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To outsiders, Pittsburgh is often considered either the “rough and tumble” town of champions like the Steelers and Penguins, or the former steel city trying to redefine itself as a renaissance town with diverse industries. Lately, it’s come back into favor with Hollywood as a film location, but most recently, it’s been bundled in with many cities in the North East that have been hammered with snow.
During the snow storms, Pittsburgh has been faced with severe problems with snow removal – a situation that resulted in one particularly disturbing tragedy. A woman tried ten times to get an ambulance to assist her common law husband during the storm. Pittsburgh EMS failed to respond, and the man died.
The 30-year-old Mayor of Pittsburgh, Luke Ravenstahl, has been hounded by local journalists throughout the situation – some may say that is the direct result of his being snowed in at a local ski resort when the storm first hit. Regardless of the reasoning, the situation hit a fevered pitch yesterday when Ravenstahl was apparently unavailable to the press or certain city officials throughout the day. Rumors of his taking a trip to New Orleans hit the streets, and snowballed. The end result was a brow-beating of the press late in the day.
Instead of thinking that Ravenstahl may have been meeting privately with officials about the death of a resident – the very story that the press undoubtedly wanted more information from the Mayor in the first place – journalists bought into the rumors. When City Council members implied that Ravenstahl was being negligent during a state of emergency because he was unavailable to them, journalists didn’t think twice about it, and kept the rumor mill turning. If any of them did think about it, and realize that Council members are entitled to briefings, but don’t actually “do” anything when it comes to emergency situations, they didn’t seem to bother saying that publicly.
The real story of the day was that Ravenstahl met with his public safety director to decide what the city should do next, as far as the tragic death of that resident was concerned. The press conference that degraded into the lecture to the press by the mayor was about that issue, and was handled as well as it could have been. The city officially apologized to the family, and stated that there would be an investigation and reevaluation of the city’s emergency procedures.
The whole situation was the direct result of Ravenstahl making himself unavailable to the press. The Mayor’s detractors – including those holding office – may very well have been the sources of the rumors. In hindsight, some journalists are considering the entire situation just a ploy. Perhaps it was, and perhaps it was a little bit deeper. Maybe Ravenstahl was taking the opportunity to see who would make something out of nothing. Whether or not that was his intent, he undoubtedly learned quite a bit about both the Pittsburgh media and members of his administration and City Council. One can hope that everyone learned the lesson he was trying to teach – while he is a public servant, he is not meant to be available to everyone at every moment. It’s pretty hard to do your job when you’re constantly being stopped to tell the press about what you’re doing.
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