Tag Archives: huntsville times

Madison County GOP Breakfast – 11/21/2009

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The speaker at this morning’s Madison County Republican breakfast was Huntsville Times editor Kevin Wendt.  Last year about this time he addressed the MCGOP as the newly hired editor, and he’s had a year or so to settle into his job.  He recognized then the frustration that many people in Huntsville felt about The Times, and IMO he has made some positive steps toward improving the paper’s relationship with the community.  More about Wendt in a minute…

Tim James won the Madison County GOP Straw Poll with 35%, Bradley Byrne came in second with 26%, and Roy Moore came in third with 15%.  In a departure from previous straw polls, this poll was open to MCGOP members only (to minimize skewing the poll results).

Here’s a post about Tim James MCGOP visit in May 2009.

 Tim James visited the meeting today, and it was nice to hear that he and his friends read Flashpoint.

The meeting was standing-room only, packed with about 250 people.  In addition to Tim James, notable notables included State Senator Paul Sanford; State Representatives Mike Ball, Howard Sanderford, and Mac McCutcheon; County Commissioner Mo Brooks (AL05 Congressional candidate); County Schools Superintendent Terry Davis; Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle; Huntsville City Council Members Sandra Moon and Mark Russell; and Judge Bruce Williams.   Candidates for office included Les Phillip (Congress AL05), Mary Scott Hunter (State Board of Education), John Wilson (Senate 9), Tony Cochran (Senate 9), and Don Spurlin (Senate 9).  I was pleased to see that Dale Jackson of WVNN joined us for breakfast.

I enjoy seeing Mayor Battle and I appreciate that he’s accessible to the citizens of Huntsville.  I should probably write up something positive about the City to make up for all the fussing…

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Now back to Kevin Wendt.  In his speech noted that he’s made some “changes at The Huntsville Times”.  He noted that circulation dropped a little bit to 50,000 papers daily, due to the “economy” and the “price increase”; Sunday’s paper circulation is 72,000 (about the same as last year). 

Wendt said that when he took over, the editorial page writers “leaned to the left” and that he was trying to “balance out the editorial page”.  He promoted John Peck to editorial page editor, offered buyouts to John Ehinger (who I think was fair and pretty good), David Persons (who was one-dimensional), and David Prather (who was a poor tipper according to people I know in the restaurant industry).

Wendt expanded the Business Section to make it a stand-alone section of the paper.  He hopes to differentiate the paper based on it’s strength reporting local news and business.  The paper is focusing on local coverage and started up a “watchdog page”.

The Sunday paper is where Wendt is building a “national page”.  He cited as an example of this page the recent printing of the text of the health care bills and the text of a Dick Cheney speech.  He said that The Times ran Cheney’s speech with the purpose of reaching out to the right and getting “to know our audience better”.

Wendt says there are things The Times can do better.  He plans to improve election coverage, in part because “we didn’t do a good job” in the Sanford / Hall Senate 7 special election (if only someone like Dale Jackson at WVNN had spoken up about it or maybe if Brian had said something the Times would have realized their error sooner).

Wendt said that endorsements for candidates “are key to what a local paper can bring to the table”.

QUESTION AND ANSWER (brief summary):

Q = is political diversity important
A = Yes.  Need to be “aware of issues”
Q = ACORN on page 8
A = “national story”, “goal is to highlight local issues”
Q = Are you going to balance the Faith and Values section – buncha lefties
A = “don’t plan changes”, “aware of it”
Q = why Cynthia Tucker
A = email Peck with ideas
Q = Great job, you’ve made the paper better
A = Thanks
I missed a couple Q&As here…  Keep in mind I’m trying to eat, listen, and write at the same time…
Q = Why is the Big10 covered in the Sports section?
A = “we won’t get into a discussion about the Big10 being overrated”

Overall, Kevin Wendt made a good speech, he was witty and forthright in the Q&A, and his remarks were warmly received.  Good job, Kevin!

The rest of the story

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I read the same story in two newspapers today: one in the Huntsville Times and the original one in the Tennessean.  Imagine my surprise to find that the Times edited out important information.

The Huntsville Times ran the story by Lucas Johnson with the headline “Anti-reform rally in Nashville fizzles” (I couldn’t find a link at al.com but the article was on page A-5).  The article was about an ObamaCare protest organized by Independent Party director Tom Kovach and his disappointment that he was the only protestor who showed up for a protest.  The Times included negative quotes from the Tennessee Democratic Party and mentioned that the “failed protest stood in contrast to a rally on Thursday in which chanting, sign-carrying supporters of health care reform backed up traffic” in Nashville.

What the Times left out was that Congressman Jim Cooper (D) had scheduled an appearance, then cancelled the event, leaving only that guy to show up:

Rep. Jim Cooper, a Nashville Democrat, canceled an appearance Friday at a first day of school celebration at West End Middle School after hearing that Kovach’s group planned to attend and raise the health care issue.

So the Times didn’t think that Congressman Cooper hiding from his constituents was important?  Or that the Congressman’s cancellation may have contributed to the protest’s “fizzle”? 

This comparison illustrates the sedulous liberal bias that permeates the Times, and even though it appears the new editor has taken some steps to de-hack the paper, much of the hackery remains.

No area excluded by housing officials

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Huntsville Times reporter Challen Stephens wrote “No area excluded by housing officials”:

The Huntsville Housing Authority made itself clear Monday: It will exclude no part of the city from public housing in the future.
Michael Lundy, executive director of the agency, has said for weeks that there are no plans to buy more apartments on the south end of town. But on Monday the volunteer board that oversees Lundy added a clarification…
“I guess we are all aware now we need to pay attention and attend your meetings,” said Carol Palermo, a resident of southwest Huntsville, who asked for a copy of the authority’s financial records.

IAW my personal policy to reward The Times for good reporting (after punishing them by cancelling), I’m going to spend the 75 cents to buy the newspaper – Thanks to Challen Stephens.  If The Times wants my money they’ll need to: get rid of (or at least balance) their Leftie editors and biased writers / columnists; quit paying the AP for slanted national news; and focus on their core competency – State / local news. 

The public can’t go to every City Board meeting and the City doesn’t post transcripts in a timely manner.  Transcripts take weeks, which is normal for such things. Stephens posted a good description of the HHA meeting and led with the most important fact surfaced during the meeting – this is not over.

HHA manages 1700 units of public housing and 1200 Section 8 housing vouchers for 2900 families in Huntsville.  HHA has a 98% occupancy rate.

Here’s what HHA Commissioner Redrick had to say about the public attendees at the meeting: “I get the impression that some residents want to exclude housing from certain areas”.

MORE:

In trying to get a feel for the scale of public housing in Huntsville (since “scalability” is a factor according the reports cited by HHA’s ‘Myths’), I found that there are 73,606 houses / condos / apartments in Huntsville (2007 data). Of these, 66,724 are occupied by 41,140 owners and 25,584 rentals.  That’s a 90% occupancy rate with 62% owners and 38% renters.

The HHA manages 2900 units, or 4% of all the housing in Huntsville.

IIRC  there are 50 Section 8 houses in the Chaffee neighborhood (50 to 80, according to Director Lundy) and there are 800 houses – then Chaffee is already SATURATED at 6% – not including the Stone Manor purchase of 50 units – which will bring the number to more than 12%.

Somebody needs to get the for real numbers and do some for real analysis before the City continues down this path…