Last week, several members of Pottsville City Council tore into the city’s daily newspaper, saying it’s not a local paper anymore and at least partially to blame for the city’s communication on the controversial stray cats ordinance.
This piling on of criticism comes months after the paper was sold by Times Shamrock to MediaNews Group.
Since then, there’s been a mass exodus of longtime employees of the paper. The paper’s home on Mahantongo St. was sold. The price of the paper has gone up to $3 for editions printed Tuesday through Saturday and to $3.50 for the Sunday paper.
And from what we’ve been told, home delivery issues continue to plague the company.
Well, last week, several members of City Council decided to twist the knife already sticking in the paper when they lobbed criticism at the Republican Herald, partly blaming it for not helping get the word out about Pottsville’s controversial stray cat ordinance.
The topic of the paper came up during City Council’s public participation portion of the meeting.
Business owner Abby Weaver asked why City Council doesn’t communicate to the public about issues before votes are taken. And, she asked, why did it take until a month after the ordinance was passed for any sort of communication on it to come from the City.
During last week’s meeting, Pottsville’s Animal Control Officer said he had been in discussion for months with local shelters and another animal organizations about starting a Trap-Neuter-Release program but last week was the first anyone had heard of it, including some of the organizations who might be able to help.
That’s when the finger-pointing targeted the newspaper.
Councilwoman Dorothy Botto spoke directly to the newspaper’s reporter, claiming they had the information about the ordinance prior to the second reading and passage of the stray cats ordinance and didn’t put it in the paper.
“That could have saved the cat-hating comments (on social media) and things like that,” Botto said.
Of course, the newspaper or any news outlet, does not exist to serve the public relations needs of government. It’s actually just the opposite. Weaver noted that in her comments in reply to the partial blame placed on the paper.
For the record, The Canary did place three phone calls to City Hall looking to obtain a copy of the stray cats ordinance prior to the vote to adopt it in June but none of those calls were returned.
Additionally, Pottsville has plenty of other options to disseminating information it wants the public to receive and has used them in the past.
There’s a City-owned website. It also manages a Facebook page. And City officials appear regularly on SSPTV to discuss topics similar to the cat ordinance that it wants the public to know.
Botto did say that the City needs to “improve on the communication with our newspaper representative” as a way to prevent miscommunications happening in the future.
But the critiques of the new Republican Herald didn’t stop there.
Mayor Dave Clews indirectly admitted that the City needs to improve its communication with the public. He noted the addition of video screens in the Council chamber and improved video streaming technology for City Council meetings.
“When we don’t get the word out. When people only get half the story, that’s when everybody’s a hero on the keyboard. I get calls. I get visitors,” Clews said.
Then, he took a bit of a shot at the paper … mostly at the new owners and in no way, the employees at the Republican Herald.
“I think everybody would know that the Republican Herald has changed drastically since new ownership,” Clews said. “It’s not a Schuylkill County paper anymore. It’s a here to New York border paper. We’re fortunate enough to get some front page news. That’s not against any of their employees. They’re doing what they can do. We do have to find more effective means.”
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