SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVING COVERAGE OF PLANNING & GROWTH ISSUES
1. Assign reporters to cover the Moscow Planning & Zoning Commission and the
Latah Planning and Zoning Commissions. Ideally, the same reporter would cover
planning at both city and county levels. But since the city P&Z meets the same
night as one of the country groups, it takes two reporters.
When I was a reporter for the Idahonian back in the '70s, I covered both groups
regularly. But at some point in the Shelledy era, the paper stopped sending a
reporter to all but the most controversial meetings (though Geoff Fattah
occasionally went to county meetings).
2. Do detailed "advance" stories about public hearings on zoning matters -- very
few people read the legal notices closely enough to recognize the significance
or impact of proposed changes. Moscow's citizens were blind-sided by the Wal
Mart rezoning because no one (including the Daily News' city hall reporter at
the time) was paying attention to the legal notices.
3. Provide maps whenever possible to help readers see where the affected
property is. For example, I still don't know exactly how large the "blighted"
area in Moscow's urban-renewal district is ... seeing a map is much more
helpful than just reading about the boundaries.
4. Scrutinize the universities' enrollment projections, especially WSU's.
According to WSU's long-range campus plan, the Pullman campus will have an
enrollment of 25,000 by 2020 -- nearly 10,000 more students. What kind of
impact will that kind of increase (and corresponding increase in faculty and
staff) have on housing, traffic and water supply? How many more thousands of
cars a day must travel the Moscow-Pullman Highway if 2,000 of those students and
500 or so faculty members live in Latah County?
5. Use the editorial page to stimulate discussion on growth issues. While the
proposed 2020 monthly column on planning is a good idea, it's no substitute for
regular and informed commentary on issues facing city and county governments.
Editorials that raise questions about the potential long-term consequences (good
and bad) of future development, as well as provide some regional context for
what's happening in Moscow and Pullman, would be much appreciated.
Good luck! I hope the meeting goes well.
--Kenton
Kenton Bird
Department of Journalism
and Technical Communication
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1785
Phone: (970) 491-5986 Fax: (970) 491-2908
e-mail: KBird@vines.ColoState.edu