Mayor-Elect Mike McGinn is looking to hire David Postman as his communications director, sources who have spoken directly to McGinn’s transition team confirm. Postman, a former Seattle Times political reporter, currently works as Vulcan’s communications director.
South Lake Union developer Vulcan, as we’ve reported, was a financial backer of McGinn’s green non-profit, Great City. (As we also noted earlier this week, Postman was at McGinn’s victory press conference on Monday.)
Postman has not returned our calls for a comment.
McGinn’s transition team staffer Aaron Pickus says Postman is currently on McGinn’s transition team advising on communications, but he could “not speak to hiring him” for the McGinn administration.
Postman, Pickus says, advised transition team community “ambassadors” on how best to engage and communicate with neighborhood groups.
UPDATE:
Postman emailed to say he had “nothing to add,” explaining:
“One of the pieces of advice I have given Mike and his staff is not to engage in speculation about jobs or respond to questions about rumors about who is or is not a candidate for a job with the new administration. I will follow my own advice.”
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One thing I have been wondering is how serious McGinn was with his ‘unconventionality”. I always got a feeling that it was more a strategy for him than a real commitment. I can’t say I have any real evidence for this, but the guy has always rubbed me the wrong way personally, partly from the fact that I thought his campaign against roads and transit was disingenuous and underhanded.
So many out-of-work journalists, so few PR jobs…
All Hail Paul Allen just because he is rich and brilliant. He always knows what is best for us peons.
Sounds like I may get another chance to employ my favorite chuckle, the dark one.
If there’s any political harm to such a move I don’t see it.
The establishment he’s so derided will be comforted to know that when McGinn does speak to them it will be through the mouth of one of their own.
And any skeptical true believers will come to see that McGinn is simply offering another misguided corporate servant the same opportunity he famously took himself once upon a time – to step into the light, as it were.
I enjoyed Postman’s reporting. But I found him to be a little lazy and not cut out for the hard work that ought to come working for the city.
McGinn should hire Robert Mak at 140k/year because he really turned the Nickels press operation around by “telling Greg’s story and accomplishments” to the people of Seattle. And monkeys flew out of my butt.
Dumb move for McGinn, and not calculated to win him any friends in labor. Postman is a scab who crossed his own union’s picket line.
For the win @ 4
“The establishment he’s so derided will be comforted to know that when McGinn does speak to them it will be through the mouth of one of their own.”
McGinn rode a bike and waged an unconventional campaign but he never claimed to be unconventional himself. He was a successful lawyer; he didn’t get to be one by fighting with the establishment, which in this town happens to be Allen.
I worked for plenty of khaki clad masters of the crap-a-verse in redmond – hades would freeze over before I’d vote for some powerpoint phony like mallahan.
mcginn is hiring a packager of The Great The Wonderful The Munificent Paul … how great thou all art.
rmm.
I liked Postman a lot until his rant against citizens in Crosscut. He basically told John Fox to get lost, and asked Crosscut to not publish anyone who disagreed with the Vulcan line. That is not what Seattle needs! We need free thought and free press. Read the story here, as well as links to other stories and rebuttals from John Fox. It makes for fascinating reading. Mr Postman did not repond to Mr Fox’s comments, which is too bad.
http://crosscut.com/2009/09/22/transportation/19252/
postman, no, please.
I have no respect for Postman after he crossed the picket line. I will have no respect for McGinn if he hires him. The guy doesn’t have a backbone.
Oh great. One more thing for Mr. Baker to go berserk over.
The selling out continues. Postman was a Blethens tool before he was a Paul Allen tool. And re: what ivan @7 said, scabs are the lowest form of scum.
McGinn was a Jello (r) candidate, and will be melted jello with marshmellows tossed in as a mayor.
I must agree that Postman’s take on Mercer Mess Phase2 is horrible. Phase2 would turn Mercer into a thru-corridor between Elliott and I-5. The many thousands of additional cars and trucks is inappropriate for high-density residential Lower Queen Anne. Mercer Phase2 is another main reason to question the Deep-bore. Postman’s communication skill is worse than his sense of reality on these critically important projects. He treated the severe impacts of Mercer Phase2 lightly. I vote NO.
This video helps explain things…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSlTMUd8cVk
@14, another thing for McGinn followers to turn a blind eye to.
Yes, 14, I will go “off”, but unlike most of my ramblings this item exists in my field of formal study. I am a non-J school, non-PR school, Com Dept Grad – Technology and Society (you’re soaking in it).
@11, I Read those articles when they were published.
Crosscut was critisized, rightly so, for framing Postman and his story too much in the light of him being a former journalist, and not the paid spokesman for Vulcan.
I nothing against Postman, or anybody else trying to make a living. The problem is allowing anybody like that keep trading off their former profession as a means to legitimize their paid Public Relations work as something more than the biased salesmanship that it is.
If Postman is hired by McGinn as flack management then I am sure NcGinn will get our money’s worth (McGinn is hiring people with tax money, not just his tax money).
If everybody could take a break from his journalism career just as he did then I think the messages he gives will be taken in the light they deserve, as spin.
To be fair to Postman, he is hired to do a job, lobby, not completely unlike McGinn was for the past two years. And I am sure McGinn and Postman have spent a lot of time together over the past two years. Vulcan is not going to just dump money into Great City without managing their investment in some way. So there is likely a history, and a level of trust between those two people, and McGinn is confident in his ability as a flack. Postman in this role would still not be a Journalist. He has gotten plenty of milage out of his past, maybe too much from current Journal-ish media. The other, and larger point, is the way we all treat corporate media PR and lobbyists as opposed to PR and lobbyists from non-profits, or the Mayor’s Office. They are all the same people, only we are more accepting of a given PR person, depending on our predisposition to the people, products, or services the person represents.
In some people’s minds Postman is somehow a bad guy when he represented Vulcan, and may now be a good guy if he is McGinn’s spokesmodel. He is changing business cards, not souls.
And so, will Publicola treat Postman and McGinn like Mallahan and Neuman, when in a year you call the direct line to the Mayor’s Office and Postman answers?
Not likely, To be fair to Publicola; communication in a campaign and in the office of the Mayor of Seattle are two different contexts, though I doubt they would be as understanding if it were Mayor Mallahan.
What I hope is that the local media treats everything that comes out of Postman’s mouth as PR, because that is his profession.
Goodluck being unbiased, nobody is.
Now, I am going to listen the the podcast of On the Nedia, and resume my mancrush on Bob Garfield.
You are welcome, America!
Mr. Baker,
You ask if PubliCola will treat Postman & McGinn (if Postman gets the job) like we treated Neuman and Mallahan.
A couple things:
1. We know that the mayor’s office is different than the campaign trail, and won’t expect that same kind of access to Mayor McGinn as we had w candidate McGinn, and we’ll be happy going to his spokesperson for answers to questions.
2. Part of Mallahan’s problem was that he leapfrogged the campaign step, and in the name of “professionalism,” he went straight to the trappings of being mayor, hiding behind Neuman. This is Seattle. The public expects more access than that, and I think Mallahan’s approach hurt him with the public. McGinn’s opposite approach paid off.
3. Neuman’s role makes your question a non sequitur. We didn’t define the relationship. Mallahan defined the relationship. In other words, we didn’t “treat” them any particular way. We called Neuman. Asked for Mallahan’s answers to questions, and got a variety of responses (none of them, however, ever involving a direct answer from Mallahan.)
Neuman would either not respond or say she’d get back to us—sometimes she would and sometimes she wouldn’t. And often, her answers would be a bit hard to pin down because, in fairness to her, she seemed to be guessing at what Mallahan’s response would be.
@19: once again, you doth protest too much.
19,
I pointed out #1 in my post, and assumed #2, and #3 will happen in a year when you call the mayor’s office and Postman gives you his best Neuman immitation.
I stated the contexts are different, my point is that if Postman gives you the spin a year from now you wiiuld be more understanding than if it were Nallahan as mayor a year from now and Neuman were giving you answers. That’s my opinion of your bias, and how it would play out a year from now, depending on who us mayor.
Same scenario, different mayor, different media reaction.
All media has a bias, Josh, all.
By story selection, by editing, by word selection, by Reporter’s opinion, by consumers choosing and participating in the business cycle. 100% of it, some passively, unknowingly, many actively.
The irony here is that the media that prides itself on calling out Susan Hutchison as an unadmitted Republican insists that it is not bias.
@22: Your other posts seem logical but here you present a non-example of bias: Publicola’s (and other media’s) pointing out that Hutchison is indeed a Republican despite her non-statements of such. That wasn’t bias, because if she’d stated it, there would have been no criticism of her for not stating it. Bias would entail criticism of her for BEING a Republican, not for refusing to state such.
Postman was a scab and a lazy reporter who felt he was entitled and better than others while working at The Times. When he sold out to Vulcan he lost any journalistic integrity he had remaining (which was next to none). The guy was a crappy flack, fell out of the limelight, and now wants to come back to feed his own ego. This time, though, it comes at the taxpayers’ expense. Bad move for McGinn.
What about reporters who work for the Seattle Times? Are they selling out to the Times’ perspective? How pure do you have to get to be considered a reporter rather than a flack?
You guys are going to criticize Postman as a sellout at this blog where the former The Stranger writer Sandeep Kaushik, is on the masthead while shilling for any Democrat whose check won’t bounce. Only in a town where Crosscut and slog are considered compromised news sources could a compromised operation like Publicola be taken seriously by a few dozen people.
C’mon folks-this isn’t journalism this is gossip and ain’t we cool cause we know this guy and that gal and we asked a new city councilman to do an impression. Jesus Christ! This is pathetic!
@26: You’re free to leave at any time, Dan.
I Just saw this. And, of course, Postman did not get the job, and Matassa did.
But for the record: Postman did cross the picket line in 2002. And I believe it reflects poorly on him. He took the easy way out. Cowardly even. Says something about a person’s character and can be a predictor on future behavior.
All Hail Paul Allen just because he is rich and brilliant. He always knows what is best for us peons.