If you do a Google search for Davenport Bus you can see that 56 different media outlets picked up the story about the bus driver that dumped the 6 year old kid off the school bus when he pointed out that he was being taken to the wrong school.
Top of the list? The Washington Post. There are others from as far away as Australia.
I don't think we've gotten any positive national media attention since the large wave of national and international articles we had the first few months after the Figge opened. Or maybe the Today Show story about how cheap our housing is.
What's it take to get a feature article about River Renaissance or the introduction of industrial loft housing into a mid-sized city in Iowa?
7 comments:
I have lived here in the QC for 8 years having moved from the east coast. I say this so everyone will know I have no romantic visions of growing up here and I can maintain an objective view. So why does the QC receive all this negative national publicity ? IMO it is because they deserve it.
Davenport tries too hard to act like a big city, which it is not. Just like a person who tries to live beyond their means to keep up with the Jones' their finances will eventually implode as their debts catch up to them.
We have enough amenities at this time. It's time to catch up on the safety of the community by doing complete audits of all public safety offices and replacing many of the high level individuals with people who are serious about public safety and not politics. We also need to be smarter about where we are spending money. Put less money toward the maintenance of these capital improvements and more money toward infrastructure such as roads, sidewalks and a more visible presence of a proactive police department.
We also need more enforcement of existing ordinances that regulate the appearance of our community and put more ordinances of this nature in place.
I agree with most of what the 2nd poster said, although I don't believe its an either/or situation. I especially like the part about enforcing the existing laws and ordinances. Streets, sewers, and safety are the things that will make living here better for the people who are already here, but I believe we need a few extras to get people moving here instead of thinking of us as "flyover country." If the population stays the same, our taxes are going to keep going up.
That's really rich, someone from the right weird coast saying we deserve negative publicity.
QCI, I also don't think we should stop the capital improvement projects, but I do think we should slow down for some time. I have many projects I'd like to do on my home but I space them out so they are affordable. I'll put off adding onto my house to replace gutters and the roof. If we spend the next couple of years catching up on infrastructure and funneled all of our efforts toward that we would get a much better return on our investment.
I don't really disagree with slowing down somewhat. The police station needed to be done, and that's a big chunk that, unlike many of the other projects, is entirely on Davenport's back.
I think that it matters to be able to drive a visitor downtown and point out something that's happening at any given time. It helps create a sense that we have a vibrant city. I am for the Freight House project, but only if it can be shown that we're getting at least $10 million in private investment from it. There was a definite consensus at the River Vision meetings that we should get started on some of those proposals, but I think we could do them gradually.
I believe our own local media play a large role in all the negative publicity. One particular local TV station beat the story about the 6 year old kid to death, running it on their teaser lead-in on for least 3 separate broadcasts over two whole days. The national media often picks up on what the local media is broadcasting, especially if they succeed in sensationalizing it enough.
Not a week goes by where one of the local TV stations don't run a story something like: "Are our area school buses safe? What you need to know to protect your children, tonight at 10." I swear, one of these weeks I'm going to count all their alleged threats to my children and put it on my blog.
They absolutely feasted on the terrible storms the other day. They ran a crawl that said something like: "Do not go outside. Cars are floating down the street. PANIC! PANIC! But be sure to stay tuned for the details."
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