Wednesday, November 25, 2009

New entries are password protected for now

There have been a number of topics that have been set aside for discussion outside of this public forum. Since it really wouldn't make any sense to cover these issues while they are still officially unresolved.

For a select few individuals, I have been providing usernames and passwords, so that healthy and open dialogue can occur without concern for the whole community watching. Sort of like "Executive Sessions".

Thank you for your support and I look forward to continued discussions "off the record" until the air is clear and I can start posting the accumulated entries.

The site may be found at www.esd15.org/protected-blog

All the best.

Mark Zandberg

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Is anyone surprised that print media is failing?

For readers of the blog that are tracking all of the clear evidence illustrating the close ties between this local rag and the District, here is a rather vivid case in point.

-----Original Message-----
From:
mark@esd15.org
Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 8:48 AM
To: Jocelyn Robinson; Eric Stevick
Subject: Questions for Candidates

I was just informed that the Enterprise published a Q and A article regarding the candidates for Edmonds School Board. I was also informed that you have no information from me and that I "did not respond".

May I ask just how exactly you attempted to contact me because no one has ever had any difficulty in doing so? Is this fair and effective journalism for our community?

While it is true that I was in Ethiopia for the month of September, my calls and email were monitored every day and I was still responding to every inquiry - even from Addis Ababa.

At the very least, all of my biographical information and my views on every issue imaginable are freely available on the internet.

Mark Zandberg


Hi Mark,

We sent the letters and questions through the mail to the addresses listed on the Snohomish County auditor's website.

I've attached the questions we sent to Edmonds School District candidates. If you can get these back to me by Monday, Oct. 26, I can include them online. I can't guarantee that we'll be able to publish the entire answers in the newspaper, but we will at least include a referral to the website.

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Jocelyn Robinson
Enterprise News Editor
425-673-6504
jrobinson@heraldnet.com

I returned from Ethiopia on October 3, 2009, the day after the Public Forum hosted by the City of Edmonds. There was nothing in the mailbox from the Enterprise and no telephone messages or email from anyone at the Enterprise. There was nothing ever mailed to me from the Enterprise to the address where I was living at the time I filed as a candidate, nor was anything from the Enterprise forwarded to my address in Edmonds.

Clearly, the Enterprise felt it would be beneficial to allow Ann McMurray and Susan Phillips to get their messages out in their small newspaper while maintaining the illusion that they were being fair and effective.

What newspaper, in this day and age, sends questions out in snail mail? One could naturally assume that if something was mailed to a candidate, the responses could be mailed back. The "journalist" (and I use the term loosely here) would then have to have the questions and answers typed up. Why not send the questions by email? After all, our email addresses were included with our physical addresses when we filed as candidates. And of course, any real journalist wouldn't have any difficulty finding contact information for the moderator of a blog with more than 400,000 page views.

Why wouldn't this "journalist" follow up with a telephone call or an email? "Gee, I noticed that you did not respond to the letter that I mailed. Did you ever receive it?" Of course, I cannot respond to a letter that was never mailed.

What is funny is that after I "complained", I was given an opportunity to respond but not given any real chance to appear in print. There was a notation at the bottom of their web article stating that my responses were submitted after the original article was published. As if to suggest that I would copy the written work of the other candidates (assuming they actually wrote their own statements).

Is anyone actually surprised that print media is failing?

Scams uncovered on the blog are "too complicated"

When I met with King 5 (contaminated site), KOMO (frozen cheese sandwiches) and the Herald, everyone was telling me that the scandals I cover in the blog are just "too complicated" for their intended audience. They couldn't possibly explain the nature and impact of each scam in a way that could be easily understood. While the blog has made an effort to reveal the feculence seeping from the operations side of the district and infecting the education side, it is clear that we need to start catering to a wider audience.

On a bright note, when I explain these real estate transactions to the many commercial brokers with whom I mingle, they immediately understand and quickly express shock at how a school board can be so blind to such blatant malfeasance.

In the very near future, the blog will be taking its message to YouTube. Our mission will not be to explain every last detail, but rather give our community a taste for the schemes being unleashed by management at the expense of the public.

The mission will be to provide a five minute snapshot of each questionable attack on our senses by district management. The viewer can watch one video in the series or all of them. They will be able to watch them in any order and watch them multiple times so some of the details will start to make sense.

Along with the use of this new platform, the blog will be revamped, restructured and revitalized with a long list of issues that have been piling up while I was in Africa.