Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser's torturous relationship with the Kansas City press is now part of an advice book for other embattled government types. In Good Press, Bad Press, De-Pressed: Governing's Media Survival Guide for Public Officials, Funkhouser joins Eliot Spitzer and other less-infamous politicians in providing textbook examples on how to -- or how not to -- deal with the media.
The book was written by Governing magazine's Jonathan Walters, who spent years covering Funkhouser's work as city auditor. Governing named Funkhouser Public Official of the Year in 2003, and Walter makes no secret of his affection and admiration for the big lug.
If nothing else, it's interesting to read about Funkhouser's administration from this perspective -- and a couple of the anecdotes shine some interesting light on what goes on behind the scenes at the Star. In a chapter titled "Blogging Blah, Blah, Blah: Geek Media Relations 2.0," for example, Walters recounts a conversation with one of Funkhouser's former colleagues in the auditing department, Michael Eglinski:
Eglinski had recently left his auditing job in Kansas City and moved to Lawrence, Kansas, and clearly there were things he didn't miss about the Big City, including the blog run by the Kansas City Star. "The whole immediacy of the Internet is driving things to the extent where the Kansas City Star city hall reporter is almost no longer reporting on the business of government," says Eglinski. "It's almost gossip. It used to be as a staffer you'd talk to reporters and figure that it was all off the record. That's completely changed. Everything is fair game."
And "everything" includes some pretty irrelevant and silly stuff. Eglinski talks about the blog posting where Kansas City mayor (and former chief auditor) Mark Funkhouser is alleged to have encountered a political enemy in city hall. Funkhouser, according to the posting, did a double take when he saw his nemesis, "fleeing" downstairs to escape.
High drama, I suppose, blogwise, but wrong. Funkhouser, whom I know very well, stands 6 feet 10 inches (at least) and doesn't back down from anybody. The real story, says Eglinski: The mayor was on that particular floor looking for a Diet Coke. When he saw that the machine was out, he simply hotfooted it one floor down to another machine. But the blog needed to be quenched, and Diet Coke, apparently, was not sufficiently fizzy to do the job.
Kendrick Blackwood, who handles press for Kansas City mayor Mark Funkhouser, recalls a daylong economic development summit, pulled together by the mayor, that was aimed at figuring out realistic ways to stimulate downtown businesses, including how to support the sort of mom-and-pop shops that often make up the backbone of a truly viable neighborhood economy.As many of you know, Blackwood used to be a Pitch reporter. He worked here from late 2001 until late 2005. Before that, he was a reporter for the Lawrence Journal-World, the Omaha World-Herald and the Times-Record News in Wichita Falls, Texas. These days, we treat him like any other source at City Hall.
The economic development report for the Kansas City Star made no bones about how boring he found the proceedings. "He's used to covering 'mega-redevelopment projects,' said Blackwood. And this surer, steadier, more modest approach to improving the downtown business climate just wasn't thrilling to this reporter. The announcement, at the end of the day, that the city would establish a sales tax-free zone to stimulate economic development in a historically African American neighborhood barely made the paper -- it was buried deep in the inside pages.
Local newspaper coverage on other key issues has been so off the mark in Blackwood's eyes that he actually violated his own prime directive (one worth adhering to most of the time): He went over reporters' heads to editors at the Star. That's always a tough call and a potentially hazardous maneuver. The only thing worse than an inept, hostile, lazy, and/or not overly bright reporter is an indept, hostile, lazy, and/or not overly bright reporter with a grudge. Blackwood felt compelled in this case to make the move. He admits that nothing really seems to have changed in the wake of his discussions with edit staff, one way or the other.
But Blackwood -- a former reporter -- is clearly among the frustrated denizens of public sector press shops frazzled by journalists who seem to be driven by some odd personal news-gathering imperative frequently unrelated to the reality at hand.
On the toughest of the Kansas City press corps, says Blackwood, he's tried everything by way of charm, cooperation, and openness, none of which seems to have worked. Blackwood's boss, on the other hand, says he has come to terms with what has been a testy relationship with the press from the very start: "I just ignore them," says Mayor Funkhouser.I know that last line's not quite true. At a Kansas City Press Club event in March, Funkhouser faced many of us who had made his public life more difficult over the past couple of years. Rather than unloading on us, he professed great respect for the local media and reminded us that we were the watchdogs of democracy.
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