Is The Oakland Press A Public Relations Firm Or A News Outlet?

Rochester Community School’s Board of Education Trustee Andrea Walker-Leidy recently announced her resignation.  Nick Mordowanec, a reporter for The Oakland Press, wrote an article on the resignation. The issue is it reads like a press release and not the reporting of factual events to inform the community.  

In the article, there is only a reference to one question asked by Mordowanec, “When asked if she would have resigned had the pandemic not occurred, she said no.”  The rest of the article is mostly quoted from Walker-Leidy, who per her LinkedIn, is the President of Walker Publicity Consulting with no regard to specific inquiry by the writer of the article in an attempt to understand her decision to resign.

If Mordowanec intended to inform the community quotes like this ““I feel all of those same things now,” she said. “Public education faced one of its hardest challenges in 2020. And for school boards this past year, it often came with personal attacks and accusations. I saw the RCS administration, families and the school board work tirelessly for our students to try to navigate the almost impossible.” would have had follow up questions of Walker-Leidy. For instance, to cite the specific personal attacks or accusations in an effort to understand the larger context that initated the premature departure from the position. 

Public Relations or News Outlet

Had Mordowanec asked for the specifics, he may have learned that In August of 2020 Walker-Leidy stated, “we would love to be able to offer a better option.”  “We are left with a project management task that does not have anything we need to get the project done and keep our kids safe”.  “Do we need you to explain to your kids that there are sometimes things are out of our control? yeah”.  

Mordowanec could have asked Walker-Leidy about all the resources spent on building the Virtual Campus (VC) and if there allocation was appropriate. Or perhaps, how the VC limited the ability to return the students to in-person district-wide.  Of all things “out of their control,” was shifting the district’s funding to prioritizing the virtual campus one of the uncontrollables?

Had he asked more questions, Mardowance might have learned that Walker-Leidy’s son attended RCS’s VC along with an in-person kindergarten “simultaneously.” That is if he was trying to really understand the situations. Had he learned this about Walker-Leidy’s son, here are a few other questions he could have asked.

1. Why would any student attending school virtually and in-person simultaneously?
2. Is it not hypocritical to vote to deny others an in-person option while sending her child to school in-person?
3. Did she think RCS could not keep the students safe while wherever she sent her kid, could? If so, why?
4. What actions did the school she sent her kid to have that RCS did not?
5. Was her kid attending RCS VC just for the optics and public perception?

Pattern of Behavior

Mordowanec and “The Oakland Press” appear to be building a track record of not asking the most pertinent questions that are needed to provide the public with relevant information. When Mordowanec reported on the purchase of the new administration building, he refused to update his story to include that RCS BOE President Kristin Bull stated the district knew for two years that they were not going to renovate the old administration building despite having the ability and means to update this information as a writer.

Mordowanec is not the only one at “The Oakland Press” that fails to ask the questions that need to be answered to professionally and accurately cover the stories. Anne Runkle has written multiple stories on the effort to recall members of the RCS BOE. Runkle has never reported on the specific concerns parents in the district have.

1. RCS uses cease and desist letters to intimidate parents.
2. The baseless police report the Superintendent filed against a parent.
3. The Superintendent lying to the community about why a BOE meeting was shut down.
4. The BOE President stating on the record that the Superintendent was not dishonest, disputed video evidence to prove otherwise.

Follow the Leader

Why is it that “The Oakland Press” acts more like a PR firm than a news organizationn? That would be a question that Don Wyatt the Content VP & Editor would need to answer. Wyatt, has been informed of the above-listed concerns of the community and as a result, he cannot claim a lack of knowledge. This leaves us, the readers and local community, to draw our own conclusions as to why a media source would refuse to provide all information and leaves us all to question if this is the type of media we want or should continue to fund.