In the Virginian-Pilot, We Trust

A better block

Or do we? 

In deference to the deity of journalistic integrity, you would think the Virginian-Pilot would put some distance between its reporting and the team Better Block project and the proposed public arts district.

Of late, most of the reporting has centered on the Granby Street corridor, north of Brambleton avenue, and less on the other two sites the Dallas-based consulting firm plans to “better” blocks of our city.

Those are 35^th Street and the Church street complex made up of the Five Points Market  and the Fawn Street Studios.

That raises a red flag. 

The art of what?

But, more specifically, it’s the area where this weekend Team Better Block plans to stage an event that concerns me.

The proposed area for the public arts district encompasses Granby Street north from Brambleton Avenue to Virginia Beach Boulevard and west to the Chrysler Museum.

Which means the district would include The Virginian-Pilot at 150 Brambleton Avenue.

Which means that Landmark Media Enterprises, which owns the property, would definitely benefit financially should Norfolk City Council approve the arts district.

Because these districts permit cities to offer tax credits, zoning waivers and other incentives to boost economic development.

And Landmark Media Enterprises is the largest property owner within the proposed district, which raises some questions about the The Pilot’s continued coverage of the Better Block project on Granby Street. 

 Someone, of course, could point a finger at me and accuse me of biased reporting. But I’m not really reporting; I am writing a column. I don’t profess to have an objective, balanced viewpoint.

The Pilot professes to have one.

Despite the public denials, journalists and reporters always inject their bias into a story. We are human and humans have biases.

Reporters fall in love with their sources or have crushes on their sources or utterly hate their sources, and their feelings surface in their articles. 

Now, newspapers hate to air their dirty laundry, though they love to air the dirty laundry of others.

And despite this mantra that they exist to serve the public interest, as this is somehow divinely inspired, the newspaper business is competitive, egotistical and award driven.

Newspapers are their best worst critic.

As readers of this blog already know, I’m not a fan of a public arts district. But I’m willing to give anything a chance to succeed or fail on its own merit.

My philosophy is very simple: people make cities, not buildings, blocks, windows, murals on a billboard or the side of a condemned building, because you have to consider that people own the buildings, people do the art, they hate, love and screw – and that is our essence.

The conflicts, the isolation, the gregariousness and the egotism.  All of it and nothing more.

It is the passion. And the style.

Not tunnels constructed of bamboo, not chickens and pigs on billboards. Some would ask, “is the Better Block project a pig chickening or a chicken pigging.”

But, hey, serve enough beer and wine, act all artsy, fartsy and you have the essence of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.”

Norfolk needs style. We have it. People may not like it. But it’s there; we just have to show it.