About the Blog:

Guelph Politico is locally sourced and dedicated to covering the political and cultural scene in the City of Guelph. Est. 2008.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Being the News

It's always a rare and interesting experience when I make the news rather than report it, yet here I am, in an article posted to the Mercury today, complaining about how I can't get Marty Burke (or his Guy Friday, Michael Sona) on the phone.
I have a lot more to say about the skittishness of the Conservatives and their approach to the media generally in a future post, but for now I'll reiterate again my disappointment that I can't get Marty Burke on the record for an interview for either Politico, or Echo Weekly.
It wasn't from a lack of trying, it wasn't from a lack of desire, and it wasn't because I'm a partisan hack that wanted to take Burke down a few pegs, though I'm sure it was that last one, or rather the perception that I fit the bill on that last point, that prevented me from getting close to Burke. CFRU as well. Our audience doesn't typically vote Conservative, but instead of asking why not, the Burke campaign has effectively asked our constituency, why should they?
The picture above is literally the closest I've gotten to Marty Burke, and even this was through a telephoto lens. Every time I hear Conservatives supporters talking about standing up to corrupt Liberals, the tree-hugging Greens or the tax and spend NDP, I think how can your candidate stand up for all that when they can't even stand before the alternative media first. Or a bunch of high school students. Or the University of Guelph community. As for not doing an interview about why you're not doing interviews, I'm not sure if that's being meta, or just consistent.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi AD
Seems to me that campaigns should be a learning experience for candidates.A learning experience, a course if you will as to how they should/must/will conduct themselves if/when elected. This is especially true for first timers.
Voters in Guelph can hardly give MB a passing grade (ie votes) if he is skipping half the classes.