Former Beacon Journal and Plain Dealer investigative reporter Bob Paynter has been hired by EfficientGovNow to help explain the role local government plays in economic competitiveness. Paynter got a two-year grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
EfficientGovNow was established by the Ohio Senate to work up a report on how residents can be
The Ohio Commission on Local Government Reform and Collaboration will solicit suggestions from the public and officials at 10:30 am. Friday in the Chapel at Malone College’s Johnson Center in Canton.
The EfficientGovNow release says that Bob “will be writing stories over the next few months about important issues related to local government efficiency . . . His coverage is just the first step in an innovative effort to engage residents to offer solutions to local government on how to be more efficient and effective.”
The Ohio Commission on Local Government Reform and Collaboration is charged with reporting its findings and recommendations to the Ohio Senate president, the Ohio House speaker and Gov. Ted Strickland by July 1. Then the commission will disband.
Lucas County auditor Anita Lopez and Lake County Commissioner Daniel Troy co-chair the commission, made up of politicians and other power figures around the state.
Paynter started Investigative Communications, which bills itself as providing “the investigative, research and communication needs of attorneys and other public, private, corporate and non-profit clients in the areas of fact and issue analysis and presentation.” You want it; Paynter digs it up.
Paynter started Investigative Communications in 2009 after taking a “modest buyout offer” from the Plain Dealer when it failed to support him over his “Justice Blinded; Race, Drugs and Our Legal System" series. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason put pressure on the PD brass, which caved. Paynter left the day after the PD’s 2008 lack of support. Columbia Journalism Review attacked the PD for its backdown.
Bob was on the BJ team that won a 1994 Pulitzer Prize for public service for its series, “A Question of Color,” about race in the Akron area. Former BJ and PD editor Stuart Warner, who supervised the “Question of Color” project, also was involved in the BJ’s Goodyear greenmail by Goldsmith series, which brought the BJ another Pulitzer in 1987.
University of Missouri graduate Paynter was at the BJ for 13 years after a year in 1986 with the Dallas Morning News. He was at the PD for 9 years.
Click on the headline to see the EfficientGovNow news release on Paynter’s hiring.
See the news release on Friday morning’s public meeting at Malone College.
See Paynter’s website Investigative Communications.
Read the BJ Alums blog post on Paynter’s rent-a-reporter company.
Read the BJ Alums story about the Columbia Journalism Review criticizing the PD for not backing Paynter.
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