Greater Mission Bend Area Council

It is a sad day in the neighborhood.   The Chronicle has decided to stop the publication of its weekly Alief/Southwest edition.  This hurts our neighborhood badly.  We have learned to rely on the Chronicle to get out information to our 60,000 citizens regarding significant events in our community.  Alief’s population is easily twice that of our area, so there is a significant population of people in West Houston who will no longer have a voice in the printed edition of the Chronicle.   Overall I would guess that about 200,000 people are deemed “not important” enough to rate a weekly paper.  I wonder how West Oaks Mall sees this?

Now if there is any kind of silver lining to this situation, it is that at least we won’t be bombarded with news from Sharpstown and Westbury.  My goodness.  Who was the brilliant soul who decided that Mission Bend and Alief were somehow terribly interested in the events of Westbury? Personally, I have many friends in Katy, some of whom are former neighbors.  I even have friends in Sugar Land.  But, I sure don’t know anyone in Westbury, or Sharpstown for that matter.  Do you?  I remember at the time trying to bring this matter to the attention of the powers that be at the Chronicle.  I might as well have been talking to a wall, which is not unlike my recent experience dealing with the Chron.  Some things never change, it seems. 

You will notice that our neighborhood edition has been replaced with a shiney new weekend edition featuring communities such as Katy, Sugar Land, Sienna Plantation and on and on.  Aren’t you impressed?  I guess we are supposed to be keenly interested in the goings on of these communities, more so than the trivial matters which happen around us daily.  You may feel differently, but most of the citizens in this area with whom I have spoken are pretty upset at this turn of events.

I spoke with editors at the Chronicle about this matter.  Have you ever noticed that bureaucrats ALWAYS have an excuse or a reason for any decision they make?  Well, I came away from my talks with the Chronicle feeling foolish for ever bringing up the matter.  I mean, they were the voice of reason.  They had wonderful and perfectly cogent reasons for this decision.  I even got the impression that I was missing the point for asking the question.  I guess you could say I left the conversation with my hat in my hand apologizing for even bothering them.  That, my friends, is what makes a bureaucrat a bureaucrat.  They don’t pay ‘em to listen.  They pay ‘em to explain. 

At the end of the day, it goes like this.  The 60,000 residents of the Greater Mission Bend Area and the 150,000 residents of Alief don’t matter to the Chronicle.  Now in the finest bureaucratic tradition they would probably argue that they care deeply about our community.  To paraphrase, show me the money! 

Now, we can console ourselves with looking up the Chronicle’s online (i.e., Internet) edition to track down happenings in our area.  Just try and find it.  That is an adventure in itself.

Oh, in the spirit of truth, we are not totally without resources.  Should we care to deal with the online edition of the Chron weekly edition for our area, we are (proudly) informed that we may contact a Mr. Richard Zagrzecki at 713-362-6418.  So, if any of you want anything important placed on the Chronicle web site, please do not hesitate to contact Mr. Zagrzecki. 

But, before you check out the Alief (there is no Mission Bend edition) online site, you might want to check out the Katy online edition and compare it to what we are left with.  I wouldn’t say we are being treated as third class citizens because someone might take offense.  So, I will let you draw your own conclusions.

I guess all I can say in closing is, Way to go Chronicle.  And you wonder why you are losing readership.  Ask me.  I’m no bureaucrat, but I bet I can explain it to you.