Meanwhile, last Friday, May 24th, the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL team gave our City a great gift -- free admission to the Willie Galimore pool, in perpetuity, at a cost of some $15,000/year. The deal was negotated by City Manager John Regan with the Jaguar's CEO. This and the pool reopening are a victory for civil rights in our city.
Was this news? Yes. Did the St. Augustine Record report it? No. No reporter attended. How ungrateful. How unperceptive.
With no quotes and no reporter, the Record's front page had three photos of the same three white men (mayor, city manager and YMCA chair) cannon-balling into to the pool at the opening ceremony. Great pix, great guys, great day, but the shallow Record entirely missed the point of the pool dedication.
Incredibly, to date, the Record has not reported the news of the Jaguars generous gift, of free admission to our pool.
Incredibly, the Record did not bother reporting the fact that this is one of only four (4) municipal pools opened or rebuilt in Florida this year (after the City Manager negotiated with the County over its material breach of contract, netting $400,000 to rebuild and reopen the pool).
Not only did the St. Augustine Record not cover the Jaguars gift, it hasn't bothered thanking the Jaguars for it, either. Nor did the Record describe the nature of the Environmental Justice battles in our City, 2005-date, which led to the reopening of the Willie Galimore pool.
The St. Augustine Record has a lot for which to be thankful – its readers are very patient with its foibles. Locals call the St. Augustine Record he “mullet wrapper” and have done so for decades.
The St. Augustine Record has a lot to atone for after 118 years. In particular, during the 1960s, the Record published addresses of KKK rallies in advance, inviting attendance. It also published the names and addresses of African-American children attending previously all-white schools, leading to employer firings of their parents and at least one house being burned down.
The St. Augustine Record's publisher in 1964 was a racist. Today, the Record Publisher's are just downright insensitive, for the most part – they ignore the poor. The Record comforts the comfortable and afflicts the oppressed, as when it was part of the Chamber of Commerce juggernaut aimed at ridding St. George Street of artists and entertainers.
Ever since Morriss Communications bought the Record, successive Record publishers have been promiscuously joining every non-profit board in sight, a walking conflict of interest/
Ron Davidson and another Record executive were members on the board of the secretive, illegal "First America Foundation" embarrassed us all – kicking off the planning of our City's 450th anniversary with a secretive group that did not do what it promised to do, while doing it illegally in secrecy, violating Florida's Sunshine and Open Records laws with $300,000 of City money (we got 2/3 of it back).
Ron Davidson recently refused to print letters concerning the St. Augustine National Historical Park, historic preservation and restoration of buskers to St. George Street. His errant editorials were the stuff of legend, with professional editors unable to restrain his Babbitt-like boosterism and unwillingness to stand up against arbitrary power and oppression and in favor of our human rights and our environment.
We hope that the Record's new Publisher, Delinda Fogel (formally commencing June 3, 2013), will not create conflicts of interest by joining every non-profit Board in sight, out of reflexive boosterism, not common sense.
How can the Record cover institutions on whose boards its publisher sits?
That's a conflict of interest if ever there was one. Every Record Publisher has sat on oodles of Boards.
If Flagler Hospital commits medical malpractice or the First America Foundation creates Sunshine and Open Records violations, is it really proper for Morris Communications executives to be on their Board? First America Foundation had two (2) Morris Communications execs from the Record on their board -- First America was dissolved and has ceased to exist because its creation and continued existence violated Sunshine and Open Records laws.
Why would a real newspaper -- as opposed to a faux Fox-style newspaper -- allow itself to be co-opted so easily by those whom it should be reporting on? This is an easy ethics question: join boards, create conflicts of interest, you are now in the tank. Why would any real journalist ever want to be in the tank with such bad actors as the Chamber of Commerce, Flagler Hospital and the defunct First America Foundation? It is unseemly. Never again.
We hope that Ms. Delinda Fogel will change the Record from being sexist, racist and anti-Gay to being more tolerant, as exhibited by yesterday's editorial about victmless crimes.
We hope that Ms. Delinda Fogel will run the Record more like a newspaper and less like a morbid death watch (waiting for car and boat wrecks and bar fights and disdaining the Founder's faith in newspapers as watchdogs).
Much of what American journalists report these days consists of what they call in Spanish "successos menudos" -- trifling events -- whether wrecks or PR-driven fluff (like the Record's reflexively taking up for every single Sheriff and County Commissioners, great and small, honest and corrupt, without investigation, or kvelling over the retirement of City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS, our disdainful former City Manager, which included deletion of all critical comment from the Record's website).
We hope the Record will soon follow in the footsteps of the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader and editor Marilyn Thompson: they blew the whistle on their forebear editors' racism and censorship in failing to cover the news, reporting what was never reported. In observation of the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Record owes us an apology, and publication of the news and photos from its archives that it withheld in 1963-64.
We wish the new St. Augustine Record Publisher well. We challenge Publisher Delinda Fogel to start covering the news, instead of covering it up, from this day forward.
What do you reckon?
UPDATE: Six (6) days after the May 24, 2013 Willie Galimore ribbon-cutting, the St. Augustine Record ran a story May 30th about the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL team's gift. The Record is often days late with news, sometimes reporting on a Saturday what happened in a government meeting five days before.
The belated May 30, 2013 page one, one column headline story was credited to "From Staff," usually the way the Record sugar-coats a press release, or something written by Record Editor Peter Ellis. In this case, there seems to be some actual reporting, but no mention of the racially insensitive closing of the pool by St. Johns County Administrator Michael Wanchick, who called then City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS during his Final Days, asking him if it was okay -- HARRISS never reported it to City Commissioners or obtained their approval -- he gave County Administrator Wanchick the go-ahead unadorned by any approval or community support. The Record did not report that, having long ago decided that it would ignore racism in our town.
The Record in October 2007 editorially endorsed bringing contaminated solid waste back to Lincolnville and calling it a "park." Our community organized and stopped HARRISS' vile plan, which was actually endorsed by the Record (which also reported that the public would be allowed to speak, which did not happen, with the Record's silence in the face of then-City Manager HARRISS' insisting it was a "misunderstanding" making the Record a willing accomplice to HARRISS' flummery, dupery and nincompoopery).
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