Wednesday, November 24, 2010
City Bound
Posted by Mary Cashiola on Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 12:12 PM
Well, I've got news.
After 10 years, I'm leaving the Flyer to go work for the City of Memphis as a specialist in brand management and civic engagement.
People — undoubtedly broken-hearted at the thought of never reading another well-reported story by me — have asked me why.
The reasons are many. Some personal. Some professional. One is simply that I've been a fan of Mayor Wharton since he was elected in Shelby County, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to work for him.
Another is that I believe in Memphis.
This is a place where if you have an idea or want to do something, no one is going to stop you from pursuing it. Look at Aaron Shafer. He came from California and wanted to get a skatepark built here. Sure, it took him five years, but the city is building a skatepark in Tobey Fields.
People have also asked how a journalism background is going to help me do my new job.
I've spent the last 10 years reporting on the city of Memphis. Through my work here, on this blog, and my companion column, I've looked at what makes cities successful, what doesn't, what we're doing in the city of Memphis to move forward, and what other cities are doing to meet challenges similar to those of Memphis.
I understand the realities of Memphis — its challenges and its opportunities. I'm hoping to use the skill sets I honed here to find bright spots that are happening in city government and the community, to communicate with the general public — both locally and nationally — about the amazing things going on in the city of Memphis, and, frankly, I hope to contribute to policy development that will make Memphis even better.
Crime is down 27 percent since 2006. People are exercising together in droves on the Shelby Farms Greenline, creating healthier habits and healthier communities. Citizens are looking to innovative strategies to make their neighborhoods more livable.
We're in an amazing place right now, and I can't wait to see what's next.
(I'll still be posting here for the next several days ... so feel free to check back. And thank you all for your continued support. It means the world to me.)
Comments (21)
Showing 1-21 of 21
"Brand management and civic engagement" (read:cheerleader/booster). Yay, Memphis!
The hardest part of this job is going to be convincing the home team's fans to cheer, rather than boo, or, as I've heard it said, the only thing wrong with Memphis is Memphians.
Yay, Mary!
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Mary, are you taking Jackson, John, and Bruce with you ? :)
Congrats !!! Well Done.
Congrats and good luck! (Although, as a former journalist myself, it saddens me to see so many decent local journalists calling it quits in order to either make a bigger difference, bring home more bacon and/or to accept jobs that seem much more secure.)
Congratulations, Mary, we hardly knew ye. Hard to believe that was a 10 year stint, time flies.
Far be it from me to presume to tell Mary how to do her new job, but one of the first places I'd like to see her start to improve the city's image is with the local media, and who better to do that than someone with media experience.
Sooner or later, something (or someone) is going to succeed in convincing our local print and broadcast media that it is not in their best interest, and certainly not in the city's, for them to incessantly bombard us with crime. Sure, we have a crime problem, but it serves no useful purpose for the media to blow that problem out of all proportion in the way that it does, and it certainly does very little to promote the city to the outside world. It's not even doing the media itself any good as more and more people opt out of reading about local news (i.e., crime) in print or watching local news (i.e. crime) on TV.
The U of M's journalism department, and particularly professors Joe Hayden and Lurene Cachola Kelly (both former TV news people themselves) have studied this problem, and might be excellent resources for convincing the local media to wean themselves of their obsession with crime. Dr. Kelly wrote a couple interesting pieces about the problem for the "Smart City" blog earlier this year. http://www.smartcitymemphis.com/author/lur… and Dr. Hayden moderated a symposium at the U of M about this subject last year, which was discussed in this article: http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2009/…
The other thing I'd do is to get the MPD to stop reporting crime in a way that puts Memphis at a disadvantage when media outlets inevitably ignore the FBI's warnings about not using its crime reports to compare cities which report crime statistics differently. http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2009/… Maybe if we reported crime the way other cities do, we wouldn't suffer by the comparison and end up at the top of so many "worsts" lists.
Just a thought (or two).
Mary,
An overall cleaner city would make your future job a lot easier. I live in Memphis and like it here, but the daily exposure to dirty streets and overgrown weeds has a tendency to breed negativity. My two cents.
Kewl.
Will you have any pull with whoever is responsible for that giant sign on I-40 that has welcomed visitors to M E M P & S for the last year or more?
Well, congratulations, but it kind of sucks. I enjoyed your reporting, and I really appreciated it considering how godawful boring Council meetings can be.
You know, having just moved out of the city and having had my mind completely blown as a result, I feel like I have something important to say here, but I'm not sure if I've even assimilated it all yet. Here goes.
I honestly had no idea how desperate, sullen, and outright sad Memphis was as a city until I left. I knew that there were places where grinding poverty was not a normal way of life, but it never occurred to me that I could participate in that life. As a friend of mine is wont to say, "Memphis sucks you in."
I am only now beginning to realize the extent to which I had completely assimilated the city's depression in my own outlook. Memphis was holding me back in ways I could not fathom until I was gone from it; I feel like I've been born again. What amazes me most about my new home, Washington DC, is how much people take prosperity for granted. The people there are more ambitious, more confident in themselves and their abilities, and they expect more out of life. It's a completely different world over there.
Right before I came home for Thanksgiving, I was telling a new friend about the Bass Pro / Pyramid deal. About halfway through the conversation he said something like, "Well, I guess that's not the best image for your city, but that's going to be the coolest headquarters they [Bass Pro] could get." He didn't realize, and was dumbfounded after I explained it to him, that all the hullabaloo I was describing about a Bass Pro coming to the Pyramid was only for a _store_, not their corporate offices.
It's not that we're selling ourselves short -- although we're doing that, too -- we're like some poor neglected and abused mare that continually breaks free of its stable and runs away to the same spot over and over again because that was the last place anyone gave us any affection. We're beyond pathetic, and our condition is quite literally all in our heads. There is no good reason why things have to be this way, and I know I can't be the only Memphian who was completely clueless to the magnitude of that fact.
FANTASTIC Mary! We believe in Memphis with you!
Kerry Peeples & Thigh High Jeans.
"What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but what happens in Memphis makes history."
You have permission to use that.
Auto: I lived in the D.C. area for several years myself before I came to Memphis, and I was high on it when I first arrived too, but eventually couldn't wait to get out.
Between the pervasiveness of the military and the government (the two denominations of a religion that's every bit as creepy and problematic as any that pervades Memphis), an economy and infrastructure that would crumble without the subsidy American taxpayers provide, and a population whose transience is institutionalized by the kinds of frequent electoral swings we've just gone through, you'll find that D.C. is, in fact, a real-life Stepford. Add to that its own serious crime, race, poverty and education problems, in spite of all its prosperity, and D.C. actually has a lot in common with Memphis, but without any of Memphis' charm or character.
I hope you enjoy your sojourn there, but I wouldn't get too comfortable if I were you; once the novelty of the place wears off, you'll start wishing you lived someplace real. I will say, though, that D.C. is the perfect place for someone who thinks of himself as an "egocrat" to live. You'll have plenty of company.
P.S. Thank you, though, for proving my point about how the only thing wrong with Memphis is Memphians, and for volunteering to be part of the solution to that problem.
Beware of holding ambitious politicians in high esteem. Even seemingly squeaky-clean Mulroy surprised us, after we helped him get elected.
Not trying to be a downer, but isn't this sort of thing part of the problem? Instead of making cuts, downsizing where possible, and making government more efficient, AC just keeps creating positions or appointing people to some unnecessary posts?
Auto-
DC is a great city, is it not? Despite so many problems of its own, it is attracting talented, young educated individuals just as many of our nation's other great urban areas.
Maybe a basic notion is related to the desire of the local citizenry to embrace what it is to be a city. It is almost as if Memphians are still contemplating whether they will take the path that encourages urban living- accepting diversity, relishing interaction with others, investing in their surroundings for their shared benefits and realizing that some issues are in fact not personal but universal concerns that can be addressed as such. I think there are many in Memphis that resent being pulled away from the farm to support themselves financially, who believe education is an unnecessary farce and would rather be separated from their nearest neighbor by 5 acres (or more). There are many here that go to Boston for example and instead of commenting on its rich history, vibrant business and cultural scene or its lively social activities will simply remark that it is simply "too crowded". Mayberry will never play host to a branch of the Guggenheim nor will it support a rival franchise to the Phillies.
Mary, best of luck. Your professional investment in the city and its inner workings are much appreciated and have added immensely to the public dialogue. Remember there are those of us that are willing to volunteer our time and talents to aid in rebuilding this community as a city, we simply await the request.
Mary, best of luck with the new position.
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