Et Tu, Bernstein?
David Bernstein of the Boston Phoenix saw fit to trash the At-Large Boston City Council Candidates Forum we held last night at Roxbury Community College in his Talking Politics blog today, saying "Man, I do love me some political theater. I went looking for some at an at-large Boston City Council forum earlier this evening at Roxbury Community College, but the poorly-promoted event had more candidates on stage than voters in the audience (this may actually have been literally true, once you subtract the press and candidates' aides from the audience). Yeesh."
First of all, Bernstein couldn't have stayed overlong at the event because there were over 70 attendees to the forum - although people were predictably slow to show up. Second, there were certainly aides and supporters present, but we estimate that those folks made up perhaps a third of the audience.
What Bernstein doesn't know - and likely didn't stick around to find out - is who the other attendees were ... and more to the point, what organizations they represented. Major community organizations like Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, Chinese Progressive Association, and the Boston Workers Alliance.
Also, the event drew 11 out of the 15 candidates. Some ducked out to other events before the forum concluded, but a majority stayed to the end and spent a healthy chunk of time giving thoughtful answers to audience questions.
Finally, and most germane to this discussion, Bernstein slapped the forum down before bothering to ask the editors of Open Media Boston why we decided to do the event, how much lead time we had to work with, and why we held it at the RCC Media Arts Center instead of a smaller venue on campus.
Our answers are simple. We decided to do the event only two weeks ago when it became evident that there were very few opportunities for the at-large candidates to gather for a media-sponsored forum - compared to the number and quality of the mayoral race events.
We did it in a short time frame because we thought it was important that such a forum should take place before the primary later this month to give the full field a chance to hold forth, and get some extra publicity from our publication and the other community publications present like the Bay State Banner and the Dorchester Reporter.
We did it at the Media Arts Center because it's a very nice facility in the heart of the city right off the T and it was available for a very reasonable rate. We knew it was going to be too big for the crowd we thought we'd manage to pull in a few days, but the excellent a/v facilities there make it a very easy place to get good audio, video and photographic records of the proceedings - which we could then make available to our audience, and to other community publications (our event coverage will be up on our main site later this week).
The big question that Bernstein doesn't ask is the very one we asked ourselves before going to the trouble of overextending our very small staff and financial resources to pull the forum off in 2 weeks. That is, why don't larger publications like the Phoenix, Metro, Globe, Herald and others use their still-not-inconsiderable resources to put together a much bigger forum for the at-large candidates? Why just focus on the mayoral candidates? Aren't the council races important - especially the at-large races? Don't they have a critical impact on city politics in the near term?
We don't think that Bernstein's snarky tone was warranted or especially public spirited in this case. We did what we did in the public interest - which we believe is very much a critical part of being an urban publication of record.
In that spirit, we extend the hand of friendship to Bernstein and the Phoenix and enjoin them to work with us do a bigger and better event (with several weeks lead time) for the final 8 At-Large Boston City Council candidates in advance of the November elections. We would naturally hope that the Phoenix will see their way clear to bankrolling the event.
If the Phoenix is uninterested in staging such a public forum with us, we understand, but would say that it speaks volumes about their level of concern about the sad state of democratic discourse in Boston politics in particular and American politics in general.
First of all, Bernstein couldn't have stayed overlong at the event because there were over 70 attendees to the forum - although people were predictably slow to show up. Second, there were certainly aides and supporters present, but we estimate that those folks made up perhaps a third of the audience.
What Bernstein doesn't know - and likely didn't stick around to find out - is who the other attendees were ... and more to the point, what organizations they represented. Major community organizations like Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, Chinese Progressive Association, and the Boston Workers Alliance.
Also, the event drew 11 out of the 15 candidates. Some ducked out to other events before the forum concluded, but a majority stayed to the end and spent a healthy chunk of time giving thoughtful answers to audience questions.
Finally, and most germane to this discussion, Bernstein slapped the forum down before bothering to ask the editors of Open Media Boston why we decided to do the event, how much lead time we had to work with, and why we held it at the RCC Media Arts Center instead of a smaller venue on campus.
Our answers are simple. We decided to do the event only two weeks ago when it became evident that there were very few opportunities for the at-large candidates to gather for a media-sponsored forum - compared to the number and quality of the mayoral race events.
We did it in a short time frame because we thought it was important that such a forum should take place before the primary later this month to give the full field a chance to hold forth, and get some extra publicity from our publication and the other community publications present like the Bay State Banner and the Dorchester Reporter.
We did it at the Media Arts Center because it's a very nice facility in the heart of the city right off the T and it was available for a very reasonable rate. We knew it was going to be too big for the crowd we thought we'd manage to pull in a few days, but the excellent a/v facilities there make it a very easy place to get good audio, video and photographic records of the proceedings - which we could then make available to our audience, and to other community publications (our event coverage will be up on our main site later this week).
The big question that Bernstein doesn't ask is the very one we asked ourselves before going to the trouble of overextending our very small staff and financial resources to pull the forum off in 2 weeks. That is, why don't larger publications like the Phoenix, Metro, Globe, Herald and others use their still-not-inconsiderable resources to put together a much bigger forum for the at-large candidates? Why just focus on the mayoral candidates? Aren't the council races important - especially the at-large races? Don't they have a critical impact on city politics in the near term?
We don't think that Bernstein's snarky tone was warranted or especially public spirited in this case. We did what we did in the public interest - which we believe is very much a critical part of being an urban publication of record.
In that spirit, we extend the hand of friendship to Bernstein and the Phoenix and enjoin them to work with us do a bigger and better event (with several weeks lead time) for the final 8 At-Large Boston City Council candidates in advance of the November elections. We would naturally hope that the Phoenix will see their way clear to bankrolling the event.
If the Phoenix is uninterested in staging such a public forum with us, we understand, but would say that it speaks volumes about their level of concern about the sad state of democratic discourse in Boston politics in particular and American politics in general.
posted by jpramas at
5:00 PM
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