Citizen Journalist: Getting It Right
Not so easy to do in a city of shadows and fog. (The third in an occasional series)
I.
In the digital age, you don’t have to have the backing of a Fortune 500 corporation to start a local news site. You don’t need huge staffs of writers, ad salesmen, proofers, paginators, printers and drivers to get out the news.
All you really need is a resentment, a coffeepot and a decent Internet connection.
This should be a huge bonus for citizens. It costs almost nothing to get a news site off the ground, and the more the merrier. Here in Mount Dora, there’s Mount Dora Buzz, Mount Dora News, Around Mount Dora, the Mount Dora Citizen and this latest arrival, The Mount Dora Topic.
As it was noted in the Federal Communications Commission’s report The Information Needs of Communities (2011),
Hyperlocal information is better than ever. Technology has allowed citizens to help create and share news on a very local level — by town, neighborhood, or even block. These sits mostly do not operate as profitable businesses, but they do not need to. This is journalism as voluntarism — a thousand points of news. (10)
However, digital technology takes away as much as it adds, and possibly far more. The business of journalism has been digitally disrupted, perhaps fatally. Print advertising revenue for newspapers has been gutted, causing earnings for the industry to collapse to pre-1950 levels. Newspaper staffs have been cut dramatically and the bloodletting doesn’t show any signs of letting up. And now ad-blocking software threatens what little digital advertising revenue newspapers might have been found.
And while the number digital news outlets may have exploded, sadly the both the amount and quality of news reporting has declined. As the traditional powerhouses of local reporting continue to shrink and cut back, it is precisely the news that matters most to a community — timely, reliable, proportional, comprehensive — that is becoming increasingly rare. Those thousand points of news dwindle fast.
II.
It’s a no-brainer that as the number of paid journalists disappear, so too ebbs the quality of a community’s news. Without them, there isn’t a trained filter to check the flood of bogus and information — the manipulative sludge we get from press releases, sales pitches and social media propaganda: pop-cultural appeals to our digitally distracted brains. In the endless fray of partisan politics and influence peddling, telling the truths runs a distant second to growing market share.
Amid such information white-out, too much of what we read and hear is taken or rejected at face value, with unquestioning faith. An item might engage the eyeballs and tease an avalanche of shares, but it may have none of the knowledge that enriches the soil for growing, proactive, inclusive and democratic communities.
Communities are awash in information, but what they sorely lack is the compass of truth. Truth is a process, not an end-product, a relentless dedication to getting the facts right. Truth demands the story keep updating itself, nudging the narrative ever closer to true north, as much of it as can be determined and then disseminated. No matter how painful or difficult such knowledge might be.
Enter the citizen journalist, the next best thing in lieu of the professional journalist. I’ve written before about the paradox of writing about a community one lives in. The loyalties are sometimes muddied. Without the training, our work is second-rate at best.
Somewhere even behind that, to my mind, are journalists who don’t live in Mount Dora whose storylines are better at selling newspapers than serving the public. Both the Lake Sentinel and Leesburg Commercial daily papers have bought into dark narrative of citizens outraged at a corrupt government. Those sentiments may be true of voter who routed incumbents out in the last election, but the picture that emerges is that of a little burning slice of a largely indifferent city pie.
Well, those reporters don’t live here, so maybe they can be excused. But what about Mount Dorans? In an off-year election cycle, shadow narratives are effective. There’s been a huge disconnect between the public statements of candidates running against the incumbents and what they have privately told their faithful. The Mount Dora News ceased most of its public posting and began communicating privately by email. I’m not allowed to comment on their Facebook site — as others who have dissented there, I’m barred. Nicke Girone and Laurie Tillett refused to be interviewed in election-related stories for the Mount Dora Citizen. Candidate “focus groups” were conducted in the Lakes of Mount Dora—where Girone and Slaby received their huge vote majorities—where the incumbents were not invited to attend. I never did hear what Laurie Tillett, challenger for the council seat of the First District in which I live, was running on; her door-to-door campaign never stopped by my house. The margin she beat incumbent Ryan Donovan was impressive, but it said more about the 80 percent who weren’t motivated to vote than the 15 percent who voted for her.
Foggy politics commanded the last election, and now we have to do with unspoken mandates.
Shadow narratives are especially effective when the majority is asleep. That’s on you, neighbors.
III.
Now that shadow narrative commands the vote of city council. New mayor Nick Girone took his oath of office on Nov. 17, and then publicly revealed his animus, saying that citizens will be respected under his new rule and that he will make that message clear to “those at the top of the organization chart” — city manager Vincent Pastue, just six months on the job, and planning and development manager / assistant city manager Mark Reggentin, who has been in the crosshairs of the Mount Dora News since that media startup began in late 2014.
Though the Leesburg Commercial reported on the meeting in passing fashion (turns out only a photographer showed up, and he left after the swearing-in), what proceeded was astonishing in its audacity and tone. In short order, the new council voted 5–2 to approve 11 new appointees to citizen committees prior to notifying those currently in those positions of their removal and in contempt of normal process of application. (They also appointed too many people to the planning and zoning committee, obviously trying to stack their deck.) They tried to schedule a meeting to talk about a different approach with Medallion Home, the developer which has ignored city codes; by law, only the city attorney can call such a “shade” meeting.
Lauren Ritchie wrote in her Nov. 18 column,
… Nothing has gone so awry that it warrants bringing in the flying monkeys. So far, this new group’s only accomplishment after one meeting is to jack up the city’s legal bill and make government operations less open to the public.
That doesn’t portend well for the future.
Which citizens have been disrespected and how and when is something known to the motivated voters who threw the bums out, but to those who think the city government is doing even only a fair job must be as mystified as I am as to what outrages have been committed.
Certainly, these grievances should be made known to the public, and city officials should have the chance to respond before council thinks of rolling heads down the steps of City Hall.
Pastue may have been expecting this, for in a Nov. 13 memo to the incoming and outgoing mayor and council and copied to his department heads, he outlined a “SWOT Analysis,” looking at strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that the city now faces. From his perspective, the greatest current threat to the city is a “distrusting political environment”:
Here are obviously two political camps in Mount Dora. There needs to be a political bridge or détente that at least allows the community to move forward. As mentioned, developers need economic and political certainty in order to commit to a project. Obviously, we cannot let a negative political environment interfere with the potential for positive economic growth that benefits all. This negative political environment needs to cease; it will become a hindrance to positive economic growth.
There is nothing in Girone’s statements that indicate a mood for détente. How far the new council members will reflect his resolve will be telling, and what they propose as an alternate course will show how radical a departure they are thinking of.
Once these become widely known, council may have a different group of citizens demanding attention (read, “respect”). Will Mayor Girone still heed his mandate to place citizens first when they are screaming at him? As far as I can tell, Mount Dora’s mayor duty is to the 100 percent.
One thing is for sure: Getting rid of city servants who do not agree with his solutions will do little to help the city move forward.
While the antagonism against Mark Reggentin is a given with this group (his evil, according to the Mount Dora News, is as dark as Main Street Leasing, their other piñata), it’s hard to understand what they have against city manager Vincent Pastue, who’s only been on the job five and half months — hardly long enough to do more than bump a few elbows.
Girone does support the Innovation District, though how much residential development he favors in the area is a bone of contention with Pastue, who is resolutely against it. (Watch that.)
The newbies seem fine with getting rid of Pastue if he blocks their way with Reggentin. In the council meeting Pastue was asked for his thoughts on the new position of deputy city manager that Reggentin fills. Pastue said, “I couldn’t be happier with him, and I will reiterate that again.” The creak of the guillotine’s rope could be heard across town.
Both Girone and Pastue share a concern that Mount Dora is not business-friendly enough. Pastue in his Nov. 13 memo said that the city’s economic development construct is badly dated. He writes,
The days of pounding the pavement with brochures, mail outs, and cold-calls has passed. The roll of economic development is to facilitate those that knowingly want to be here. This is best performed by a municipality having an appropriate infrastructure plan in place, a reliable and expedient development review process, and political certainty and support that if a developer is meeting the development code requirements, the project will be approved for construction.
Political certainty in such a polarized environment is hardly likely. And just where any of this is an issue of citizen respect is beyond me. Perception and reality are just as distant here as the difference between being listened to and being agreed with.
I expect that Girone will put forward a new economic development initiative that will exclude city staff. Pastue himself has recommended the involvement of the Chamber of Commerce as a non-toxic third party to that work, but where anything smells of toxic in this town, the shadows probably dealt it and say that they smelt it.
At the conclusion of his memo, Pastue urges city council to avoid the threat of “short-term thinking.” He writes,
Mount Dora is on the verge of significant economic growth. Again, this obviously represents a tremendous opportunity but also a significant challenge. The City will likely receive many development proposals in the next several years, some of which will represent a significant positive financial impact in the short-term. However, each should be measured with their compliance to our development code and how does it fits with the long-term vision for the community along with its brand. It is a balancing act that will not be easy … For this to work effectively, it requires patience and discipline.”
Right at the time that the city is about to be impacted by the most significant changes in its entire history, we have a new mayor clamoring that citizens — some very specific ones — must be respected. This perception of disrespect has come from the political shadows; how else can disagreement have been allowed to cook into hatred? Can the city do a better job of listening and responding to citizens? Of course it can. But to have a mayor attacking city government at this most challenging juncture may be the most destructive thing an elected official can do, against the city and its electorate.
Pastue’s memo to department heads, council and the mayor an exceptionally perceptive analysis of what the city is facing right now, and he is blunt in many places stating where and how Mount Dora government must improve. Read it and make up your mind for yourself is he’s no good for the job. If, instead, you yawn and go back to watching football and running the kids to endless games of soccer, the blame for what is coming to pass will fall on all of us.
IV.
Annoyance got the Mount Dora Citizen (which I contribute to) started; another local site was stirring up political waters with a profound dedication to misinforming the public, damaging both the town’s cohesion and civility.
Stories have kept us engaged: the more we look about this city, the more of it deserves an audience. Weaving those stories together for our neighbors every week is slowly creating a complete picture of the city.
But it is the challenge of getting it right is what makes our work most important. Reclaiming a news desert is bucket work, and at The Mount Dora Citizen, it’s accomplished slowly — one neighborhood, one issue, one history, one character, one unsung hero, one bone of contention and one well-deserved kudo, one week at a time.
Getting it right has me writing under my own Mount Dora Topic masthead because some things one has to say on their own. I believe in Mount Dora Citizen, but I need the pulpit from time to time; and so indulge myself here. (Features I’ve written for the Citizen appear hear, as well as some writing I’ve done on the importance of community news.) I’ve taken the name of the newspaper that died in this town in 2006 after dimming for a decade. The Mount Dora Topic’s demise sent the local news desert sprawling, so the reclamation of that desert should include the paper that spoke for this town for a hundred years.
Getting it right means not knowing what the last paragraph will say when you start the first one, and leaving a wide berth for changing one’s mind. Mabel Norris Reese, the feisty editor of the Mount Dora Topic in the 1950s, was originally a staunch supporter of Sheriff Willis McCall’s professed responsibility for keeping order; but when she learned how dirty the news was that he fed to the media, she had very visible change of heart and mind in her columns. Maybe I’ll learn some things about city hall from these grievances that will temper or even change my opinions.
Getting it right means sticking to the story until all of the truth is visible.
I volunteer for this work; there is no pay in the new plurirverse of hyperlocal media. Maybe some day Mount Dora will believe in this work enough to provide an economic base for The Mount Dora Citizen where I’m committed for the long haul, but even if that day should come, its work must remain loyal to citizens; as civic duty. (As council members know, there are plenty of much-better paying gigs that promise a much lesser beating.)
Fortunately, there are tools of journalism that provide a reliable and durable path to getting it right. In their 2010 book Blur: How To Know What’s True in the Age of Information Overload, journalists Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel say there is a six-step process to learning truth as it evolves with what they call “skeptical knowledge.” It asks:
- What kind of content am I encountering?
2. Is the information complete; and if not, what is missing?
3. Who or what are the sources, and why should I believe them?
4. What evidence is presented, and how was it tested or vetted?
5. What might be an alternative explanation or understanding?
6. Am I learning what I need to?
This is the litmus test for determining whether information true or just more of digital mud. If journalists have done their job, each question has been answered in full. Skeptical knowledge is enabled; the learning process can continue.
But all of these questions are really for the news consumer to ask of his or her news. Gone is the day when readers can blindly trust what they see offered to them as news. (And if you believe something because you read it on the Internet, then you have become the perfect chum for the online sharks.)
At best, passive consumption is bad habit formed back when our news ecosystem was still shiny and analog. Far worse for all of us, uncritical news consumption (or, because there are so many diversions now, no news consumption at all) is behind every bad decision a community makes.
Armed with these questions, however, the reader becomes an essential partner in the newsgathering process — if not the essential one. Kovach and Rosensteil write,
Today, when the news comes from all kinds of sources, in all styles and formats, from journalists and non-journalists, we need more. We need to be able to know why we should believe the sources relied on to offer facts or to comment on them. Now we tend to think, “Give me enough information to judge this source for myself.” (33)
The journalist’s job is one of providing tools for managing the overload, offering measurements and calibrations that help decide what is real and relevant and important — and true. The citizen’s job is put those tools to use in deciding what is best for his or her community.
That’s why what is happening in Mount Dora this week — and the next and the next and the next — is not just the job a few citizen journalists, but YOUR job — you have to know what’s going in order to help decide what is best for our community.
Of their information providers, citizens must demand accuracy and transparency of process. They must demand that their news serves the entire public above select groups or vested interests. And they must demand that their journalists carefully monitor government and provide open access.
The onus is on every Mount Dora citizen to ensure their media is dedicated to the truth. We owe it to each other and to this town.
Know your city, and support what is best.
And if this media site fails in its task, then turn the channel. Delete the app. Unfriend. Pass.
If need be, go create your own Mount Dora site.
Just know your neighbors will be watching you. With skeptical minds, I pray, but with fingers crossed.
— David Cohea ([email protected])
