IS "THE REP" SYSTEMATICALLY TRYING TO REHAB HEALY?

In what appears to the SCPR to be a "puff" piece (Healy goes extra mile for Canton to gain call center, Ed Balint, August 6, 2011) that is more likely to come from a public relations type (or, in the case of Canton government, the likes of former communications director Adam Herman) than MSM (main stream media).

It seems as if The Repository - realizing that Healy is highly likely to be around for four more years - has embarked on a rehabilitation project of the mayor and his administration?

The Report has long maintained that The Rep should do a disclaimer each and every time it does publish anything on Canton officials in light of the contract that Stark County's only countywide newspaper (its parent company:  GateHouse) has with Canton to publish a glossy quarterly Canton public relations magazine:  The Canton Connection.

Repository publisher Kevin Kampman has promised Stark Countians that The Rep's commercial ties to the Healy administration would not affect its reportorial/editorial coverage of the mayor.  Promises, promises!  So Kampman has the audacity to ask us to trust them?  A newspaper man should know better than to ask readers to suspend their critical faculties.  What a perversion of what a newspaper ought to be doing.  Newspapers are to encourage reader "due diligence;" not falling back to "blind faith."

Trust, but verify is more in order.

However, how can one verify that Kampman, Gauger and Beck keep their hands off the reporter staff or are unaffected by The Rep's financial interest in their journalism. 

Answer:  You can't.

So we have come full circle to simply trusting the poobahs at The Rep.

The SCPR is not willing to do that.  Neither should any discerning reader.

In hypocritical fashion, then, The Rep's editors annotate letters to the editors and the like indicating any interests/connections/associations the writer of the letter may have in the subject matter of the letter. 

Readers of The Rep should be constantly be reminded of its money making ties to Canton government so they are equipped to factor same into the credibility and reliability of the published material.  Moreover, the same should apply with other units of Stark County government that The Rep writes about and has commercial ties with.

In his writing Balint seems to be praising Healy for doing what Healy ought to have done without seeking/receiving any recognition for the effort.

But that wouldn't be Healy.

For The Repository to be a willing conduit of Mayor Healy seemingly incessant need to have his ego stroked is disturbing.

Going the extra mile?  You have to be kidding. 

In reality, Healy's effort has been a matter of survival for him personally in the political sense and for Canton in the economic development/financial sense. 

While getting jobs - any jobs - even those VXI Global Solutions call center jobs paying $10 - $12 an hour (not likely a living wage job for a breadwinner with family) are worthwhile; these are hardly the kind of jobs that are going to return Canton to a "new" glory, to wit:  “My vision is not about going back to the glory days of the past.  My vision is to create the new glory days.” (William J. Healy II - City 'is far better today.' The Repository,  Balint, April 23, 2011)

In the City 'is far better today' article, Healy is also portrayed as follows:

Detractors of the mayor describe him as a pompous dictator. A leader who is arrogant, boasting of his master’s degree in business administration from the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University.

Asked about that image, Healy fired back with the swagger of a gunslinger. “If you want to know the root of brain drain, it’s the small-minded folks who criticize those who go out and get our education and come home and want to give back to their community, and are criticized because they did something (with) their lives.”

“... If every kid could do that ... the city would skyrocket to success,” he said.

Leave it to Healy to invent a word ("those") that was never used in the critique he is referring to.

The SCPR is the critic he is referring to.  The Report has never criticized people in general who try to improve themselves with advanced education.  Yours truly has a daughter who is a medical doctor, another who is an attorney working on her PhD and a third who has a masters degree and is a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force Reserve.


It would be strange indeed if they were to have had a father who did not promote higher education as they were growing up right here in Stark County, wouldn't it?

No, Mayor Healy, cannot hide behind his contrivance of "those" in order to divert attention from himself.  He stands alone in The Report's critique of his misuse of having an advanced education.

When one trumpets ad nauseam as he did and continues to do  - his NYU degree - such suggests a certain insecurity on his part.  The way he has used his achieving an MBA from the NYY Stern School of Business has been as an play on arrogant superiority and as a club; not as an inspiration/motivation for others to follow.

The SCPR honors those who achieve intellectually.  Canton and Stark County does need the best and the brightest to stay in, return to and come anew to the area to provide the intellectual power that we need to get out of the deep, deep hole that unthinking, self-serving, power grabbing politicians have put us in over a number of decades.

The Report does not see Healy as being an intellectual powerhouse who has the potential to bring on a "new glory" to Canton, his NYU degree notwithstanding.  He is way too much into himself to be thinking much of others and their well being.

The SCPR continues to see him as smart in the sense of having political street smarts with the chutzpah to bully his way through most any tough situation so that he can be king of his own little world.

Apparently, the folks at The Repository see him differently.

Time will tell who is right.

In the meantime, it would be real nice if The Rep writers started applying disclaimers to themselves when writing about their customers.

One other thing about Balint and his pieces on Healy.

It has to do with Balint's discussion about the viciousness, horror (Healy's terms) perpetuated by The Repository in its article Healy Fakes Illness and its column Healy's time off debated which were, according to Balint, written "in late 2000 and 2001."

From Balint: (William J. Healy II - City 'is far better today.'  Balint, April 23, 2011)

But “there was nothing anyone could do that was more horrific” [Healy said to Balint] than the article and column about his father, he said, referring to bloggers, council members, the media and the public.

Who specifically were:

• the bloggers, 
• the council members, ... and 
• members of the public circa late 2000, early 2001 had anything to do with The Rep's article and column about Healy's father?

Were these Healy's words or were they Balint's fill?  Hmm?

The reference to "the media?"

Of course, we know its identity.

But who at The Repository ('the media") wrote Healy Fakes Illness?

Who at The Repository ("the media") wrote Healy's time off debated? 

It is interesting that Balint does not identity the writers!