The San Francisco Chronicle, meanwhile, used the power of its 500,000-plus circulation to get government agencies to repair escalators, replace damaged street signs, and paint over graffiti on a jungle gym. The paper was less successful in its attempts to have the government regulate sand blowing off Ocean Beach.
OK, I admit it: I'm being snide in the face of success. If you read the local papers, you cannot deny having read ChronicleWatch, the shaded box, usually found on the front of the local news section, that highlights minor problems government bureaucrats worth their salt should fix, pronto.
The ChronicleWatch format has a certain irresistibility to it, a multiple-points-of-entry, Internet-generation, Maxim-magazine-without-breasts kind of feel. It's a box, with two boxes inside: a picture of the public problem in question, and a mug shot of the public official who, in the eyes of ChronicleWatch, could fix the situation. The text is nothing if not succinct: a few sentences describing the problem (for example, both escalators at a subway station out of order); a couple of sentences on the Status of the problem; a Person to contact, along with phone number and e-mail address; and then a standing question -- Is there something broken in your neighborhood? -- followed by the ChronicleWatch phone number and e-mail address.
I suppose part of my fascination with the feature, which debuted in October and generally runs a couple of times a week, lies in its extortionate nature. When the Status of a problem doesn't change -- and quickly! -- another ChronicleWatch box runs, saying the problem's still not fixed. And then another. And sometimes another -- until the problem finally is addressed to CW's satisfaction. At which point the Status is changed to "fixed," and (amid the overwhelming impression that ChronicleWatch has successfully put the screws to another dithering bureaucrat), a public servant is honored as the person Who got it done.
Most government types who deal with ChronicleWatch seem wary of its power. "I don't think it'd be prudent for me to comment," was one for-the-record reply. But off the record, the bureaucrats are downright dismissive, with the word "bullshit," derisive laughter, and audible snorting common reactions to the mere mention of the feature's name.
Government officials who did speak for attribution often seemed to be splitting the difference. Fred Hamdun, executive director of the city's Parking and Traffic Department, said ChronicleWatch "has the potential to be a good thing; however, what I've noticed recently is that they've focused on less-than-deserving-type issues."
Particularly, Hamdun was bothered by a ChronicleWatch item on 17 parking-meter poles on Clement Street; the poles lacked meters. Hamdun said his department is in the process of replacing 23,000 parking meters across the city with electronic devices, and the meter-replacement contract is designed to ensure the project gets done on time. To have changed the schedule to fit the needs of ChronicleWatch would have been bad policy, Hamdun said. "They kept it in there [in the paper] for a week; it gives the citizens the impression we're not responding. ... That's just not fair," Hamdun said. "On that issue we stuck to our guns."
Alex Mamak, director of communications for the city Department of Public Works, agreed to discuss ChronicleWatch, but only if it were made clear that he was expressing his own personal opinion, rather than department policy. He too seemed to take a good-idea/less-than-perfect-execution approach. "It does provide a voice to the citizenry; in that way it's one more channel of communication," Mamak said. "But I have some reservations about the way they promote it."
Perhaps the most widely derided ChronicleWatch was published in mid-October and called on DPW to remove sand blown onto a promenade along Ocean Beach. "That was one that was particularly irksome," Mamak said. "The sand always comes back; it's a force of nature." Even if there were a reasonable way to block sand from blowing onto the promenade, Mamak said, it would need to be approved by the federal government, which controls Ocean Beach.
Even so, after the sandy promenade made a repeat appearance in ChronicleWatch, DPW caved and swept. ChronicleWatch declared victory, announcing that DPW Director Ed Lee had got it done. Lee apparently was not soothed.
A little more than a month later, the Chronicle published a story on the closing of the Great Highway because of flooding and sand deposited on it by harsh winter storms; the story prominently cited complaints by neighbors about the closing, which, they said, filled side streets with traffic diverted from the highway.
Lee took the occasion to write a blistering letter to the editor that noted closure of the highway had been requested by the San Francisco Police Department as a matter of public safety. The final two sentences of Lee's letter, which the Chronicle did not publish, seem particularly heartfelt: "Your paper continues its arrogant attitude to have us sweep sand off the beach, and now water off the highway when it rains. Your paper does not deserve the fish bones that I wrap in it. "
OK, I admit it. When I began looking at ChronicleWatch, it rated below fish bones in my mind, too.
But then I called Dave Murphy, the main researcher and writer for ChronicleWatch. (For the record, he was on vacation and did not deal with the Sisyphean task of removing sand from a beachside promenade.) I found his thoughts on ChronicleWatch to be reasonable.
When told that government officials felt ChronicleWatch might do good, if only it dealt with larger problems in more detail, Murphy's response was disarmingly direct: ChronicleWatch is meant to focus on discrete, quickly fixable problems. The feature's six or eight column inches of space simply leave no room to address the large, complex problems that are the province of many other Chronicle public affairs reporters. "What we want for readers is to feel like there's someone they can go to for something that's a fairly obvious fix," he said.
Murphy said the new feature has gotten strong reader response, and new ChronicleWatches are drawn from a pool of 50 or more problem reports a week. Sometimes, he said, research turns up a reasonable explanation for delays in fixing a problem that initially seemed easy to address. "So we don't end up using it," he said.
In the end, Murphy pretty well convinced me that he is an honest journalist doing what he considers to be a worthwhile (if not literarily satisfying) job, and that I was barking up the wrong journalistic tree. That government officials sometimes find ChronicleWatch oversimplified is to be expected; bureaucrats always say the media have it all wrong. Besides, I am quite willing to let the Chronicle and the city decide, on their own, whether immediate or delayed parking-meter installation on Clement Street better serves the public good.
No, I saw that if I had a problem with ChronicleWatch, it involved not execution, but scope. I've always taught my writers to go for the big story, when and where possible. On journalistic safari, rodents are as hard to kill as big game; so, I tell writers, hunt elephants, not mice.
But daily-newspaper readership continues to decline, the pool of potential readers diminished by horrid public education and then split into a zillion niches by television, the Internet, magazines, video gaming, and even altweeklies like this one. Could I really blame daily editors for looking at almost anything that sparks general reader interest and doesn't involve breasts, sports, or celebrities? ChronicleWatch may aim small on purpose. But at least it aims at a form of public good, and doesn't stop shooting till the critter's dead.
On the whole, I wish a whole lot more Chronicle reporters were tracking pachyderms. But every city needs a good exterminator or two, and with ChronicleWatch watching, no San Francisco mouse will be safe again.
