Good morning, RVA! It's 63 °F, and it’s a little rainy out there. Expect that to continue through the morning but then dry out before we get too far into the day. This evening—and the weekend—look lovely, if a bit chillier than the last couple of magical November days.
Water cooler
Mel Leonor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Governor-elect Youngkin has rustled up a bunch of old governors to advise his transition: Bob McDonnell, Jim Gilmore, George Allen, and Doug Wilder (who is 90!). My take on this is that looping in these Coca-Cola Classic Conservatives—from a more moderate time—helps Youngkin distance himself from the Trump wing of the party. Yet, buried in Leonor’s piece is this critical bit of information: His transition steering committee “will be co-chaired by Sen. Steve Newman, R-Lynchburg, and Kay Coles James, a former Virginia health secretary under Allen, who served as director of the Office of Personnel Management under President George W. Bush and is outgoing president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.” Oh, the same Heritage Foundation that’s out there convincing state legislators across the country to prevent our children from learning about how racism has been built into America’s systems since day one? Gotcha. The decision to include Wilder in the transition grabbed up all the headlines, but the big news, to me, is Youngkin’s quiet alignment with a Trumpian organization that denies climate change, pushes Trump’s Big Lie of voter fraud, and believes we solved racism in the 1960s.
Ned Oliver at the Virginia Mercury reports on how Virginia’s Republicans might change the Commonwealth’s new marijuana legalization plans. It’s all depressingly predictable: Republicans are excited to speed along retail marijuana sales (a good thing that’d generate a bunch of cash for all involved), but want to make sure that those lucrative licenses end up in the hands of well-resourced, established medical-marijuana business owners (a bad thing that does nothing to undo the decades of inconsistent and racist enforcement of our previous marijuana laws). Oliver puts it this way: “It’s unlikely GOP lawmakers would share that concern given their general opposition to equity programs.” That’s obvious, I know, but it still shocks me to read it so plainly put. I mean, if you’re generally opposed to equity, what are you generally in support of? It’s wild to me that, somehow, we’ve normalized Republicans’ position of increasing racial inequity in Virginia.
OK, what about a casino in....Petersburg?? Chris Saurez at the RTD reports that Sen. Joe Morrissey has started working on the legislation to allow Petersburg to hold their own casino referendum. Petersburg’s mayor even says that the One Casino folks approached him about shifting their casino project down 95 a bit.
The RTD’s Patrick Wilson has an early look at a bill from Del. Danica Roem that would reform how Freedom of Information Act requests works in Virginia—specifically how and how much local governments can charge to fulfill such requests. Roem’s legislation would prohibit local governments from “charging money for a FOIA request if fulfilling the request takes under two hours and the requester has not made more than four requests in a month. After two hours, the local government could charge $33 an hour for staff time to gather, review and redact records.” Here’s my advice for folks trying to learn things from their local governments: Before submitting an official FOIA request, just send an email to the right person with a kind request for the specific information you’re after. In my experience, this will get you what you need the vast majority of times and won’t put a huge burden on our local civil servants. If that doesn’t work, and you want to move on to actual FOIA, make sure your request is as narrow in scope as possible (including date range, the people involved, topics, and mediums).
I love very specific and random requests in /r/rva, like this one: “Hello all. I am looking for the largest bowls of noodles in Richmond. Kinds of bowls where you eat for fifteen minutes and have made no discernible dent in the contents of the bowl.” Yes, this is an admirable search! Top answer at the moment? The extra large bowl at Pho Tay Do.
The Richmond Marathon kicks off in less than 24 hours, and that means our streets will fill with incredible, inspiring people who all think it’s normal and fun to run 26 miles. For the rest of us, happy to limit our participation to cheering from the sidelines, that means road closures and changes to bus routes. Make sure you check in on both if you plan on moving about the city tomorrow!
This morning's longread
The "here's where we're coming from" statement in journalism
I don’t know how our political news media in America got so broken, but “the view from nowhere” is a huge part of the problem. We saw it most recently with the coverage of Critical Race Theory in Virginia’s gubernatorial election, which had almost every media outlet describe Youngkin’s non-existent campaign platform as “education.” Erasing equity and systemic racism from our classrooms is not “education,” but if reporters point it out as racism, which it is, they step outside of the comfy “view from nowhere” island. The instinct to give both sides equal treatment is so strong that it feels like taking a side, when it’s really just stating facts.
In the below post, NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen, writes about how journalists can have a perspective—a view from somewhere!—and still build trust with audiences.
Instead of trying to persuade people that you are detached and viewless — but fair and informed! — you disclose what you think. Not everything you think, but the part that readers, viewers, and listeners should know about when they decide whether to trust your account of things. Instead of “we have no agenda other than bringing you the news as fairly and accurately as possible…” which is one way to bid for the confidence of the news audience, you disclose your intent: To spur reform using the moral force of investigative journalism. Which is a kind of agenda. But it’s compatible with the principles of good journalism, and it tells people what to expect.
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