December 18, 2008 Issue
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Classified Chestnut Hill Local Don't Miss an Issue, Tell us what you see or Winner of Two |
Opinion
Big news for a little paper We detailed in recent issues how the Chestnut Hill Community Association formed an ad hoc committee to address financial concerns at the paper (for those of you new to the topic, the Association owns the Local, making this paper one of a very few extraordinary publications owned by a civic association). The paper, the CHCA suggested, was heading for financial disaster and only swift action could prevent its insolvency. When that committee completed its work, many on the Local staff balked at what we considered a lack of due process (we were shut out of the process) and what we believed to be insufficient research on the part of the committee — the committee was drawing comparisons between the Local and daily operations that have much different structures and economic realities than we do. So last Thursday, the Local staff e-mailed a detailed report and action plan to the CHCA board and presented it to the executive commission. Anyone interested in reading our research can do so by visiting our Web site, www.chestnuthilllocal.com. The report argues that the Local should address real concerns about dwindling revenue sources and rising expenses. It should address the mounting debt, much of it to the Chestnut Hill Community Fund, the 501(c)(3) trust fund run by the CHCA board and administered by an independent board of trustees. But, the Local, we found is also in a good position to weather the storm of a massive media meltdown, as are other independent community publications. Why? No one else does what we do. News organizations are hard to create, finance and run. The Local has been around for 50 years and reports on Chestnut Hill and Northwest Philadelphia in a comprehensive manner that no other publication can pull off. We have a better than 50 percent market penetration in Chestnut Hill (what other business can boast that?), and as our readership surveys tell us, 90 percent of you are satisfied or better with what you’re getting. This is by no means an endorsement of the status quo. In order for the Local to thrive, it must change with the times. As our readership online grows (one third of you read us online now) and the economic realities of this industry change, we must change also. We must address revenue losses to online classified sites like Craigslist. We must look at dwindling sources for other advertising revenue and address the biggest question facing news organizations today: How do you translate gains in online reading (or, as the case may really be, a shift in habit from hard copy reading to online reading) into revenue to run your news operation? Finally, we argue that the most significant change would be to finally hire a publisher (or, in the parlance of past Local practices, “business manager”) to run the advertising and circulation departments of the paper. For too long, this publication has persisted with a vacancy in one of the most vital positions of any news organization. Our plans will be a subject (one of many) of debate at this Thursday’s Board of Directors meeting, 7:30 p.m. at the Chestnut Hill Library. If you’re interested in the paper’s future, you should attend. It is, after all, your paper. Pete Mazzaccaro
Case of mistaken identity So here’s my problem. I’m a writer, and two things writers think about is knowledge of their subject and their audience. That’s why for you, dear readers, I have concentrated on the corruption of the leaders of the CHCA and the CHCF, their partners-for-profit in local business, and the willingness of fellow travelers to aid and abet these perpetrators of fraud and secrecy. This last, pitiable group, used by the power-mad and profit-minded has another motive. It is, for the first time in their lonely existence to be accepted by any group willing to give them a spot on a committee, any committee. I have knowledge of what these groups have done, and I know that the results affect you. A combination of hubris and stupidity precludes them from hiding their actions effectively from me. But here’s the problem. Sometimes Pete says, “Ed, people are tired of hearing about our soap opera.” I always counter with,” Maybe it’s YOU that’s tired, Pete.” He usually agrees, but the result is sometimes a piece about national politics instead, an arena in which I feel equally comfortable, but one in which I face a little more competition and which you read about in other newspapers, don’t you? I offer a compromise, a synthesis of the causes of our national economic horror show and how the same ingredients help to destroy our neighborhood. We have become, in my own words, A Nation of Hustlers. We make fewer items that the world wants than ever before. We lose technical expertise jobs by the thousand each day. How does our economy exist? The last six months showed us. By buying and selling abstracts. Betting on future sales of loans, hedging those bets, and selling the loans. Billions and billions of dollars based on the sale of … nothing really. To compare the American economy to a house of cards degrades cards. At least they require a manufacturing base. (I just looked at a nearby deck of cards ” “Made in China”). Calvin Coolidge turned out to be a prophet when he said, “The business of America is business.” Not the business of making TVs (we don’t) or clothing (ditto), but just ... business. Ever hear salespeople brag that they could sell anything to anybody? I have. No knowledge of the product? No problem. Sold shoes last year and tires this year without first watching them being made? Forget it, I know how to sell! And why do CEO’s from one industry get hired to be CEO’s in unrelated industries without having any prior knowledge of their new company’s product or service? Could this be part of the reason that the car execs don’t seem to have any idea what cars we might actually want? They got you all to buy SUVs that, before they actually started selling them, no one even asked for. Can you all remember that far back? No? That’s part of the process. Don’t innovate. Don’t waste precious executive bonus money on unnecessary research and development, just get out there and sell. The only other ingredient needed to propel an economic system without a future was an absence of oversight. Check. “Government is not the solution, government is the problem,” Reagan was told to say. Not wasteful, or inefficient, or corrupt government — just government. This facile, stupid statement, along with the one recounted above, led the way to the deregulation of every industry, resulting in wage reductions for workers while execs salaries skyrocketed, more pollution, less federal tax money from corporations, and the uncontrolled pimping of loans, mortgages, and funds by banks, insurance companies, and brokerages. How could we have been sold this idea by a second rate actor? Because out-of-work actors make good salespeople. Every realty agent in California has a promotional head shot. They pretended to be something they weren’t in the profession they failed at, so why not sell something they don’t know anything about now? Which brings us to Rob Remus. Rob has no background in newspapers, journalism, printing, paper, or news. He works in a real estate office. I don’t know what he did before, but if it had anything to do with media, I bet he would have mentioned it. I don’t know if he had a job in any realty-related business either (but I bet I’ll know by next week). What Rob does is sell. Now he is selling the idea that he is qualified to be involved in a business in which he has no background. Dina, Tolis, the rest of the board — no experience in any professional media — company newsletters that rival middle school student’s blogs notwithstanding. Yet they continue to try to tell professionals how to produce a paper that has been publishing long before their interference began, and does so now, despite their amateurish meddling. They claim that their concerns are efficiency and financial viability, but the real reason has been revealed over the last few years, time after time, and you have all witnessed it. They fear that a free newspaper, one not under their control, will continue to expose and allow free discussion of their actions. There’s your destruction of oversight. That the Local continues to put out a quality product — even during these constant attacks — is reason enough to admire its resiliency and leave it alone. But watch, when they read this they’ll redouble their efforts to instill a culture of fear at the Local. Dina’s latest was her request to Pete that he send me an e-mail that states that I have been representing myself as a Local reporter and to cease doing so. I don’t know if I’m supposed to sign it, or notarize it and send it back, or discuss it with my rabbi or my shaman (I’m near Berkeley), or just giggle. Since Dina didn’t have the courage to ask me in a public forum (she hates that light-of-day stuff), I’ll reply that way. Dina (and with all due respect to the good people at the Local), when I want to impress someone with my credentials, there are more than a few I can mention before the Local. And when interviewing people concerning your actions and the actions of your co-conspirators during the Dornemann and Hitchcock-Vardakis administrations, I reference the book I am writing, not these pieces. But, speaking of false representations, I would like you, and Rob, and Tolis, and Mark to stop representing yourself as editors, publishers, accountants, civic minded-or any of the other things that you have pretended to be for the last few years. As we have all seen, the main thrust of your tenure has been to retain power, stifle opposition, and control the press. The Hill has not improved during your time in office; it has declined. Muzzling the paper, as you continue to try to do, can’t change that. But you think, if only the reportage was more positive people wouldn’t notice. You are, however, a most compelling character in my book. Think Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate.
Local needs an advisory committee In support of George Spaeth’s letter to the CHCA board of Directors and members last week [“CHCA President should acknowledge CHCA’s overreach”], I would like to add some thoughts. The Chestnut Hill Community Association was created some 50 years ago to confront community problems that City Hall had neither the time not the resources to address. The concept was one of quasi-government from inception that operated in similar fashion to city, state and federal government, but at the local, community level. Bylaws were fashioned to ensure open, transparent, democratic procedures much as the Constitution serves the federal government. The Local was created shortly thereafter as a separate but vital arm of the CHCA. Its purpose was to provide a public forum for the exchange of information and opinion as they related to Chestnut Hill and its immediate environs. The Local was not meant to be a newspaper in the traditional sense, nor was its chief mission to realize profit. It was to be a forum for community dialogue. The bylaws state that the policy and decision-making responsibilities remain with the full board of directors, not the Executive Committee, standing committees nor temporary committees formed to investigate specific issues. Both the ad hoc committee formed to look into the Local’s operational and financial structure together with the Executive Committee were in violation of the bylaws when they implemented their recommendations to the Local staff without prior board discussion or approval. The approach to the staff was brusque. The staff was upset by the tone used and by the fact they were not included in any of the committee’s deliberations as promised. Operational vice president Dina Hitchcock, Treasurer Mark Keintz and president Tolis Vardakis knew better, as all three have been active members of the Bylaws Committee. The Executive Committee’s attempt to micromanage the Local has been a periodically recurring problem going back in time. It usually has the appearance of a power grab with the absence of democratic procedures. The Local was set up as an independent entity meant to be free of supervision by the CHCA Executive Committee. I believe we need a Local advisory committee composed of independent individuals with newspaper, financial and community expertise. The committee should include the editor and one representative from the CHCA. At the present time, I seriously doubt that we can fund either a business manager or a publisher without going into greater debt. I do not think the Ad Hoc Committee should serve as an Advisory Committee, nor should any one of its members serve as business manager, even temporarily. From my point of view we need a fresh start that includes the Local’s participation. Virgina Mallery is a long-time resident of Chestnut hill and a member of the CHCA’s board of directors.
Philadelphia in free fall Mayor Nutter is coming to the Northwest on December 18 to “explain” budget cuts that seem to have blindsided everyone, and if you believe the propaganda, no one saw it coming. Nonsense! Philadelphia has been in fiscal free-fall for quite some time, but most of those who should have been our watchdogs seem to have other priorities and political agendas. Actually paving over problems and looking the other way has been a characteristic of city politics and city government for quite some time, and although remedial action is promised at election time, that only happens if events call our attention to a massive problem at that moment or the unusual happens — some investigative journalism turns over a rock. Remember how then candidate Nutter promised a Stop-and-Frisk policy for our police force in dealing with massive amounts of violent crime and the more than one-a-day murder rate in this city? Have you heard those words once since the election? Not a chance. Even the statistic-based financial report recently produced by the Pew Charitable Trust on the City of Philadelphia makes the point in the first sentence of its opening paragraph that we are the murder capital of the United States. I think the message is clear that even those folks who are most focused on financial negligence (and there is plenty) see negligence at the level of personal security right up there on the priority list of a city they specifically tell us is worst in the nation in fiscal shortfalls. And it’s not just the worst examples of murder and violence, but street and neighborhood crime is on the rise, citywide and in the Northwest. Our local police captain’s approach of telling the community members what “they” have to do to be safer with explanations of crime that sound more like a lesson in sociology, won’t cut it. We want a district run on law enforcement and crime prevention — whatever it takes. I want to hear statistics on how many additional officers, how many squad cars now versus then, how new technology that is in place expedites crime prevention and law enforcement. How about every citizen’s right to a safe quality public education — anybody ever heard of that in this city in the last 25 years? Even two of the local charter schools have failed us despite massive subsidies, and now they want to keep licenses that their own commission has denied and will waste public time and money on appeals. Why, because like most things that happen here, they think the political connections can save them and keep the public money flowing down the sewer — as usual. When you attend the meeting at Martin Luther King on December 18 — and you must attend — it is not just the failure of the PICA Board and our Comptroller to stop the fiscal manipulation and underfunding this city has been doing for years that needs to be discussed, it is years of channeling millions and millions of dollars to failed agencies (read Germantown Settlement, GGHDC, etc.), it is the insider dealing with favored developers, tax abatements for those who least need them, double-dipping employment policies, and the shortfalls in safety and quality of life issues that have been masked by politics and politicians that must be vocalized. Since the mayor and his team of apologists are coming to the community, let them learn for a change whose priorities come first. That would be ours. Jim Foster is a Mt. Airy businessman who has been a regular contributor for many years.
Creating a pie big enough for all “We need to have hope in times of fear. And to fear in times of hope,” he said to me. He was talking about the mindset that he applies to the stock market, but I knew that I was hearing an apt metaphor for life. “When the tide is up and money is flowing, people feel expansive and they tend to relax. But this is actually the time to be more cautious and think carefully for the future. Conversely when the tide is down and the flow is tight and restricted, we are fearful and then we base our decisions on narrow-minded views of the future. To be successful in the market, you need to do exactly the opposite from what people generally do.” I am trained in the field of personal mastery. One of the things that we do in this field is study how people do things well. We study what they think, how they believe and how they will act. I have been trained by some of the best in my field. My own mentor created a leadership university at Fiat in Italy, so that Fiat was able to train their upcoming leaders based on the success principles of their former ones. This process is called modeling and it can be used for success in, literally any area of life. I am sharing it now because I wonder if it might be useful to apply these principles in our currently restricted financial times. What normally happens in times of financial restriction? The other day I was in a store on the Hill and overheard the storeowner talking badly about a neighboring storeowner, saying her neighbor was taking her business. I was really shocked by this. But it’s actually a perfect example of the type of attitude that goes against the grain of prosperous thinking. It made me think of a time years ago, when I was invited to part of an international team of trainer’s and consultants. I was one of only 32 people invited by our mentor. Even though our mentor had always taught us to be a sharing community, I noticed that the environment was more like the kind of high stress environment you might find in business, where there can be an undertone of backbiting and competition. I hated this feeling but soon found myself getting caught up in this negative whirlpool. Every morning, I ran into the training room to get a coveted seat in the front row. But one morning I arrived to find an important British businessman in my spot. I wish I could tell you that I gracefully took another seat, but I did not. We had a big argument right there and I made him change seats! I’m embarrassed to admit that now. I know now that this is not a good way to establish rapport with your fellow trainers. But at the time, I obviously had something to learn. That night, I had a dream in which I saw a hoard of fish all heading for one small opening in the stream and I had this feeling of panic that they all wouldn’t get through the opening together. When I woke up in the morning, I knew that this dream was symbolic of our group. When I told my mentor about the dream, he said something that really surprised me, something that remains with me to this day. He said, “Annie if the pie is too small for everyone to have a slice, then we’ll just have to make a bigger pie.” Wow! Here I was foolishly trying to secure my own little slice of the pie, even at the expense of some of my fellow trainers. I was appalled at my own behavior and the next morning when that British trainer came into the room, I offered him the seat. We have been friends ever since. I learned an important lesson here — that thinking about oneself in times of fear, really serves no one. Had I carried on with my negative ways, nothing good would have come out of it. But thanks to the expansive mind of my mentor and role model who believes in “creating a world that works for all,” I was able to create a bigger pie and I’ve been happily part of an international group of trainers ever since. I hope that our local shopowner can find a bigger slice of the pie, too. Actually I hope that we all can. Because if you think about it, there are always people who prosper during tough times. And if we study why — what are their internal thoughts and beliefs — we just might find that those who think wisely and act generously, especially in difficult times, bring prosperity to us all. So this year, let us be the ones to create a bigger pie. Annie Hart is a Trainer, Consultant, Storyteller and Breakthrough Coach. She was born in Chestnut Hill hospital and though she has lived all over the world, she now resides happily on the hill with her little dog. Annie is active in a creating a world that works for all.
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