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There’s a new link in the County Party Websites blogroll - the Perry County Democrats. Welcome!

http://www.perrycountydemocrats.com/

Our June Membership Meeting is tomorrow (6/27) where our speaker will be talking about healthcare and a single payer healthcare system.
Update: The speaker will be Dr. Chris Stack, member of Healthcare-Now.

Three new campaign links.

IN-02: Joe Donnelly for Congress; http://www.donnellyforuscongress.com

Statehouse 57: J.D. Lux; http://www.jdluxforstaterep.com/

Statehouse 89: John Barnes; http://www.barnesforstaterep.com/

See the full list at http://www.indianademclub.org/blog/election06/ and if you know of any other campaigns with websites that need linked, let me know at the Contact page.

There’s a fundraiser for Barry Welsh, who’s running for congress in the 6th against Pence, comign up.

Fundraiser hosted by David and Robyn Honig

Start: 06/24/2006 - 4:00pm

End: 06/24/2006 - 8:00pm

Timezone: Etc/GMT-5

Event Details:
David & Robyn Honig are holding a fundraiser on June 24 from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. David and Robyn live in Carmel, and David has been an active supporter of Barry’s campaign and contributor to the website for quite a while now.

The location of the event is 2811 Maralice Drive in Carmel, Indiana. Stop by and mingle with frinds, talk politics without anny annoying dittoheads runing your good time, and donate your time and or money to a good cause. Here is a map if you are not familiar with the area.

The group Drinking Liberally: Indianapolis is hosting a cookout on Saturday, June 10th at 2pm at one of our members’ house in the Broadripple area. An excuse to get together in the nice weather, enjoy some grilled treats and some beers (or your beverage of choice). If you’re interested, leave a comment here and I’ll get back to you with details!

Date: 5/22/2006
Time: 7:30pm
Location: Julia Carson Government Center, Indianapolis, Indiana
Speaker: Dennis Ryerson, Editor and Vice-President, Indianapolis Star

The meeting was opened at 7:40pm by IDC President Ken Kern. Last months minutes were handed out and accepted as presented. The treasurer’s report was read and accepted as presented.

Speech and Q&A, Dennis Ryerson:
Topic: The Role of the Print Media Today

Introduction by Gilbert Harret, a physician and Vietnam Veteran: Mr. Ryerson has been with many newspapers in the Midwest and West. While with the Des Moines Register, Mr. Ryerson moderated presidential debates and has been on TV news programs such as Meet The Press. Mr. Ryerson is “a breath of fresh air to Indianapolis media.”

Mr. Ryerson: Grew up on an Iowa farm as rental farmers, moving from farm to farm. He got into the newspaper business not because it was a job but because “it is a calling.” As part of his duties in the newspaper business he has been to South Africa at the heigh of Apartheid. It was a very eye opening experience - he was even scolded by the ministry of information for getting out into the townships and actually speaking to the people.

Mr Ryerson remarked how being in Iowa or any “Midwest Flatland” there is “alot of sameness and change can be threatening.” Despite that, he makes it his goal in media to “show people the world as it is, not how they want it to be.”

He gave a great example of this in that he came to the Star right at the beginning of the Iraq war. he came here from San Jose, where his wife was regularly covering anti-war rallies, to a newspaper devoting coverage to the pro-war rallies. He has been told that people are here (Indiana) to “avoid the coasts and ‘where he came from.’” Despite this he came in and worked to balance the coverage.

An example of the disconnect between reporters and the reality ‘on the gorund’ was given when he mentioned his work in Iowa during presidential primaries. Reporters from around the country would come into his office wanting to go out and talk to the farmers, but Mr Ryerson would remind them that only 5% of Iowans farm. There are many areas, especially Midestern communities, that are seen in stereotypical views that he works to fight through his coverage - “don’t succomb to stereotypes but look for commonalities.”
Mr Ryerson also emphasized his role to “not marginalize any voice” in the community and that there is room for all voices at The Star. He freely admitted that the paper has a long way to go, citing that just a matter of a few decades ago the Star woudl run a picture of Jim Crow on the front of every paper, so he understands that there is hesitance from some groups to trust the paper. He wants to work hard to change that an dearn trust.

Good news about The Star : indystar.com gets 30 million page views every month. 2005 saw an increase in circulation while many larger newspapers around the country were bleeding subscribers. 2006 has seen a slight drop but still much less than most. He wants to increase the paper’s footprint in the community with trustworthy reporting.
Mr. Ryerson then spoke on how the media is rapidly changing in today’s environment. People want their news online and want to participate it, but he argues that this has led to people “self selecting” their news that meets their views, and wonders hwo this challenge is to be met by the traditional media.
Mr. Ryerson believes that the print media can still have a role as an investigative body.  In Indiana he wants to investigate the questions of today in depth such as Voter ID, the Toll Road, the new Stadium and smaller issues that may go below the radar.

Despite the Star’s large online readership, Mr. Ryerson laments that many of the hits are going to pages like “Party Crasher” and Man Bites Dog type stories, but they are increasingly seeing more  hits on real news and data.

One story recently that highlights a new push at the Star in gathering data and making it available to readers (along with the stories about the data) was the Star’s requests fo rthe budgets of every Division I college football program to see if the belief that college football makes a profit for its schools is really true. The Star found that after taking away gifts from states such as tax deductible gifts and state money only 10 or 12 Division I football programs were making a profit without support.  After the database was posted, there were over 100,000 hits on the data.

The Star is also looking to soon post a set of data on the pay of every state employee and anayze it for topics such as men vs. women’s pay across the state. It is stories liek this that Mr. Ryerson hoeps to provide more of via the Star and give the newspaper a niche in investigative reporting and making data available to the readers.

Another example is they have a plan to eventually impliment a system where any reader online can imput their address and get a list of all police adn fire calls in their area for the last 24 hours. According to Ryerson, this isn’t to keep people scared, but to allow readers to have allt he information they can about htheir communities.

Q&A:

Q: How is precinct voting data reporting, and can the Star go back to providing information in the print paper again about precinct vote totals?
A: The Star has been doing this exclusively online now, but for the election Mr. Ryerson said he will re-examine the space constraints and see how it turns out.

Q: Since Indy is a one newspaper town, who is the Star’s biggest competitor.
A: Reader time. With so much more going on  in people’s lives today and more news options it is much harder to draw people to print media. Ryerson also laments the lack of competition, arguing that news is better when there are three papers competing for the stories. There are drawbacks, such as stories being published too early to get the scoop, but he feels that the lack of competition does hurt. Also, with the change in commute patterns driving more and more readers to morning papers the afternoon paper died, lessening competition even further.

Q:Why hasn’t the drive to privatize many services beyond the Toll Road such as medicaid benefits received more coverage?
A: Mr. Ryerson agreed that there needs to be more coverage of social privatization attempts in the state. The lack of coverage of education privatization is compounded by the loss of advocates for education in the city due to the flight to the suburbs. “As schools go, so goes the city” and the Star does need more, and deeper, coverage of these issues.

Q: School coverage seems to have shifted to the metro sectins, leaving those in the center of the city left out of school coverage.
A: The Metro sections were set  up before he arrived, and he agrees that they are not set up right, that they are too large of areas to cover and Indianapolis neighborhoods are left out. They are talking at the Star now on how to fix this. They can’t ignore the suburbs, but change is needed.
Q: How many reporters does the Star have specifically assigned to investigative reporting?
A: There are currently a some assigned to various investigative projects, but there is not a dedicated investigative team. He is advertising an investigative reporter position currently to beef this up. They have also improved their polling to make it more scientific and valid since he arrived to the Star.

Q: Is the reader movement to online and blog news due to a lack of hard investigative journalism in many print media sources, and is that in turn driven by the increased hostility towards the media by, and secrecy of, government?
A: Does not believe it is hostility towards Investigative reporting in general. It’s hostility towards questions that lead to what they don’t want out.  He beleives he has a good day when he gets flak from both sides of the debate.

He is more and more dismayed at the increasing classification and closing off of records by the federal government. For example, HIPAA regulations are being used to restrictively that if a newspaper wants to do a story on teh quality of care given by a hospital it is almost impossible to get the information needed to do the story.

The recent story about identity theft of Veterans Administration patients may end up driving even more laws to make information (and stories about things like this) secret, instead of jeal time to those responsible for letting the personal information out. THis is leading to it becomign harder and harder to get information from the government. Government secrecy is bad and “frankly, some editors are cowed” by the trend.

Q: Gannett has a reputation of hewing to the bottom line & not to reporting. It’s better than Pulliam (who used to own the Star) but the questioner is troubled by the reliance on feature stories instead of reporting.
A: Unfortuantely, the Star is not a destination paper for reporters. The paper must improve its quality of reporting to draw more reporters. One thing about Gannett is that even though they don’t do alot of hiring, they don’t fire. The Washington Post cut back its newsroom by 80 but the Star isn’t cutting news staff - the total staff is lower, but investigative and news staff is up since Mr. Ryerson arrived at the Star.

According to Mr. Ryerson, “Gannett does not push what to put on P1 and instead urges papers to serve their community.” He says that this leads some papers to become conservative, some liberal, within Gannett.

Q: When government breaks the law, is it the newspapers’ and whistleblowers’ duty to expose it?
A: Mr. Ryerson agreed. Unfortuantely in our present environment, “a time of war” always leads to more secrecy. 9/11 was a horrible event, but has led to “terrorists” being an excuse for increased secrecy of government. Any more, “asking questions leads to being accused of not supporting the country.”

Sometimes there is push back when the paper does a tough report, but it is not advertisers. The few isntances an advertiser pulls out after a story that possibly hurt them, they have always come back.
Club Business:

A motion was passed to write a letter to Louis Mahern admonishing his anti-union stances on the library project.

A motion was passed to write a letter to the appropriate Indianapolis City/County Council committees in support of Public Access TV.

State Senator Billie Breaux presented Robin Winston his Democratic Man of the Year award from 2001.

Public Access of Indianapolis: http://www.indyaccess.org/

Guests & Notables:

State Senator Billie Breaux, running for Marion COunty Auditor
Kris Kaiser, former candidate for 7th District Congressman. Threw his support behind incumbent Julia Carson after the primary.
Katherine Carr, candidate for 5th District Congresswoman.
Larry Ryan, Center Township Board
Indianapolis City/COunty Councilman Greg Bowes, running for Marion County Assessor.
Marion COunty Circuit COurt Judges Becky Pearson-Treacy and Mark Stoner.
State Representative David Orentlicher
Barry Welsh, candidate for 6th District Congressman
Susan Fuldauer, candidate for District 88 Indiana State Representative
Lettie Oliver, Warren Township Board