Never in your life try and tell yourself that Mayor Gavin Newsom and his vaunted, expensive five-person press corps don’t know how to handle the media.
On the very day that the San Francisco Examiner planned to run a two-page “cover story” (so titled on the top of the pages where it ran, buried deep within the Thursday paper and advertised nowhere on the cover) detailing how the city may be forced to alter its Hunters Point Shipyard redevelopment plans to NOT include a 49ers stadium, the San Francisco Chronicle had an exclusive story on what will be there — something called a “United Nations Global Warming Center,” 80,000 squre feek of wonks telling each other stuff like “BOO COAL” and “HOORAY SOLAR!”
We worry that Newsom used the poor Chronicle for the express purpose of turning heads away from the Examiner story because:
1. On Wednesday’s daily e-mail from Newsom’s press people, it was advertised that Newsom would “announce an environmental partnership with major global
organization” at 10 am Thursday.
2. On Thursday morning, a Newsom staffer e-mailed the Chronicle story to the press list, a good hour before the press conference.
3. A half hour later and a half hour before the press conference, an updated Mayoral schedule listed the 10 a.m. event as “Mayor Newsom to announce environmental partnership with the United Nations.”
Not that anyone asked about the Global Warming Center at the press conference anyway.
That the Newsom administration has plans for Hunters Point with or without the 49ers isn’t news. That the administration would dick with the local media isn’t news, either, but it still warrants mention.
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