Stories only good as the reporters who write them

By RON BROCHU

The Technology Village, Great Lakes Aquarium, OmniMax Theatre, a high-speed train to Minneapolis and the infamous Red Plan. Why do so many high-risk, costly public projects take flight in Duluth despite great odds for failure?

First and foremost, they’re funded by government money, which flows like water here in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. So if a project isn’t successful, losses are simply covered by more government money, or tucked into a line item that escapes public attention.

But there’s also insufficient media scrutiny, and a tendency by media to partner up with project sponsors to gain a slice of the action –contractor-funded advertising spreads that typically accompany open houses.

One gut reaction would be to conclude editors, publishers and producers are telling reporters to back away from popular civic projects, but it doesn’t happen that way. The truth is that many journalists lack the skill and background to adequately report complicated financial stories. They’ll deny it, but it’s the unfortunate truth.

But don’t blame reporters. The problem runs all the way back to the institutions of higher learning that fail to provide them a broad educational background.
Journalism schools spend far too much time focusing on the glory and grandeur of reporting while failing to ensure students know the difference between an income statement and balance sheet, revenue and profit.

Math skills are equally weak, no matter the reporter’s pedigree. The number who can’t calculate the percent of change (for instance, the decrease in attendance from 2007-2008 at Great Lakes Aquarium) is astounding. Many journalists also graduate with no background in spreadsheets – the most basic software tool used in public and private accounting.

How many would know the difference between equity and commercial financing? Who would be able to analyze cash flow? How many could name Duluth’s top angel investors, and in which projects they hold a stake?

Such details would bore the hell out of most reporters, and probably baffle many of their supervisors. So it’s not surprising that few stories provide deep financial analysis of even the biggest, costliest projects.

Meanwhile, Duluth’s large collection of young novice reporters doesn’t have a pony in the race. They’ve never owned homes, so they haven’t experienced the joy of paying property taxes. They don’t have kids in school, so they don’t recognize the hassle of driving from downtown to Morgan Park to pick up an ill child, then back home to Duluth Heights in a mad dash that can last far more than a hour.

As an alternative, reporters interview project sponsors, who are all too aware of the media’s limitations. People like Superintendent of Schools Keith Dixon hold all the trump cards in most every discussion of the Red Plan – even though the project will cost nearly a half-billion dollars. He fully understands complicated financial plans; reporters can’t even navigate the index.


Psychological factors


Despite numerous accusations, editors seldom if ever tell reporters they can’t write about stories favored by civic leaders. But reporters face psychological barriers.

What Duluth News Tribune reporter in her right mind, for example, would propose to pen a critical analysis of the high-speed rail plan – for which DNT News Director Robin Washington has been the lead cheerleader? Looking back a few years, the same question could have been asked when Dean Jacobus was a Technology Village consultant while his wife was DNT publisher. Or later when DNT Publisher Marti Buscaglia chaired a task force to save the aquarium.

It’s unlikely News Tribune reporters would admit to such intimidation, but they raised concerns internally about relationships between company execs and project sponsors – and were consistently ignored.

Today, of course, there are fewer reporters than in the past to chase stories of high community interest, and the numbers keep declining.

On the TV side, streamlining is most evident in the KBJR-KDLH newsroom. It would take a high-power microscope to unveil any difference between news coverage provided on one channel versus the other.

In print, the News Tribune continues to cut, and the most recent layoff proved embarrassing. Days after it occurred, Forum Communications’ CEO Bill Marcil was credited in USA Today for saying his company is having “one of our best years ever” after making some necessary staff reductions. But in an April 10 internal memo, Forum President Lloyd Case said Marcil was misquoted. If true, Marcil was misquoted by the best. The USA Today column was written by Al Neuharth, who founded the nationwide newspaper. Marcil, by the way, married into the Forum fortune.

This story was published in the April 24 Reader Weekly