Putting out the Call

What else might be repaired with a little nudging?

by Isaiah Thompson

First things first: Lower the boats! Toss me the line! Let down the ladders: Man Overboard! wants back on the ship!

For a minute, anyway: Because I bring you this week — enjoy it while it lasts — good news. Three weeks ago, I described a peculiar gymnastic feat Philly's little kids had to perform every time they wanted a drink from the adult-height public water fountain at Lloyd Hall on Kelly Drive. The kids' fountain was broken — and had been since last summer. Asked why, Fairmount Park director Mark Focht described a daunting task: It would be "a major project. It's not going to be a quick fix or an easy fix. Even when we get the parts, I don't know when the work will be completed."

Woof! Earlier this week, I passed the fountain to see that it was, in fact, repaired. A hunk of ice spontaneously dislodged itself from my frozen heart and drifted gently downstream. It was a small matter in a big city, sure — but to some people, it will make a difference. A special Man Overboard! kudos, therefore, to Philly Parks & Rec!

And just think: What else might be repaired with a little nudging?

Because if a public drinking fountain can remain broken, in plain view, for nearly a year, one wonders what might need fixing behind the closed doors and within the nooks and crannies — not just of the parks, but of the city, and of the great commonwealth itself.

Plenty, I assure you. But we at City Paper get only the faintest glimpses — sometimes catching a small hint, often reeling in an empty hook. Which brings me finally to the point of this column. This week, the media landscape was torn asunder by the tornado whirlwind of 90,000 pages of leaked documents on the war in Afghanistan, made available to the public — to everybody — by wikileaks.org, an organization and website dedicated to publishing secrets.

Despite all their sources, traditional outlets of such high-caliber information, like The New York Times, were required to go to the upstart WikiLeaks to get the goods. How did they get scooped?

Maybe because WikiLeaks is doing something newspapers ought to more often: asking its readers for tips, admitting to its readers that they know better. The more deeply I've delved into investigations, the more obvious the need for a good tip has become. Without tips, there is merely data, and oceans of it. Yet the meager tip, a simple subject-verb-object combo sometimes, can suddenly order that data and extract from it a useful truth. But while reporters regularly hobnob with their contacts in high places, rarely do they make an appeal to the best source they have: their readers.

Maybe it's seemed a little unseemly — but this week, WikiLeaks blew the notion that the reporter knows best apart for good. And so we're putting out the call, climbing the crow's nest, manning the night watch — looking out for your tips: Harrisburg bureaucrats, DEP inspectors, Gambling Board lackies, legislative aides, City Council members, mayoral press teams, map-drawers, paper-pushers, document-signers, public defenders, assistant district attorneys, homeless shelter operators, cops, inmates — everybody.

And especially you, readers. Whatever you do, wherever you live, whatever your own proverbial broken water fountain — you know more about it than we do, so drop a line. Let's see what else needs patching around here.

Asking for help is the first step. Give Isaiah a hand at isaiah.thompson@citypaper.net.