News from Michi-Ohio
To those who've visited this blog before: Take note that I've corrected a few figures in the fast-ferry posts below. To everyone: I'm now on vacation in southernmost Michigan, just having crossed over from Toledo, Ohio. I took my folding Dahon on the bus to Toledo and plan to pedal west to the south shore of Lake Michigan, then on to Chicago to see family and the big city.

Toledo is a classic Rust Belt city, Great Lakes-style. (Maybe we should call them the Rust Lakes, so universal is the region's urban decline, and so widespread is the water pollution.) I first found myself in a downtown wasteland, one mitigated with significant 19th-century architecture. Then I hit the East and West sides; they could have been East Buffalo or Rochester's "Crescent." Then I went into the appropriately leafy city of Sylvania, apparently the area's Brighton or Pittsford, well-scrubbed, trendy, and flush with Beamers and cappuccino emporia.

The contrast is nothing new to me or you or anyone who has seen apartheid. But some political thoughts about all this are percolating in my overheated brain as I ride through the heat wave. I'll post something as soon as I can chill. Maybe a nice tall Guinness will do the trick later in some Midwest oasis.

Ferry redux
Topic: environment
When I wrote about the fast ferry and the environment (see below), I was unaware of Cory Ireland’s July 10 D&C piece on the same subject. The piece is well worth accessing at www.democratandchronicle.com. Ireland covers the air-pollution issue in depth. He also touches on the ferry’s fuel consumption, and he looks at the advent of cleaner marine diesel fuel and what that might mean. Officials gave Ireland a fuel mileage figure (3,500 gallons for the 100-mile lake crossing, i.e. 35 gallons per mile) a tiny bit better than the figure I used. The conclusion remains the same: the ferry is a world-class gas-hog.

Looking backward: Nearly four years ago, I drafted an article for City Newspaper on the ferry’s enviro-impacts. That was when public debate could have determined what type of ship would be ordered – or if a ship would sail at all. The editor spiked the story, with prejudice. To be fair, CityNews had run a decent piece that concentrated on wave-action and related concerns. But I felt the paper needed to look at the fuel and air-quality issues more closely. Well, that’s all water over the dam, I guess. But I recall that when I drafted my article, the paper was cozy with Rochester businessman Tom Riley, who simultaneously was a CityNews executive board member and a partner in the private, and soon-to-flop, CATS ferry company. Such triangulation may not stink as bad as diesel fuel, but it doesn’t smell like a rose, either. CityNews has papered over this appearance of a conflict of interest with the standard journalistic disclosures. But inquiring minds might want to ask the editors what it all meant, and if it's still meaningful.

New math on the fast ferry
Topic: environment
Even though the ship long since left the dock, rah-rah coverage of the fast ferry still runs at full steam. Rochester’s booster-class cabins are full, and City Hall’s fiscal salvage operation --- not quite like raising the Titanic, but a real challenge --- rivals the terror war in terms of grabbing headlines.

But no local news outlet, with the exception of Frank Regan’s excellent rochesterenvironment.com, has peered into the abyss. I mean the ferry’s environmental impact. That’s where some strong light is needed. Plus a calculator.

I recently worked up some back-of the-envelope figures on one crucial angle: fuel economy. According to data released by the operator, the ferry gets 42.3 gallons per nautical mile (1.15 statute miles). So the one-way, 87-nautical-mile trip from here to Toronto consumes around 3,680 gallons of marine diesel fuel.

That’s a lot of fuel in absolute terms. But the real issue is how this level of consumption compares to what Toronto-bound travelers using other travel modes might use. Do the math: If 220 cars (the ferry’s carrying capacity, minus a relatively few trucks and buses) getting an average of 20 mpg made the 180-mile one-way road trip to Toronto on their own power, they’d consume 1,980 gallons total. Roughly half of what the ferry uses.

Well, nobody ever claimed plowing a boat the size of an urban neighborhood through unwilling waters would win the efficiency prize. But it’s reasonable to expect that transportation policy will favor environmentally sound projects. And if we ever do a state-of-the-art regional transportation plan, such projects will be the only ones on the map.

Other relevant comparisons: The ferry, running at capacity (a vain hope; the boat’s regularly been about half empty), comes in at about 20 passenger-miles per gallon of fuel. According to a range of official sources here and in the UK, intercity passenger trains get from around 50 pmpg to more than 100 pmpg. Buses and (alas) cars are much more fuel-efficient than ferries. Other environmental angles need to be looked at, of course: land-use, noise, tire wear, etc. Safety data should be factored in, too. But let’s face it, the fast ferry, largely because of the energy needed to move its immense payload, has created another rolling environmental deficit.

I haven’t yet looked in depth at the pollution issue. But here again, the ferry comes up short. Not only does it use much more fuel than competing modes; it uses dirtier fuel (i.e. marine diesel), and it’s very light on anti-pollution technology.

Does the travel time saved make it all worthwhile? Not remotely. A high-speed rail service, or even a moderately fast one, could cut the trip to well below the ferry’s two-and-a-quarter hour optimum. Conversely, if the distance saved were substantial enough --- as with the ferry between Bar Harbor, Maine, and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, whose saltwater route cuts 75 percent off a 600-mile road trip --- the calculus could be different.

But in the Lake Ontario lowlands, there’s no way around it: Rail rules. Or it should.

Hypocrisy alert: I just may take the ferry trip for fun. Enviro-writers do what they gotta do. I’ll report on the experience. And please post your own thoughts on this issue. Hey, it’s the only fast ferry we’ve got. Let’s keep its dark side in the public eye to balance the PR.

An open letter to WXXI
Topic: media criticism
At a recent demonstration downtown, one placard said it all: “It’s not SOME of the Public Broadcasting.”

Funding issues and political meddling aside, public broadcasting’s biggest problem these days is its uneven coverage. Viewers and listeners don’t get the full spectrum of our communities, philosophies, age and ethnic groups, and so forth.

That’s why more outlets, including our own WXXI, should heed veteran journalist Bill Moyers’ recent advice to pick up Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez. DN! covers the ground that the business press and for-profit broadcasters fear to tread.

Though Goodman and Gonzales take pains to include every relevant viewpoint, their special contribution is letting the underrepresented have a say: progressive organizations, people of color, labor, feminists, antiwar activists, and other true reformers. Many public broadcasting stations run the show precisely because it speaks to all of us.

How about it, WXXI? Take your news-and-views programming to the next (higher) level.

- J.B. Spula

Welcome!
Topic: media criticism
Thanks to friends and opponents alike, I've now got my blog up and running. Thanks for dropping by.

My beat is Rochester, Western New York, and the Finger Lakes, but my postings will reflect the plain fact that all politics is global.

I'll be posting commentaries on politics, the environment, social and economic justice, the media (especially local), and more.

Hope to hear from you, as well.

-- Jack

P.S. Surprisingly, and gratifyingly in an odd way, I'm still getting inquiries about how I came to leave City Newspaper last year. So if you're interested, read the statement below, given here in its original form. On this blog I'll naturally focus critical attention on Rochester's "alternative" paper, which runs some good reporting and writing but doesn't always walk the talk (e.g. on labor issues). But I promise not to obsess!

5/28/04

To my friends in the progressive community:

Seven very difficult weeks have gone by since I left City Newspaper. In early April, as you may have seen, the paper reported I was no longer on the staff. The brief announcement, looking oddly like an obit, did include some praise. But the words were so carefully chosen --- so exquisitely neutral --- that they might lead to the wrong conclusions. I don't want anyone to
think I quit, or worse, that I was fired for a real offense.

Here's what happened.

I spent the week before Easter on a cover story on Main Street. You may have seen the story in the same issue as the "obit"; the juxtaposition itself may have raised some eyebrows. I finished the story on Thursday around dinnertime and was set to leave for a long weekend with family out of state. My editor quickly reviewed the story, and everything seemed good to go. Then he and the publisher pulled me into the conference room to "talk." Once the door was shut, the
publisher told me I was out. What led to this? I asked for the complaints in writing, and the publisher agreed to supply them but never followed through.

I clearly remember what was said, though. First, I was accused of not covering certain beats adequately. Then it was said I "closed down discussion" on Empire Zones during a recent editorial meeting. (Like all the Rochester media, we were looking at the EZ designation given some high-end suburban rental properties; I said essentially that we should add a deeper analysis of EZs as corporate welfare. I was told we have "to live in the real world," etc. The discussion was polite enough; I still can't imagine how it led to trouble for me. But obviously some buttons were pushed.) Later in the exit interview, I was told that I improperly injected politics into unspecified articles. The accusation may have stemmed from a column on workers' issues I submitted shortly before the fateful day --- a column about which I never received the slightest feedback, not even an acknowledgment that it had been read.

In both these cases, there must have been a more general, longstanding grievance at play. It's a shame it wasn't put on the table.

The exit "talk" took only a few minutes, and I left the conference room in a daze. At no time during my nine-plus years at the paper did anyone say --- orally or in writing --- that my performance was in question. There never was any reprimand or warning of sanctions. I absolutely never was told that my job was at risk. The publisher now is telling third parties that the firing was under consideration for a long time. So I actually was on probation, without notice.

I'm sure you'll agree the reasons given for the firing were trivial. I don't think I did anything to warrant dismissal. Quite the contrary: I believe I was consistently producing good work, was covering as many beats and subjects as reasonably could be expected, and was participating fully in discussions and ancillary duties. My published pieces, including many unsigned "MetroInk" items as well as bylined articles, bear this out. I also had taken on two new assignments: the working-class-oriented columns I mentioned above, and classical music reviews and previews. The first music review appeared just before the ax fell. I thought it was well-received.

Just this February I got an annual performance review and a substantial raise. There was no mention of any deficiency (nor was there any word of appreciation). We talked about my covering a range of new beats --- and again, I believe I made a good faith effort to comply. I want to emphasize that, apart from a "beats" memo that was handed to me, the annual review was entirely oral. Apparently as a matter of policy, CityNews does not provide employees with actual written performance evaluations with the usual feedback on good and bad points, things to watch or improve, and so forth. Instead, the employee fills out a form with his/her reactions --- what he/she likes about the job, what he/she would like to change, what new projects should be tackled. This type of evaluation process does give the employee a say, but it's obviously incomplete. It does not put management on record, and it may leave the employee with false impressions.

The paper has no mechanism for employee grievances to be filed or adjudicated, and there is no provision for third-party mediation. Management follows the letter of state law, which allows termination "at will." There's some relevant history: Several years ago City?s non-supervisory staffers unanimously chose UNITE as their union, after being forced by management into an NLRB election. I was the employee rep on the bargaining committee. Through many months of negotiations, management consistently balked at proposed contract language. The biggest sticking point was management's refusal to accept an arbitration clause. The union obviously could not approve any contract that lacked this key clause, which helps protect workers against unreasonable penalties, etc. I believe that if we had won a contract, I'd still have a job. One thing's for sure: A contract would have given me due process rights.

Some people have been wondering where City is headed. I think it's too soon to tell if there's been a major shift in editorial policy, though the editors insist they're staying the course. The local competition, especially Gannett's The Insider, may have some effect. One general problem at City is a kind of tone-deafness about editorial priorities, coupled with a tendency to jump at new, trendy content and packaging, for example, "edgy" Q&As like one with Brother Wease some weeks ago. There's also a tendency to miss the connections between local and global issues, and a hesitancy to explore this angle. I note some recent City articles have a libertarian cast, but the paper remains left-of-center (not left). My radicalism was always a little out of synch there.
Readers frequently took me to task. That comes with the territory, and I think I appealed to a wide range of readers. I enjoyed the liberal-left and left-right interplay of ideas, and I thought the paper valued this.

I don't think my firing had to do with anything as specific as my take on the Middle East. But sometimes there were political disagreements that may have reverberated more than I thought. Last year, for example, precisely as the Iraq invasion started, the editors decided to stop covering the peace movement. This was made explicit in a staff meeting called specifically to pull me off a story already in progress. I had started research into the actual --- as opposed to conventionally reported --- psychological effects of war and peacemaking on children, here and in combat zones. The piece was to counterbalance the simplistic "shield their eyes" advice rampant in the mainstream. I still think it would have been an important piece at that moment. And I thought we had a basic journalistic and moral responsibility to cover the movement in depth.

Not long after the meeting I was reassigned to cover the suburbs in the run-up to the 2003 local elections. All through the international crisis, you may recall, the Democrat and Chronicle and other mainstream outlets sent reporters along to peace marches and interviewed soldiers and vets and families, filling up many pages with solid locally-connected stories. City had weighed in before the invasion --- often admirably --- but pulled punches during and after. I said City should do the other local media one better. I was overruled.

Another example: Management had long planned a major series on a theme I won?t reveal. (I don't want to alert the competition; besides, it's the process that counts, not the particular subject.) Last fall, after already being on the backburner for a year or so, the series finally got underway. Or so I thought, as did a colleague who had been attracted to the job by the prospect of working on the series. Ed staffers and an intern fanned out across the state to do the necessary interviews. I was sent to the Hudson Valley. We all did lots of research. But after a huge investment in time and overhead, the paper never ran a word on the subject.

Though I dislike the way the paper treated me, I do miss my job. And I'm puzzled. How could it be that my years of sincerely devoted work --- several books? worth of research and text, often produced under the gun --- ended with such brusque treatment? (Some people have asked if I got a "good deal." Well, after nine years on staff, I got two weeks? severance pay; the publisher insisted that small companies usually "don't have severance policies.")

Maybe in time I'll understand what people are telling me: that things will work out for the best. I might even feel good about lasting so long at City. The paper has an extraordinarily high turnover rate. During my years there, quite a number of writers were on staff, mostly in editorial. I won't presume to give reasons for their leaving. But the sheer length of the roster (the ed department has just one or two writers at a time) speaks volumes. Maybe you followed these bylines: Will Astor, H.B. Ward, Joan Collins Lambert (the star labor reporter, back when the paper really had a labor beat), Ryan Whirty, Lauren Farrell (a powerful voice who's now a UAW organizer), Lee Strong, David Raymond (the region's best classical music critic, never given his due at City), Cindy Mindell-Wong, Chris Busby, Chris Fien.

Some readers, including organizational staffers who depend on longterm relationships with journalists, have told me they're concerned about the turnover. But management policy seems to follow a perverse logic: During union talks, a management rep stated quite openly that the paper's traditional role has been to help newcomers to journalism learn the ropes. That suggests it's easy to wear out your welcome.

As I said, the last weeks have been tough. I'm encouraged by the supportive letters-to-the-editor, personal emails and calls, and the number of supporters certainly is larger than the letters page would indicate.

Practical considerations set the agenda, though. My job search continues. I want to keep plying the trade of writer/peacemaker. Please pass along any leads you hear about! Thanks to all for being there for me.

---Jack Bradigan Spula

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