NORTHWEST NATTERINGS: The Arizona Daily Star has noticed all that burgeoning growth on Tucson's northwest side and is printing a Thursday insert called Star Northwest and distributing in that area. It's edited by Ed Cook, who reported for some time on Marana and Oro Valley. This move has caused consternation at the twice-monthly (soon to be weekly) Northwest Explorer, a free tabloid distributed throughout much of the area north of Orange Grove. In an interview in Inside Tucson Business, Explorer publisher Melanie Larson whined, "They saw a marketplace that we've created out here and they're going to go directly against us." Put a sock in it, Melanie. You didn't "create" the market--it was already there. And to claim it isn't "ethical or right" for the Star to "try to put the Explorer out of business" is a question you should have asked when you came in on top of the formerly published Catalina Sunrise. That paper is gone now, so was that unethical? AND SPEAKING OF DOGPATCH AND CADDY SHACK: A recent article in Star Northwest discussed the growth plans of Marana and Oro Valley, and it seems their planning departments are both still bent on seeing their boundaries meet at Thornydale Road, while incorporating between them the entire northwest side. And we thought the new town council folks in Oro Valley had given up on that ludicrous expansionism, and that Marana was having enough problems digesting what it had already grabbed off or rezoned. Watching some of the pols and bureaucrats out there discuss what they call "planning" is reminiscent of what it must have been like in Berlin in the 1930s. Do these Clowns really look at all those county residents between their two burgs as Poland, to be divided up like a sausage? Do they realize what it would cost their taxpayers to service those areas? Tucson City Manager Mike Brown and his annexation gang aren't the only empire builders in this valley. SIGN LANGUAGE: You can tell it's almost primary time because there's something else cramming out all the builder promos that usually fill up county rights of way--political signs. It's hard to believe some of these candidates actually paid good money for a lot of what's out there. Many are oversized sheets of plastic that warp and fall over when the wind blows. Others are so poorly done you can't read the name, or are mostly wasted space with small letters in the middle. Voters should pay heed. With a media that tells us nothing about who these candidates are, decisions may have to be made on the quality of the candidates' signs alone. And maybe that's not completely bad. Any candidate who looks confused and inept doing something this simple will probably be confused and inept in office AT LAST! LOCAL ELECTION COVERAGE: KVOA-TV, Channel 4, in conjunction with The Arizona Daily Star, has finally begun covering the local political races. They both kicked it off with a look at the Democratic primary for county attorney, and KVOA's methodology indicates just how far TV news has slipped. Both candidates--Barbara LaWall and Rick Gonzales--faced a panel of Pima County voters while newshound Sandy Rathbun played, well, moderator. This is part of the new philosophy of election coverage--let the public do the reporters' work. So whatever happened to having a knowledgeable group of reporters make up the panel? Will David Brinkley's Journal replace Cokie, Sam, and George with some voters picked at random? Here's a suspicion--there ain't enough real reporters left in town with the institutional memory, or just plain ability, to make up the panel. And even if there were, the format is so wobbly, with no rebuttals or follow-ups on shallow and non-answers by candidates, as to be pretty much a game of pitch and putt. Local news reporters have so degenerated in their ability to ask a cogent question that a half dozen voters picked at random probably know more about what to ask than the reporters do. And that's the real scary part.

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