Lancaster city and county suffered huge economic losses and lost many growth opportunities due to the misrepresentation and bias by the Lancaster Newspapers (LNP) during the convention center planning, launch and more recent operations.
The previous county commissioners were unjustly vilified and tax payers overwhelming objection (88%) to subsidizing the projects was ignored. Over many years, LNP knowingly lent credence to misrepresentations and untruths. Don’t Dick Shellenberger and Molly Henderson deserve a public apology? They kept the faith of responsible government while predators feasted and a district attorney ran rampart with the protection of the Lancaster Newspapers.
But just as serious for the future of the community is the lingering poison of doubt and distrust because LNP has never acknowledge its very evident mistakes, apologized for them, made major economic concessions, and promised that nothing like it will occur in the future. (As partners in Penn Square Partners, equitable owner of the Marriott Hotel, LNP is only giving back a small portion of what, under normal economic negotiations, it wasn’t entitled to in the first place.)
A sign of good intention would be the appointment of two Ombudsmen with serious journalistic credentials and from outside the county. They should be answerable to an independent organization, not the newspapers. We suspect editors and reporters would rejoice at such a safeguard from the tyranny of the executive “fourth floor.”
LNP is like the emperor parading without his clothes. No matter how good might be the intentions of the new management, until LNP publicly accepts blame for careers ruined, the bias of Convention Center reporting, the self-serving of its editorial stances, and the misuse of its influence, LNP will suffer from the poison of the ongoing cover up.
Newslanc often mischaracterizes the actions of others and occasionally themselves. Regarding the convention center, LNP made no mistakes. What LNP did was engage in intentional deceit by hiding the whole truth, and character assassination of good public servants.
Maybe the Harrisburg Patriot News could do a real investigation into the role of LNP and the convention center disaster. Hopefully it would go nationwide, embarass Ms. Steinman, and heads would roll along with a long overdue apology and true re-organization of management and editorial staff….maybe even hire some minorities…wouldn’t that be radical????
Please share three instances of “huge economic losses” and/or “…many growth opportunities due to the misrepresentation and bias by the Lancaster Newspapers (LNP) during the convention center planning, launch and more recent operations.” Facts are needed for your opinion to be taken seriously.
EDITOR: We gave two big ones:
The Lancaster Public Library had to cancel its expansion and renovation due to the re-directing of promisesd ear mark funding from its campaign to pay the cost overruns for the convention center project. The library hosts well over fifteen hundred members each day.
Lancaster Square East could have been redeveloped with a tiny fraction of the state and local funds that were mis-directed to the Convention Center.
And to add another observation, having the barren convention center across from the Lancaster Newspaper building creates a desolate block on most evenings, thus discouraging the spread of gentrification from the north side of King Street to the south.