Comments on: Daily Paper’s Vision Not 20/20

By: dog

dog — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:49:56 +0000

The “Vision thing” looks white, uptight and out of sight to me.

By: Sisyphus

Sisyphus — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:47:29 +0000

Richert is beating the drum for more people to participate while acknowledging this criticism. Lest I get labeled overly cynical I’ll encourage people to do so since the Statesman doesn’t have a very good cross section of folks and neither does that group look so terribly inviting. I mean, so many belong to exclusive Arid Club.

http://voices.idahostatesman.com/2009/01/14/krichert/vision_valley_lets_hear_you

By: Tom Anderson

Tom Anderson — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:59:03 +0000

Bikeboy: Right on! Faux News actually reports more of the ‘alternative media’ type events than any of the other corporate media.

What I see in the local corporate media is that they rarely report what the story actually means in comparison to past events, or other statistics.

They tell you that crime increased by 2%. They don’t tell you what previous crime levels were, what levels are in other cities or nationwide, or of any trends. In other words they dig out and publish facts without creating useable information or allowing you to know if the information is significant or just background noise.

The corporate media rains down facts that clog your brain with a multitude of information bits. This makes for a populace that is overwhelmed and unable to take action other than yelling at the TV on occasion.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:50:20 +0000

Mass transit in general will not work until private auto usage becomes prohibitive for most people. Even then, people will sit jammed on the freeways rather than ride public transit. I have seen this first hand in cities like Chicago and Boston.

Cities like Portland, Oregon, Honolulu, Hawaii and others have figured out the key is the avaialbility and costs of downtown parking force people to park and ride locations.

Portland, Oregon is a model city for public tansit usage. I had no use for a car in the downtown core, to Lloyd Center, the Airport and all downtown venues.

Boise is not yet ready for light rail but express bus services from Caldwell and Nampa and a downtown transfer site for the core area and other major employers is another matter. Busses give the system a huge amount of flexibility to meet changing demands in ridership.

By: Rod in SE Boise

Rod in SE Boise — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:36:34 +0000

Good article and good posts. Keep up the good work everyone.

By: bikeboy

bikeboy — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:55:07 +0000

Fox News: “We report – you decide.”

Statesman (and KTVB): “We report – AND decide… so you don’t have to.”

By: Sisyphus

Sisyphus — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:59:36 +0000

I agree Sara and thanks for saying it. They’ve lost sight of their objective to inform and I think they overlook the role that plays in their demise. As a result I think they’re more patrician than plebian since they cater to the elite rather than inform the citizenry.

By: The Boise Picayune

The Boise Picayune — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:57:24 +0000

Before the Coles Administration imploded, the Mayor was putting together a “Blue Ribbon Committee” to examine ways to improve Mass Transit in Boise.

Having extensive knowledge of the (then) Boise Urban Stages and having used some of the best Mass Transit Systems in the world over the years, I did my civic duty and volunteered.

Only to be told that the committee was to be comprised of business leaders (of whom I’m sure none had ever set foot on a city bus), with no representation for Strap Hangers (riders) whatsoever.

Dirty Little Secret — The compelling reason for establishing bus service to Nampa/Caldwell?

So that Krick, inc., et al could tap an even cheaper more compliant workforce.

By: Sisyphus

Sisyphus — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:55:59 +0000

Serendipity, I agree 100% about KTVB. They were the subject of another post I wrote the other day. I’ll post the link below. Also the cross post at 43sb has some embedded links with the actual list should folks wanna learn more. A big ole hat tip to BG for the cross post. I’ll link back.

http://43sb.com/?q=node/5637

By: Sara

Sara — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:37:23 +0000

I haven’t really followed this whole vision thing much, because quite frankly, it was a Statesman initiative. And as such, it seemed and seems designed to promote their own paper. “See how visionary we are, how we care about the community, how we feeeel about things, aren’t we altruistic – buy more papers, buy more papers.”

The best thing the Statesman could do, and they won’t of course, because it’s way too plebian, is to start reporting the local news again. Spend some time out in the community and tell us whats going on. Don’t just reprint press releases, but actually dig, do some in depth stuff and not just human interest but real news.

I swear, there is more news made on the Guardian, than there is the daily rag and that’s just pitiful. So if the Statesman wants a vision, how about envisioning what a real newspaper would look like. Otherwise it’s arguable whether it will even be around in a year.