Let's end the misinformation over the dance ordinance in Des Moines

Much is being made about the "unfair" dance ordinance in the city of Des Moines and that it is such an impediment to bringing attractions to the city. Let's bring some facts to the discussion:

Here are some of the statements made by those who support repealing the ordinance (in boldface) and what the record REALLY shows:

1. No other city in Iowa has a dance ordinance. This is absolutely wrong. The city of Iowa City has a dance ordinance. Iowa City Code Chap. 4: "It shall be unlawful for any license or permit holder under this title to allow dancing in connection with the operation of such business without first securing a permit therefor from the city clerk."

The ordinance is in conjunction with the city's alcohol service regulations. They only permit dancing in facilities with a valid alcoholic beverages permit so the sponsor of the operation has to cease service of alcohol at 2am. The duration of dancing is determined when the permit is investigated by police.

2. It's not true that raves are a hotbed for drugs. Members of the city council like Tom Vlassis and Christine Hensley should remember differently. Promoters of raves in Des Moines sought to have the dance ordinance overturned in 1990, but when it was relaxed somewhat, police found widespread underage alcohol use and use of drugs like "ecstacy". That alone was reason enough to get the city out of the business of licensing these types of establishments..

3. We're losing big venues because of the current ordinance. So far, the only venue was the one event at Des Moines Social Club which could have taken place if it stopped at 2am and the owner of the establishment paid the permit fees. The truth is, promoters of the "515 Alive" electronic music event in the East Village on August 8th are the ones that want this. They want to go past 2am. I'm not sure the neighbors in the Village would all approve of loud music and crowds disrupting THEIR sleep.

Rehka Basu and others forget why the ordinance exists. It's not to stop dancing...it's to protect our young people. With a city permit, Des Moines officials can make sure the promoters are reputable, the establishment safe for large crowds and that there are adequate safeguards to ensure underage drinkers aren't enabled and that underage teens don't have access to illegal drugs. Those two go hand-in-hand with "raves" or electronic music performances like the one that Ms. Basu wants to permit.

It's also to protect the public. If allowed to go endlessly, it disrupts the neighborhood in which the venue takes place. With residential housing in much of downtown Des Moines and the East Village, not everyone is going to be a raver that lives there. Those who pay or paid good money to live there have the right to a peaceful evening. Police should not be required to maintain order when an event goes on that long. This is not Woodstock, it's Des Moines.

So I'm hoping cooler heads will prevail at the Des Moines City Council on this issue. Mike Kiernan: I know your buddies want this, but you have to answer to the WHOLE community. It's not going to hurt Des Moines' reputation to keep the ordinance as is-remember, even that wild Iowa City community puts restrictions on dance. Protect our kids. Protect our residents. Don't allow raves.

Hey Media Outlets-Want Your Tweets to Work? Follow These Rules!

A lot of media...radio stations, television newsrooms, newspapers and bloggers have all discovered Twitter and are experimenting with how to "tweet" to benefit their operations. As both a journalist and someone who uses Twitter daily, let me offer a bit of expertise on some basics for those who are getting started and for those who are already underway in this endeavor:

RULE NUMBER ONE: Remember what Twitter is supposed to do.

The one thing that I think media outlets forget is the most basic one. On the top of the Twitter.com page, it asks the basic question "What are you doing?" and gives the user a box and 140 characters to answer that question.

That box doesn't say "Spam me" or "Sell me something" or "Throw random stuff out there that I don't care about" or even "Solicit stuff from me." It says "What are you doing?" So whatever application or individual from your organization you use to "tweet," what gets posted should answer that question. Tell your followers what YOU are doing in your newsroom, your organization, your blog. What are you printing, publishing, broadcasting RIGHT NOW that would be of interest to your followers?

RULE NUMBER TWO: Remember your followers and how they're following you.

The basic thing to remember is that you post on Twitter and the people that follow you get the brief message, along with other "tweets" from other people that they're following. Those people have to choose to follow you, and they can just as easily choose to un-follow you. And many people de-select media outlets after just a few days. Let's give you a couple of tips to keep those followers.

One thing to keep in mind is that most people don't use Twitter on their desktop computer. In fact, a lot of companies are starting to block Twitter at their company firewall because of worker productivity issues and concerns about content security. So a lot of people are getting their "tweets" from their mobile phone.

Twitter has an easy-to-use applicaiton that allows you to have the tweets of the person you choose forwarded to you in the form of a text message. (And allows you to post tweets using the same text message number) Remember that when you have lots of people following you in this way you don't want to disrespect them.

Rule Number 2a: Don't make your followers "beeping" mad!

Since most of us get our Twitter fix on our cell phones via text message, we have our phone notify us that we have a text message via some kind of ring tone each time one comes in. It can't discriminate between a "tweet" from your organization and a text from anyone else--it beeps, rings or says "hey there" or whatever no matter what.

THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO TO YOUR FOLLOWERS IS TO SEND BATCHES OF TWEETS AT ONE TIME! The single most annoying thing that my friends at the Des Moines Register and WOI-TV in Des Moines do is to send out a burst of items when their "Twitter person" first gets in in the morning or when their Twitter application first gets started up. My phone will "ding" me in my workplace-to the stares of my co-workers-for five minutes straight while the Register sends me five or six things and TV5 sends me five or six things. THEN THEY DO IT AGAIN at 11:00am and again in the afternoon. Remember: Twitter is supposed to answer the question "What are you doing?" not "How much stale information can you put out just to show you're on Twitter?"

Sending fewer Tweets with important information is better than trying to dump a bunch of stuff out there. This is not a war with your competition over quantity. It's a battle over QUALITY. You will lose followers if you keep spamming us in the Twitter-sphere with a dump of items that you've collected or gotten from another source.

Instead, use Twitter to give your followers information or insight they won't get elsewhere, like a reporter's initial scene-setting reaction when arriving at a breaking news story, or a brief description of a news story your's following, or a synopsis of the things being called into the newsroom phone or coming in from other media. THAT's what will make your "tweets" compelling and make people want to continue following you. This is not one media where you can dump things out there to show you have a presence. You don't have a presence if you don't have followers and you don't have followers if they leave you because you're not respecting them.

Rule number 2b: It's "What ARE you doing?" not "What DID you do last night?"

The basic tenet of Twitter is that it is asking the poster to answer the question "What are you doing?" to get an answer that talks about what his happening now. Too many media outlets use automated applications to just dump "stuff" onto the Twitter-sphere thinking it will impress their following by sheer numbers. It doesn't. It annoys most of us. We're a net-savvy group and have probably already read that stuff on your website or somewhere else anyway. We decided to follow YOU on Twitter thinking you'd give us an insight on what's happening RIGHT NOW and how your organization is covering or reacting to it. Tell us that. We're interested...and waiting!

• Don't tweet Associated Press or other wire service stories (and remember Rule 2a-don't send AP stories in batches-doubly annoying!!). The wire service is, by its function today, largely not a generator of information that is happening right now-it's a regurgitator of what its members have already reported. Your followers get their news from the web and they probably read those stories at the source at the time it was published. We don't need you to repost it. And chances are, some other news organization's posted it before you did. Remember: it's "What are YOU doing?" not "What did everyone else do a while ago?"
• Don't tweet your early-morning news at 10am. If we're following you there's a really good chance we're your viewer, listener or reader and we heard, read or saw that already. Again, remember it's "What are you doing?" not "What did you do?" Make it timely for us!
• Don't use Twitter for email. If you want your audience in your "traditional" media outlet to communicate with you, don't ask for questions via "tweets"...ask for email. People tweet to answer "the basic Twitter question" not to question you. Twitter just isn't an efficient medium for that kind of communication. Email's much better. Better choice: Post a tweet asking for questions with your email address!
• DO give us unique information about what your operation is doing right now. To me, one of the most fascinating Twitter posts to follow are the ones by the NBC news photographers. Their photojournalists give good scene-setters about what they're covering and what excites, aggravates, interests and humors them. It gives us a good reason to watch their stories on the air during the Nightly News and see what they're tweeting about right now. And they use TwitPic to provide still images of the things they are seeing. Don't just tell us where you're at-tell us what you see as you arrive. Is it a mob? Does the President look confident or tired or annoyed? What are the crowd signs saying at the rally? How are people responding to what's going on? This is the stuff that you probably won't get to say on your regular story, broadcast or feed. But if it's compelling enough it's the kind of stuff that will "hook" us to follow you...and send us to YOUR media to get more of the story (and that's what this is really about, right?)
• DO give us timely, important information. I keep at least one of the local TV channels in my list of "mobile tweets" just to keep pace with the weather and breaking news. Having your weather person/meteorologist post updates on storms, potential hazards and other weather events helps me during the day. Don't give me the forecast--tell me if I can go to the soccer game after work or mow my lawn. And on breaking news, make it compelling and link me to your regular web coverage. I'll follow it there, either on my phone on my computer. Best example of this was 6/24 with the breaking story of the murder of the Parkersburg High School football coach. KCRG-TV's tweet linked us to their page where they had live streaming coverage of the news conference.

The Twitter-verse got drawn right to that in an instant! And tweets later brought us back for updates!

RULE NUMBER THREE: GET THE TWEETS OF YOUR COMPETITION

Just like most media outlets monitor the competition to make sure they haven't missed anything or to do a "stare and compare", it's important to follow your competition's tweets. Look at it in several ways:

1. It will make sure you haven't missed something they have. Gives you a way to avoid embarrassment
2. It will help you avoid the "don'ts" in Rule Number Two
3. You'll soon find they will be following YOU

RULE NUMBER FOUR: DEVELOP A POSTING POLICY AND FOLLOW IT

Just like with your web presence, your organization needs to decide what items to tweet and when to tweet them. And stick to that policy, because you will lose followers more often if you suddenly stop doing what your followers came to you for than anything else.

1. Should I post when I'm going to a breaking news story? First, if you follow Rule Number Three, you'll likely know what the competition is doing. If they haven't said anything about the breaking story you're deciding on, do you want to tip them via Twitter? Pros: In this multi-media world of news dissemination, you still have "here's the story we brought to you first" bragging rights if you brought it to your audience first on Twitter, Facebook, the web OR your outlet (TV, Radio, Newspaper, Blog). It will enhance your image as a technology-savvy operation. CONS: You must be comfortable both in bringing the information to your community first and alerting your competition so they can report on it and if you decide NOT to be first you have to be comfortable with giving someone else the "first report" bragging rights. It's not an easy decision, but you need to decide the policy and stick to it.
2. Who is going to tweet for us? This should almost never be a computer application. It's just bad to do it that way because it means just about everything in Rule Number Two will be violated and you'll probably end up losing followers. Instead, pick the person or persons (remember you need backups) that can give the best perspective. In a newsroom, I see some of the best tweets from assignment managers and photographers because they have unique perspectives, and aren't as focused on getting the publication/outlet's story done. They can give us the insight that will lure us to the story.
3. Promote your tweets and let your tweets promote your media. Make sure your audience in your "traditional" media know they can get up-to-the-minute information on Twitter. Give them your Twitter "handle" and instructions on how to follow you. And then, once you've gotten them there, don't hesitate on each tweet to link to the story you're tweeting about. One leads to the other and circles the follower back if you do it all right.
4. Decide on a policy for non-official tweets. Chances are, if you're a larger media entity, a lot of your employees have their own Twitter accounts and post regularly. It's wise to adopt some kind of "rules of engagement" for Twitter posts about news coverage and news stories by those people. If they are in your employ or working on your behalf, you need to ensure their tweets don't undermine your Twitter strategy and don't cause your legal department headaches. A good start is this article by Julie Posetti: http://tinyurl.com/llrw5w
5. Get your biggest "geek" and least computer-savvy friends to evaluate your Twitter posts. Make sure they are encouraged to be honest and you'll be surprised how much it'll help!

There you have it...a few of the things I try to use everyday in my Twitter travails. I hope they are useful to you. If you want to follow ME on Twitter, I'm iowanews1.

Archie Brooks: The Final Chapter

The Des Moines City Council took the steps last night to put the final shovel of dirt on the grave of the saga of former councilman Archie Brooks. Like in the old western movies, where a disgraced sheriff gets his badge ripped off his vest, the council voted to tear Brooks' name off the southside community center and put it back to the original name: Pioneer-Columbus.

Archie is spending his time in prison, having been convicted of mishandling two million dollars in federal funds as the head of CIETC. But that's the shorthand of what happened. Brooks was the epitome of the politician who traded on his position for favors, favoritism for his employer and for employment itself...and got caught.

He started on the council with his full-time job being that of a self-employed insurance salesman, operated a bar for a while, then moved up to being the facilities manager for the Ruan Center in downtown Des Moines. It was in that full-time position that Brooks had his first big brush with the law.

After the flood of 1993, the Des Moines Water Works was asking downtown businesses to stay closed because of the failure of the water treatment plant. The Ruan Center's largest client at the time was Wellmark Blue Cross-Blue Shield, and that business wanted to stay open to ensure they didn't miss a beat in processing health insurance claims. Enter Archie Brooks.

Archie got the Water Works to keep water flowing to the Ruan Center on the ruse that it was needed to cool the elevators in order to keep them operating and keep the roof accessible. On the roof were a bunch of radio transmitters used by the city and county for emergency communications. Again, it was a ruse, and a Water Works employee found that there was a lot more water being used than would be required to cool a couple of elevators.

Reality was, Brooks was using the water (while other downtown businesses followed the mayor's order and stayed closed) to run the chillers for the entire building so that Wellmark could stay open. How do I know this? At the time, I took several calls from the husbands and wives of Wellmark employees angry that their business was open when others weren't. Employees were calling our newsroom saying it was nice and cool in their office on a very hot day. I talked with HVAC engineers and we calculated the amount of water that would be necessary to cool the Ruan Center offices vs. the elevators which don't require much cooling to operate. The math exposed Archie's ruse.

Once he was caught, the Water Works employee shut off the water to the Ruan Center. Brooks, after an angry exchange with a number of officials, promptly shut off the electricity to the roof of the Ruan Center in retaliation. That shut off the backup two-way radio communication for police and federal officials and started Archie Brooks' first federal court case.

Ken Fuson of the Des Moines Register and I chatted before the news conference at the emergency operations center, compared notes, and agreed that if noone else was going to ask about the Ruan issue, we were. Well...noone else did, so Ken asked Brooks why he shut off the power to the radio transmitters. Brooks responded that since the water was gone to cool the elevators, he had to shut off the power. I followed up stating that HVAC and elevator maintenance people were saying that he didn't need to cool the elevators. His face reddened deeply, veins bulging as the live television cameras watched and Brooks angrily told me that if I knew so much about it, I should come up to the podium. Then he walked out of the camera view.

Shortly afterward, the US Attorney's office indicted Brooks on charges of interference with emergency communications. Brooks got a plea bargain where he promised to stay out of trouble for two years and have his record expunged if he did. And he went back to his job and his seat of power on the Des Moines City Council.

He and fellow councilman Tom Vlassis landed seats on the Central Iowa Employment Training Consortium, a non-profit that was set up by area governments to act as a channel for federal job training funds so they could be pooled for the best bang for the buck. As we came to learn later, Brooks became involved with the CEO of CIETC, Ramona Cunningham. She took that job having no executive experience and no higher education. And we now know that she and other paid staffers at CIETC got huge bonuses from those federal funds. How did they get the bonuses? Brooks signed the authorizations (he denied it was his signature at first).

This was something Brooks couldn't plead out. He ended up with a federal prison sentence of one year and one day and a requirement that he make $400,000 in restitution. Councilman Vlassis told the city council last night that he writes Brooks, whom he calls "a friend." And Vlassis was the only one who didn't vote to take Archie Brooks name off the community center.

While some people might disagree with his vote, Tom Vlassis did have one good idea at last night's meeting. He pointed out that the Des Moines school district won't name a building after a person until they've been dead for at least two years. And then said that would be a good idea for a city policy. The council should think about this, so they don't face another embarrassment in the future.

Obama Administration Needs A Math Lesson

Everything else aside, the appointment of Judge Sonia Sotamayor points out the need for more math education.  Because the Obama administration simply can't do simple math.  Maybe the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills should be administered to incoming White House staffers?

In their press release, the White House says-and Obama himself orated-that "If confirmed, Sotomayor would bring more federal judicial experience to the Supreme Court than any justice in 100 years, and more overall judicial experience than anyone confirmed for the Court in the past 70 years." By my read of the official biographies of the current seated US Supreme Court justices, Steven Breyer had 14 years on the First Circuit of the US Court of Appeals-the last four as chief judge.  

That ALONE tops Judge Sotamayor's resume.  Justice Samuel Alito Jr. had 16 years of service in the Third Circuit, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg had 13 years in the D.C. Circuit of the Court of Appeals.  Looks to me like Sotamayor is far junior in experience than most of the court.  Oh, wait-the White House staffers forgot to add in that she spent six years as a federal trial court judge before being appointed by President Clinton to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in 1998.  Any way you look at it and it shows the need for a fact-checker at the White House.

Why The Fairness Doctrine Won't Work

I'm at the Iowa Broadcast News Association annual convention in Ames and just stepped out of watching a panel forum on Talk Radio that featured WHO Radio's Jan Mickelson and Westwood One's Jim Bohannon.

Everything was going pretty smoothly until the inevitable question came up (from a college student, I believe) about the Fairness Doctrine.   For those of you who aren't following the issue, here's the condensed version:  There has been talk in Democratic circles of either forcing the FCC or passing a federal law that would reimpose the Fairness Doctrine on talk radio.   Obviously a lot of the audience didn't understand the history of the doctrine and the noise level grew as Jan Mickelson explained it.

Understand that of late the talk of the Fairness Doctrine comes from those who lament the largesse of conservative talk radio on the airwaves.  They believe that the Fairness Doctrine would give liberals "equal time" thus negating the stranglehold conservatives hold on the medium.   Mickelson did a great job of answering this call, but I doubt the liberals in the audience really heard what he said.

Mickelson gave them a history lesson.  He (and I for that matter) both worked in radio during the Fairness Doctrine.  The policy was developed when there were a finite number of broadcast media outlets and little alternatives.  So, to get their FCC license renewed, stations had to prove they would run  "cover vitally important controversial issues of interest in their communities," and second, "to provide a reasonable opportunity for the presentation of contrasting viewpoints."

Thus, if I were to schedule a pro-life guest to talk about abortion, I would have to offer and document that I'd offered a pro-choicer the opportunity to speak as well.  That would fix the conservatives wouldn't it?

Not in our reality.  Let's look at WHO radio.  Sen. Tom Harkin has had multiple opportunities to appear as counterpoint to Mickelson but has declined.  In fact, when he wants to get exposure on WHO Radio, he books himself on the Van and Bonnie show.  He doesn't even want equal time to his Republican counterpart.   At KCRG radio, Senator Grassley did a one-hour show with us each month.  We could only get Sen. Harkin for a half hour-which because of top-of-the-hour news ended up only as about 15 minutes.  Senator Harkin ONLY wanted to appear on shows where he could control the time or was sure he wouldn't face any challenges from the host.

I really don't think it would be different for most liberals if a Fairness Doctrine were to suddenly appear on the scene.  Because most liberals would still refuse to go up against Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly or Glenn Beck or Jan Mickelson.  And those hosts could proudly (as they can now) tell the FCC and Congress that they have offered opponents to their viewpoints to participate in the conversation-which is all the Doctrine really requires.   Doesn't look like it crumbles conservative talk to me.  Just puts radio stations through a bunch more paperwork.  Doesn't "level the playing field" at all.

Besides, I find it entertaining these days to see liberal media extort the Fairness Doctrine.   They want Congress to impose "equal time" requirements on talk radio that they'd never in a million years allow to happen to news reporting.  Yet media bias is rampant in print and broadcast news. I'd support the Fairness Doctrine if it would be applied to the press as well.  If we're going to restrict First Amendment rights to free speech, then it should be done to everyone who caters to a mass audience.    (Actually, I wouldn't because I'm very libertarian on this...but you get my point)

What will the "base" think?

The Iowa legislature was officially done by 6am Sunday morning after a marathon all-day, all-night session that started Saturday at 10am.  By the time they were saying "aye" to the sine die resolution, lawmakers had already shed the bills the Democrat legislature's core constituency had pressed for.  And it wasn't all roses for the GOP as well.

Gone was talk of "prevailing wage" and any other labor-backed bill.  On the shelf was the attempt to remove your ability to deduct the federal taxes you paid on your Iowa income tax return.  They all perished after Gov. Culver got Democratic leaders to cave in to his demand that the state borrow money on infrastructure projects.  More on why Culver did this in our next post.

But GOP lawmakers who could have declared victory to small businesses and moderate income Iowans with the defeat of the labor bills and federal deductability legislation.  They could have bragged that without Republicans rallying Iowans against them, all of that legislation would have passed and meant Iowa businesses and taxpayers would be forking out more money in an uncertain time.   Instead, they hanged their mantle on opposing gay rights.  It's definitely a wedge issue, but one that seems to be losing its punch.  And interviews with reporters in states that have already dealt with this issue find that the clamor died down shortly after the first "I do" was said between two people of the same sex.  

What the GOP did was prove itself ineffective in getting legislation passed to block gay marriage.  That was a foregone conclusion, given that they were well in the minority in both chambers but by clinging to the issue day after day, Republicans took ownership of the issue-and they own their impotency on the issue as well.  ("Why should I vote for you?  You couldn't deliver before!)

And Dems have the same problem with Big Labor.  They didn't deliver for them.  Nor did the Progressives succeed in taxing the rich this year.  Democrats are equally impotent on their core issues.

It will make for an interesting election season.

Law and Order Party Urges Lawlessness

I can't believe it.

The party that has always maintained that this nation has lawmakers, laws, courts and a constitution for a reason is now throwing all that out-if we take what's happening in Des Moines at the state capitol for GOP gospel.

State Sen. Merlin Bartz (R-Grafton) apparently is worried that there won't be the chance to get a constitutional amendment debated that would overturn the Iowa Supreme Court's ruling that the state's ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional.  So he unsuccessfully tried to give immunity from prosecution to any county recorder who refused to issue a marriage license to same-sex couples.  In essense, he's saying that county recorders should be allowed to be "conscientious objectors" if they don't want to obey the court.

Sen. Bartz, when you were sworn into office you swore to preserve protect and defend the constitution of Iowa and the US.  Part of that constitution declares that the Iowa Supreme Court is the final arbiter over whether a law passed by the legislature is constitutional.  In this case, they used that power and ruled that the "heterosexuals only" law in Iowa violated the constitution.  If you encourage elected officials to ignore the constitutional power of the Supreme Court, then really you're violating your oath of office.

Gay marriage opponents are clinging to the thought that the law on the books still says that gay marriage is banned and county recorders should follow that law.  Again, however, the point is moot.  The Iowa Supreme Court, by ruling the law unconstitutional, declared that it was unenforceable.  Thus any action to resist the ruling stands the extreme likelihood of arrest or removal from office.  

The difficulty in getting the Iowa constitution amended is intentional.  We should not be bending the constitution to fit the will of one political group or another.  It should be well thought out and discussed.  And it should require overwhelming support.  Sen. Bartz, gather that support and you'll get your ban.  But the polls I'm seeing show support for civil same sex unions so I think you will lose.

And let's all stop with this "it's interfering with my freedom of religion" argument.  YOUR freedom of religion ends when it interferes with the freedom of another.  You still have the ability, Sen. Bartz, to believe that gay marriage is wrong, but there are those in other religions that don't agree with you.  Thus you have no right to impose your beliefs on others-doing so starts us down the path of appointing mullahs that control the government and the church.  They are separate for a reason.  Each has its own task.  

I understand the backstory as to why your vocalisms on this issue are so strong, Sen. Bartz.  But you need to step back and remember that you have a sworn duty in office.  The Iowa Supreme Court says the gay marriage ban can't be enforced, and you need to either live with it, or gather the political steam to change it.  Just don't be the face and voice of those who think they can convince county officials to violate THEIR oaths of office.