The Windsor Star Upside Down and Spinning

The Windsor Star seems to be getting wrapped in its own spin. From October 1 until now our favorite editorial columnists seem to be upside down over which way to lead the charge. Their usual game strategy is to open with the B-String (Jarvis and Vander Doelen). They capture public feedback so that Henderson can cut loose with his weekend Mayoral Rah-Rah Report.

Everything got turned upside down last week when Dave Battagelo came from out of the blue with his “the Revolving Door at City Hall” piece followed up with a sharp left hook from Anne Jarvis on the same day (“Audit Report Hi-Jacked”). Vander Doelen tried to squelch that breach with a poorly penned diatribe about fuzzy math while Henderson…well lets just say that he decided to go off on a flyer with pending painful changes at the U of W. In the middle of all of this the good Mayor, not used to having his Rah Squad turn on him like this, unleashed his bought and paid for and self proclaimed “Evil Lawyer from Toronto” to teach the Windsor Star Editorial team how to do their job in an Op-Ed. Now that’s not out of character for His Worship is it? It gets more interesting. Vander Doelen’s and Andrew Roman’s words were barely dry when two more pieces came out rendering them pretty much null and void. Trevor Wilhelm wrote “Former Deputy Fire Chief Tim Berthiaume Slams, how city Treats Staff” and Battagello chimed in with “Another Departure, this Time from Enwin”. In a time line it looks like this:

· Thursday, October 1
Dave Battagello - “Revolving Door Article”
Anne Jarvis - “Audit Report Hi-Jacked”

· Friday, October 2
Chris Vander Doelen - “Casino Rebound a Bad Bet” (unrelated)

· Saturday, October 3
Gord Henderson - “U of W gets Ready to Face Painful Changes”

· Sunday, October 4
Anne Jarvis - “England Bound Pizza” (unrelated)

· Monday, October 5
Vander Doelen - “City Hall Turnover is Small”
Trevor Wilhelm – “Former Deputy Fire Chief Slams how City Treats Staff”

· Tuesday, October 6
Anne Jarvis - “Random Road Tests go too Far” (unrelated)
Andrew Roman Op-Ed – “Evil Toronto Lawyer”
Dave Battagello – “Another Departure, this Time from Enwin”.

It became a little stranger than fiction too when Vander Doelen seemed to take some debasing swipes at Battagello and Jarvis. He, Vander Doelen, seemed most off balance as he tried to steer this wayward editorial slant back to its usual course. Aside from his baseless statistical analysis, Chris reached for every straw in the hayshed. There was nothing convincing. He tried to demonstrate that the Development Commission was not a city department by telling us that it was a “separate legal entity” but we all remember too well when the board left and Mayor Francis installed himself; a little less than arm’s length. Then he tried to take both former Deputy Chief Tim Berthiaume and former Commissioner of Traffic Engineering John Toffelmire out of the equation. He was nixed again when Trevor Wilhelm documented Berthiaume’s bad treatment from the city and when Dave Hall announced that Toffelmire is being presented an award from the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers for his leadership on several major City of Windsor initiatives. Vander Doelen then tried to make the analogy that the private sector has a much higher turnover rate in comparison to that of the city. Again, before his quil was dry, his paper threw an apple into the orange basket with a story about Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne shaking up the embattled Chrysler Corporation by letting two people go; a minor adjustment considering all that Chrysler has gone through in the past decade. Probably not convinced himself, Vander Doelen played the “saving money” card. That did not go over large either. Blogger Arditti finished Chris’s argument by presenting the entire math: “So assuming salary and benefits per manager at say $125,000, Edgar has wasted, over 5 years of inaction, $10,625,000. Now THAT would have paid a lot of post retirement benefits!”
Read his entire post here:
http://windsorcityon.blogspot.com/2009/10/mini-gord-makes-it-all-better.html

In his wrap up Chris resorts to a notion that both the Mayor’s office and the Windsor Star have been trying to impinge on the publics fore conscious: That public feedback from the 101 day strike is overwhelmingly in favor of the Mayor’s actions. How do they know this? How do they substantiate it? Did they hire Angus Reid to do an opinion poll? They couldn’t have, otherwise they would site it. The public feedback that they are probably referring to is from the feedback forums from the Windsor Star’s digital publication. That’s a pretty small and repetitive population slice. In a union town like Windsor who in their right mind would wager that way?

After all is said and done it is still hard to figure out what was happening in the Editorial Department of the Star over the last several days. Was no one at the helm while leadership was caught up in the Can-West re-org? Is the Star onto a new way of creating controversy to boost its sales? Is the Windsor Star suddenly on a road to nowhere? It will be interesting to see where Gord Henderson picks up tomorrow.

Related Links:

http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Revolving+door+costs+Windsor+money+reputation/2060978/story.html

http://chrisschnurr.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/divert-dismiss-defend-when-a-resignation-becomes-a-buyout/

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/redirect.php?r=8fba588f43e9afcebc9f4638b59038fe&url=http%3A%2F%2Flineosight.blogspot.com%2F