Last week, Ellen S. Comerford wrote an excellent piece about her brush with a political pollster who wanted to know about the Niagara Falls Reporter.
To be fair, he also wanted to know about Gov. George Pataki, state Sen. George Maziarz, Assemblywoman Francine Del Monte and mayor-elect Vince Anello, the Robert Moses Parkway situation, the impact of the Seneca Niagara Casino here and what should be done with the local share of casino revenues.
Comerford thought it was odd that there was a question about the Reporter, and so did I.
So I did a little checking around.
Don't think badly of me for this, but I happen to know a couple politicians. And from the regional nature of the questions asked, I was able to narrow down the list of possible suspects.
Finally the poll, which was conducted by the state Republican Party, was made available, at least the part that dealt with the Reporter.
The results were astonishing, in that 84 percent of the people of Niagara County said they were aware of the Reporter and considered it a credible source of news and information.
Eighty-four percent. Talk about total market penetration.
I'd have guessed the number to be somewhere between 50 and 60 percent. After all, we only print 20,000 copies a week and there are around 200,000 people in the county. But I guess a lot of those copies get read by more than one person.
Anyway, to the 84 percent of you who participated in the poll and answered favorably about the Reporter, thank you very much.
And, as for the other 16 percent, we know who you are and we know where you live.
Just kidding.
Coverage of the scandal at Niagara Falls High School by the Niagara Gazette has gone from just plain strange to downright weird.
In the first place, the paper has begun referring to the alleged sexual relationship between a male teacher and a female student as an "affair," a word that has always connoted something pleasant for me.
Call me old-fashioned, but I was brought up to think of sex between an adult and a child as something much worse.
One of the oddest sentences I've ever read in any newspaper appeared in the Gazette's Nov. 25 edition.
"However, the Niagara Gazette has learned the teacher's identity, but has chosen not to reveal it at this time as a way of protecting the victim."
Huh?
The Gazette later went on to say that the victim actually lives in Youngstown, implying that she may have been attending NFHS illegally, that the teacher is a music teacher who allegedly met the girl while she was attending middle school and that the last time Superintendent Carmen Granto let him anywhere near a child was on Nov. 17.
Draw us a map, why don't you?
How could a failure to reveal the teacher's identity, which everyone in town knows already, protect the victim?
For the eight people here who don't already know, the suspended teacher's name is Phil Sims. There, I said it. Now the Gazette can breathe a sigh of relief, know that it's part of the public record, and not have to wait until the case goes before the grand jury.
The search for Mayor Irene Elia continues. We've looked high and looked low, from the heights of the Lewiston Escarpment in to the depths of the Niagara Gorge and still no luck.
It's been tougher to keep tabs on her since she turned in her "NF-1" license plates prior to the election.
She didn't even emerge to defend her 2004 budget, which officials in Albany said was the phoniest financial document they'd seen since that guy tried to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to some gullible tourists years ago.
You can't really blame her. The recent election results showed that her lack of popularity is only exceeded by the tremendous poll numbers garnered by the Niagara Falls Reporter (see first item).
The de facto mayor, City Administrator Al Joseph, seems to be content to issue soundbites -- "We're right and everybody else is wrong" -- in between dodging members of Anello's transition team and cleaning out his office.
Four weeks and two days, boys and girls.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 2 2003 |