Mayor blasts paper for coverage

The mayor and a councilman criticized the newspaper for Sunday's story.
By ROGER G. SMITH
CITY HALL REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Mayor George M. McKelvey pounded his hand on the table four times. His face turned red. He yelled.
When he was done, he left the city council meeting that was about to adjourn. Applause filled the room.
The target of his anger was The Vindicator, specifically, a front-page story Sunday headlined, "Prisoners in their own homes."
The story focused on an East Side neighborhood, where a drug gang was recently broken up.
Residents talked in the story about their fears and thoughts on the area.
Different focus: It should have been about how the police cleaned up the neighborhood, McKelvey said.
The title should have been about taking back a neighborhood. Such stories leave the impression that the city is doing nothing about its problems.
"Nothing could be further from the truth," McKelvey said.
The Vindicator's coverage "is destroying our community," he said. It's bad enough when out-of-town newspapers such as in Columbus portray Youngstown as "a piece of crap," he said.
"It's not a piece of crap," McKelvey yelled.
With that, he walked out.
Turning to the nearby press table on his way out, he said, "Write that."
Lawmaker's criticism: McKelvey's statements followed Councilman Rufus Hudson's criticism of the newspaper for the same story.
The story was offensive to East Side residents, said Hudson, D-2nd. The newspaper ignores positive developments on that side of town, such as new businesses, cleanup projects and the work of churches, he said.
Hudson said he will send out press releases so progress will be impossible to ignore. Hudson, too, drew a round of applause.