Friday, October 30, 2009

The District Weekly: Teacher layoffs, parks and recreation and "PostKiller.com"

Ed. note: Apologies for the light posting the past few days, I've been under the weather. As of now, this is a one-man part-time operation, so "daily" might not always happen.

It's been a headline week for the D.C. Council, with a hearing about the D.C. Public Schools layoffs and more discussion of the parks and recreation contracts. Aside from that, the media world has been dominated with talks of the new local news site for D.C.

D.C. Council holds hearing on the controversial teacher layoffs. This was the big cannot-miss local news story for the week. There's a whole ton of analysis floating around the Internet, so I'm not going to spend too much time rehashing it right now. The main story here is the same story we're seeing with the Parks and Recreation hubub, a lack of communication, oversight and respect between the Council and the rest of the D.C. government. Yesterday's hearing stretched for several hours, and the tone of animosity between the Council and DCPS was hard to ignore. There's significant discontent between many on the Council and Rhee. Those who have a bone to pick with Fenty are going to continue pressing this. It looks likely that Rhee did go around the Council's directives in order to get her way. But, she's smart, and knows how to testify at a hearing. The same can't be said for her CFO, Noah Wepman. Wepman appeared unprepared and shaken by the questioning.

All of this, of course, revolves around the controversial firing of teachers. Hundreds of teachers were laid off just as the school year started, with Rhee citing budgetary reasons. The Council had previously slashed $20 million from the DCPS budget. Prior to the firings, DCPS had conducted massive hirings over the summer. Rhee is accused of using the budget excuse to fire tenured teachers and replace them with new, younger hires. Rhee claims she had no choice but to cut jobs. A matter of this much importance, and involving this much money should not come down to a he said/she said argument. Sadly, though, that is where we are. It looks like either Rhee knew exactly what she was doing (likely) or the books at DCPS are so poorly kept no one could have figured out there would be budgeting problems for FY2010.

Right now, Council meets to discuss Parks and Recreations contracts. Today the Council is meeting to discuss the questionable contracts sent through the D.C. Housing Authority. The City Paper has learned the total is now at $120 million. City Administrator Neil Albert is testifying at the moment, and CFO Natwar Gandhi is scheduled to appear as well. Albert is denying any sort of conflict of interest problems, and the Council is trying very hard not to use the "corruption" word. I'll have more on this once the meeting wraps up. Again, it is difficult to make the claim that either Albert or Gandhi didn't realize there was something fishy going on.

Can Allbritton revolutionize local news? Well, it seems they are going to try. The creators of Politico are looking to create a local D.C. news web site. Allbritton also owns local ABC affiliate WJLA-TV as well as the local cable news station NewsChannel8. I spent some time talking about the future of local journalism last week; this is a topic that is not going away anytime soon. Allbritton believes there is still money to be made with a local news web site, and wants to dedicate a staff of 50 to making this work.

Well, as other people have mentioned, it's hard to believe that Allbritton will be able to find some magical advertising market that no one else has been able to tap into. I'm very much in favor of seeing more local news coverage, and I think it would be wonderful if an organization with vast resources would dedicate some time to our city. As it stands now, WJLA and NC8 have resources (even news trucks!) but the only product they put out is a television newscast. Rather than hiring 50 people to start a new web site, it might make more sense to hire a team of a few writers and editors to put out quality web-based versions of the stories already being covered.

We'll see what happens, but I wouldn't hold your breath. The Next Big Thing in journalism will need to take bigger risks than just throwing some money at a new web site. We'll need to see a completely new model. We'll need to see something that stops everyone in their tracks and says "wow, that's gutsy." There's a difference between gutsy and foolish optimism. Unless there's some huge part of this that Allbritton is keeping a secret, this is will not be the future of local news.

by Dave Stroup, filed under District Weekly at 1:00PM   0 

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Friday, October 23, 2009

The District Weekly: Shootings, corruption and Metro safety

What a surprise, the biggest stories this week revolved around shootings, corruption and safety within Metrorail and Metrobus. This is the first of a weekly round-up of sorts, where I present what dominated the news during the week in the District.

Many shootings across the District this week. Last night DC Alert sent out a notification of a shooting at 14th and Maryland Avenue, NE. No news reports on this incident, so it's likely injuries are minor. NewsChannel8 ran the story as "Man Goes to Checkers After Being Shot." I overlooked the headline, the humor downplayed the seriousness of the event. A man was shot in the chest and taken to the hospital. The alert gave the time of the shooting as 7:19 PM. 14th and Maryland Avenue NE is right near the nightlife destinations along H Street.

As noted here earlier, there was a shooting in Shaw near the Mt. Vernon Square Metro station. That incident left a woman injured. A teenager was shot at the Safeway on Georgia Avenue in Petworth. At last update the teen was in grave condition with a gunshot wound to the head. Earlier in the week, a man was injured and another killed in an apparent shootout in the 4800 block of G Street in Southeast.

Also noted, a man was killed by police in Northeast, near the National Arboretum. That incident was the 14th officer-involved shooting this year in the District.

The Washington City Paper takes a closer look at some of the taxicab bribery defendants. "Meet The Other Defendants" is a very well done story, and hats-off to the City Paper. This is absolutely an example of why continued, in-depth coverage of local stories is vital. For those following the ongoing taxicab investigation,this is a definite must read. Jason Cherkis sheds some light on just who was rounded a few weeks ago in a mass-arrest by investigators. In most cases, it appears, these were hardworking people hoping to have a shot at becoming cabbies. It looks like they had no idea they were playing a role in a large bribery scheme. It's a very sad read, and it also raises some questions about the investigation and the tactics involved.

Also from the City Paper, Councilmember Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) decides to make a public meeting "off the record." Graham recently attended a Kalorama Citizens Association meeting and had a few things to say about the federal investigation that nabbed his Chief of Staff, Ted Loza. Sources who attended the meeting claim Graham essentially accused the FBI of entrapping Loza, and noted how the entire investigation is making him paranoid. When the City Paper attempted to confirm the comments, Graham's press chief Brian DuBose said the meeting was "off the record." Further efforts to receive a comment from Graham were fruitless.

Sorry, Councilmember, but a public meeting is, by its very nature, on the record.

Metro gets blasted for bus problems, announces testing of rail safety technology. WTOP News did what can only be described as a hit-job on Metro this week. Adam Tuss and Mark Segraves obtained employee discipline statistics from Metro, and ran a very sensationalized piece entitled "Ride at Your Own Risk." While some of the numbers they present are startling, it's difficult to make sense of them. There is no context given, nor definitions. Generally figures are given in terms of incidents per 100,000 revenue miles, in order to normalize across transit systems and account for the amount of service an agency provides. WTOP essentially just wrote a story based on a first glance at a spreadsheet.

I'm cleary not a Metro apologist, but I'd like to see some sense made of these numbers. Perhaps the number of bus collisons is high compared to other agencies. Perhaps Metrobus drivers are "less safe" by the numbers than say, MTA drivers in New York or MBTA drivers in Boston. While I don't expect a 5,000 word investigative piece from WTOP, I'd think they could do just a little bit better. The story would be much more compelling if it told a bit more of an actual story. A scare piece and a video of buses (and cars) rolling through stop signs isn't anything earth shattering.

Also this week, Metro announced that a prototype track circuit monitoring system is ready for testing. The software system, developed by Bethesda based firm ARNIC, will monitor track circuits in real time for any malfunctions. Metro currently scans for circuit malfunctions twice a day, as a response to the June 22 Red Line crash. The development of this real-time monitoring system was in response to an urgent NTSB recommendation. At this point it's unclear how long the testing will take, or what the cost of the software will be. Metro has refused to answer questions about pricing.

This is obviously a step forward, however one has to wonder why a real time monitoring system was not developed sooner. While it's helpful to have software checking for defects in the Automatic Train Control system, it would be even better to have an ATC system that could experience malfunctions and not result in trains crashing into one another. However much money Metro ends up spending on this software monitoring system could have been better spent decades ago developing an ATC system that fails safely.

by Dave Stroup, filed under District Weekly at 10:00AM   2 

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