Alternative Weekly?

[first published: Friday, December 7, 2007]

Pasadena, California has felt the very real sting an ugly national phenomena, the right-wing attack on public education. It didn't happen though, through some outside agitator as one might imagine, it happened in the most unbelievable manner via our "alternative" weekly which has churned out (literally) bash-articles for many years, aimed at discrediting Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD) - our local public school district - and by association, the thousands of children (mostly of color) housed within it.

For years they have been openly been using none other than Rene Amy's blog ("greatschools and pusdgreatschools" on Yahoo and Google groups) as a news "source" for almost all of their articles on PUSD.

Here the Pasadena Weekly uses information Amy obtained from the district under threat of lawsuit - cell phone receipts (selectively presented by Amy) from former superintendent Percy Clark (Amy conducted many sadistic attacks on Clark during his tenure, many of them documented in the pages of the PW). Amy skewed the content on his blog, and editor Kevin Uhrich wrote an editorial on it, openly quoting Rene Amy in it. Here is a excerpt from Uhrich's 5/31/07 column:

http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/article.php?IssueNum=74&id=4702

Get off the phone!
Editorial By Kevin Uhrich

"We don't want to keep beating a dead horse and jump all over disgraced former schools Superintendent Percy Clark one more time..... Even though he was hounded from his post in November after plagiarizing a column for the Weekly the previous May, Clark — or at least his ears, mouth and dialing digits — have been very, very busy. And all at taxpayers' expense.... Amy compared Clark's phone habits to that of a teenager. “Mr. Clark had no business — quite literally — calling on a district-owned phone,” Amy wrote on his greatschools listserv, which monitors and solicits comments on school news".

Solicit comments? or hate, whatever the purpose of Amy's blog, Uhrich is using it to bash PUSD. He also makes an inaccurate accusation here against Clark when referring to a plagiarism charge that was discovered to be completely unfounded by local reporter Susan Henderson in May of 2006 (one year before this editorial was written!). Note also the griping about "tax payer expense", yet the Weekly has never ever griped about the far greater tax payer expense the district has paid out to Reny Amy from the multiple lawsuits he has served them - nor the expense to the district staff who have had to devote large amounts of time in fending off Amy's latest assault on them - nor even begun to imagine the harm all these blog-fed "war-games" have had on the children of PUSD (a whole lot).

If the PW is so concerned about taxpayer money, for instance, why did it openly support this payment of it going in Rene Amy's pocket in this column by Joe Piasecki:

http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/article.php?IssueNum=49&id=4115

Upfront
Broken law, better budget
Joe Piasecki

"Last week, district officials paid $6,000 in attorney's fees and costs to settle a lawsuit filed by schools activist Rene Amy after ignoring a Public Records Act request for several months".

Or why did it support, with this column, Amy and Mary Dee Romney's attacks on PEF (the Pasadena Educational Foundation) - which were a transparently viscous attempt to stop donors giving money to poor children's education.

http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/article.php?id=4572&IssueNum=69

Appearance is everything
By André Coleman

“The PEF group acts almost like a second PUSD board directing policy and influencing the board itself in a very heavy manner. The win by these additional PEF'ers further cements that relationship,” said schools critic Rene Amy".

Here's another strange one, since when does an alternative weekly boast about getting an "Exclusive" on a vandalism article?? (and note how the whole community is implicated).

http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/article.php?id=4716&IssueNum=74

WEEKLY EXCLUSIVE
Graffiti vandals hit Cleveland School
By Kevin Uhrich, André Coleman and Carl Kozlowski

"The school for preschoolers through sixth-graders has a nearly evenly matched African-American and Latino population.
The incident occurred at a time when police have been trying to quell racial- and drug-related violence in portions of Northwest Pasadena, where Cleveland is located."

These examples are only a few of the countless times the Pasadena Weekly (our alternative weekly gone bad, I mean talk about a betrayal of the great alternative press tradition) has openly bashed PUSD.

Kevin Uhrich's recent editorial in his 2007 "Best-of" issue, calls Clark "the worst superintendent in recent memory". I would flip that around to say Pasadena has NEVER had a worse alternative newspaper editor, and that while Clark is responsible for turning PUSD around, Ulrich is responsible for running a once-decent alternative weekly into the ground - morally if not financially.

To me it seems our Weekly is breaking the law of common (as in plain, ordinary) decency. Pasadena is a great city but being a great city comes with "rules" and right up there near the top is the integrity of the press. These are disturbing violations of the principles of journalistic ethics and standards, not to mention the breaking of moral laws which are supposed to protect children and especially, children of the poor.

Not to mention, since when does an Alternative Weekly spread right-wing supplied propaganda?

A huge concern here is given their proclivity to right-wing supplied information, how much MORE of their content is/has been affected??