My thanks to the folks who submitted questions for my televised session with Gilbert Mayor Steve Berman.
As it turned out the mayor did the questioning at Monday morning’s session. He told me on Friday that I misunderstood, and the request was for questions that I wanted him to ask me, not questions that I was going to ask him.
“Only the paranoid survive,” Andrew Grove, a founder of Intel, once said. Nothing can be taken for granted in the chip-making industry or in journalism.
Berman’s questions centered on the history of the Tribune and journalism in today’s world. Hardly the stuff that will drive ratings. But certainly more the Jay Leno format than the WWE grudge match event that I had only half-jokingly referred to in my earlier column.
He did provide me with a response to a question from a reader who wanted to know how Gilbert’s budget stacked up against other Valley cities.
The answer: Chandler and Mesa spend more overall and Peoria and Glendale spend less.
The data prepared at city hall lists Gilbert as having the lowest employee count per 1,000 residents–6.07 employees.
I ran my own numbers on spending per capita based on the town’s data. My calculator shows the city’s budget spends $4,599 per capita. You can check my math. The 2009 budget for Gilbert is $936,700,000. And, according to the document, there are 203,656 residents.
Mesa in contrast spends quite a bit less at $2,550 per capita. Chandler spends somewhat more at $4,986 per capita.
I don’t know when this edition of “Talk to the Mayor” will air. I was told maybe in about two weeks. It will be on Channel 11 in Gilbert only.
If you have a conflict, I suggest that you keep your schedule.
But if you insist, you can track Channel 11 programming by going to the city’s Web site http://www.ci.gilbert.az.us/ and clicking on the “Gilbert Live!” tab on the right of the home page. Then click on the programming schedule.
Jim-
Did you apologize to the Mayor for accusing him of doing something he turned out not doing?
The mayor interviewed a journalist for a TV program? For what purpose? Did taxpayer money pay for this?
That’s it? No clue or writing as to your exchange? lol
Jim,
Leave it to “Boss Hogg” Berman to change the rules on “his” show.
So just like I asked originally, even Berman can’t name a single town (of similar size to Gilbert) anywhere in the U.S. with such a high yearly budget (almost $935,000,000). Instead he names cities with higher populations and larger geographic areas.
Situation normal with Berman, mislead with facts that have little or no bearing on the question at hand.
Maybe I’m just a nansy pansy, but I see no real harm in Berman trying (perhaps disingenuously) to get a grasp of the state of the media. Wouldn’t it be in his interest to better understand the history of The Trib and how journalism and the newspaper industry in general is changing in this rapidly evolving environment.
I’m new here and still learning myself about The Trib. My guess is that Berman and many locals have fond remembrances of small-town papers that only print the mayor’s press releases; run check-passing photos and generally don’t rock the boat.