George Rebane
I just returned from the weekly meeting of our Rotary Club at the National Hotel. Today’s program was a talk by The Union’s publisher Jeff Ackerman. Jeff gave us an update on the paper’s current fortunes as it implements a plan forward in this age of the internet that is sinking many newspapers across the land. His report was hopeful and positive – pulp readership “flat”, online daily readership under ten thousand but growing.
Most folks in Nevada County know that Jeff Ackerman, through his columns and community activities, has been the gravitas of the newspaper and lent it a human touch. This has served well to balance the journalistic travails of the paper’s editorial staff.
Last week the paper published an op-ed piece that introduced the issue of the county DA’s moving to new quarters. The three salient factors of this planned move – were 1) did the DA need to move, 2) was new office space appropriate, and 3) was there impropriety involved in the selection.
The piece – under The Union Editorial Board byline - was a heavy hitter and drew a lot of subsequent comment from those who were in agreement and those who criticized the planned move. Through obvious innuendo it called into question all three factors, but especially focused on the second and the third. There it left pieces of hanging chad that implied that better locations were available and overlooked, and that the Board of Supervisors had colluded with the owners of the building in a manner that could range anywhere from cronyism to outright fraud
I posted on this op-ed piece here, pointing out the nature of the published innuendos, and asking the Union to either make good their charges or print a clarification/retraction. The Union has yet to give us any back-up and has left those pieces of indeterminate chad dangling in the public eye which continue to draw irate letters from readers. This type of journalism was to be expected from editor Jeff “full story” Pelline, but somehow this piece by the “Editorial Board” seemed to require a bit more imprimatur than what Pelline and his merry boys and girls could muster.
On the other side of the ledger, I have talked to several Supervisors, and met with county CEO Rick Haffey, and Steve Monaghan, its Director of Information and General Services. Their basic explanation about this DA office move focused on the urgent need, the limited number of suitable sites available (actually only one – The Union Street Building), and the cost-benefits of the lease agreement. Given the urgency of the need, everything else seemed to tie, including the Supervisors and CEO attesting that they had no prior conversations with the building principals about the new DA offices. I did not debate with anyone the political implications of this move, of which there now appear to be many. But we’ll save these for another time.
So after Jeff Ackerman opened his presentation to questions from the floor, I asked him what was his involvement with or contribution to the op-ed column. He answered that he “agreed with the piece” with the implication that, beyond approval, he did not do any of the wordsmithing. His answer then expanded on characterizing the county’s action as being ill-timed, involving a poor selection process, violating the stated and planned use of the space selected, and burdening the county with unneeded costs at this time. I was also told by a prominent commercial real estate professional, next to whom I was sitting, that the county’s action had surprised the real estate community. It seems to me that there are too many loose ends that need to be tied on this shoe. And it’s The Union who now should either tie these loose ends or drop the other one.
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Jeff Ackermand responds to this post here.
What is flat? Doing a little googling These are some of the numbers I came up with.
2002 - 15,800 Interview with former editor
2004 - 15,871 Readership Institute Study
2005 - 16,163 Knight Foundation Survey
2007 - 16,395 Newspaper Circulation Survey
My guess is that the real number is between 16,000 and 16,500.
If your would like some more insight into past Union Operations check out this interview of a former editor.
Posted by: Russ | 07 February 2008 at 10:23 PM