Joe McNamara for Mayor

Who am I to say, but I think he has a good chance. He's a Democrat. Bell shot himself in the foot with the unions. Democrat + union endorsement = election wins in Toledo.

Help me on this one, but wasn't he an attorney for the Blade prior to council ??? Endorsement anyone ??

I don't know a lot about the behind the scenes drama of Lucas county politics (nor do I want to) but I thought Joe was persona non grata over at Dem HQ, If Lopez decides to run, won't she more likely to pick up union/party endorsements and money?

McNamara Law: About Joe

Lopez will get both the union and Blade endorsements if she decides to give it a go, my guess is she will.

Why do you think she'll get the blade endorsement?

Hell, in this town, no other qualification is needed except being a union butt kisser.

^^^ Right. Because that worked so well for Bell.

i've brought it up in other threads... lcdp is run by a cobbled together group of some moderate dems, some unions, independents, and republicans. because only democrats win here, these disparate groups came together and took over the democratic party HQ - the democratic "party" here is run by largely non-democrats. along with that, union members are very conservative on all issues except union issues. in the last mayoral election they largely supported bell but bell bit the hand that fed him. the progressive wing of the democratic party, liberals, are largely shut out.

in that light, anita versus joe looks like a blood bath waiting to happen. anita is a good candidate although she is somewhat suspicious of the old "a" teamers (just as jack ford was), some say paranoid, and is surroundeed by some ambitious opportunists who dont always serve her well. joe is in tight with the "a" team but suffers from being so transparently ambitious and tight ties to the blade. being on council he doesn't have the staff (office of cronies) that a county official like anita has. they both have different unions that are strong supporters; the same unions that have been battling for control of HQ.

i think joe is probably the policy wonk that would come in with a better grasp of how to proceed and build more and broader coalitions to get things done. again, the fifedom of a county department is more "my way or the highway" and anita is not so comfortable smoozing and in details of legislation. she is warmer and less... smarmy... self-satisfied... know-it-all?!

bell is surroundeed by cagey veterans... he will get credit for busting unions... then secretly giving fire and police almost everything back... if the blade choses to give him a pass on the chinese "investments" in downtown, bell will get credit for that as well. but there is a lot to go after with bell... but that will have to wait for the general election

bored today, so I dug a little into google. Joe McNamara was an attorney for The Blade parent company, BCI...Block Communications back before his start of council duty. Definitely an interesting by-line as his mayoral ambitions commence

With Opal, at least you know you'd get what you voted for.

Lopez threw thousands of dollars of business to the Blade just months ago when she was given the choice of putting foreclosure ads in the Blade or the Toledo Free Press. Despite the State AG's ruling that the Free Press fit the qualifications, and they met the circulation needs she tossed the money to the Blade. That's an endorsement if I ever saw one.

lopez putting the foreclosures in the blade over the t-freep is worth considering. how many thousands are we talking about? would there have been a cost savings using one versus the other? if you have two equal cost and equal (under the law) circulation choices, is either choice wrong? The AG ruling doesn't require using one provider over another, just provides options. the blade appears to me to be more in the public interest because its circulation is much larger; on the other hand the t-freep is free to anyone who wants a copy.

fred... what do you mean by "that's an endorsement..."; who is doing the endorsing and who is being endorsed?

I am not likely to support lopez but it seems she operated within the law; it may or may not have involved making a politically strategic choice as well... but you can't seriously think a politician would make a politically unstrategic choice?

"lopez putting the foreclosures in the blade over the t-freep is worth considering. how many thousands are we talking about?"

http://www.toledofreepress.com/2012/12/07/pounds-questionable-bid-ness/

crazy

wow!! thanks jr.

that absolutely appears to be lopez putting personal gain above tax-payer's best interest. $245,000 more than necessary!? WOW!!

did this get mentioned here or in any other media (besides the t-freep)? i hate to tell you fred, if it came up on the radio, wspd's lack of balance and serious reporting over the years has caused so many of us to never tune in anymore... the boy who cried wolf syndrome...

mcnamara will now get the benefit of both the blade endorsement AND the backlash against anita for making such an irresponsible decision... at least in theory. are voters listening at all?

"are voters listening at all?"

Czarty elected mayor three times. What do you think? But if people like Carty are the best available, then why listen or pay attention? Live and do the best you can in spite of the political dunderheads.

November 2007 post: Theory: The non-voters are happier than the voters

We used to get the Free Press delivered in the street by our homes. People complained and now it does not even show up. I personally think the Blade has a much larger circulation if you are looking for more people to be informed.

Have no clue on whom to vote for mayor. Do know Bell will not get my vote this time.

Jackie
Carty may run again

^^"Do know Bell will not get my vote this time."...he'll get enough to win

"I personally think the Blade has a much larger circulation if you are looking for more people to be informed."

From the December 2012 Toledo Free Press editorial concerning legal notices published in printed newspapers:

But why does government in 2012-2013 require a list of legal notices to be published on printed paper, instead of simply providing the info only over the Web?

I guess it's charming that people still get their info from printed newspapers, but it's way to slow of a technology for me. I contend that people could be much more informed by quickly visiting numerous websites than reading a single printed newspaper. People can visit websites at their convenience in just about any location, instead of waiting for the info to arrive on the doorstep, driveway, or sidewalk. And tablets now make it even easier to read the Web and be informed.

Plus, visiting websites or using feed readers or using social networking sites with the "following" feature means that you are accessing the information that's of interest to you. But along the way, you'll encounter other stories on other topics. Printed newspapers provide the info that they think is of interest to you. And obviously, printed newspapers are restricted to providing a fixed amount of info on a daily basis. The requirements for the Web-only reader are a device, an Internet connection, and time. But with limited time, reading the Web is vastly superior to reading a printed a newspaper.

Printed newspapers are beyond outdated, in my opinion. A printed newspaper is something to view in a museum today as, "Can you believe we used to get information this way?"

Today, an 8-track player is more relevant than a printed newspaper.

Keep in mind, that much of news we consume on the web is from newspaper and television sites. I don’t know the last time someone linked to an article on TFP web site. While TFP prints lots of copies, I’m guessing the bulk of them are simply recycled, which is the case in my home, while people who pay for the Blade are much more likely to read it.

jr -

i think vinyl is a more appropriate comparison. sure, most people want the convenience of a CD or even more likely just a stream of electrons. but for many, and a growing number at that, vinyl albums are a tactile rich experience. i feel that way with a washington post new york times or financial times on a sunny lazy sunday afternoon.

nobody but an odd-lot few ever embraced 8-tracks.

I usually read the headlines in the blade while hearing the same exact story on channel 11. Then I do the only thing useful with the blade I work on the sodoku and the crossword, and read the comics.

Well, our age is showing. My husband has vinyl, 45's, 78's amd 33's. 8 track tapes and CD. And still has the players for all and uses them when in the basement hiding from me and my honey do list.

I like the newspaper and read it cover to cover. I also like USA Today and the NYT on the weekends. And many older people do not use or have access to the web.

I also do all the puzzles every day that are in the newspaper. Trying to keep my brain active I guess.

Oh, change is hard.

@enjoyeverysandwich: "nobody but an odd-lot few ever embraced 8-tracks"

May be true......but there was no way I was ever going to be able to play my albums in my '77 T-Bird!

What? You didn't have one of these?

Too funny! Never knew there was such a thing.

Hmmmmmm.........still have my vinyl collection.......plenty of room in my Odyssey for one of those...........

"Keep in mind, that much of news we consume on the web is from newspaper and television sites."

Yeah, which is why I don't see the point of printed newspapers. I did not imply that printed newspapers and newspaper websites were the same thing. To me, they're vastly different entities, or they should be. Unfortunately, many newspaper publishers treat them the same. The same story can be found on the website as in the newspaper, which makes no sense.

The story on the newspaper website should contain significantly more info than the print version. The website should be loaded with photos, videos, context-links to other stories that provide relevant info, and the story text that was cut off because it did not fit in the print newspaper.

The newspaper website should contain more database-backed information look-ups, like the Blade did with salaries and could do with votes, such as the voting record of every local official. The Blade has created some maps-mashups with public info, such as crime stats, but a lot more could be done.

The newspaper website could also be a wiki-like information source, except all the info comes from old stories created by the newspaper company. The newspaper site should contain a directory structure or taxonomy of all of its stories for all the many different subjects covered by the newspaper.

It seems, the Toledo Blade published two stories about McNamara announcing his attention to run for mayor. Both dated Feb 12, 2013. The first story published before he announced. The second story published after he announced. The second story seems short.

Neither of those Blade stories contained links to other Blade stories or Blade information pages. It's a website. How can a Web story not contain links? That's useless. This is when a newspaper website acts too much like a printed newspaper. The only linking thing contained on each of those McNamara Web stories is the "Related Stories" section, which is good and Web-ish, but it's not enough.

Maybe I'm overlooking it, but where's the link to the full video of McNamara's news conference? It's the Web. It's okay for newspaper websites to display audio and video. Newspapers websites are not restricted to only text and photos.

Where's the link to the database-backed Web app that shows McNamara's voting record for his entire time on Toledo City Council? Where's the link to the Toledo Blade's info page about McNamara that also contains links to all the Blade stories that were about McNamara? Sure, using the Blade's search function can help find some stories, but a human-organized Web page or directory is better.

Who cares if it's too much information? Let the readers decide. The readers can filter through and find what's important to each reader. And if the info is organized properly, it's easy for readers to come back to the info later.

The newspaper publishers should think Web first and print as an afterthought if at all. If they don't have the resources to create such applications or directory structures mentioned above, well, that's the way it goes, I guess.

The Blade website, however, does many things right. They publish stories throughout the day and night. A new front page story was posted a short time ago. They have their blogs on various topics, a mobile-friendly Web display, photo galleries of the local area, video from other media outlets, the 'Our Town' sections for Sylvania and Perrysburg, and their Data Center.

This Feb 13, 2013 Toledo Blade story about an incident that occurred last weekend at Scott High School contains embedded video from 13abc.com. And this Feb 13, 2013 Blade story about TPS contains an external link to a report, located at http://www.auditor.state.oh.us. These are examples of the Web version of the newspaper being better than the print version.

Back to the second Blade story about Smokin' Joe announcing his intention to run for Toledo mayor. The text of this Feb 12, 2013 Blade story titled McNamara cites job creation as main task if he becomes mayor contains no Web links.

Proper nouns in a story should at least be links to Toledo Blade Web searches if specific Toledo Blade wiki-like information pages do not exist for the subject. In my opinion, this is how the first few paragraphs of this Blade story should have appeared on the Web:

If all those links pointed to other Toledo Blade Web pages, then all that linking may encourage readers to spend more time on the Blade's website or Web properties. And naturally, when a reader clicks on the City Council link, that Blade Web page will contain links for each council member and links to previous council lineups and maybe links to other city-like info. It doesn't replace the city's website because the info is culled from Blade stories. All of the Blade's info created over many decades by many writers needs organized. Who has more historical and current information about the Toledo area than the Toledo Blade?

"Keep in mind, that much of news we consume on the web is from newspaper and television sites."

What's the definition of "news" today? We have political news, sports news, entertainment news, tech news, etc. I would guess that most of my tech news comes from websites that do not offer a print version.

There's really no excuse for published news articles today to not auto-link nouns to wiki pages at least. Then again, this might be better established on the client side with a Firefox plugin that allows you to google up the contents of a simple mouse selection field.

Wiki pages are a no-no in journalism because they are not 'authoritative.' I say this knowing that journalists rely on them heavily, although they'll never admit it.

My take on the mayoral situation: Mike Bell has received bad advice from Karl Rove types who have horribly tin ears for politics. Not every decision should be based in politics, but there needs to be a political strategy for every decision. Bell's advisers don't get politics.

Joe is very wonkish and is quite an effective leader of the opposition. However, governing is a much tougher proposition than leading the opposition and I'm not sure, as bright as Joe is, that he has the sagacity to lead.

All I heard response-wise from McN and Craig at a community meeting at the Weber Block, after numerous complaints about the now usual problems with decaying streets and houses, and of course the continued mal-investment in the downtown and pet developer projects, was that they can't do much due to the "strong mayor" form of government. I'm not the only one who heard this; there were about 100 people there.

So Joe's plan to fix that is to become mayor? Something about that is wrong.

"Wiki pages are a no-no in journalism because they are not 'authoritative.'"

What? So you are saying that the Blade would view its own Web pages that were 100 percent based upon the writings by Blade staff as being a "a no-no in journalism." Why?

Ignore the links that I used in my Blade story example above. I needed a prop. But I said all the links should point to Blade Web pages.

Nobody said that these pages would be created by people outside of the Blade, like with an open wiki. Closed wikis do exist. Forget the word "wiki." It's a Hawaiian term. Call it something more local like "goby."

The Blade uses the Libercus content management system. Call these info pages whatever you want. It's just content. And my suggestion was that all of this content would created and managed by Blade staff, and all of the content would be based upon stories created by the Blade. And all of the links within these pages would point only to other Blade Web pages.

The ToledoBlade.com site map is a humble but useful beginning to a directory structure.

I don't know how much digital content the Blade has stored. Their about page says their site began in 1997. Even if the Blade has only 10 to 15 years of its stories in digital text format, that's still a lot of information to cull and organize into an encyclopedia-like format.

I'm getting the idea that The Blockade prefers to sell access to older content. Internal linking implies open access.

Just another career politician that's the child of another career politician looking to pad their pension just a lil' bit more off the people.

Toledo will vote for him. Exercise in futility.

Sounds like just the kind of playground Phil Copeland likes to romp around in!

I'm looking for a candidate who doesn't make me want to check my wallet after talking with them.

^^Good luck finding many of those in Lucas County. Then again, you'd have to say the same about those who vote for them.

What can we say about Joe's terms on the council? Should I be spending time in the library on their Toledo Blade archive link to find out?