January 05, 2005

To Hell With Predictions, We've Got Demands

What We Want In 2005

Many media outlets and commentators, when a year ends, post their predictions for the upcoming twelve months. That being a rather silly game, we thought instead that we'd post something of a wishlist -- or, really, our list of demands for the worlds of Portland politics and media.

Notwithstanding the occassional chorus of people dismissing the blogopshere as just so much blather, we want more people blogging in Portland this year. And, of course, we have some specific suggestions as to just who should be joining the rest of us.

Obviously, we already have Commissioner Randy Leonard contributing to the fine BlueOregon, and we know that Commissioner Sam Adams is moving towards launching a weblog of his own. That's a good start, but we want to see more elected officials, more media people, and other community leaders becoming part of the scene.

Right up front, we repeat something we've been urging in the comments to various other local weblogs: Nick Fish, if you're reading this, start a blog. Yes, we endorsed your opponent, who is now in office. But it's evident to us, as it likely is to most people who followed your race, that Portland's political discussion needs regular access to your perspective. And we're fairly certain that there are any number of local bloggers who would be willing to help get you up and running.

For that matter, we also encourage any and all of the candidates who were motivated enough to run for local office in 2004 to start their own blogs. The local blogopshere increasingly is where the political conversation is taking place -- certainly, at least, the only real place in which the political conversation is permanently on-the-record and easily accessible to all -- and you can't afford to be left out.

Somewhat related to this, City Auditor Gary Blackmer recently commented that he found intriguing someone's proposal to make the weekly online posting of the City Council agenda into a weblog, which would allow people to post comments in response to the various agenda items. There are any number of technical and policy issues that would need to be worked out, but we strongly encourage movement in that direction.

(One thing that is expected to happen is the online posting of the material related to each agenda item, thereby increasing access to that information. Combine that with the above agenda-blog idea, and we'd probably be breaking new ground.)

As we said, we also want local media people to start blogging. If nothing else: Phil Stanford, for all of how much we try to put the smackdown on you, this means you. It doesn't have to cut into your column, which already is more or less a print blog anyway. Instead, it would mean you can weigh in whenever you want, and perhaps then draw upon items from your blog for expansion and further thought in your print column. Go for it. We'll still take shots at what you write, but we will be linking to it in the process, so what do you have to lose?

It isn't strictly a blogging-related demand, but here's one for The Oregonian. Leaving aside the disaster that is the corporate separation of Advance newspapers and Advance websites, which helps result in the abhorrence that is OregonLive, we have a more pressing demand. If you're not going to demand rationality from your editorial board, at least open up its meetings and let us see how it functions.

Whether that means, for example, letting people in to blog editorial board discussions, or perhaps letting OPB film an editorial board session the way Willamette Week did, we don't necessarily care. But the reputation of your editorial board is poor -- not because of its positions, but because of its logic, or more commonly its lack thereof. You demand transparency of government? Well, we demand transparency of you.

And then there's the troubled Tribune. We basically have only one suggestion here, but it's a big one. If your operation is in as problematic a state as various people seem to say and think it is, you don't have much to lose by trying a grand experiment. Read Lex Alexander's report to John Robinson, editor of the News & Record in North Carolina.

Alexander was asked by Robinson (who, by the way, blogs) to write this report recommending ways the newspaper in conjunction with its website could truly become a "public square" for the city of Greensboro. It's dramatic, and its radical (by staid modern-day newspaper standards), and it's also very right. Go for it.

A few final thoughts, although we may add more later as they come to mind. First, if the community manages to fend off the threat of big box retail at the Burnside Bridgehead site, we ask that City officials and Portland residents alike take it as an opportunity generating momentum into changes in perspective and priority at the Portland Development Commission.

Now, we don't hammer PDC as much as others do, partly because some (note to nitpickers: we said some) of the criticisms against it are a result of a lack of understanding of how urban renewal works.

But there are rumblings out of the most recent election that PDC needs to make some changes, there are rumblings from residents that it needs to make some changes -- and there are even movements out of PDC itself which suggest some degree of understanding of all of this. How much movement can be made, however (both in terms of PDC itself and in terms of Portlanders' understanding of PDC), likely is dependent upon success at the Bridgehead.

In early articles on the Bridgehead development, The Oregonian (presumably due to a spellcheck error which wasn't caught by human eyes) kept referring to it as the Burnside Beachhead. While factually wrong, it's symbolically correct as it relates to urban renewal and community priorities. Our online dictionary software offers this as one defintion of beachhead: "An initial accomplishment that opens the way for further developments."

On the subject of changes, we would also like to believe that if and when Mayor Potter calls for a Charter Review Committee, said committee will not return a recommendation that our commission form of government be changed. Since we assume the form-of-government discussion is ienvitable, we have begun doing some serious reading on the matter, and expect to argue our perspective on the matter rather vigorously (presuming we're still publishing at the time).

Lastly, we were going to include our pet proposal to add "Conversations with Council" sessions to supplement the existing three-minute Communications items which appear at the start of every regular Council meeting.

But there in fact appears to be movement on that front, as we somewhat disconcertingly discovered during this morning's City Council session, so we will teasingly leave discussion of that until a post we should have ready late tonight.

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