IS THERE A MAYORAL RACE?

Not if you are relying upon the local media to find out.

Last night the four candidates in the race for mayor of Grand Rapids -- incumbent George Heartwell, grocery clerk Jackie Miller, GR school board member James Rinck, and City Commissioner Rick Tormala -- participated in a discussion in which the public could call in questions.  It was televised on the GRTV cable channel.  Unfortunately, your Editor and Executive Director had to attend a meeting at Davenport College during the broadcast, so we didn't get to watch the candidates in action.

No problem.  We thought we would tune into the 11 o'clock news on TV8.  Sure, enough the anchor informed us that the call-in forum took place -- and that was it!  Absolutely no coverage as to what transpired.  Nothing about the questions asked, nor the answers given by the candidates.  Pitiful coverage.

Comments

[beentheredonethat]

I was looking for some sort of update as well. Even if there was something on the news, it would only be soundbites and hopefully people look deeper into the issue than that.

[Nick]

Mayoral race? No fair... Heartwell just got a fancy new car at taxpayer expense. He'll win any sort of race with that baby souped up the way it is.

Oh, wait.

--Nick
www.RightMichigan.com

[Jeff Winston]

Grand Rapids news is mostly LAZY NEWS. I was at the debate. WOOD and WZZM attended for the first five minutes to get their 'quick shot' so that they mention that they were there. Then they packed up their gear and left. Only Jim Harger from the Grand Rapids Press sat there through the entire two-hour debate. This is the HUGE problem with television news. It has become so much more about sensationalism and so much less about responsible journalism. The municipal elections in Grand Rapids are just as important as any state, congressional, senate, or presidential election. It is the apathy of the media in the non-glamorous races that transfers to the people. No wonder only 12% of registered voters participate in municipal elections.

If you want to follow this and other municipal races; you should stick to print media, blogs, candidate's websites, and word of mouth. Just please don't expect the television media to provide you with the information that you seek. All of the candidates have been interviewed by WOOD, WZZM, and WXMI. They will posts these interviews on their websites at some point. I don't expect them to play these on the air. That would inform voters.

[Bridget Dupont-Tingley, Editor - L.A.W.]

Hello Jeff,

Excellent take on the local media in G.R. They are LAZY. Even if they get a story, they often choose to scrap a segment if it is not exciting enough for their viewers. Keep in mind, it also goes beyond lazy. Many groups in this town tie into one another inappropriately for financial/political/power reasons and thus, they won't cover certain people or events the way a truly objective media would.

We concur that the best avenue for information these days is print media (even that can be weak locally as we've called out in the past), blogs, candidate's websites and local networking.

We started up L.A.W. over 5 years ago because we couldn't get any of the traditional media outlets to look into the Berkey & Gay Toxic Towers waste scandal. They told us they were willing to get involved AFTER we pulled all the evidence together, AFTER we pursued the bad guys in court and AFTER we won all our trial cases. Until this was done, they were hands off. Silly us, we thought part of their job was to do research, call out the bad guys and help spotlight local problems. We learned after the fact, our media is "soft on the news" when it comes to hard crimes and real stories in this town.

We appreciate you calling out the local news stations in their "shoot and go" program for the debates - showing up for the shot and then leaving quickly for other venues they felt were more interesting. No wonder little information showed up on the news breaks that evening and throughout the next day - they weren't there long enough to have any real sound bites.

We are confident a large majority of our readers are included in that 12% of registered voters that will cast their vote in August and November for Mayor of Grand Rapids for the next four years. They span all political parties, ages, sex, religion and nationalities. Judging by their comments at this site and their e-mails to us at info@localareawatch.org, we believe they search hard for the best information they can find and then become informed voters.

Thanks for your feedback to this article and your great monthly contributions at The Local Area Watch with your guest writer spot, "A View From The Left".

Regards,

[Xopher]

Mayoral Debate: I've posted the Mayoral Debate on YouTube.com

Part 1 - http://youtube.com/watch?v=MG4f5XGuxgI

The quality (or lack of) is due to GRTV. There are 19 parts, because the debate was two hours, and YouTube allows 100MB/10 minute clips.

[Bridget Dupont-Tingley, Editor - L.A.W.]

Thanks for the link and work Xopher!

We will share what you did with our readers so, hopefully they will check it out before the primary to see what each candidate said about the issues. It's not always easy to locate the information needed on each candidate and what you did will be a short cut for those who want the facts.

Great job!

Regards,