed no intellectually curiousity, as if he knew it all, heard it all and wasn't being paid by MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS to learn and impart his knowledge.
We can understand the "senior reporter's frustration." In the past, when he did an outstanding job of news reporting that reported misconduct by Judge Christiansen, he was threatened with firing.
MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS and the St. Augustine WRecKord are anti-union and have no Newspaper Guild chapter.
MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS and the St. Augustine WRecKord fired political cartoonist Ed Hall for First Amendment protected activity nearly six months ago and have not apologized to readers, showing anger at those of us who complained.
"Wrong Way Corrigan" was an airplane pilot who supposedly flew to Europe instead of flying across the USA (supposedly a ruse).
In the "Wrong Way Corrigan" School of Journalism, few facts are imparted to the people about what their governments are doing (right or wrong).
In the "Wrong Way Corrigan" School of Journalism, opinions and trite tropes pass for facts.
In the "Wrong Way Corrigan" School of Journalism, few errors are ever corrected.
In the "Wrong Way Corrigan" School of Journalism, citizen participation in public meetings is ignored, with most of the "news" reported amounting to little more than PR drivel emanating from the lips of St. Augustine's City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS or other satraps.
In the "Wrong Way Corrigan" School of Journalism, discussion and debate is boring, even when the subject is an important public health agency whose actions touch upon the lives of every citizen.
In the "Wrong Way Corrigan" School of Journalism, positive news is ignored (like AMCD passing a whistleblower protection policy on November 20, 2008 -- a policy second to none in the State of Florida, suitable for imitation (the sincerest form of flattery) by every government agency in our community.
MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS and the St. Augustine WRecKord, practitioners of the "Wrong Way Corrigan" School of Journalism, owe a fiduciary duty to their stockholders and bondholders under the Sarbanes-Oxley law to investigate reader concerns about coverups (like noncoverage of waste, fraud, abuse, misfeasance, malfeasance and nonfeasance by City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS and the City of St. Augustine.
Perhaps MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS bondholders and stockholders will want to scrutinize the St. Augustine WRecKord's languid non-coverage of local coverups in the context of deciding whether to put MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS in bankruptcy.
The business of a newspaper is to report news, not censor or ignore it.
Based upon the negligent failure to cover stories that could have won MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS and the St. Augustine WRecKord a Pulitzer Prize or nomination, bondholders and shareholders will want to ask questions:
1. Of exactly what is the St. Augustine Record a "record" of?
2. The local Chamber of Commerce's preferences and prejudices?
3. Car wrecks?
4. PR from governments and corporations?
After all, this is the only newspaper in America that did not have a front page headline on November 5, 2008 reporting that Barack Obama was elected President -- a newspaper that gives more than ample space to the ranting cant of Ann Coulter. Meanwhile, this "newspaper" canceled the column of senior reporter Peter Guinta -- an excellent, thought-provoking column that deliciously managed to offend both left and right and make us all think.
Wonder why?
Precisely because it was too thought-provoking, and some lugubrious goobers complained.
2 comments:
It was probably the same reporter who covered the Tea Party Rally. He has a math block as well, can't count worth a damn!
"Math block" -- that's a good one. "Acalculia" is the inability to perform mathematical functions.
This same reporter vastly inflated the number of attendees at a Randall Terry hate rally in Jacksonville after the Supreme Court's 2003 Gay rights decision.
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