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An open letter to
the Herald-Trib: Getting a clue doesn't mean printing "Ed Martin in the library
with a candlestick"
Clean up your poo, please
-- John Patten, 05/02/08
--
jpatten@veniceflorida.com
Got a comment?
Make
it here.
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The following text was sent to the
Herald-Tribune and to city council in a somewhat altered form. I am now in hiding at an undisclosed
location. The door is closed and locked. If you knock on it, I'm not coming out.
-- JP
<prefatory.disclaimer>
I'm not
cheerleading for the mayor, I am cheerleading for accurate reporting. I am still
not happy with the free speech / redress government issues that Hizzoner and I
have, and I will not blink in my opposition on that issue. Hopefully, he will
not make that mistake again, but if he does, I will go for his throat. That's
been very public and I've written several articles on that issue, so it's pretty
clear that I will not give Hizzoner a pass if I think he's done something wrong.
We clear on that?
</prefatory.disclaimer>
Two things that we both missed
Two things that I wasn't aware of until a conversation with Hizzoner last night.
I totally missed this. So did you guys at the Herald-Trib.
First, it wasn't one citizen plan -- there were two separate plans by two
separate groups, although the plans ended up looking remarkably similar.
Schmieler and his guys at VABA came up with one, Rafferty and Co. came up with
another. Schmieler gave his drawing and cover letter to the mayor on March 4,
Jim Marble delivered the other one on March 5.
I missed that and so did you, but it's clear in
the first video clip in
a previous story published on Venice Florida! dot
com. There's a whole chart there, item after item, of what went wrong
with the Herald-Trib's reporting on this story, BTW. Fact check it, blast back
if I'm wrong.
Secondly, there was no "surprise" -- The mayor told council about all of this
prior to his Washington trip. That's on yet another
city council DVD that is floating around my house that I haven't looked at yet.
Marty would have known about it. As to why he didn't get
copies, call it a dumb oversight, but he clearly knew about them and could have
asked for them at any time, or he could have simply
walked across the hall to look at the copies that were in council's office
space. If it was a surprise to Marty, it was a surprise by his own refusal to
look at them or ask for them, as he clearly knew about them (council meeting
prior to Washington trip should bear this out according to Hizzoner, and so far
everything he has told me that I have fact-checked has turned out to be true).
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From the Mayor's blog, February 2, 2008 (link)
"I have been informed recently
that groups of citizens interested in the airport, representing a
cross-section of stakeholders have been meeting and
working cooperatively to develop a layout plan which meets the city’s wish
to have a plan that provides safety for pilots, does not place residents of
Gulf Shores in a Runway Safety Zone, and has minimal impact on the Lake
Venice Golf Course. The results from this planning process would be given to
an expert firm, perhaps MEA, should council agree, to add technical review
from certified experts.
"It is important to note that the city
is not directly involved in this process and has only informal reports, not
an agreed upon plan or strategy. This process might not result in agreement.
"My own goal has been to
encourage cooperative efforts on the airport and avoid as much divisiveness
as possible, so I am cautiously optimistic. I would like to have the City
present the FAA with a plan with broad support. Marty Black and I have plans
to meet with FAA officials in Washington as part of a multi-purpose trip and
should we have something more concrete about a plan,
[then] a discussion of possibilities might be possible."
-- Ed Martin, 02/08/08 |
In the videos that are online, Simmonds mentions that the docs were in council
offices on the table, available for review. This is apparently prior to the
Washington trip.
Paragraph after paragraph, story after story
It's not just the Sunshine Law allegation. Herald-Trib
reporter Kim Hackett got it wrong in
paragraph after paragraph after paragraph. I like Kim Hackett,
she's bright, she's articulate, she is professional in her
demeanor, she's an all around good person, I can't say enough good things about
her. I thought I was making good progress with her in backgrounding her in
Venice history.
But...
On key story after key story, she has created imaginary facts that are often the
exact opposite of what can be documented as really happening.
I took her to severe task on the Tramonto Vista debacle that she created (that
pasting is still online), I could have pasted her
on the CMU story, and now there's this.
As much as I genuinely like her, I am really tired of writing damage control
stories because your paper goes ahead and publishes what is essentially
fictional bullshiat. It's not necessarily damage control for city hall, but
damage control for the true story. I've written about these topics and I've
tried to do so knowledgably. When the NYT comes along and publishes bullshiat,
it makes it look to the casual reader as though I am on drugs, so off I go
having to rape and pillage to discredit severely bad journalism just to prevent
getting the tag stamped on me. It seriously pisses me off and creates more work
than is needed [note: the Sarasota
Herald-Tribune is owned by the New York Times].
I had no intention of writing anything about the airport at this time, but I had
to drop everything to follow you guys around because you let your happy but
dopey Labrador shiat all over the neighborhood again.
Ed Martin in the library with the candlestick
Now if I understand correctly from subsequent
follow-up interviews that you've done in retracing your ground, you guys
appear to be running around trying to
find an obscure crime that will
somehow fit the facts. You've already figured out that
the Sunshine Law allegation was a crock of pickled fish heads (council members
are actually allowed to talk one-on-one with members of the various city
boards), but there's gotta be something you can hang this guy on.
Do you have any idea how bad that could look if it backfires?
And it will. Hey, he didn't violate the Sunshine Law, but look at the paperclips
and pens Hizzoner has taken home!
I had to retract a story recently. I got it wrong. Way wrong. I wrote bad things
about a good cop and it turned out that it was
undeserved. I didn't accuse him of a crime, but I did accuse him of negligently
allowing my property to get destroyed, specifically a video camera that was
crunched by that asshat Mike Vellucci (I think when someone
deliberately destroys a $300 camera, you are entitled to forever refer to
him as an asshat in print -- it's in the NYT style
book).
But as later facts (that I really was initially unaware of) became known, it
turned out that I was waaaaaay wrong. I cleaned up my own mess as best I could
because it was the right thing to do and because I sure as shiat didn't want you
or the Gondo doing it for/to me. I was not about to doggedly dig my heels in to
back up what I subsequently discovered was a fiction -- that just leads to the
embarrassing cesspool that you folks are wallowing around in. I farked up. So I
had to lose some face. I was going to anyway, it might as well be by my own
hand.
I still have plenty of face left, by the way.
And you know what? Nobody jumped on me as a result. Oh, there were snickers and
jokes and I'll have to live it down for quite some time, but
that was gonna happen anyway. I'm not gonna waste time and emotion defending an
indefensible story.
Please clean up your poo
I cleaned up my mess. You folks have shiat all over this town on this
story. Get out the paper towels and doggy scoops and clean up your own mess, not
by trying to find a new crime to fit the facts, but by admitting that you seriously
farked up.
John Patten is the head of Web Operations for Creative Pages, and has worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He
can also be incredibly rude at times.
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