Hey, Clay Today, Take Some Advice

Quit Playing Silly Games and Just Cover the News

Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash with a little help from ChatGPT. Kudos to any reader that can guess what is wrong with this photo illustration.

Psssst! Clay Today, I’ve got some professional advice for you. I know I make you nervous because you scrubbed some stories I once wrote for you from your archives. That’s fine. I don’t care.

I cannot speak for my colleagues here at Clay News & Views, but, personally, I really want to see you survive. We’re never going to write about the latest candidates for Eagle Scout or the Art Guild’s new museum, but somebody should.

And I appreciate that you’ve upped your game and begun writing about some important local issues, which—if I’m not wrong—has happened because of our arrival on the scene a couple of years ago with a hard-hitting brand of journalism. As the rapper Cordae once said, “Competition is the best form of motivation.”

So, what are my qualifications to give you unasked-for advice? Before going into magazines, I worked at four old-fashioned print newspapers. For eight years, I was editor of the New Hampshire Sunday News, directing a staff of elite and aggressive reporters. Motto: “Be accurate but, for the love of Gawd, be first.”

I saw how different papers reacted to getting beaten on a story. Some would try their best to pretend that the story didn’t exist. Move along, nothing to see here. A subset of this group had a more passive-aggressive approach. They would respond with a story that somehow “knocked down” the significance of our “scoop.”

I had no respect for that nonsense. The good papers would dutifully report the story in question, trying to top us with new information or a new angle, and then striving to beat the pants off of us for future new developments.

So, when I read your coverage of a recent Green Cove City Council meeting, I was disappointed by your reporting. A quick summary is in order:

The administration of former City Manager Steve Kennedy had effectively pulled off a bureaucratic mugging. The city had extracted more than two hundred grand from an Orange Park businessman who owns an industrial parcel here in town. The mugging came in the form of billed stormwater fees over the span of three years.

The problem is: His property wasn’t connected to the city stormwater system and never had been. He was maintaining his own system of culverts and ditches to move excess water to the St. Johns River. According to a plain language reading of city ordinances, the fees did not apply to him.

Lately, with a changing of the guard on the City Council, there has been recognition that this was akin to a civil rights violation. Plus, the mugging victim had finally decided to sue the city, asking a judge to reverse the injustice.

What I found breathtaking was the mindset. If the City of Green Cove were willing to do this to a guy who could afford lawyers, what chance do the rest of us have of being treated fairly?

So, you’ve got an alleged injustice, a lawsuit, and a debate in the council between new councilors and the previous regime about whether to spend money fighting the case or just give the guy his money back.

What was your meeting story about? Whether the interim city manager can get the position permanently even though he lives outside the city in Bostwick.

Okay, I still think the stormwater mugging is a better choice, but the residency question is a legitimate news story and appears to have been well reported. Then, down at the bottom of your piece, we get to a workhorse phrase that you will often see in meeting coverage. “In other business, the council did xyz.” or maybe it was “In other action.”

Well, the other action was (I hate the term) a nothing-burger. You made no mention of the Huntley case despite the debate it was causing. And clearly this was a petty omission, justified only because Clay News & Views has been covering the story all along. People other than me have noticed this.

Look, Clay News & Views is just three unpaid volunteers with a little bit of insight into what goes on around here. You are the closest thing to a paper of record in an era when newspapers are shutting down almost every day.

You wanna survive? Quit worrying about ways to diminish our credibility and just cover the freaking news. That’s the promise you’ve made to readers, even if your primary sustenance comes from the money the county pays for you to print legal notices.