"We are excited about moving to new facilities that better reflect our organizational needs as we move into the future."
-- Iowa City Press-Citizen General Manager Dan Brown, in a story today about the Gannett paper's agreement to sell its
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Iowa City | How to say we're scaling back
-- Iowa City Press-Citizen General Manager Dan Brown, in a story today about the Gannett paper's agreement to sell its
29 comments:
Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."
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Strangely, the story says that the school superintendent "did not disclose the final purchase price, but said the cost of buying the building and renovating it for the district's uses would be less than the $4.5 million" it's getting for its current building.
ReplyDeleteThis is taxpayer money, Press-Citizen readers are noting in comments on the story. Why isn't the purchase price disclosed?
I do not believe the price can be legally withheld from the public. But it does not have to be volunteered. If no media demands it, then it is likely to remain undisclosed. Shame on the newspaper for not doing its job.
ReplyDeleteTranslation: Laura Hollingsworth to Bob Dickey that she will reduce our costs, so her brilliant idea was to find a smaller office space, hence "we are excited to fire all your asses, so we can move into a new, smaller, office and save even more money". How was that Dickey?
ReplyDeleteWhen I worked for a non-Gannett paper, I would have been in deep shit if I had not found out the price. What's wrong with calling each school board member and checking the board meeting minutes? There are other ways to get information besides from the offical mouthpiece, which seems to be the superintendent in this case.
ReplyDeleteWake up people. There was an easy way to get the information on this one since it involved Gannett. This is just pitiful.
the iowa city building is not "downtown"; rather it is east of I.C. in the most exclusive residential area of the entire community.
ReplyDelete1725 n Dodge St, has been on the market for the last year for $3.45 million, but the Iowa City real estate market is off about 5 percent over that period, so it should gave gone for less.
ReplyDeleteThat is an extravagant price for something one story, 43,495 square feet and 20 years old in the suburbs. It looks like it would go for something less than $2 million, based on one deal I spotted for an office building 14 years old that sold for less than $50 a square foot. Unless, of course, there was some side deal to pay the full price or even more.
If this is public money, aren't they required to have a public appraisal of some neutral party assessing what it is worth before they make a purchase?
ReplyDeleteAlong these same lines of asking the tough questions and getting at the dollars, tell me this please:
ReplyDeleteAll I want to know is whether or not that cruise ship company is going to reimburse the taxpayers for the Pop Tarts and Spam the military apparently had to deliver to the stranded passengers. Did I miss that tidbit in the USAT stories?
That is an extravagant and breathtaking cost for an office building, given the average rent in the United States for office space was $21.85 a square foot, down from $23.04 the previous year. That is for office buildings averaging 559,000 square feet.
ReplyDeleteRents for an office building in Manhattan now average $31.37 a square foot.
9:39 Consider it your contribution to the well-being of downtrodden and impoverished ship passengers scared witless at the prospect of being dumped into the middle of Mexico's drug war and let to find their own way home. They couldn't even get a drink at the bars. Oh, the humanity. Remember the Titanic.
ReplyDeleteThis is 9:47. I meant to attribute those figures to a source:
ReplyDeletehttp://knightfrank.be/library/PDF/Global_Real_Estate_Markets_2010.pdf
These Gannett managers are so good at twisting the truth, one wonders why they ever decided to work in the newspaper business. Did they have to check reality at the door when they were hired?
ReplyDeleteOne could say the same thing about the people who post here, 12:12.
ReplyDeleteThis is beginning to look very sleazy. Why didn't they disclose the purchase price? What are they trying to hide?
ReplyDeleteRemember that the Iowa City Press Citizen
ReplyDeleteis run by the Des Moines Register......
This is the site that closed their Presses and mail room.
They now send the press work and delivery etc
to the competitor nearby ,the Cedar Rapids Gazette,and that is the paper that they compete with in Iowa City as well.Figure that out.
They lost big in layoffs in 09 ,so the building has been for sale since then.Why occupy a large building when you only employ so few.
7:06 Hey, the posters here are not the ones covering up the costs of this building. What's the twisting of truth here? I only see questions that need to be asked and answered.
ReplyDeleteOne thing about the Press-Citizen most people don't know is that they have real competition from the University of Iowa's Daily Iowan.
ReplyDeleteChilean miners two months trapped underground with no food. Passengers on the Carnival cruise ship three days on the sea deprived of ice for their drinks and provided only cold food and Spam. You decide who gets the sob story. Maybe there is a book for one of the Carnival survivors?
ReplyDeleteThe point about the cruise ship is this: Will the company pay the government (taxpayers) back for assistance lended to that private company. Quite frankly, I can't afford a cruise, and I really would rather see my tax money going somewhere else besides for delivering Spam and Pot Tarts to people who CAN afford vacations.
ReplyDeleteI'd rather they'd be given spam and pop-tarts than the MRE's that rained down on Louisiana at $7 plus a meal. And from the beginning, Carnival paid for the food, the Navy just delivered it. Spam was never served on board either.... oh hell, the story is more interesting the way we told it to begin with, let's just skip the facts.
ReplyDeleteBoohoo, you can't afford a vacation, so someone who made different life choices shouldn't be helped when they're endangered?
By that stupid logic, if I can't afford a car and you wreck your Buick, that's your own dumb luck for being uppity and living the high life? NO EMT FOR YOU!
But here's the real news story - had this event not happened, the Navy wouldn't have left the Ronald Reagan tied up at San Diego, turned off and with the keys on the dash. That boat would have been running the same types of helicopter missions, communications drills, maybe more fixed-wing sorties - but with no purpose at all except for training.
At least this way, they got real practice doing their jobs and they assisted other Americans at the same time.
But again, that doesn't fit the story we (the press) decided this was going to be. Remember the Spiderman or Superman movies, where the cigar-chomping editor blocks out his front page in the air, without regard for actual facts or the real story?
Except now at big G, that editor is also pushing it online 3 minutes after he gets the first tweet from Huffington, calling his diversity list for their opinion, reworking the department budget and finalizing his 'interns only sports dept.' at the same time.
http://www.iowa-city.k12.ia.us/board/2010-11/November%209,%202010/11-9-10%20Closed%20Session.pdf
ReplyDeleteWell, looks like the building purchase might have been done in closed session. I'm wondering why the original story didn't say that.
4:19 AM
ReplyDeleteJust offered me more proof of what's wrong with today's journalists. I think they're out of touch with readers.
The point is this: MY tax dollars are being used to help a private company. I don't like that one bit. I'm sure a bunch of USAT readers agree with that stand.
The only time your tax dollars aren't being used to help a private company is when they are directly given to another government. Otherwise, every dollar we spend goes to a corporation, even if we have to give it to the seniors or the military first.
ReplyDelete"But here's the real news story - had this event not happened, the Navy wouldn't have left the Ronald Reagan tied up at San Diego, turned off and with the keys on the dash. That boat would have been running the same types of helicopter missions, communications drills, maybe more fixed-wing sorties - but with no purpose at all except for training.
ReplyDeleteAt least this way, they got real practice doing their jobs and they assisted other Americans at the same time."
That's your opinion. Maybe the boat would have been idle, and maybe not. The best way to find out is to do some reporting, pal, to find out what missions were haulted so that the Navy could "bail out" a private company. If it's nothing, then why are the staff being paid in the first place to do nothing? Now, that's a story, and one taxpayers want to know.
I'm sure I'll read the real stories soon in The Guardian. And I'm sure that news organization will have worthwhile video, interactives, maps, interviews, timelines and all the things that are woefully lacking in USAT.
12:12 PM
ReplyDeleteYep. But at least when government aid is given to seniors, it's not a direct link to a private company. A person (taxpayer) has a choice about which business to support with the money.
This is different. My tax money is being used to pay people to "bail out" a cruise ship company. I resent that big time, and I'd like to see USAT and other news places take every opportunity to tell me where my tax dollars are going.
This was a ship in trouble on the seas. Of course the US Navy would respond because the admirals would get a black eye if they didn't. So they sent a few helicopters and wrote it off to the training budget. So what?
ReplyDelete12:24 PM
ReplyDeleteWhat? The cruise ship company should reimburse the taxpayers, that's what.
12:37 Do you reimburse the fire department for coming when your house is burning down?
ReplyDelete12:51 PM
ReplyDeleteOnly when they bring Spam and Pop Tarts. Now pal, I'm finished debating this topic. Nice we can agree to disagree.
You may now return to your cubicle.