EDITORIALS : Don’t be small
Posted on Wednesday, May 3, 2006
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/153590/
THERE’S AN addictive little website
called Romenesko that gets a lot of
hits from people in this business. It rounds up news about newsies. Mostly fact, not a lot of rumor. Mostly info on the Big Boys on the coasts, not us small fry in Flyover Land. It’s a good way to keep up with the Media-ocracy and, let’s face it, a great way to waste time on a slow afternoon. (However did folks kill an hour before the Internet ?) The other day, an item popped up from our own backbiting media neighborhood: Arkansas governor’s office refuses to deal with alt-weekly. Oh. You figured it was some rant by Max Brantley at the Arkansas Times about how Mike Huckabee wouldn’t grant the weekly’s opinionated reporters an interview or return their calls. Big deal, blah, blah, Old News, etc. The Times likes The Huck only a little more than it likes the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
So the Guv wouldn’t be the first pol not to cooperate with his critics. (Which reminds us: Hey, we editorial writers at the ADG never did get that interview with Bill Clinton before his presidential library opened. )
But a click on the Romenesko link led to the Arkansas Times ’ blog and this statement from the governor’s genteel flack, Alice Stewart, a nice lady with a tough job. To quote her statement to the weekly:
“We don’t consider the Arkansas Times a news organization. By your own definition, you are a journal of politics and culture. As you said, there are hundreds of news outlets in the state, and we don’t attempt to notify every one of them. The major news organizations are on our e-mail list and that’s the way it will continue.”
So the Times won’t be getting those standard e-mails / public notices from the governor’s office that provide the most basic information. Like news releases, the Guv’s public schedule, and notice of upcoming press conferences. If the Times wants a schedule, it’ll have to fish it off the Guv’s website, which may or may not be updated in a timely way, and is kind of confusing and not very detailed anyway. And what about those last-minute press conferences that have been a semi-staple of, yes, a pretty accessible governor’s office ? Good luck finding out about those. Harrumph and sniff.
GOODNESS, that’s just plain weird
even for Mike Huckabee. This
weekly isn’t asking for the governor’s time or cooperation, just for his public whereabouts and announcements. What’s so offensive about that ? First off, what’s the governor’s point ? Does he really think giving Max and his gliberals all this free publicity is punishment ? On the contrary, he’s doing them a favor by making them look picked-on. Second off, on a scale of 1 to 10, this over-reaction rates about a 25. Just about the time you think Mike Huckabee has shed his thin skin, well, think again.
Instead of closing the door on a pesky li’l weekly that doesn’t like him, the governor has opened a whole can of media worms, and a roomful of picayune questions: Is the Times a news organization ? Is its daily blog ? Is any weekly or blog ? At the most recent political conventions, bloggers were granted press credentials and seats. Does that make ’em legit ? And so tiresomely on.
Editor Brantley—who has worked in Little Rock journalism for 33 years, including 18 at the Arkansas Gazette, where he was, among other things, city editor, assistant managing editor and political columnist—says this is more than a media issue, it’s a public issue: “Notice of public meetings is required,” he points out, “not of all media, but of all who request the notice... [Huckabee ] has ample reason not to like us. We don’t require his affection, only publicly financed service at the same level provided others similarly situated.”
Uh, governor, your pesky critic has a point. Not to mention what sounds like an FOI case.
What is it about this governor that causes him to act so presidential one minute and so petty the next ? He can be the best of leaders and the worst of thin-skinned pols. And what brought all this on now, almost 10 years into a tenure during which The Huck has been regularly skewered by the Times ? Miss Alice wouldn’t say. The Guv could take a lesson from another Republican and Arkansas Times whipping boy, Asa Hutchinson. Here’s what Asa’s communications director, David Kinkade, said about keeping the lines of communication open even with an uppity tabloid: “We don’t have any illusions that the Arkansas Times is an objective news source—it’s more of a partisan combatant in the political arena. That said, you know that openness and transparency in government is one of the key themes of our campaign, and it will be one of the defining characteristics of Asa’s administration.” Translation: You’ll still get Asa’s e-mails. And the Guv would do well to note that business about openness and transparency. Why give his critics something legitimate to complain about ?
JUST WHEN it looked as if this e-mail
business was nothing more than a
spitting match between a longtime politician and his longtime critic, Mike Huckabee called.
Verrry in-ter-est-ing.
Whenever a governor calls unsolicited, you can bet something’s up. And you can bet it’s more of a something than the something he called about.
Once upon a more controversial time, after a particularly spicy editorial, then-Governor Jim Guy Tucker called to rant, rave, fume and generally dissent. If memory serves, and it doesn’t always, the editorial in considerable question alluded to his role in what was then known as the Castle Grande deal but soon afterward morphed into a tributary of the whole Whitewater swamp.
As it turned out, Governor Tucker’s level of interest in that editorial couldn’t have proven a better gauge to the feds’ future interest in him and in what eventually seemed like half the political establishment in Arkansas. We should have known we’d touched on a big story, and a nerve, but at the time we just wrote it off to Jim Guy’s having a bad hair day. So much for journalistic intuition.
Governor Huckabee didn’t rant or rave when he called the other day. On the contrary, he couldn’t have been more pleasant. It’s always good to hear from him, and he usually has a good point to make. Usually.
In the mysterious case of the stricken e-mail, Mike Huckabee made this point: There’s nothing that Editor Brantley and his staff will be denied. They can still come to press conferences. The Guv says he’ll still answer questions from their writersthough don’t count on him to return their calls. They can get his schedule off the website or, if they want to spend a buck, sign up for something called the Governor’s Electronic Mail Service. (Which, full disclosure, the Democrat-Gazette doesn’t have to do. At least not yet. )
But as far as a special invite (read email ) to the governor’s every appearance, well, “nobody operates like that.”
The Guv continued: “We’re not restricting [Max Brantley ]. I’ve answered his questions. I’ve never treated him disrespectfully at an event.... What we’ve said was, we’re not going to go out of our way to invite him to everything.”
Yeah, somehow we figured that. And goodness knows it’s going the extra mile to add ol’ Max to the e-mail list, knowing how he can get on a Republican governor’s nerves. But did you know, Governor, that in these technologically advanced times, you can actually create what’s called an e-mail address group ? That way, see, you don’t have to type in all the individual e-addresses one at a time. Nope. You just key ’em in once under the heading of, say, Arkansas Media, and... SEND.
But something tells us convenience and efficiency isn’t what this is about. This is about a little payback for a perennial critic. And as nice as Mike Huckabee can be when he calls to tell his side of the story, it doesn’t change one thing: He’s still being petty. If he’ll forgive us for offering a little absolutely free advice (the cheapest commodity in politics ), here’s what we’d tell him: Heck, Governor, you’re pretty much running for president of the United States now. You’re too big for this kind of thing. Cut it out. You’ll be glad you did.