Photo By John Hoff It's not exactly the question on EVERYBODY'S mind, but it's a question on the minds of more than, say, six people: what is up with the Kenya McKnight campaign in the 5th Ward against Don Samuels? Is she still running or WHAT?
Some insight was expected from the latest edition of, well, Insight News...
...which had not only supported Kenya McKnight in a front page article and ringing endorsement, but publisher Al McFarlane was so vocal in his support of Kenya McKnight that he pretty much burned up Kenya's speaking time at the podium during the Fifth Ward Convention, leaving Kenya with a mere 37 seconds on the clock.
So one might reasonably expect Insight News to answer the question on (at least!) five dozen people's minds: is Kenya running? Her Facebook campaign site gives no clue. Last week's edition of Insight News appeared to be press ready before Kenya McKnight information could be squeezed in, but something was certainly expected THIS week.
Sure, writing about the convention results would have been a pointless rehash for Insight News, especially since there was a STrib article and this blog covered the story extensively. However, even a story saying Kenya had not yet decided one way or another would have been some kind of news. As the situation currently stands, it appears Insight News built Kenya up to great heights and expectations only to let her crash down hard in a political mismatch characterized by veteran political observers as "poodle versus pit bull."
And, in a spirit of full disclosure, I'll admit I lost a dollar wagering against Hawthorne Housing Director Jeff Skrenes that some mention, any mention, would be made of Kenya McKnight in the next issue of Insight News. Next time I'll be sure to take the cynical side of any bet about North Minneapolis politics.
5 comments:
The latest facebook comment is this: Soren C. Sorensen wrote
at 2:52pm on March 30th, 2009
You have until 10 days after the convention to file a challenge - look in the Official DFL Call for the form - if there were any shenanigans that grossly violated normal processes. I have heard some faux outrage from suspect persons... that leads me to believe something is up.
what is faux outrage? and who are the suspect persons? what is up?
Al McFarlane's m.o. has always been to go completely incommunicado while he is setting up his pins for the next round. It's interesting to me that Al mentioned in his endorsement of Kenya that she understands the importance of "legacy" organizations. This term "legacy" organization is the term he kept whipping out to describe WHO. (I find it hard to believe that Kenya woke up one morning and thought to herself "you know, I really support "legacy" organizations!") Al was clearly setting up Kenya to be the pipeline to his newly formed (or form-ing) WHO organization, and I'm sure that it is still his primary focus, Kenya just being a disposable means to this end.
My take is that Insight News clearly has an axe to grind with Don Samuels. Maybe that has some merits and maybe it doesn't. But my mom (probably most moms) would say, "If you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything."
It seems to me that Insight News has turned this axiom on its head in this case: "If Insight doesn't have anything bad to say about Don Samuels, then don't say anything."
To me, this is very disappointing. I know that every news outlet from Fox News and Public Radio all the way down to local rags and blogs has some kind of agenda at least some of the time - probably more frequently than that. But the best reporting comes when that agenda gets set aside as much as possible. Clearly, that hasn't happened in this case.
Unfortunately, the fact that Insight News doesn't even report that Samuels was endorsed, simply because the editor was backing another candidate, is entirely representative of the kind of "journalism" that the editor practices. The North Side deserves a real newspaper.
I was wondering if this was a gossip column? I have yet to read anything that has anything positive to say about either candidates.
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