The grand narrative of NashvilleNext does not tell the whole story

This is a textbook example of how public relations flacks, when allowed to tell stories uncontested, dominate the community's narrative.

Colby Sledge has been hired to tell the story of NashvilleNext, Metro Planning's instrument to apply a county-determined grid across neighborhoods and local communities for the purposes of promoting future development and growth. You may remember Mr. Sledge from his days as a newspaper reporter or from his days as a hired partisan with the Democrats or from his days in charge of a "neighborhood" group that advanced the Mayor's agenda, whether that agenda involved tearing down the Fairgrounds or trying to help Sarah Lodge Tally defeat Jason Holleman.

Today Mr. Sledge is leading the community outreach goals for NashvilleNext via Karl Dean's favorite PR firm, McNeely Pigott & Fox, LLC (or "MP&F"). He tells an evolutionary story, one in which visions of Robert Altman's classic film "Nashville" (1975) give way to ABC's current glitzy soap opera "Nashville". That unqualified 40-year cultural gulf is large enough, but he also misapplies it as a metaphor for what happened in Metro Planning in the early 1990s vs. what is happening in 2014:

It’s no secret that the city’s last general plan update, way back in 1992, didn’t quite hit the mark. That plan predicted unmitigated suburban boom, which was accurate … until the city started booming, too. Urban neighborhoods were mentioned, but their design and character was left to subsequent planning processes.

The plan’s development also wasn’t the most public process, resulting in something that looked a lot more like a thesis than a blueprint: plenty of theory, but not a whole lot of direction from actual Nashvillians ....

These days, Nashville looks a lot more like Hayden Panettiere’s version than Robert Altman’s ....

So amid all these challenges, city leaders tasked the Planning Department and our agency with including as many Nashvillians as possible in NashvilleNext, and to do so in a diverse, inclusive, and instructive way.

Those of you who like me have participated in the community planning process since the turn of the century may already notice a problem that goes beyond that of trying to compare 20 years of Metro policy changes with 40 years of pop culture: in his enthusiasm for mapping the next 25 years of planning, Mr. Sledge fails to account for the last decade.

He is obviously trying to get to the purpose of this self-aggrandizing piece: he still has to discuss the cute effectiveness of the little nosepickers MP&F used for the promotional ad campaign to entice people into the planning process. But Colby Sledge failed to tell our whole story. When Metro Planning Director Rick Bernhardt flipped the planning process into a community planning process years ago it was a positive move. Many of us met with our fellow neighbors and Metro planners on occasion, expectant that the emphasis on grassroots generation of community plans would help hold developers and planners accountable.

Granted, there were plenty of times developers adjusted and gamed the rezoning process, and it was a challenge to hold community plans together when the Planning Commission and Metro Council prostrated to the influence of lawyers and lobbyists for developers.

But Metro Planning under the same director has abandoned community planning in favor of first getting a county-wide, prepossessed formula for growth everywhere and predetermining the decision local communities like rural Whites Creek will make before their process gets off the ground. That is the story that hired gun Colby Sledge is not telling.

He makes it seem like we went from Nashvillians having no influence over the planning process in 1992 to having the most influence they can have in 2014. The truth for some of us is different: we went from having no influence to what was ostensibly a significant degree of influence that we could exercise with community plans to having our influence contracted by a county-wide process that softens the impact of organized neighborhoods to protect their quality of life from unsustainable growth and avarice.

For some of us, NashvilleNext looks like a step back toward 1992, away from community-based planning to planners justifying their own decisions based on monolithic county-wide polling without regard to diversity. It is set up to support a tyranny of a majority rather than a dynamic process of consensus. That is the story that paid narrator Colby Sledge is not telling.

The example of Whites Creek is instructive: they cannot determine their own plans without regard to non-rural areas of the county, which have higher density and thus more power to determine Whites Creek's plan. The rest of Davidson County will determine what growth looks like in Whites Creek even though many in Davidson County have never set foot in Whites Creek.

That is a plot line Colby Sledge conveniently leaves out of his story. Those of us who do not have the wealth or influence of MP&F should still try to make sure it gets put back in whenever the story is told.

Mayor Dean's big, fat staff

We are going to be bombarded in lead-up to the the next local election by messages buoyed by funding from special interests who lust after a smaller, more pliable Metro Council to lobby. While there are segments of our community that are willing to seriously consider their bid to rewrite the Metro Charter in order to constrict popular representation at the Courthouse, I'm more worried about revenues Mayor Karl Dean dumps into a ballooning executive branch. This is a bloated staff:

Mind you, if the bid to reduce the size of the council is successful, district voters will only have 8 more people representing them than the Mayor has on a staff he pays to advance his pet projects. We're so busy pondering the question of whether a city Nashville's size needs one of the largest councils in the country that we're not bothering to ask harder questions about the financial drain of the Mayor's large staff. Here are three off the top of my head:

• Why does the Mayor need 2 (and in many cases 3) people to run his PR campaign? Janel Lacy had worked for Karl Dean for several years before former journalist Bonna Johnson was hired in 2011 as Press Secretary. Add to those two Courtney Wheeler, hired to direct the Mayor's Office of Neighborhoods, who seems to coordinate the Mayor's PR in the digital social media. The times I have seen Ms. Wheeler attend community meetings, she spent a lot of time talking to the news media rather than to neighbors. That's three people coordinating the Mayor's talking points. Why does he require that many? Why are public revenues spent on 3 people to broadcast messages?
• Why do we need an "Office of Innovation" when the Mayor's Office of Neighborhoods and Mayor's Office of Economic and Community Development have been charged before with the duties of the innovation office? This looks like a duplication of services, unless my past concerns about MOON have come to pass, and Courtney Wheeler is spending more time on pitching the Mayor's agenda and less time on coordinating service delivery to the neighborhoods. The other troubling aspect concerns the disruptive connotations of innovation, which Jill Lepore described this week in The New Yorker: the innovative culture advocates an "idea of progress jammed into a criticism-proof jack-in-the-box". Mayor Karl Dean is not tolerant of criticism and he rewards loyalty. For his administration to plug into disruptive innovation is both predictable and alarming. For all the good this office might do, how is it disruptive to those of us not in power?
• Speaking of loyalty: what in the world is a "Director of Financial Empowerment" and why does Erik Cole qualify for the position? Never mind. I just remembered why.

Our Mayor is an executive who every spring questions whether Metro departments could operate on less money than what they had received the year before. Watching the way his own staff grows, I have to wonder whether he brings the hard questions to bear on his own department.

If he won't, then we should; especially as we are being lobbied to vote to cut our representation on the Metro Council.

Flag this tweet for future reference

Context for this tweet: Nashville Scene reporter Steven Hale and I were debating whether District 23 CM Emily Evans should be consuming time working on resolutions to shrink the council as well as on a PR effort outside of the council to persuade neighborhoods to sign her petition on the question. After pointing out that I have read some constituents' concerns that this initiative is becoming a drain on time CM Evans might spend on their issues, I alluded to the possibility that a PR firm (like The Calvert Street Group) might be being paid to do the time-consuming campaign so that CM Evans might not have to. Steven Hale's reply to my speculation is the tweet posted above.

A PR firm describes what they do.

I'm just making note of his reply in case at some future time we find out that a PR firm is indeed being paid to shape public perceptions on CM Evans' wish to shrink the council.

One other point: it is cheaper for the lobbyists at any PR firm to have a smaller council to influence and leverage rather than a larger one like we have. If a PR firm is getting paid for working this campaign, it would be like double dipping to win it.



UPDATED: almost one year later CM Emily Evans concedes that her bid to shrink the council is getting help from the Calvert Street Group. Her exchange with Steven Hale in an April 9, 2015 interview:

[Hale] Is this just a one-woman show here? Are you getting people to help out, whether it's professionally or just volunteers? What's the campaign look like? ....

[Evans] The campaign part of it was what I'm laughing about. It's volunteers. We hope to pick up some endorsements, which will help as we move along. We're getting some help from [PR/lobbying firm] the Calvert Street Group. Darden [Copeland, managing director] is a friend, a personal friend, and he's ... being a personal friend [laughs].

What goes for NYC goes doubly for Nashville

New York City has a new progressive mayor to replace the neo-liberal Republican Mike Bloomberg, and noted architectural critic Michael Sorkin acknowledges the transition with an open letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio. I excerpt significant parts here because Nashville Mayor Karl Dean tends to mimic the "public-private partnership" approach to governance that Bloomberg exercised and at which Sorkin takes aim, calling it the "post-Reagan turn against government":

It's time to reintroduce communities into the planning process. New York must move beyond the oppositional model of planning that has too long dominated .... Although there is no contradiction in planning both inductively and deductively, our process is too skewed toward money and away from people: the capacity of neighborhoods to meaningfully participate in planning their own destinies—and that of the larger realms we all share—is fundamental. Wisdom doesn't belong to any particular group (although needs are best assessed locally), and a mayor must empower everyone ....

Let the de Blasio planning department pay better attention, return to the task of physical planning attuned to local desires, and more aggressively pursue architecturally significant outcomes. Instead of simply being the adjudicators of the circumstances for construction, our planners should produce more facts, more designs—and should set priorities that are both concrete and truly visionary.

For the past dozen years, the real power to plan has resided with the city's Economic Development Corporation, which, operating more like a private entity than a city agency, stands outside full scrutiny and control and acts as the mayor's creature. This tilt toward understanding government's role primarily as the facilitator of private initiatives has special consequences for the public realm—a space shared by the city's many publics—and it's time for a more transparent use of public money. There's something dispiriting about celebrating the fact that the beautiful Brooklyn Bridge Park was produced not by the Parks Department but by a special corporation financed by the inclusion of superluxe condos and a hipster hotel within it. Forcing the public realm to effectively produce its own revenues on the spot is a formula for assuring that the best public spaces will be in neighborhoods that can most afford them. The role of planning should be to equalize opportunity and community assets, and any system that either privatizes revenue collection or steers it too locally risks deepening the rift between our “two cities.”

The past two mayoral terms in Nashville drifted away from sustaining agencies in Metro government that advocate for community-based and neighborhood-based interests.

Says Dean: "Maximize tourism and entertainment"

Before Karl Dean took office and started remaking government into a public-private composite, the Mayor's Office of Neighborhoods acted as an arbiter between the community and municipal departments. Now most of the energy is going to the Mayor's Office of Economic and Community Development, an intimate partner of the Nashville Chamber of Commerce, which spearheads much of what passes for Metro policy. The Office of Neighborhoods has shrunk to the standing of PR gadget.

Consequently, Mayor Dean is experiencing blow-back from his seemingly singular dependence on economic development, and he is having to stave off questions concerning his spending on public infrastructure. There are perceptions that the Mayor is the Mayor of the more privileged parts of the city, but not of the entire city. Nashville has it's own reputation of being "two cities" to live down, but the leaders are not living it down gracefully. Take last week's Nashville Ledger:

Dean is quick to point out that the bulk of his spending plans have focused on basic infrastructure needs, such as sidewalks and paving, as well as projects that provide direct services to residents, including new police precincts, libraries, schools, parks, greenways, bikeways and open space ....

His capital spending plans have also invested $373 million in schools and allocated more than $40 million to improving Nashville’s walkability.

And a capital program begun in 2010 will spend more than $1 billion on a backlog of water, sewer and storm water infrastructure projects throughout Davidson County that were needed to preserve safe, clean drinking water.

But Hizzoner overplayed his hand. If I were Mayor and taking some heat for spending more on subsidizing big business than on serving the community, I would point out if I could how much more I have spent on sidewalks, library buildings and schools than the previous "Neighborhoods Mayor". To me it is telling that Karl Dean does not.

As for the spending on schools, what Mayor Dean failed to mention was that chunks of the $373 million went to aid his program of privatizing public schools by helping charter corporations and corporately-partnered "academies" effectively designed to limit public education for all.

Also, keep this in mind about the water infrastructure: it had been violating the Clean Water Act and getting negative attention from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation for years before Nashville made a concerted effort to upgrade components that predated Abraham Lincoln's administration. The Mayor was forced from the top-down to make changes to Metro Water infrastructure to avoid costly and embarrassing EPA fines that threatened the Nashville brand. There also might be a couple of Metro Council members who should get credit for their efforts at shepherding water upgrades and sensitizing constituents to the need for changes.

If Hizzoner really is not getting the benefit of the doubt on policy that seems focused on handing entitlements to wealthy special interests, then he has earned the reputation. The current planning process is overrun and corrupted by Mayor Dean's exclusive commitments to business over community. Developers continue to enjoy greater advantages over communities than ever before. Wealth tips the balance of power.

If reintroducing communities into the planning process and taking the spotlight off public-private partnerships goes for New York City, the idea goes doubly for Nashville. We have seen a 2-term stretch in which Karl Dean has acted like a mini-Mike Bloomberg and asserted business models over a more democratic community process that should have more influence over growth and development than currently allowed.

I see a bad MOON arising

When former Democratic Party campaign strategist Courtney Wheeler took over the Mayor's Office of Neighborhoods earlier this year, I predicted that MOON--which was originally created as a community-oriented advocate connecting people with Metro bureaucrats and municipal services to solve community problems--would become a campaign/marketing mechanism to sell the Mayor's brand to consumers (a.k.a., his constituents). While we have yet to see whether her work will assist future Dean campaigns for higher office, in the wake of what MOON has done so far, I have to say now that sometimes I really hate being right.

Ms. Wheeler cranked up MOON's social media soon after taking the wheel. Her office joined Twitter and created a PR engine sending out Mayor's Office releases to members of NextDoor (a private social networking site marketed to neighborhoods). While not a member of latter, I have been following @moon_nashville since its beginning. Its primary bent has little to do with troubleshooting and problem-solving at a community level. It has not really been focused on connecting people with Metro services.

The MOON Twitter stream devotes at least as much space if not more to the Mayor's appearances around town and his pet projects as it does to neighborhoods. Here is a sampling of tweets having nothing to do with neighborhoods:

 

MOON social media promote Hizzoner's appearances with celebrities like Jack White, Jimmy Fallon, Taylor Swift and Garrison Keillor. They hawk a new riverfront amphitheater and The Amp. They preach us up to lose weight, pick up litter, and then lose more weight.

In the meantime, the nods to neighborhoods are marginal at best. They are just as likely to virtually wink at the Chamber of Commerce. The few and infrequent statements about neighborhoods tend to be vacuous ones about how Mayor's Office officials had a "great time" meeting with neighbors of wherever they appeared next.

The Office of Neighborhoods' social media strategy seems oriented to neighborhoods in name only. Kind of what you would expect when a campaign strategist steers the ship.

(While I did not say much about Hizzoner's use of NextDoor in particular, if you are interested, you can find more on it over here after the jump).

Shamelessness and joblessness

Granted, the Tennessean made a campaign contribution to the PR effort designed to produce a favorable vote for Mayor Karl Dean on the Music City Center, but did reporter Michael Cass really have to end a piece on a North Nashville march against joblessness with the Mayor's talking points on the jobs the new build provided?

It was bad enough that Cass just repeated Hizzoner's spin while leaving out news that the Music City Center lost a court case in which Metro officials blocked out the addresses on lists of construction workers preventing a union from evaluating Karl Dean's claims that jobs would go to locals. And never mind Music City Center's shoddy method of counting the employed by merely counting the people who signed up for safety training beforehand. I do not only read perceptions that the Mayor's projects do not provide the jobs promised in the news media beyond the Tennessean, but I hear it in community meetings I attend and urban talk shows I listen to.

So, yes, it is bad form to report half-news as news simply in order to put Karl Dean on the right side of the joblessness issue. It is not like he literally rushed out to be a drum major in this march.

But to detract from organized dissent over joblessness by shilling once again for a Mayor who does not care about North Nashville community development or social justice is shameless. Cass's report should have ended closer to where he conveyed Brenda Gilmore's meeting with the Mayor. That's the most Karl Dean should have figured into the story.

Michael Cass should explain his decision to portray--unequivocally, mind you--the Mayor as an effective break on the joblessness that marchers believe is a chronic problem. Otherwise, the Mayor's communications director should have been listed as a contributor to this story.

How do we know the Chamber of Commerce poll on charter schools is legit?

The Nashville Chamber of Commerce has made a habit of introducing its yearly "report cards" on Metro public schools with terms like "bold" to the point that it means very little: when every report card is bold, then no report cards are bold. Nonetheless, the special interest group whose main purpose seems to be to lobby and leverage policy favorable to it from Metro agencies trotted out another report card with rather interesting "poll" numbers:

Armed with a poll taken in May, chamber officials insist Nashvillians want “school choice” in the form of charters. A survey of Nashvillians, featured in the report, found that 43 percent of respondents believe the city should have as many charter schools as possible, and 39 percent say it should operate a limited number. Eleven percent believe charters are not necessary here.

Any marketer know that you can call just about anything a poll, because there are no rules governing the Chamber when it gathers its "findings". Too bad the journos at the Tennessean do not seem to heed it enough to probe into methodology.

We can assume that the "poll" was paid for by the Chamber, which makes it suspect to begin with. Money changes everything, including claims to objectivity, which brings me to my next point. I searched high and low for information on a polling agency that the Chamber could have contracted to conduct the study, but I could not find that information. Assuming that they hired a pro polling agency (I give them the benefit of the doubt that they did not just phone bank a bunch of their own volunteers asking leading, push-polling questions), I would like to know if that agency acted independently to cull these numbers in the same way an independent auditor would turn over objective balance sheets and neutral assessments. I would also like to see sample questions to test their objectivity. It is only fair. The Nashville Chamber of Commerce has not been bashful about questioning the methodology of more objective media polls at odds with their priorities.

Otherwise, I have serious doubts that nearly half of Nashville would like as many charter schools as possible. If the numbers are accurate and based on operationalized data gathering, then I can only feel sorry for a city that seems bent on going from foundering public education to mediocre privatized education that hands over tax dollars to entrepreneurs who have little or no obligation to taxpayers.


UPDATE:  Local reporter J.R. Lind tracked down the info that I could not find initially on the MNPS website. Appendix A has the questions asked and the results, but J.R. underscored the following paragraph in response to this post:

The following graphs represent results from a telephone survey commissioned by the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce. The survey was designed, written and analyzed by McNeely Pigott & Fox Public Relations in Nashville. The Parker Consulting Group of Birmingham, Ala., randomly surveyed 545 Davidson County registered voters May 8-9 and 13-14, 2012. The survey has a margin of error of approximately plus or minus 4.2 percent for the total sample.

Essentially, a special interest lobby group commissioned a survey designed, written and analyzed by a public relations firm (which itself has ties to local election and policy campaigns, most notably those of our pro-charter Mayor) and conducted by a marketing consulting business. The matter of whether the framing of the questions as well as of the answers offered to subjects is a legitimate one that I do not want to pass over lightly (for instance, it can be leading to frame the "unlimited charters" question by mentioning state legislative action), but more important for me is the fact that at no point along the process is the research conducted by neutral, independent firms that would be more exhaustive about objectivity and fact gathering.

The Birmingham consulting firm markets their phone surveys to get "accurate information" from their client's "target audience" and to "manage to specific quotas" in the target audience. What the appendix does not say is how the target audience was selected. It also does not delineate controls in place to keep callers from phrasing questions in leading ways or straying from a strict protocol of asking the same question in the same way to each subject in the target audience.

In my opinion a more neutral and objective survey of attitudes about charter schools should be formulated and conducted by a research (not marketing) firm without skin the game or financial connections to a local special interest group that has invested years and money clips on getting answers it expects. If the results are legitimate and objectively gained, I would like to see more qualitative data on what the 43% who support unlimited charters schools believe they are supporting and why they support such a market model for public education when running government like a business has not consistently worked.

Well, you could have his favorite PR firm coach your writers, never ask him critical questions, and declare him "Tennessean of the Year"

Tweet from Blake Farmer, who was one of two reporters covering Mayor Karl Dean's speech to a Rotary Club today observing Dean's embrace of their competition:

The Tennessean journos have shamelessly hitched themselves to Karl Dean's star, and he is returning the favor with some free advertising to influential local leaders. There is no grander sell-out of the local "4th Estate," and journos at other local media companies should be pleased that they are are not hitched to Hizzoner like those at Nashville's main newspaper, because there is a cost to the groveling coziness:

Ethics vs public relations: tweets Registered

A series of reporters' tweets from earlier this afternoon that makes me wonder what the Metro Nashville Public Schools Director prefers in leadership. He is more of an ad man or an ethics man?

Salemtown, Sulphur Dell, and Karl Dean

At some point I'll get to blogging on the details of yesterday's association meeting regarding concerns I blogged about this past weekend. However, there were two rather remarkable revelations divulged that deserve their own space here.

Apparently, our new president has jumped in with both feet to support the Sulphur Dell ballpark. Less than a month into her tenure as the chief, she has joined an effort with Germantown, Hope Gardens, Buena Vista to form a tighter consortium to try and shift Courthouse sentiment (assuming it has ever really waned) back to the concept of a ballpark near Bicentennial Mall. She told us they are looking to brand the group with a hip name like "North Core". They have political heavyweights working with them (politics consultant and PR stud Mike Kopp's name was dropped), and they have a budget (our neighborhood association has yet to even see any 2012 budget proposals).

Salemtown Neighbors is on record having expressed a guarded openness to the ballpark project in the past, pending assurances that increased vehicular traffic would not undermine complete, pedestrian-friendly streets or our North Nashville Community Plan. If the association is to take a more unqualified, enthusiastic response supporting a paid lobbying effort for Sulphur Dell, then we ought be discussing this in open meetings and voting up or down to change our previous stance.

Despite being on the Executive Board, I do not believe that this is a decision that should be decided by executives alone since it affects us all. It would be out of character for us to become top-down. Moreover, all of us would like to see our quality-of-life enhanced by smart growth, but common sense tells us that not all growth is smart just because it makes developers more money. The community needs to be involved to the widest extent possible, and it is imperative now that we not reduce chances for discussions by cutting the frequency of our meetings as proposed.

The second interesting revelation at the meeting was that two of our newly-elected officers have been meeting with Mayor's Office officials and they have an upcoming meeting with Hizzoner himself, Karl Dean, in the near future. I think it is wonderful that the Mayor's Office is reaching out to Salemtown as they have not in the past. It would be super if our officers can convince him to set aside more in his future capital budgets to upgrade our antiquated sewer system or designate more money to parks and recreation so that Morgan Park Community Center can stay open longer hours for our kids, teens, adults, and seniors.

I'll keep an eye on these rapidly developing stories, but please send me any news you hear, too.

Exactly what is wrong with journalism and why journalists do not get social media (beyond its shallow advertising potential)

From the Twitter stream today following the Tennessean's event to explain how the news media uses Twitter, Facebook, etc:

Tennessean uses social media to protect their brand, engage their audience and as a customer service tool

Notice that nothing was said about using social media to uncover ignored and subverted news or to act as a social or political force countering or revealing information beyond the approved orthodoxy (hence, to be the Fourth Estate). Nothing about speaking truth to power, come what may, for people not at the table.

I've insisted for some time that journalism today is less about playing a critical role in society or reporting news beyond the spin, and more about public relations, branding, and promotion of friends and associates through advertising. (Note that their "free" Wednesday papers thrown on lawns are exclusively advertising now; no news at all). In essence, journalism is not a power to which we can turn as an alternative to the party line or the corporate talking points. Instead, local journalism, especially that exercised at the Tennessean, sells and brands exactly like the elite powerbrokers do.

The more journos use social media to defend their product rather than act for the sake of the common or a principled good, the more they slip from a seat of legitimate gatekeeper of information. Hence, we need social media and blogs in particular to get information past the disingenuous branding and the flackery of the Tennessean. Reporters already crowd Twitter for specific reasons and hawk their product to many, many audiences. If we fail to strive to keep social media an authentic alternative then it will be colonized via this generation of acquisitive journalists by government power and corporate money. It will be sapped of its peculiar and distinct potential.

For more on what's happening inside the Tennessean's social media event tonight, jump to their Twitter hashtag (#) stream (you may have to scroll through some obtuse participant tweets to get to the corporate sales jargon dispensed by the Tennessean's social media evangelists).

The social media brain trust at the Tennessean to "collaborate" with Seigenthaler PR on a new project designed to cherry pick legit community voices

A brainstorm: the scene inside Tennessean's social media
office as they attempt to reanimate the body of journalism

The Tennessean decision makers, obviously dissatisfied with the noble goals of the Fourth Estate, have decided to try to be an arbiter to determine which voices in Nashville are more legit than others. They are introducing an online initiative called "Brainstorm Nashville," which they describe as "a collaborative space for the community to brainstorm ideas for solving community problems". It is worth asking whether a top-heavy, hierarchical corporation can create a "collaborative space" (which assumes that all Nashvillians have the money to have access to the newspaper's space to collaborate).

But it is also worth pointing out that this looks like another excuse to continue to pass over the voices that are already being expressed around Nashville, in community meetings, in neighborhood elists and newsletters, and on local blogs. Local news media has constantly failed to get the potential of social media and of local blogging for reporting. "Brainstorm Nashville" looks like another attempt to put new wine in old wine skins. It seems to me to be an attempt to throw the weight of the corporate media behind some local voices friendly to Gannett projects while ignoring dissent beyond the "storm."

Consider a question posed on construction of the new convention center on a mocked up Brainstorm page at the document-sharing Scribd website. The social media mavens failed to disclose that their company donated $15,000 to selling the construction project to the public at the same time that they were supposed to be reporting objectively on it. But they went ahead and wrote a leading question that looks like it assumes the validity of buying into the convention center: "Is it worth $585M ...? If not, what is?" The implication: critics are expected to come up with some other bright idea for spending more money than has ever been spent on one project in the history of Metro government.

"Gripes or rants" not welcome; flackery approved.

I noticed on Twitter today that members of the Tennessean social media group had lunch at Seigenthaler PR to discuss Brainstorm Nashville with PR flacks and to "springboard to more collaboration." Well, what a coincidence. It wasn't too long ago that another PR firm was coaching another Tennessean employee and having telephone "conversations" with the paper's local beat reporter about how to brand the convention center. And Seigenthaler PR itself had participated in the selling of Music City Center.

I cannot wait to see leading questions on other issues springboard out of the collaboration. The question of whether the Music City Center will benefit all of Nashville is still open, but in their unabashed promotion of the project the Gannett family and their collaborators obviously have already decided the question for the rest of us, regardless of budget overages, regardless of the drain on Metro services.

This congenital coziness that corporate media has with corporate PR firms on questions of local governance is repulsive given that journos are supposed to offer intrepid disclosure and analysis as a check on power. Brainstorm Nashville (Twitter hastag: #BrainstormNashville) seems like a further attempt to manage dissent and cherry pick community voices rather than critically reporting the news that journalists are supposed to. The paper's social mediarites claim to be getting past community "gripes or rants," but they embrace mercenary flackery instead? The privileged voices in this venture will be those who echo the dominant PR talking points on the issue du jour.

Brainstorm Nashville managers claim to give you a voice you might not otherwise have, but don't buy a bill of goods. Social media, including blogging, remains a somewhat open, independent element that does not require the Tennessean's Brainstorm or their social media brain trust to get the word out and to try to eke out a little influence on public policy and local developments.

Journo-a-journo on "West Town" neighborhood

Charles Maldonado, who is headed out of Nashville to write for a New Orleans publication, calls out the Tennessean's Bill Lewis for undoing the distinction between advertising and reporting in this morning's edition.

Here's how Lewis gives a leg-up to realtors and brokers who would otherwise have to pay for exposure as wide as the newspaper's readership:

Homeowners and real estate agents are holding a neighborhood-wide open house today that will showcase 15 homes for sale.

Homes range from a restored 1899 Victorian at 4800 Illinois Ave. to new construction, such as a 2006 cottage at 4906 Illinois Ave. Prices in the neighborhood range from the $90,000s to about $260,000, says Kay Hunter, a Realtor with the Realty Association. A number of vacant lots have signs promising future construction of new single-family houses ....

Potential investors overlooked the neighborhood, says Alice Walker, president of the Greater Nashville Association of Realtors, who helped organize the open house ....

That’s changing as momentum builds in Historic West Town and small neighborhood businesses move in along Charlotte Pike, she says.

“That’s what makes urban living so great. You have your own little neighborhood,” says Walker.

Indeed, there is very little in this article that has to do with broader issues of community development or cultural legacy. Everything is reduced to the economic development tools that Realtors and real estate brokers use to make money off neighborhood life.

Here is Maldonado's response to the Tennessean pieced together from his Twitter stream:

Okay, the Nations or Historic West Town or whatever is a perfectly fine neighborhood. No reason to be scared by it or anything .... But it still has plenty of problems. And this article which declares its "rebirth" in a nonquote, is barely distinguishable from an ad .... Furthermore, the name. Just because there's like one house from the (extreme late) 1800s, that a realtor pointed out to the paper .... That doesn't actually make this neighborhood as a whole historic. Basically it's an ordinary suburban neighborhood .... Lots of post-War tract housing. And plenty of houses wherein whatever "historic" elements there once were have been renovated into oblivion.

Isn't speculation on real estate part of what brought us a bubble and then the housing crisis of the past half decade? It seems like a contradiction of the journalistic mission for a newspaper to aid and abet wealthy special interests that inflate expectations and buying frenzy without regard to facts or local history.

Maldonado points out that this story simply gave real estate developers the benefit of the doubt without any digging behind the image that they project for the commercial purpose of selling property. Bill Lewis was helping out the privileged few more than he was doing the local community favors, especially if home values are artificially driven up with contrivances like "historic". The more influence Realtors have, the more likely they are to do what they want regardless of what's good for all West Town residents.

That ingratiating Tennessean formula

John Arriola's misuse of Metro revenues is maddening enough, but news that paid PR firms and Nashville's local daily were in on the marketing of Arriola is beyond stupid. Witness an excerpt of the email correspondence from Amanda Virgillito Saad, Andrews Agency PR flack, to Clerk Arriola via NewsChannel5, which seems to perpetually kick Gannett butt on stories that embarrass Metro government bureaucrats:

l'm happy to report that the Tennesean does plan to cover the office move with a positive story. Right now the plan is a news story plus a great column from Gail Kerr. l'm still waiting for further details, but l'd love to go over talking points in advance.

Dean doubles communications staff "to serve the needs of the media"

The pipeline leading from newsrooms to the pistons of government is alive and well in Nashville, given Karl Dean's hiring last week of Bonna Johnson as his Press Secretary. Johnson left the Tennessean last April to become a Public Relations Manager (no surprise there, since today's brand of journalism many times has more to do with spin and flackery than with critical questioning and unflinching reporting). Now she's carrying Karl Dean's message back to her former colleagues at the Tennessean who will no doubt continue the brainwashing that prompted them to make him their "Tennessean of the Year." At the same time, the Gannett kids will get someone close to the Mayor who can influence things for them if necessary. Looks like there will be a good chance for mutual back scratching.

In the meantime it is reasonable to ask: does Johnson's hiring catapult communications office expenses to unnecessary heights in this recession? Karl Dean has been burning Metro revenues with multiple hires of former employees of Phil Bredesen in an attempt to shore up his administration in preparation for a statewide run in 4 years. Given that the Mayor annually requires Metro departments to cut their budgets, why isn't he demanding the same from his own office? We know what dedicating a single staff member to fondle handle the media will mean to the Mayor's elections aspirations, but are the "needs of the media" really worth what we're going to pay Bonna Johnson to spoon feed newspeak back to us for the paycheck? I guess it beats overpaying those former journos at McNeely Pigott & Fox for shoveling us similar Pablum.

About those journalistic double standards that render the journo part of the story

Here's your difficult truth: Your guy [referring to Darden Copeland] is as much a part of the "elite" you rail against as [James] Weaver or anyone else. Sorry, dude.

- - Local newspaper editor Stephen George to the person he believes me to be

I've got to hand it to George. At least he was willing to put his name by his uncorroborated comments. Typically when I get accused of being a tool (or, in George's words, "angling" online writing in coordination with PR firms and lobbyists) it is the anonymous trolls spouting bottomless conjecture they wouldn't sign their name to. But Stephen George incorrectly tweeted that the PR specialist hired to mobilize the movement to preserve the Fairgrounds was "my guy," which indicated to me that I was among the unnamed whom George speculated Darden Copeland "harnessed."

Has Gail Kerr been coaxed or coached to merchandise the Mayor's Office?

Last Sunday's column by Gail Kerr on possible challengers in the next mayoral election perpetuated the perception that the Tennessean writer is in no sense of the term an independent journalist, but a professional PR flack functioning as the sounding board of the increasingly powerful Metro government executive.

Karl Dean goes into the next election with a campaign machine firing on all cylinders. Those cylinders include his administration, the private sources of wealth and influence behind his administration, and the corporate media, which moves too easily between political parties, press, and PR enterprise. This synthesis, this syndrome of kingmaking is on display practically every time Kerr writes a column on Metro politics, every time the Tennessean neglects pushing ahead less than flattering stories about this Mayor.

However, perhaps it was never more on display than in 2008. Kerr's Tennessean was caught in that web between a prominent Nashville PR firm (founded by former pro journalists) and the Mayor's MDHA boys, who were vested with working with that firm (McNeely, Pigott, and Fox) to hard sell a new convention center to a Nashville community reeling in the throes of economic recession. At the time--with Tennessean reporters and columnist doing interviews and meeting with McNeely Pigott, and Fox spin merchants--it wasn't the paper that broke a story of huge Metro budget overages to MPF, but NewsChannel5.

And after the NewsChannel5 story broke, we found out that PR pros had huddled with Gail Kerr to coax or to coach (depending on whose interpretation you buy) a story favorable to Mayor Dean. I obtained a copy of the MPF statement billing MDHA for hours worked on selling the Music City Center to Nashvillians. I extracted the sections of the bill that include the hours spent on work aiding and abetting Kerr, and they are posted below (I highlight her line items and inset her picture):

Was Kerr merely coaxed or coached? I have a hard time believing that if this were merely a matter of MPF working for its client Metro government to inform the media then so many hours would be spent with Kerr. Does it take more than a lunch or a couple of phone calls to inform a journo? Also, there seems to be at least one coordinated meeting between Kerr and major Metro players, MDHA's Phil Ryan and Finance Director Rich Riebeling. If MPF is only helping her with research, why have meetings with Metro officials, other than to make sure that everyone is on the same page? Coordination goes beyond education.

Finally, that manufactured letter to the editor does not pass the smell test for me. Even by itself a PR staffer paid to write a letter to the editor seems like a scheme that violates the community spirit of "Letters to the Editor." However, the appearance that the letter was synchronized with a lengthy series of prep events for Gail Kerr is even more unsettling. Was there ever a chance such a letter would be rejected, and thus an investment lost? Other investments were made. The marketing organ for Dean's capital project had received donations from the Tennessean. The newspaper had skin in this game, so what are the odds that a professionally prepped letter would be published? And later, the Tennessean endorsed the new convention center as if they were doing so merely on the merits, if not on principle. It all smells rotten.

This entire context of government, media, and corporate intermingling makes unsavory Gail Kerr's continuing efforts to brand the Mayor's office in the next election run-up. The PR firm predictably insulted our intelligence by denying influence on Kerr via Twitter. The Tennessean editor predictably insulted our intelligence by denying influence on Kerr via editorial page.  But you cannot look at the bill of goods and eliminate the probability of some form of influence, some form of cribbing, some form of action coordination.

We really should not look to Gail Kerr for an independent and reliable account of local politics. She is perhaps the most dependent, most unreliable of the bunch.

A staggering number

Almost $1,000,000 has been spent to bankroll lobbyists and consultants to sell Nashville the concept of the Music City Center. That total includes the $450,000 McNeely, Pigott, and Fox billed Metro government and the $533,000 that corporations privately donated to the Music City Center coalition.

Construction has not even started because leaders had to spend $1,000,000 to convince Nashville of MCC merits. But the council votes have never been close. MCC boosters have never been down.

And this is good business? $1,000,000 to lobby and influence public opinion when council support was certain? Why do people with this much money to throw at advertising need our general funds as a safety net on their capital debt obligations?

The Mayor's Supporters Pull Their Own "Obscure" Parliamentary Move and Force Less Time for Reconsidering Authority

Thanks to Christian Grantham for forwarding these documents, which Vice Mayor Diane Neighbors supplied to the news media.

First, CMs who apparently have a dog in a speedy convention center hunt (Ronnie Steine, Michael Craddock, Jim Gotto, Anna Page, Carl Burch, Buddy Baker, Parker Toler, Jim Forkum, Rip Ryman, Charlie Tygard, Walter Hunt, Frank Harrison, Duane Dominy, and Phil Claiborne) submitted a letter earlier today requesting a special meeting to consider Mike Jameson's move to reconsider the council's snap approval of the Mayor's new convention center authority in the wake of the Mayor's PR debacle the last couple of weeks:


Without pause and as if she has a dog in the swift hunt, Vice Mayor Neighbors responds by scheduling a special meeting for the day after tomorrow:



I can't say that I've ever seen Metro Council move with such cat-like and coordinated reflexes on a mayoral request. Makes me wonder how hungry Metro Council members are to have influence over and benefits from the construction of a convention center. Makes me wonder how corralled by the Mayor's Office the council is on this single issue. Makes me wish they were motived to operate with such coordinated efficiency on issues that benefit common people's real lives like parks, neighborhoods, schools, infrastructure, etc.

Development Controversy Hits Pages of the Tennessean

People just need to give me the chance to tell them what's going on and not just believe what they read in a neighborhood blog.

- - UP, LLC Investor Steve Yokley defending Schoene Ansicht's problems in yesterday's Tennessean

So, don't believe those Schoene Ansicht mudslide pictures from 5th and Hume that Enclave published this morning. S-townMike could have just photoshopped the muddy mess into a picture of a clean intersection. Don't believe what you see here. Go see the intersection with your own eyes and judge for yourself. Stand around the intersection after it all dries and let the dust blow up and sting your own eyes.

On the subject of believing what you read: I agree that you shouldn't believe everything you read, just like I shouldn't have believed Steve Yokley when he e-mailed me saying that the Schoene Ansicht run-off would connect to sewers underground. Wait, didn't he just ask for a chance in the Tennessean? It sure sounded like a chance when he e-mailed me. In fact, these investors have had countless chances to work with neighbors on design issues, but as one commenter put it in a previous post, they keep shooting themselves in the proverbial foot.

There's nothing I would like more than not to have to blog about questionable investment and construction practices in the North End. As I told these investors face-to-face the other night, I shouldn't have to blog on it. They should be doing the right thing.

But, the Tennessean reporter of yesterday's story--which also promoted Steve Yokley and Taurus McCain's Salemtown developments with some free right-column advertising--paid attention to the controversy after reading about it on Enclave. And nobody outside of the six people who were there would have known about a UP, LLC investor physically threatening the President of Salemtown Neighbors had I not blogged on it yesterday. So, go ahead and give Steve and Taurus more chances than they have been given already and more than they deserve, but just remember that there are other sides that don't get public mention short of a neighborhood blog.