Paramount Theatre
Bunch Blames the 'Chronicle'
RECEIVED Tue., April 15, 2008
Dear Editor,
Re: “Point Austin,” April 11 [News]: Your subhead last week – “You can tell a lot about newspapers by what they don’t cover” – is right on. I remember an Austin weekly that, if it were true, would tell its readers that all seven City Council members, including the mayor, owe their seats to bundles of developer cash. A guy named Al Ears would remind us of the fact, at least every other week, until someone who cared about our city got off his or her butt and tried to do something about it.
The paper would tell us this fact made a difference, that well more than 90% of the time, in contested land-use cases, the council voted for the developer and against neighborhood and environment interests. It would note that in most issues that mattered, the vote was unanimous, or perhaps with a weak protest vote.
The paper would report that wearing a green tie every time a camera pointed your way didn’t make you green. If the City Council trotted out a Climate Protection Plan and declared it the “best in the nation,” the paper would explain that the plan was 20% green and 80% greenwash. It would tell us how many tons of our daily trash fail to get recycled. Its readers would know how much water we waste and how many hundreds of millions more dollars our city wants to bet on decades more of water waste.
If the city manager went from being “best in the world” to smelly goat in the course of six weeks, its readers would know why.
It would do all of that – and more – on a shoestring reporter budget.
You can tell a lot about a paper from what doesn't get covered.
Re: “Point Austin,” April 11 [News]: Your subhead last week – “You can tell a lot about newspapers by what they don’t cover” – is right on. I remember an Austin weekly that, if it were true, would tell its readers that all seven City Council members, including the mayor, owe their seats to bundles of developer cash. A guy named Al Ears would remind us of the fact, at least every other week, until someone who cared about our city got off his or her butt and tried to do something about it.
The paper would tell us this fact made a difference, that well more than 90% of the time, in contested land-use cases, the council voted for the developer and against neighborhood and environment interests. It would note that in most issues that mattered, the vote was unanimous, or perhaps with a weak protest vote.
The paper would report that wearing a green tie every time a camera pointed your way didn’t make you green. If the City Council trotted out a Climate Protection Plan and declared it the “best in the nation,” the paper would explain that the plan was 20% green and 80% greenwash. It would tell us how many tons of our daily trash fail to get recycled. Its readers would know how much water we waste and how many hundreds of millions more dollars our city wants to bet on decades more of water waste.
If the city manager went from being “best in the world” to smelly goat in the course of six weeks, its readers would know why.
It would do all of that – and more – on a shoestring reporter budget.
You can tell a lot about a paper from what doesn't get covered.
Sincerely,
Bill Bunch
Bill Bunch
[Michael King replies: Save Our Springs Alliance is both financially and intellectually bankrupt, can't organize its way out of a disposable paper bag, and its executive director, Bill Bunch, blames the Chronicle. Well, why not – a politics wholly based on denouncing your neighbors and community has its limitations; arrogant self-righteousness is only the most obvious.]
