Shout Out to the Journalists

A lot of people in my line of work have a universally negative view of all media outlets other than Fox News. As a small cry of protest I want to piggyback on a post over at Sticks of Fire that tells a little story about what journalism is really for. Here's the link. All the pertinent articles in the newspaper, the Saint Petersburg Times.

Some days ago, it surfaced that the Pinellas County Commission was seeking bids to build a restaurant and several other tourist-related developments at Fort DeSoto Park, a popular barrier-island park and annually one of the top ranked beaches in the United States. A columnist for the Times, Howard Troxler, uncovered the plans and wrote a rather tetchy article about them, beseeching his readers to respond and tell him what they thought.

Five days later, he tipped his hat about the results and urged readers to write and tell the commission what they thought. Two days later he reported that his request had brought from his readers 55 letters, calls, or emails in support of the "upgrades" at the park, and over 788 negative responses. The people were better than 14-1 against the proposal--a proposal that the commission claimed "the people" were for. Which people? Not Troxler's readers, certainly--and with three columns on the subject in just over a week, those people who supported the idea should have been calling and writing, too, to prove him wrong. They didn't.

They also didn't call or write to the county commission. "The people" who the commission initially claimed supported the new development apparently failed to materialize, and the commission ordered the staff to revise the plans for the park; Troxler wrote a very insightful column on the entire ordeal.

Now, this was the work of a columnist, who has a little latitude to support a particular position, as Troxler did. But his position turned out to be solidly in the majority, and he gave that majority a much-needed voice. But the Times printed an article just yesterday about plans by two local officeholders for some underhanded dealing on a new development. A state legislator was working to pass legislation in the upcoming session (March-April) that would have allowed local developer Grady Pridgen (who is not, I must point out, a bad guy, especially as developers go) to skirt local and state traffic studies on his way to a new development in central Pinellas County.

Pridgen has a pretty good development record, and is actually working on a second project in downtown St. Pete that. He's developing a piece of property that is of no particular ecological significance and is going to be developed sooner or later. What's more, the plan he has is a good plan, something that deserves a chance. But every other development in the county has to undergo a state sponsored traffic study and meet other local traffic mitigation requirements. These can cost a pretty penny, and Pridgen no doubt hoped to save that money.

I can't blame him for that. But figuring that he'd get no support from local government, Pridgen went to the state legislature, where he found supporters. Local government was outraged, as you can well imagine, and Rep. Farkas is going to have a tough time finding much love from local leaders for the next few months. One might wonder how the voters feel about this. I can tell you what I suspect--given the density and size of the development and the near-universal appeal of NIMBYism, I imagine readers of the paper yesterday morning were just about as outraged. This sounds like corruption.

The Times dutifully reported the facts. And a day later--one day, only one day--Rep. Farkas withdrew his sponsorship of the bill. Farkas made other excuses, but we can reasonably assume that had the article not been written, the bill would have continued to move forward.

Of course this is a tough thing to support, for me at least. The development, La Entrada, looked to have been a good development. Density and infill are infinitely better than sprawl, although in Pinellas County the debate is moot since there's little land left on which to sprawl--in fact, the development in question was on one of the few undeveloped bits of land left in the county, which is largely built out. Still, the project deserves a good hearing and, I think, solid support. It's a shame it will be thought of in relation to this little escapade.

But just because the development is a good one doesn't mean it should get to circumvent the rules. Development rules, especially in Florida, are necessary things. If the traffic studies are too onerous for large developments then the state needs to look at changing the way the studies are conducted for all developments, rather than exempting one at a time piecemeal. That's inappropriate, and bravo to the Times for reporting on it.

This is why, when I hear some of my colleagues complain about the media's lack of integrity, I tell them they are stupid. We all lack integrity; it's the human condition. The role of journalists is to call people on it.