October 22, 2002
How the Buffalo News hyped Christian Menn's bridge design to the disadvantage of all others
Patrick Lakamp's page-one article in the October 20 Buffalo News, "Striking new visions for the Peace Bridge," is 1661 words long, of which slightly over 1000 words are quote or paraphrase Christian Menn or are directly about Christian Menn.
The other three bridge architects and their designs combined get slightly over 300 words, or 18% of the text.
The continuation of Lakamp's article on page A6 has a two-column headline that reads: "Bridge: Construction could begin in 2006."
"Striking new visions for the Peace Bridge," including the four bridge images and the photograph of Lamb, is online in its entirety at the Buffalo News website, as is Lakamp's 761-word Q&A: "Anatomy of a design and its place in the selection process."
Sandra Tan's Buffalo News article, "West Side asthma rate is 35.7% of homes," is on line, but without the map showing the asthma rates in several areas of Buffalo. Tan's article on the lung disease research is 524 words long, of which 190 words, or 36%, consist of Lamb's responses on behalf of the Public Bridge Authority.
None of the three articles is linked to one any other and the Q&A was not listed in any of the Buffalo News web site tables of contents on Sunday. To get to it you had to run Search. By Monday night, the Q&A didn't even turn up on Search: you could get to Lakamp's page 1 article, but the Q&A had been disappeared.
If you any article on the City and Region page of the Buffalo News website, you get 15 categories of city and region news: Buffalo, Northern Suburbs, Eastern Suburbs, Southern Suburbs, Erie County, Western New York, Niagara County, Niagara Sunday, Ontario/Niagara, Around Town, Columns, Schools, Corrections, Sunday Neighborhoods, Peace Bridge Choices.
Click on any of the first 14 of those and you get all the articles about that subject for the past 10 days. Click on "Corrections," for example, and you get a day-by-day list of the errors the News wants to acknowledge.
Click on "Peace Bridge Choices" and you go directly to Lakamp's page-one article. His Q&A isn't listed and neither is Tan's article. Just Lakamp's page-one article with its four computer-generated images and the photograph of Jake Lamb.
It is the only one of the hundred or so categories in the Buffalo News contents frame that leads you to a single article.
for an analysis of what seems is going on in the Peace Bridge expansion process, see "Heading for a wreck at Peace Bridge Plaza"
click here for the previous articles in the Peace Bridge Chronicles
click here for color images of the four bridge designs