PETTY-FILE UPDATE

[Mark Crnolatas]

This thread brings up a point. I'm aware of the initial "theme" of the L.O., as Jim and I were talking often about another project, which I think, was about the same time as Jim was working on kicking this concept of the L.O. off. At that time I understood the theme of the L.O. was going to be an "up with Lakewood" type of thing, if I understood correctly.
However, most things tend to evolve. I see what might be a natural evolution of discussion here, into what could be termed the "harder news" area.

The question being, should the Observer get into the gritty areas? Investigative reporting? Obviously this is a matter for the publisher, and the decision-making members of the staff to decide. Us mere mortals can voice opinions, post what is on our minds, but at this point of the birth, then evolution of the L.O., the question of where should it go, news wise, might need to be discussed once again. Those areas can get extremely "gritty". Public records, sometimes, can be shocking. What is spoken about, is usually fodder for some degree of discussion, but what goes unsaid, many times holds dark content behind the silence.

Possibly this has recently been addressed?

Mark Allan (Crnolatas)
_______________________
"A society or group of people exist soley in it's ability to maintain an atmosphere of peace and civility. It's failure is directly relative to the degree of the lack of these conditions".

[Jim O'Bryan]

Mark


First this would be a great thread to throw out on it's own. "How should the Lakewood Observer handle hard news?" We get in many heated discussions over this at our meetings. Feel free to take the lead on this.

But the Lakewood Observer was not created to be "Up With Lakewood." It was created to build the Lakewood Brand, which I see as slightly different, and our Mission Statement would reflect a much closer view of what we are trying to do, "Have Lakewood and it's residents know more about their city than any group has known about their city in the past, or ever."

The paper was also started to "amplify" civic intelligence. This would mean take some of the resources LO has and get the views, ideas and opinions of the residents, businesses, and politicians, and get them into the open where ideas can be presented and discussed. Lakewood is a city in Transition, you and I have spoken about this many times. We have some tough issues ahead, but I have also spoke to people that have some very innovative ideas that would make Lakewood one of the best locations in the country to live, work and raise a family. However some of these ideas cannot be presented in sound bites. Tom Powell-Bullocks "A City In Transition" is a perfect example. A 12 piece 48 page outline is too much to throw into someones lap, so we break it down into 12 sections, and surround that with information that would help people make their own minds up.

While groups like LakewoodAlive present and "education" on the need for economic development in Lakewood. The Lakewood Observer presents a vast cornucopia of various ideas to make everyone in Lakewood more prepared for the future.

A perfect example of this would be Community Currency. An idea put forward by Denis Dunn at council. Everyone thought he was joking, the LO Advisory did not. But Denis feel foul of only being able to get out sound bites. The fact remains if you explain how the our money is made and backed, then make people aware of how The Federal Reserve works, then show repeated examples of Community Currency working well in Toronto, Ithaca, and other places, and tone down the rhetoric about it "saving" a city. Then people can clearly see that Community Currency makes sense for some, not for others, but COULD have a small place in the future of Lakewood. But that discussion will take pages and pages and months if not years to make. Something other papers would never give the subject or our city.

The Observer is working on some very "tough" stories that have fallen in our laps, but when it comes to hard news it demands very good fact checking. This takes The Observer longer than some, but does not mean we are not willing to go there.

Another example would be the murder on Brockley. I called the police and was given, "You are not going to report on the murder are you?" My answer was, "How does the only newspaper in town, over look the only murder in town?" The policeman I was talking to agreed. I then asked, "Random act of violence or did the murder know his assailant?" When the reply came back that they had history, I was relieved, and we decided to work on the story in a different way. Before we could run our piece, arrests had been made. So we reported the good news about arrest, and the fact that it was not random.

Unlike any other board in town, or in the country, the advisory board really rarely meets to discuss politics, or where this experiment is headed. We are almost 99.9% dependent on watching where the residents and businesses of this city take it. This is one of the reasons we find it exciting and the rest of America watches in amazement to see how they could bring the party to their hometown.

[observeradmin]

A correction needs to be made (not reported in Dan Slife's story).

It was reported in the Plain Dealer that DiStasio had worked at the Lakewood Y, but in fact, he had worked at the Westpark YMCA, 15501 Lorain Avenue.