Ann Caulkins: Abdicate Your Throne
Either as publisher of the uptown paper of record, or as co-chair of Charlotte Center City Partner’s 2020 Vision Plan. It’s bad enough that Caulkins is a member of the uptown lunch bunch’s board of directors; it is patently egregious that she’s co-chair of the Center City 2020 Vision Plan.
Why? For starters, the county directly funds the 2020 Vision Plan effort, contributing $125,000 this year for the study and on the hook for another $125,000. To repeat: The publisher of The Charlotte Observer serves as co-chair of an initiative that receives direct and substantial funding from Mecklenburg County, to the tune of a quarter-million dollars. And that’s on top of the roughly $2.4 million that Center City Partners receives annually in other tax money.
As only one member of Center City Partner’s board of directors, it could be argued that Caulkins has limited influence on charting that group’s ultimate direction. The same argument doesn’t hold water as a co-chair of the 2020 Vision Plan, where her stamp of approval will be indelible.
How is The Observer supposed to objectively cover something like that? Answer: It can’t. Caulkins has claimed that she has no direct editorial control of her newsroom. OK, I’ll buy that, to a degree. But the notion that she holds no sway over the paper’s overriding editorial mission is pure sophistry. She does, or she’s not doing her job.
Former mayor Harvey Gannt, the other co-chair of the 2020 Vision Plan, delivered the group’s update to county commissioners on Tuesday night. Imagine if it had been Caulkins who was standing behind the podium, joined by Charlotte Planning Director Debra Campbell and Center City honcho Michael Smith.
Now imagine you’re an Observer reporter covering the presentation of the report, which sparkled with the grandiose ideas that Caulkins’ group has concocted. Now imagine the chances of a completely unbiased article about the 2020 Vision Plan appearing in the morning edition of The Charlotte Observer.
It defies imagination.
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