New twist as newspaper association director is queried by Pelham Public Relations and Marketing Specialist
BY DAVE BURKET The VOICE
Following our story last week, chronicling Pelham Town Hall’s trashing of Voice copies left for the public, the removal of a media worktable from Council chambers, and the Town’s refusal to answer or even acknowledge the simplest question from Voice staff, reaction was swift.As of press time, the online version had garnered some 4,400 hits, 36 shares and 33 almost entirely critical comments on Facebook.
A number of residents have expressed frustration in person to Voice staff. Some have said that they intend to carry folding tables into Council chambers for the next Council meeting as a symbolic protest. The meeting was scheduled for Monday evening after the newspaper went to press.
“There seems to be a general lack of professionalism on what would appear to be a whole bunch of city officials,” said Nick Taylor-Vaisey, the President of the Canadian Association of Journalists.
“When you have [newspapers] who are independent...it seems to confuse public officials into mismanaging situations. But this seems unique in that the tap has been turned off. What a bizarre way to go about dealing with the media.”
Taylor-Vaisey, who is also an editor at Maclean’s magazine, said that the Town should “really start picking the phone, and put the media table back there. And they should stop being so blatantly anti-transparency.”
Taylor-Vaisey said that the Town’s refusal to answer even the most mundane of questions fails the public interest.
“They have a duty to respond to question from the press on issues of public interest. That’s the first bad thing,” he said.
“And the second bad thing is that they’re shooting themselves in the foot. Your readers have no idea what their rationale—or more likely excuses—would be. The full story is never told, and the community can’t move forward. It seems to feed a very poorly informed community.”
Taylor-Vaisey said that he’s never heard of a municipality throwing away papers.
“That's petty as hell. It’s not just petty, it’s damaging... It’s not like even under the cover of night you’re going to get away with something like this. Someone’s going to notice that there are newspapers in the trash, and it’s not going to be hard to figure out who did it. That fact was going to come out. It makes no sense. Ham-fisted, wrong-headed, it’s everything.”
A new twist came last week when the Voice was alerted by Caroline Medwell, Executive Director of the Ontario Community Newspaper Association, that she had been contacted by Town Public Relations and Marketing Specialist Marc MacDonald—but that MacDonald initially did not clearly identify who he was and where he worked.
Medwell said that MacDonald wanted to know which Voice news articles won the paper an award for Best Investigative News Story, awards which won’t be formally announced until they are presented in Toronto in late April.
“I thought, ‘Why is this guy bugging me about the Voice of Pelham?,’’ said Medwell.
“So I did find out what the story was and I read the story, and I saw his name, Marc MacDonald in it, and I just emailed him and said, ‘I thought you were [an Association] member but you’re not, you seem to be P.R. for the Town.”
Medwell was a journalist for nearly three decades, and worked for the Globe & Mail and Rogers Media in advertising roles, before transitioning into the newspaper association’s management.
“Once I found out that he was trying to get information about the newspaper...I’ve never had a municipality call me,” she said.
Of MacDonald’s inquiries, the Canadian Association of Journalists’ Taylor-Vaisey said, “That’s the kind of thing that's not technically or necessarily unethical, but certainly feeds this weird pursuit of…what? What are they even trying to find out? What a waste of time.”
According to one Pelham resident, he was told by a Regional councillor and a Town of Port Colborne councillor that the media table had been removed so that wheels could be installed on it. The councillors did not specify who in Pelham had asserted this.
But another resident says that she phoned the Town last week and received very different answers from Public Relations and Marketing Specialist Marc MacDonald.
“I asked him some questions, and he said that he didn’t have the answers for me but that he would talk to some people and get back to me,” said the woman.
“He called me back the next day. I asked if there was a desk shortage in Town Hall that they needed the table for, and he said no. I asked him if the Town needed the space in the Council chamber, and he said no, they weren’t using the space. And I asked him if the table was going to be returned, and he said that there were no plans to put it back.”
“There was no mention of wheels,” she said.
The woman says that MacDonald confirmed that the Town was not answering the Voice’s questions, attributing this to an effort to distance itself from the newspaper.
Neither the Mayor, CAO Darren Ottaway, any councillor, nor Marc MacDonald responded to Voice requests for comment prior to Monday night's Council meeting.
As the print edition of the newspaper went to press on Monday evening, Council held its regularly scheduled meeting. Upon being asked by the Voice, face-to-face, MacDonald denied telling the woman that there were no plans for the media table to be returned, instead asserting that he said that he “didn’t know when” it would be put back. Reached later, the woman said that she stood by her account of the conversation. A different table was present in Council chambers on Monday—with wheeled legs.Regional Councillor Brian Baty, however, had plenty to say:
“While I still send Pelham Council a summary report of Regional Council activities, I no longer attend the Pelham Council meetings. I would have generously transferred my seat to the Voice, but Pelham is the only council chamber in Niagara that has not provided dedicated seating for their Regional Councillor, usually at a staff table.
“To deal with the decision to remove the media table from Council chambers, and to trash copies of the Voice, I recommend that all local daycare and nursery care centres be provided copies of “The Emperor’s Clothes,” and that our young citizens learn from this classic story so that they can grow up to become docile, submissive electors.
“As further preventative measures I recommend that the Public Works Department be requested to install water cannons in the arches leading to Town Hall.
“I also expect an infrastructure grant from the federal government to create a moat around Town Hall and to stock the moat with piranhas. The only gate to the Council chamber across the moat should be controlled by Billy Goat Gruff, who will charge admission to enter the Council, and residents will be subjected to a penalty should they ever challenge the Mayor and councillors with a comment or question.
“I recognize that these suggestions are beyond reality, but so is the current situation.”
With additional reporting by Sam Piccolo
On Tuesday, March 20, the Canadian Association of Journalists issued a formal statement criticizing the Town of Pelham's actions pertaining to the Voice. Corrections: An earlier version of this story described the replacement media worktable as not having wheels. The replacement table did, in fact, have wheels. Caroline Medwell's work for The Globe & Mail, and Rogers Media, has been clarified to reflect advertising duties rather than editorial duties.
