Hortsman's Bias Continues And Grows With Cranley's Help

It will come to a shock to no one that Enquirer Writer Barry Hortsman has written yet another hit piece on the Cincinnati Streetcar. What may be a surprise is how much this hit piece was free advertising for Mayoral candidate John Cranley.  Professional journalists and mainstream media outlets, usually don't do that.  That isn't the case for the Enqurier or Hortsman.

Hortsman couldn't bother to get a quote from the other candidate for office? Better yet, he could have written about the article about the Streetcar and not include Cranley at all.  It is called an "Exclusive" by the newspaper.  What that typically means is that the story is one on that media outlet has.  Instead, this article was exclusively filled with the political viewpoints of only one candidate for office, Cranley.  This no challenge to what Cranley says or believes.  His inclusion is irrelevant   This is supposed to be a transportation story, not a political story.

Pure Bias, terrible Journalism.

I honestly don't believe any article Hortsman writes at this point. After claiming to be able to walk as fast as the wind blows, he lost all credibility with anyone paying attention. Now, I would like to hear from any journalist explaining how this article is not an intentional endorsement of John Cranley.

I'd also will be checking the Cranley campaign finance reports for an in-kind contribution from Gannett for the publication of this article.

So Much for Protecting the Vote, Enqurier.

CityBeat has the details on the dumb error by the Enquirer in posting 'test' data for an election results page that incorrectly showed Romney up by 92K after early voting in Ohio. It has been removed.

Before the error was caught, Drudge picked it up and tweeted, cause he's dying to report impossible to find information.

For the record, there have been no vote counts released by anyone in Ohio. The Enquirer just made a stupid error. I hope this does not become the basis for any conspiracy theories.

I don't know why, but it seems like they did this previously, or I am just having a bout of deja vu?

Enquirer Has Voter Protection Coverage

The Cincinnati Enquirer has several election day efforts to document voting issues in the Cincinnati area.  The main section is located here (behind the partial pay-wall), which includes interactive maps showing the precinct and issue identified.  Already there have been issues with cut/torn bar codes that caused issues with scanning and many reports of provisional voting requirements that were not expected by voters.

You can follow the voter protection efforts of the Enquirer on social media on Twitter and Facebook.

Is the Enquirer Delaying Print Stories From the Web, Again?

Since I ponied up and paid for an online subscription to the Enquirer, I thought I would read their front page headline on the print edition to see how they spun the news from last night.

What I saw to the left of the front page headline was another, smaller, front page story with the headline of "NAACP election will be battle." I read the article and thought, hmm, that would be a good story to link to on Cincinnati Blog.

That's basically how news blogging goes. You read other articles and link to them, adding your own take on the subject, often reacting to article itself.

So, I start to look for the article on the Enquirer website. There's not a Local News section.  That kinda sucks.  So I check around all the sections, including the Latest Headlines section, and  I can't find it. I do several searches for the article using the Enquirer's web search function. I can't find it. I go to Google and search on an exact sentence from the article including someone's name. I STILL can't find it. Maybe it was just a hiccup with their new paywall system, I don't know, but I like to find things I know are supposed to exist when I search for them.

So I gave up looking and had a different blog post than I was planning on writing.

Has the Enquirer gone back to a "print only exclusive" model?  Has it had that for a while and as a web only reader I am just now seeing the delay?  That's possible.  I kind of would have thought that such a delay would GO AWAY with the advent of an online subscription model, but maybe not.

It is still early in the morning and the article may pop up before I publish this post, but I was annoyed, therefore I am writing about it.  That's another way blogging happens, you get pissed off about something, so you blog about it.  Kinda simple, but it works for me.

The Enquirer Does Not Get the Point of Urbanism

If you were to presume that the majority of the Editorial page board live in the suburbs based on this editorial, then I think you would be right. I can't prove it, you know, except if I wanted to look up the individual members on the voter registration rolls, which I will skip tonight. Instead, I feel that I must point out something simple, yet,  that at least the writer of the editorial misses about why people are moving to Downtown Cincinnati.  As a person who lives in the near Downtown area (OTR), I can attest to this personally.

I plan on living here as long as I live in the metro area.

I don't plan on moving into a house with a picket fence.

The suburbanite fantasy is not for me.  Please don't force it upon me or anyone else, which is what the Enquirer appears to be doing, from the editorial:

Most Cincinnati residents live in neighborhoods like these. And we want young adults who live Downtown, attracted by redevelopment, to someday live in those neighborhoods. Neighborhoods need city investment and attention.

No, Mr/Mrs Editorial board members, I don't hope people who move Downtown "come to their senses" and move to a white picket fence neighborhood. I want people who are looking for a City to FIND and LIVE in a CITY.

We choose to live in city, not a 2.2 kid and backyard dream. If people want to move to city neighborhoods, THAT IS AWESOME! I really hope they do. They are far better than exurban wastelands and are closer to the action, the urban core. If you want to live in a city neighborhood, that is a very honorable goal.  That person is not the target for Downtown living.

If people feel more comfortable in Hyde Park, I am SOOOOOO COOOOOL with that. I want people to move there. I want Westwood and Avondale and Bond Hill and Mt. Washington and Madisonville to have tons of people living in them.  None of those neighborhoods have ever been or will ever be economic or cultural centers and they are not meant to be.

Here is what the Enquirer and much of the Conservative Republicans don't get. Urbanism is about creating a core that helps EVERYONE. We build the urban core up and then all the neighborhoods gain. Not everyone wants to live the hardcore city life like Tim Mara apparently doesn't get. That is OK, but we must recognize the urban core as the economic and cultural center of the Metro area and keeping that urban core healthy it helps foster the innovative, creative, and energetic people living in that core to induce the growth all around the Cincinnati Metro area.

We love the nightlife, we got to boggie on the disco 'round, oh yeah.

Yes, this is a hard pill for the "if you build a stripmall, they will come" crowd, but that is the past.  Our future is in our cities.  This is a throwback to the past, but the post War years have killed our culture and society long enough.  If we don't embrace urbanism, then American culture, the good parts of it at least, will decay.

As a side note, the part that I don't get and never will understand is how anyone living way out in the exurbs or traditional inner-suburbs can think that without a vibrant and focused urban core the metro area can grow.  It just will not happen.  I really hope someone at the Enquirer will wake up and see the future and stop fearing it.  Exurbanite Republicans will always fear change, but just because that is your core audience, you can't hide the truth from them forever.

Finally: so if you think the Enquirer isn't biased against the Streetcar and the City core, then I guess you have been living in a cave in Indian Hill for the last 5 years.

Where Will You Get Your Cincinnati News?

With the the Cincinnati Enquirer going to a Paywall format tonight, where will you get your Cincinnati News? Will you subscribe? Will other local outlets expand coverage? There are no other mainstream outlets that have any stories that are as in depth as a daily newspaper goes. Will the TV stations improve their online articles to compete?

I fear few will notice.

The problem is that the public, overall, is filled with ignorant sloths, who care more about sports or Dancing with the Stars, than what happens in their community. They wouldn't be able to tell much of a difference if you moved them from West Chester to Dublin, OH, while they slept.

MetroMix Print Edition to End with September 19th Issue

Just in time for launch of the Enquirer's NYT style Paywall for it's online content, the FREE weekly entertainment newspaper MetroMix is ending its print edition with the September 19th issue. It will instead be online and incorporated in a new redesigned website. Here is how the Enquirer article describes it:

We’re currently hard at work relaunching Cincinnati.com’s Entertainment channel – consider this the Extreme Makeover: Entertainment Edition. We’re going to combine all of our entertainment coverage into one easy-to-navigate web site.

I'm not sure how this will impact Cincinnati's entertainment industry, but I do know that it lessons the impact of having a cover story. The one thing a digital edition or website has difficulty doing is creating the impact on the reader, or casual passer by, that a cover story provides. This effect is similar to a front page headline on a daily newspaper, but for weekly or monthly publications, the cover takes on a different focus.

MetroMix provides a boost to certain events by running a cover story on it. I don't see the impact with anything that could be created online or in an email. The medium doesn't have the same type of interaction with readers. This is a loss. I don't know if will or can be replaced.

More Enquirer-Horstman Anti-Streetcar Bias

Another week and another biased anti-streetcar headline from the Enquirer. Here is the latest article: City threatens Duke over streetcar costs.

No where in the article does it say the City threatened Duke Energy. It states the City is “investigating potential legal remedy.” It also says that the City's inability to reach an agreement "threatens to pose significant cost risk" to the project.

It does not say the City is Threatening Duke Energy. The word threat is a bias created by someone at the Enquirer. I'd like to know who wrote it. Headline writing is much talked about and usually creates a frenzied finger pointing effort. Reporters point to Editors. Editors are mum or point to someone else. In this changed internet age, I have to ask, does a reporter submit a story without a title/headline? On most blogging software you have to have a title to the story when you post it, even in draft form. Is that what the Enquirer does? Does the reporter include a headline along with the story when submitted and it then is modified by a copy-editor, content-editor, or layout designer?

Did the word "Threatens" start with Horstman or was it added after? No one will likely ever take blame (or would it be credit?) for the misuse of the word. We just have live with the bias, but we can and must call them out when they fail to present the truth to their readers.

When did they become the Cincinnati Inquirer?

I understand that the Cincinnati Enquirer is changing to a tabloid size print edition, but when are they changing their name to the Cincinnati Inquirer? They might as well do that if they are going to print crap like this story about Council member Chris Seelbach.

This story has no point. It is reporting gossip from the comments from the online news article and then tries to link that to facts to point to no conclusion, but to embarrass someone who was just the victim of a crime. Seelbach was disorientated and had a broken foot and 'people' are 'upset' he mentioned he was a member of council a few times to the 911 operator. Gee, maybe the man who attacked him was doing so because he was a member of council, the first openly gay council member. Did that fact run across the reporter's mind? Instead they sought to trace

To top it off, they got a quote from Mark Miller. Seriously, the lone guy who allegedly lives in Hyde Park from COAST is a relevant source for this story? How? Please, someone tell me what caused the reporter to reach into a big pile of irrelevant sources and pulled out Mark Miller's name. If the Enquirer wants to play the tawdrily game it is playing, I hope they asked Miller where he was Monday Night. Instead they gave a political foe of Seelbach the chance to gloat and make fun of him for being the victim of a crime. That sounds like the COAST I know, too bad the Report is either ignorant of COAST or shares the desire to allow COAST's gossip to make it to print. His point wasn't even valid, he was comparing this to Laketa Cole incident where she was with a person being ticketed. Seelbach was clearly the victim of a crime, he did nothing wrong. Miller is trying to damage him and the Enqurier, and the reporters, let him take a shot. There didn't appear to be an editor around to stop this either.

Also, why did they story include a sentence that mentioned where Miller lived? They quoted another people, but didn't state where they lived. What was the relevance? Is it actually true that he lives in Hyde Park?

Finally, they Enquirer again created another false equivalency. The only way to find any sense in this story is to view it as reporting an online flame war. The Enquirer got juicey quotes from both political sides and falsely feels they reported a fair and balanced story. The problem is that this isn't a political story. This is a crime story. Why not write about the crime? Write about what the police know or don't know. We don't need to have stories about Facebook comments. We really could use some news stories that would require the reporters to leave the newsroom.

Enquirer Blog Falls into False Equivalency Trap

I know journalists often look at the political world and try to find two equally opposing viewpoints to compare and then pretend to be objective. That type of action is a false equivalency, see a description of what that is here. The problem is that most of the time, the viewpoints are not equal, they are not the same.

Take yesterday's Enquirer political blog story: Mixing food with politics: What do you think?. The blog post, wrapped around an online poll, tries to marry two topics together: 1) those boycotting Chick-Fil-A for providing financial support to anti-gay groups and 2) The mythical hoards of people who might no longer want to go the Montgomery Inn because the owners took a public political opinion in the Presidential race. The two don't equate. For many reasons:

1. One is real, the other is speculation.
2. One is a national effort and one is a mythical-hypothetical local situation.
3. One is about bigotry and the other is about political opinion.

Number three above is key.  The boycott of Chick-Fil-A, which I participate in, is about the financial support Chick-Fil-A gives to groups like the CCV, the Cincinnati area's own anti-gay bigoted hate group.  This is being treated as a political issue by many conservatives, not a moral issue, and that is the clear false equivalency being allowed to fester by the media.

If a national fast food chain were to sponsor a golf tournament for a white supremacist group, would anyone try to compare a boycott of that fast food chain to what the Montgomery is doing?  No, the media would instead help expose the fast food chain's actions.

Gay rights are civil rights and the CINCINNATI media needs to understand that issue better and more importantly get on the moral side of it.  If too many of your readers are anti-gay bigots, tough shit, be journalists, don't be accomplices in the oppression of gays and lesbians.

We have bigotry in this community happening out in the open and our media far too often lets is slide unnoticed, or in the case of the Enquirer, lets it slide all the time.

The other bad part of the article was that it was talking about an event supposed to take place yesterday where the Republican Governor of Oklahoma was coming to appear with one of the Owners of the Montgomery Inn at their Boathouse location on the river.  This event was a Mitt Romney "We Did Build This” campaign event pushing a lie about the President that falsely claims the President said that small business owners don't build their businesses alone, the government helps. That's not what the president said, but it is the story line that should have been asked of the Governor and the owners of the Montgomery Inn. They should have been asked: Who owns the building where the Boathouse Location resides? The answer is the City of Cincinnati, or as the website says "Cincinnati City Of." I don't think that question was asked, nor asked how much help the people of the City were back in the late 1980's to the suburban based company.  I am just wondering how much hypocrisy you get with a full slab of ribs?

So the Enquirer missed the real story and tried to create one that just wasn't true. Bad day for Journalism.

Why the One-sided Interview?

So the Enquirer's Mark Curnutte had an article called Social worker: Poor pushed from OTR with a subtitle of "5 QUESTIONS: Alice Skirtz". It includes a short introduction to Alice Skirtz and a book she's written. Then it has a really short Q/A, literally five questions, that has no depth what-so-ever on the subject she's writing about. She makes outlandish and unsupported claims in the answers she gives and no follow-up questions are published seeking evidence on what she claims to be true.

What gives?

Is this throwing a bone to a particular political activist group? Is this article a reward for something else? It is not customary to let anyone equate the actions of redeveloping a decaying neighborhood with genocide, calling it "econocide," without calling It insults those who are making the city a better place, and it sullies the memories of those who actually have died in acts of genocide.

This Five Questions concept could be one that I've not seen before, but really is off mark for a story a subject like this. When there is controversy on the validity of what an author writes, then five questions just does not do justice to the reader. We need far more or just skip the author and/or the subject. If you can do something right, please don't do half of it.

Enquirer To Erect Paywall For Its Online Content in October

The Enquirer will create a paywall for it's online content starting in October. Earlier this year news broke that by the end of year this would happen. This new timeframe was shared in a speech given by the Enquirer Editor Carolyn Washburn which oddly enough was given an full fledged news article. Here's the main point provided from the story:

The Enquirer beginning in October is also changing its business model to to charge for subscriptions to access both online and print content. The cost of the new subscriptions has yet to be determined, Washburn said. It will be metered, allowing for some free access online.

There wasn't a ton of flack from the earlier announcement of the paywall. I expect the first time someone reaches their allotment maximum and are sent to a subscription page, we'll hear a screaming whine like Porkopolis has ever heard.

Enquirer's Bellwethers Blog Series Demonstrates Public's Ignorance

The overall point I find hovering over nearly all of the stops the Enquirer's Jane Prendergast makes on her Bellwethers tour of Ohio is that people are vastly ignorant of political issues. Just because they have an opinion, doesn't mean it is an informed opinion. What is demonstrated most is that people can only understand what they see 5 feet in front of of them. That's an over the top metaphor, but on track. Most of the people interviewed seem to exist only in the limited experiences of their lives. They are cut off from the wider parts of the State, let alone the country or the world.

Some talk about not understanding something because they don't "know" anyone who fit into a specific situation.  I am guessing they don't have many friends or live in such an isolated or homogenized community that they are just ignorant.

One lady is so ignorant (or worse) that she still believes the President was not born in the United States.  I am guessing she is not delusional.  If I assume that and I assume that type of belief is not code for racism, then I would presume she doesn't consume enough or accurate news sources.  Anyone left believing the President was not born in Hawaii is either delusional, extremely ignorant, a racist (therefore also delusional) or playing around for affect.

I realize the blog posts are limited glimpses of each person interviewed and don't provide larger transcripts of the conversation, but I am trust the reporter's ability to provide an accurate interpretation of the interaction.  I hope the thing that the reporter, Jane Prendergast, takes back to her editors is that the news media needs to do a better job of educating the public.  It is no longer good enough to report that people have two opinions on the location of the President's birth.  Journalism must present the facts and keep reporting the facts, no matter how many crackpots creep out with promises of controversy and an increased audience.


We need journalism to do better to educate the public on facts and stop pretending there is always a debate on the facts.  Often there is a disagreement on the facts of a situation, like the horse race of an election or what the best policy should be.  The existence of a disagreement does not warrant underplaying facts.  Water is wet, the earth is not flat, Elvis is dead, and you can't dance on the head of a pin.  Journalists don't even alluded to those being false.  If you read a story where a debate on a fact like that is even mentioned, then that story was not written by a journalist.


It takes judgement on defining those facts.  But that judgement is based on evidence, not popular vote.  The public is filled with too much ignorance and reporting the ignorance with equal standing as the fact just makes the public more ignorant.


Yes, I watched The Newsroom's latest episode. I wish all Journalists watched it, but also lived it.

More News The Enquirer Missed

A nationally known group of Catholic nuns is touring the nation holding events to promote their view that the House Republicans Budget (the Ryan Budget) is wrong and goes against Catholic teaching. For a newspaper that does not miss a beat covering Catholic related events, the Enquirer didn't appear to cover either the Nun's rally held on Fountain Square on Sunday or the event outside House Speaker's Boehner's West Chester office on Monday.

Instead, police news upstart FOX19 covered the story.

Not even a few photos of the nuns? Come on, if nothing else nuns are great in photos. It wouldn't have to do with ignoring an issue that conflicts with local Catholic Republicans?

Ignorance Begat a Trite Enquirer Photo Montage

Has the Enquirer reduced its news gathering staff to the point of putting recycled photo montages on the front page of their website? Apparently, yes, they have. It's complete with an dig at OTR. Drivel. Indeed.

Why is the Enquirer Mixing a Murder in North OTR with Development Efforts?

The Enquirer's article online about the tragic murder of a 15 year old girl fails to be nothing more than pointless quotes cobbled together and a transparent ploy to gain attention. The first problem was the sensationalism, with two headlines: one on the article itself:

Girl's blood marks Over-the-Rhine dividing line

the other on the front page preview:

Girl's death a 'black eye' on OTR

The thought of trying to link violence with the neighborhood of Over-the-Rhine (OTR) is not a new thing, obviously, in Cincinnati. OTR still brings up the idea of violence and crime to the average suburban/exurban resident of the metro area who have been here for at least 10 years. Today, that crime and violence has decreased at a massive rate. This has helped changed the image of OTR. We (I live in OTR) don't have the automatic fear factor present itself, as often, when we mention OTR in conversation, except by the most anti-urban conservatives around town.  This link, however, sells newspapers.  The Enquirer makes money selling papers to people who have lived in Cincinnati for all of their life and their ignorance doesn't like to be challenged, so the newspaper feeds that ignorance with the same old story: crime happens where it is supposed to happen. To the ignorant person that place is OTR.  Selling it with emotional tugs is just the means.  If you can get quotes that bash 3CDC and the development in OTR, then that just appeals to a newer potential Enquirer Reader that wants their ignorance fed.  That group tends to be one left, as opposed to the right wing anti-urban knuckle-scraper.

What is the more disappointing problem with the story is it's structure.  What I get from it is that the reporter walked down Vine Street over a half mile from the murder scene and talked with some of the businesses in the newly developed area (right where I live). The article added pleasant quotes from employees at a couple of the businesses. He then walked West towards Washington Park in the quasi-narrative and invoked quotes from the usual suspects that were not really relevant to the point of the article, which was talking about the divide of the neighborhood, or was it the violence, or was it the drop in crime, or was it the resilience of the new residents?

If the article was going to be about something, it needed to be one of three things. First: Tell the story of the crime and/or the victim.  We got little about who she was, why was she there, what happened. Second: Talk about the situation of the Street Violence that affects many neighborhoods in Cincinnati.  Was this a stray bullet from a drug deal gone bad?  What she standing next to people who are involved in the drug trade?  Was this just an accident of some foolish person handling a gun?  Third: Tell of the divide between Northern OTR and the development South of Liberty.  This would surely have been most of what Josh Spring would have talked about.  His quote was filled with a big lie, but that's another blog post. One of the three would have work as an article and been relevant.  Instead we get a mess.

This article had many contributors, so that likely added to the hodgepodge feel, but the lack of editing just beams like a beacon a top a tall radio tower. It is like there could have been three different stories written and either the reporters were not able or allowed to do enough reporting for those stories, or more likely the story was only given so many lines of space. It would seem to me that the Newspaper should stop structuring their articles for newspaper print and focus on writing for the web. On the web, there isn't much of a space limitation. Also, other than organizational limit, the number of articles shouldn't be an issue, so write three stories instead of one. Put the out of town copy editors and layout people to the test!

Delusions of Grandeur Continue to Flow From Smitherman Like a River

Today's article from the Enquirer's Jane Prendergast on Cincinnati Council Member Chris Smitherman was an interest read. I say that because my blog (and myself) were quoted and I represented the face of Criticism of Smitherman. I take that as a compliment. I try to give voice to issues and topics that don't get lots of press. Criticism of Chris Smitherman does not get much media attention. I am glad it got some today.

The other more entertaining portion of the article comes from a direct quote from Smitherman himself:

“I will become the mayor one day,” he says, though he won’t run in 2013 when Mallory leaves.

I don't know what planet Smitherman is living on, but it appears to be akin more of an alternative-reality than anything resembling the actual Earth, where the rest of us reside. Smitherman at best has a niche voter base that he segments more each time he opens his mouth in public. Unless he plans a cultural revolution to drive out everyone in the City who disagrees with him, then I don't see him winning an election for Mayor against nearly any other remotely credible candidate.

Those of us in the political opinion world would love to see him run someday, just to watch him lose in the primary. How a man who wants nothing more than the destruction of the urban core could think he could be mayor is beyond my comprehension. I guess that's why I can't see it as anything other than a delusion of grandeur. One thing I don't doubt about Smitherman: he has a high opinion of himself. That doesn't translate to anything unless you can make stuff happen. The only stuff he can make happen is gettting in the newspaper by making outlandish comments. Negative press attention in the end might earn you a day old bag of doughnuts, but little else.

Surprise! The Enquirer Ran a Puff Piece on an Anti-Abortion Group

You are totally shocked, I am sure, to find out that the Cincinnati Enquirer ran an "In-depth" puff piece on an anti-abortion extremist group. The paper even has a photo collection so you can "meet" them.

This is nothing new for the newspaper. The Enquirer must appease the Westside and Conservative readers or they risk losing circulation.  Is that what they really risk? I am beginning to wonder if this is about business or about ideology of some editors.  For what ever reason, it has been come pathetic. Whether it is a puff piece on bus rides to Washington DC anti abortion rallies or blog posts on political tactics, the Enquirer has an anti-abortion bias in the newsroom. Yes, in the newsroom, not just the editorial page. The paper has a soft spot for the anti-abortion crowd and they don't disparage them.

Horstman's Anti-Streetcar Bias Continues

Enquirer Reporter Barry Horstman continues to push an anti-streetcar bias in his reporting and this simple article about the locaion of the streetcar maintenance facility is his latest example. The story is straighforward, the city announced the exact location of where the Streetcars will be maintained, about two blocks north of Findlay Market. Horstman just had to add this stand alone sentence:

"On Monday afternoon, the only sign of commerce on the quiet block was an apparent prostitute trying to flag down passing drivers."

First, it is not even factual, it is supposition, unless he was the personal flagged down by the prostitute. There is no valid reason to include this comment. It has no relevance to article and is put there on purpose to disparage the project. There is no other explanation, and it is really disappointing that his editor let this get through. Horstman is far to biased to be reporting on the Streetcar, he can't even write a simple article about it without adding in bias. This needs to be addressed by the Enquirer management, or it will just get worse.

Rich Patrons Don't Rule the World, Even the Arts World

Reading this article from the Enquirer on a 'protest' at the Cincinnati Art Museum, I come up with many points lost in the article and on the people protesting:

1. This article would not have been written if someone with pull hadn't tipped off the Enquirer that this was going to happen.  I really hope it wasn't the rich patron who appears to pushing the issue with the Museum, but it was likely someone connected to that person.
2. The issue isn't about money, it is about power within the Museum.  It appears to me that this curator wants a promotion and wants more control over what goes on at the museum.  What has he done to warrant that? Whose job would be lost for him? Does the rich patron care about that?
3. It this curator is so great, why did his exhibit get the criticism from one of the article's author's blog? If he were to counter and say that the elements criticized were beyond his control, well, then if he wants to move up in management, he needs to make

I really enjoy the Art Museum and I hope patrons continue to support it, but staging a stunt like this makes people look foolish and ignorant. I would instead hope they use their time lobbying their elected officials to fund the arts.  If they don't want to do that, I suggest spending more time just raising more money to help the Museum be able to afford new cutting age art exhibits.  Money is the main factor in getting new and vibrant art at the Museum, not just one curator.