TIMES-NEWS BIAS, ERRORS PERVADE AIRPORT RUNWAY ARTICLE

Today's article in the Times-News by Reporter Tim Hahn on the award of a construction contract for a controversial runway extension at the Erie airport is typical of the sloppy, superficial, incomplete and biased reporting one has come to expect from the monopoly daily, which raises more questions than it answers.

To put the article in context, one needs to know that the Times Publishing Co. is rabidly in favor of the runway project as a matter of editorial policy, as it is of most expenditures of public funds, whether they're needed or not (although The Times is notoriously skinflintish when it comes to paying adequate salaries for competent reporting, editing and editorial management at its newspaper: ergo, its generally sub-standard journalism).

Consequently, any Times-News article on the runway project is predictably sharply slanted in its favor, even though there's significant opposition to it within the county, which is rarely or never mentioned in the Times-News coverage, such as Hahn's article.

According to the article, there were only two bids for the first of three phases of project construction whose total cost is estimated at about $80 1/2 Million. Evidencing a dire need for some grammar school tutoring, Hahn wrote: "The company's bid (for Phase One )was the lowest (sic) of two that airport officials received in May." (It was actually the "lower" of the two.)

Hahn said it was about $1.5 million lower than the airport authority's original estimate, or $10,620,000. (Elsewhere in the story, he says the lower bid added up to $10,519,500, indicating he needs some help with his math too). The only other bid was significantly higher than both, about $15,775,575.

Hahn's, and the newspaper's bias comes into play early in his lead paragraph. He writes: "Erie International Airport officials have officially found a BARGAIN (my emphasis) in the first phase of their $80.5 million runway-extension project."

There 's nothing in the story's factual presentation to indicate the contract is a "bargain." And even if there were, that's an opinion which belongs in an editorial, not in a news story, unless it's attributed to a knowledgeable outside source. Just because the low bid is lower than the authority's estimate and the only other bid, doesn't necessarily mean it's a bargain.

It's more likely an indication that the authority's project cost estimating competence is lacking and it simply over-estimated the cost of Phase One. Or it could indicate that the lower bidder deliberately underbid in order to position itself for advantageous bidding on the two subsequent project phases.

Alternatively, it could suggest a ploy common to construction contracting, which is to bid low deliberately to get the job, then when work is well underway, to come in with a change order needed to complete the project, materially raising the cost,leaving the authority with no option but to comply or litigate at an even higher cost.

In any case it's incumbent upon the reporter to determine WHY the low bid was so much lower than the other, as well as the authority's estimate. For starters, Hahn should have contacted the high bidder to inquire why there was such a disparity between the two bids.

Realistically, the low bidder's bid should have been higher because that contracter is from Ohio, and would have to move his equipment and workforce farther to the job site than the high bidder, which is located in Erie. That alone should raise a flag for any competent reporter, but Hahn ignored it.

Hahn quoted Airport Director Chris Rodgers as saying "that the first phase of construction is expected to result in 329 jobs and about $6.7 million in payroll paid out, all impacting the local economy."

In fact, neither Hahn nor Rodgers has any idea how many, if any, of the 329 jobs will go to Erie workers. Many if not most of them are likely jobs held by Ohioans who work for the Ohio contractor, and won't be available for local hire. But exaggerating the local job impact better serves the Times-News editorial bias.
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For more on the airport runway extension fiasco see my blog archive at Feb. 2, 2010.

HOW THE ERIE TIMES-NEWS SNUFFED OUT THE LIGHTS OF COMMUNITY JOURNALISM IN ERIE COUNTY

In a Good Morning column today entitled "Thankfully a Light shines on", Times-News Reporter Ed Pallatella regaled us with a beguiling narrative of a small weekly newspaper for which he once worked on the West Coast as an intern known as the Point Reyes Light.
Like most small newspapers, existence for the Light was and is a constant and precarious struggle, surviving through two changes of ownership despite the fact that it was the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize. According to Pallatella, it's now owned by a non-profit.
"The Light's future is far from settled;" he wrote: "the paper likely will need grants to stay in business over time. For now, the Light is still burning, an example of newspaper's bond with its community...Its story, to the relief of its readers (and one former intern) has not ended."
Ed's story reminds me of the fate of half a dozen weekly newspapers here in Erie County which weren't so lucky. Once known as the Brown-Thompson Newspapers, they were the information and advertising lifelines of communities like North East, Edinboro, Girard, Union City and others.
Their lights were snuffed out by Ed's employer, the Times Publishing Co., which bought them several years ago, then within a few years, predictably terminated their existence which in one case had lasted about one hundred years, my hometown newspaper, The North East Breeze.
Seems the Times's owners didn't want the weeklies, whose advertising rates were roughly half those of its flagship daily, The Erie Times-News, competing for the various communities' advertising dollars with the daily newspaper. So they shut them down, leaving the small communities without a voice, forcing their small businesses and governing bodies to pay big city rates for advertising space in the Times-News.
At the time, The Times promised the communities would not suffer for want of local news because the Times-News would publish a community page each week devoted exclusively to news in the newspaperless towns. But that promise was soon extinguished.
Sadly, in this case, thanks to the Times Publishing Co., the lights have gone out.