“SAN JOSE” MERC PRIDE?

San Jose stands out as an innovative and beautifully complex city. Sadly, San Jose feels unique in all the wrong ways when it comes to our hometown newspaper. With the clear exception of the respected Bay Area sports guy Mark Purdy and some insightful tech news reporting and product reviews from Troy Wolverton, the folks at the Mercury News generally leave the impression they are eager serve as beacons of negativity for the community.

It’s more than obnoxious; it’s a disservice to San Jose.

The Boston Globe is no patsy paper. The Washington Post doesn’t give local officials a pass. The Miami Herald isn’t a propaganda rag. But, they all have something in common seriously lacking from the Mercury News, their general tone reflects deep pride in their city.

A recent San Francisco Business Times article was captioned “S.F. ranks at top of most improved economies list for job growth,” while a graphic describing the statistics in the article actually had San Jose as first among major metros for job growth last year. Naturally, the Silicon Valley Business Journal changed the caption to “San Jose ranks at top,” and re-ran the article on their site.

It would be nice to use this example to point out differences between the Business Journal and Mercury News, but the Merc never ran a story about that data. Any other paper in the nation would consider it a big deal if their city metro led the nation in anything, let alone job growth.

Scott Herhold’s piece last week on one of San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo’s many attempts to cheerlead for San Jose is classic. Herhold regularly appears to revel in negativity, but to use his own words, some of his facts are “not quite right.”

On PATENTS… Each year for at least the last half-decade or so (and probably more), San Jose’s residents and companies have received more patents issued than any other city in the United States — that’s NOT metro, but just within the city limits. Yes, other cities in Silicon Valley are also high on the list, but Herhold’s spin clouded the basic fact that the city of San Jose is number one all by itself. Positivity apparently makes Herhold quiver with annoyance, but we’re talking about a unique, powerful economic catalyst that makes our city really stand out. Why play games with this? San Jose leads the way with patent creation.

On CRIME… Among all US cities with a population of at least 500,000 (while the 201o census data feels a bit old, we know there are at least 30 of them), San Jose has the lowest violent crime rate. This is a fact. We’re talking about the city, NOT merely the metro. The Mayor used the term “major” cities to define the relevant universe. Herhold expanded the universe to include all cities he pulled up using some crack Wikipedia sourcing and decided San Jose was sixth among “major” cities. A quick visit to that Wikipedia page, and you’ll see that it lists all cities greater than 250,000 in population, a weak data set since the cities listed with lower rates — Chandler, AZ, Henderson, NV, Chula Vista, CA, and Fort Wayne, IN (to list a few) — are each about one-fourth of our population. Nobody considers any of those “major cities,” except, apparently, Scott Herhold.

On JOB GROWTH… This is little aspect probably had Herhold cackling with glee the most as he correctly caught the Mayor’s citation of metro statistics. But, the mayor absolutely DID accurately frame the statistics as “metro” job growth — something Herhold admits in his article. But, our esteemed “Debbie Downer” omitted any exploration of how San Jose was doing specifically on job growth. Instead of articulating his amateur dermatology analysis of the Mayor’s skin, Herhold could have easily noted that we kept pace with or exceeded job growth in the rest of the Valley, with the best year of economic development in San Jose’s history.

Job growth in San Jose has many facets. Four new international flights at SJC (and another coming), Apple, Google and Splunk moving into the city, dozens of big companies like Samsung and Broadcom making real investments to grow in San Jose, and critical progress being made to boost manufacturing by companies like Bestronics, Jabil and SuperMicro. These things matter, and they represent tangible and important data points related to job growth.

Here is a challenge to the Mercury News: No mayor or public official demands your love and adoration. Feel free to continue skin-deep coverage of City Hall and local government and revel in your ability to get a reaction from local officials. How about you just simply exude some love for your city? Just own some pride — it will make your legitimate efforts to hold people and policies to account when they fail matter that much more. Not asking for inaccurate reporting, just seeking to read a paper that actually appears fond of the city on the masthead. Take it a step further and you might just get up to the task of being a catalyst for the very progress the Mayor is leading. Twenty page deep editorials every election cycle won’t shape a community’s perspective — regular, insightful, unbiased reporting and commentary does. Give it a whirl.

Oh, and you too can help with job growth in San Jose! How about hiring some folks to improve your terrible web site and upgrade your unusable “app” so readers don’t enjoy a better digital experience consuming your content from their Facebook feed than they do on your own digital properties. Hate to be a downer, just sayin’…