day 3 notes
I ducked out at the end of the second day of MT training and headed off to the DDA meeting downtown. The meeting had started on time, but I didn't get there on time, so I missed some of the initial public commentary.
In addition to the usual crowd of developers, city staff, and other interested parties, there were three reporters in attendance: Dave Askins from the Ann Arbor Chronicle; Andrew Cluley, a news reporter at 89.1 WEMU FM; and Dave Gershman from the Ann Arbor News. Some part of the DDA meeting was also recorded by video cameras; I haven't figured out yet how to replay that.
It's instructive to see the different viewpoints that these three media channels provide, and to figure out what added perspective you could get from it.
Dave Askins was twittering out notes on @A2ChronicleMeet with a running play by play. I'm certain that it will be part of the raw materials for a long, descriptive, detailed account of the meeting, complete with bits of reflection on logos on garbage cans and the ins and outs of what roles and responsibilities flow to the mayor pro tem. Dave gave a great talk at Ignite Ann Arbor 1 the previous night about how the extremely descriptive style of news that the Chronicle publishes serves them well in reviewing things long after the fact, even if wading through 7000 words seems like a bit long for right now in a world where reporters are used to publishing 500 or 1000.
Andrew Cluely from WEMU was in the back taking a few notes, and he had his recorder out front at the end of the meeting with one of the board members. I looked online really hard for where the story might have been posted already, and came up at best with this page where it might be, buried deep on a search string. There's some wasted opportunity here, since the same-day audio clip is going to give you a perspective on decisions later - if, and only if, you can find it again.
Dave Gershman filed two stories from the Ann Arbor News - one on how the DDA's decision on public arts funding impacts the murals proposed by Fire Up Downtown, and one on how federal stimulus money will save $1.5 million in financing costs for the Library Lot underground garage. The mural story attracted MLive's usual crowd of incredibly lame, rude, and anonymous commenters - people who didn't add any value to the story.
Now I know that there were a lot more stories to be told out of that event - the continuing saga of somewhat confused people figuring out how e-Park meters work, the continuing series of anecdotes about how the Maynard St structure is always full without any supporting data or analysis, and the parliamentary maneuvers about whether Leigh Greden should be able to vote in the seat reserved for the mayor as mayor pro tem.
Where do you start with news? Small town politics of parking meters. I'm told that new employees at the New York Times and returning international correspondents once worked the sanitation beat as their first stint (and I can't source that quote, even though I'd like to, because I didn't bookmark that link).
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