Elect the Media?
I agree with many of your points regarding Frank Cagle. I'll take local politics and commentary over syndication any day. But I disagree that Cagle should have remained on the air. As a self-described fiscal conservative and social libertarian, I ascribe to the philosophy of "Don't waste my money, and leave me the heck alone." So I should really dig Cagle, right? Wrong. Cagle has a voice...for newspaper. On the air, he usually sounded like he had just woken up, and spent the first 10 minutes clearing his throat.
He often ran out of things to say, and you could hear him fumbling through his notes looking for another topical issue to discuss. It was painful to listen to. Boortz is entertaining and delves into national issues of importance. In general, local Knoxville media lacks a quality because it fails in so many ways to find talented people to debate the real issues that affect Knoxvillians. Korda (still on) and Cagle both worked for Mayor Ashe. Why do we want to listen to these guys anyway? In print, KNS and Metro Pulse silence, rather than encourage debate on a wide range of issues. On the air, we get sound bites and syndication. When we do have a fresh voice, like Hallerin Hill usually is, it is only one voice. Where is the contrast? The counterpoint? The issues?
You yourselves, Metro Pulse, chose to silence debate on the mayoral race by deciding not to run letters to the editor about the race as far as a month before the election. KNS did, running letters for one candidate three to one over the other.
So why do we need local commentary anyway? If Metro Pulse, our alternative weekly, is going to silence debate, why don't we just get some syndicated columns from the Village Voice and be done with the whole matter?
As Bill O'Reilly would say, you're a bunch of pinheads. Find some fresh voices, and start robustly debating and discussing the issues. Get the usual suspects off of Sunday morning local talk and find some people with some opinions, not agendas. Knoxville print and broadcast media alike need to kick it up a notch.
We have a new mayor. Can we now get a new media? Fair and balanced?
Doug McDaniel
Knoxville
KTSC Is OK With Me
The selling of the Convention Center is an issue with a brief but complicated past and a variety of players, agendas and acronyms. As early as 1997, efforts to market Knoxville as a convention destination were not effective enough for local hospitality and government. So, the city built the Knoxville Convention Center (KCC) and hired Philadelphia-based SMG to consult, promote and book future conventions.
The facility was scheduled to open summer 2002, but bookings remained below expectations. Seeking a solution, city and county officials approached Gloria Ray, President of the Greater Knoxville Sports Corporation (GKSC) to develop a plan to boost sales. Ray's success and reputation gave local leaders the confidence to create a new organization, the Knoxville Tourism & Sports Corporation (KTSC) in August 2002.
Among KTSC's first tasks was assessing past marketing decisions and strategies. KTSC's primary concern was establishing the best allocation of money and staff to achieve results. KTSC's business plan includes an entire professional staff marketing Knoxville and KCC to every possible meeting planner demographic from business, medical, science and religious to military, academic, fraternal and sports.
It includes $200,000 worth of advertising in publications achieving 95% penetration into the meeting planner market, a $100,000 national media marketing campaign, custom-designed sales tools, web-based resources for meeting planners and the implementation of a "value pricing" strategy to quicken the booking process and advance negotiations. It also includes annual evaluation of professional memberships and tradeshow attendance. For example, KTSC maintained its membership in the American Society of Association Executives, but didn't attend this year's conference because it was in Hawaii.
Every conceivable performance measure (economic impact, delegate days, hotel room nights, future business, etc.) comparing KTSC with its predecessors indicate our strategies are sound. As a matter of fact, the Knoxville Tourism Alliance and the Downtown Hotel Coalition both state on the record that KTSC is the solution to past KCC booking problems. KTSC's city contract for 2003-2004 requires the organization to produce $45 million in economic impact citywide and $10 million from events held at the KCC in return for an annual service fee of $750,000. That's a 60:1 return on investment. We expect to meet or exceed those performance measures and anyone can check our results at our annual performance review.
It is difficult for Mr. Sullivan or anyone else to spend a few hours of research and expect to understand the details and nuances of a particular industry. It is, however, easy to make partially informed opinions and present one's own agenda as an accurate portrayal. Perhaps in the rush to promote the need for a convention center hotel, he has forgotten the missteps of the past and the solutions — created but a short time ago — to help Knoxville regain its swagger and find its stride in this competitive business. For too long, Knoxville has wasted its time and talent fighting with itself. We look forward with great confidence and anticipation to directing all our energies toward the fulfillment of our contractual performance obligations and to being a positive, uplifting organization at work for the people of this community.
Sincerely,
Matt Seaman
Director of Corporate Relations
Knoxville Tourism & Sports Corporation
What goes around comes around
I am writing this letter to express my extreme disappointment in the lack of professional ethics employed by Metro Pulse in a recent article "Dome-iciles."
The woman whose character was assaulted is my mother, and I cannot believe there are no editorial reviews which prevent such inflammatory and unfounded 'journalism.' I did, however, track down the author and privately voice my concerns. I can understand ignorance being allowed to remain in letters to the editor (such as the recent article which blames the trucking industry for car selection- witness an exemplar in neo-liberal logic of middle class privilege!)...but how can you include such an unprovoked attack in a feature—especially when my Mom did return the call but couldn't negotiate the red tape of your phone system! The house is not yet complete, but that is all water under the bridge now. I used to love the Metro Pulse, but I am afraid it has become a forum for wanna—be intellectuals clamoring for some type of personal validation, rather than a grassroots publication aimed at empowering the people's voice and familiarizing ourselves with the environment in which we live. I look forward to the return attacks on even this letter, with which my husband and I are very familiar (remember us? "Not in Our Name")?
Unfortunately we are STILL witnessing the daily realities of unjust military action as the US "liberates" yet another community in the human family. In all aspects of life (journalism, opinion, even slander), remember—what goes around comes around. Informed debate and good journalism are essential to a healthy community—ignorance is contagious!
Sincerely,
Melissa Hargrove
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