Nugget Project 2.0: RGJ fumbles story

I don't pay a lot of attention to the Reno Gazette-Journal for Carson City news. It's been years since they shut down their bureau here, and I haven't seen them do much original reporting about our city since then.

But I ran across this correction to their story on this week's Nugget Project meeting, and had to laugh. It's one thing to blow the original story, but the correction blows it, too.

A Monday story about a Carson City library project noted about $23 million donated by the Mae B. Adams trust and Carson City Library Foundation for the project. The money includes $4.5 million in a down payment for the land and an $18.7 million donation.

Get that? The Adams Trust and the Library Foundation are making a $4.5 million down payment for the land, and a $18.7 million donation.

In the real world, the Adams Trust is planning to donate three acres of land, valued at $4.5 million, to an as-yet-unformed nonprofit entity. The plan is for this entity to use the land to help secure financing for the project.

Funny, but the reporter actually got this partially right in the story he wrote before the meeting, noting that "(t)he land has been donated...." If the land has been donated, why would there be a $4.5 million down payment for the land? But of course the land hasn't been donated yet.

As for the $18.7 million, these organizations are pledging to raise that money by next April to get the project going. The correction and the post-meeting story makes it sound like they already have the money on hand and are just waiting for city approval to hand it over.

If the reporter had actually been at the meeting, he probably would not have made these errors. Instead, he seems to have relied on information fed to him by people connected to the project.

The post-meeting story has other uncorrected errors as well. It attributes some of its information to Kerri Garcia, "a communications official with the Carson City Library." Wrong. Garcia is a public relations person hired by Nugget President Steve Neighbors, and has no official capacity with the Carson City Library.

The story also states that the project will be funded in part by a "0.8 percent sales tax increase...." That should be a 1/8th cent increase, which would work out to 0.125 percent. The same reporter got this right in the story that was printed before the meeting.

That first story also has problems, such as this line:

The committee that is making the proposal tonight includes Carson City Manager Larry Werner, Carson City Supervisor Karen Abowd and H + K Architects...

There was no committee making the proposal last Monday, the proposal was being made to the committee, and I don't remember Supervisor Abowd being a part of this presentation. In fact, it would be seem a bit strange to have a sitting supervisor making a presentation to a committee to get them to recommend a project to the Board of Supervisors where she serves.

Besides mixing up the facts, the reporter also relied on just three sources for all his stories, all from the same side: PR professional Garcia, Library Director Sara Jones and Robin Williamson. He also seemed to miss the fact that Williamson, who he described only as "a member of the Library Board of Trustees," is also a member of the advisory committee, and a former supervisor who championed this project from the beginning. That's kind of important to the story.

He quotes Williamson at one point saying, "The biggest opposition we've faced is that some people feel strongly that we should put this tax increase on the ballot." That may be her view. It's also some nice spin in her side's favor, basically limiting the opposition to a procedural issue instead of acknowledging the persistent complaints about the earlier version of this project. I know a number of people would strongly disagree with her view, and the reporter might have found that out if he had bothered to talk to anyone who was opposed to the project. He could have found some of those opponents had he been at the meeting, or just used Google.

But I'm not here to slam the reporter, because he's only a part of a the problem. It appears to me he was thrown into this story, told to cover it from afar while juggling probably half a dozen other stories. My question is why the RGJ is trying to cover such a complex story in Carson City? They seem to still be in love with the metro newspaper concept, even though they barely have the staff to cover their own city. Then they waste resources giving superficial coverage to stories 30 miles away, somehow trying to keep alive the notion that they cover "the region."

Reporters make mistakes. I get that, because I've made them. But the editor who did that correction made it worse. He or she should have checked to see if the correction was accurate, and if the story had anything else wrong with it. It should have been obvious from reading both the pre- and post-meeting stories that there were inconsistencies. I know from experience, there is nothing an editor hates more than making multiple corrections to the same story. It makes everyone involved look incompetent.

So, people of Carson City, if you want local news, stick with one of your local news sources.