Yes, Yes, Yes. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that whole mess is a waste of ink.

This is just part of a larger pattern of reckless and irresponsible journalism on the part of the Willy Week (certain sensationalist and disastrously inaccurate pieces by James Pitkin aimed at Reed College come to mind). I'm a Merc man for life.

I agree, the whole story read like a juicy gossip article in a tabloid magazine.

Are you serious, Matt? Why don't you spend some time engaging in actual journalism and stop your constant whining? There is a shortage of people willing to take a hard look at Leonard or any of the other commissioners. Even if Jaquiss relied too heavily on innuendo, at least he went out and interviewed people and collected some goddamn facts on which to write an article. He wasn't just sitting in the newsroom doing "some soul searching" and writing vapid and bitchy rants about rival weeklies.

Make no mistake, I am not a fan of Leonard. I do admire his general willingness to speak his mind in a direct way. But here are some of the things I don't like about Leonard, and why it shocks me that the Mercury would suggest that WW was in any way out of order:

- Randy threatened to exercise the city's eminent domain power to prevent the U of O from changing the Made in Oregon sign. Eminent domain is a scary power. Sometimes it's necessary to take private land and put it to public use. But to threaten to condemn a piece of property in order to stop a state university from advertising on it? That is a horrifying abuse of power.

- Randy tried to arm the water bureau. THE WATER BUREAU!!! And when the chief of police wouldn't give him his way, he threatened to make a public statement critical of the Portland PD's handling of the Chasse murder. He followed through with that threat the next day. Think about that for a second. Randy Leonard withheld information from the public to use as a bargaining chip to establish his own personal paramilitary force!

- Randy continues to do everything in his power to give away city money to Merritt Paulson's ill-conceived dream of owning an MLS franchise. This includes perpetuating lies about an MLS rule that requires soccer-only stadiums for its franchises. No such rule exists! It is mind-boggling why Randy is so bent on socializing the costs and risks of this enterprise while requiring almost nothing in exchange from Paulson. When the Denver Rapids (which is an MLS team, for those whole don't follow the sport) wanted a new soccer-only stadium, you know what they did? The owner of the franchise financed the new stadium himself.

I'm getting carried away now, but I just want to call out one bit of your post, Matt:

"City Commissioners Amanda Fritz, Nick Fish, Dan Saltzman, and the mayor himself have all declined comment on the article. Maybe they're frightened of the kind of vindictive journalism Leonard may be experiencing right now."

Here's another more reasonable explanation for why they declined to comment: Randy Leonard is a bully who holds grudges. Fritz has already experienced Leonard's petty score-settling for votes she's cast against half-baked Leonard proposals.

Get a clue and stop with the petty jabs at your competitor.

@Ted

It's the Colorado Rapids and they are not in Denver. They play at Dick's Sporting Goods Park. The total cost was $131 million, which was equally split between Commerce City (where the stadium is) and Kroenke Sport Enterprises. It is owned by Commerce City, exactly like PGE, and operated by KSE. That means $66.5 million was provided by the city for financing of the stadium.

At least get your facts straight.

Thanks for the correction, Blacked Out. Feel free to reread my previous post and replace my references to the Rapids with references to the Columbus Crew or the LA Galaxy, both of which play in soccer-specific stadiums built without any public funding.

At any rate, the MLS thing only came up as a digression from my two main points, which are:
(1) Matt should stop his petty sniping at WW and do something with his life; and
(2) even though Jaquiss's articles on Leonard aren't without fault, at least he's doing some digging into our absolutely bizarre city commissioners.

And I might as well just add that I have no allegiance to the WW, the Mercury, or the Oregonian. All three publications consistently put out worthless articles that are nothing but slight rewrites of press releases. Each paper will occasionally, on very rare days when the planets are aligned just so, produce a slightly polished turd of an article that is worth reading. When those rare polished turds float to the surface of the lagoon of unshiny shit that normally passes for journalism in this town, it seems wrong to me for a rival shit-spreader to criticize the turd. Because it might be a turd--and even a shiny turd is still a turd--but at least it isn't more of the unshiny shit Matt squeezes out every day.

But I digress. The bottom line is that it is unseemly for a writer of one of the independent weeklies to make whiny and empty swipes at another independent weekly.

The column was written in the same style as Ann Romano's, which is snarky opinions. However, Romano writes a gossip column which is supposed to have snarky opinions, is really funny, and the main reason that I read the Mercury.

News columns are supposed to be a little more analytical other than comments like, "is nonsense to anyone who's been inside city hall in the last year". If you disagree, do some research, interviews, and come up with something that doesn't sound like you were searching for a column idea 2 hours before your deadline.