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The media and Dan Grabauskas
By adamg on Thu, 08/07/2008 - 9:18am
Train Rider muses:
I must say - the media loves MBTA GM Dan Grabauskas. I just don't get the love affair? Why are they so hard on other elected officials and public leaders, but they just give Dan softballs everytime?
As a recovering reporter, I think the answer's actually fairly simple: Grabauskas gives reporters and editors what they crave: Access - or, at least, the appearance of access. Imagine how the current "We're going to die!" fare-increase story would have played out if, oh, a Globe reporter had ferreted out the possibility of massive increases in some obscure document related to the Green Line expansion project (maybe in some appendix on financing the work). There'd be outrage, outrage! Instead, Grabauskas simply arranged a series of interviews with local media types and got in front of the story. It's good media management.
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Comments
They've given up
All he ever gives is softball answers. Have you seen the weekly questions column in the Metro? Writer poses question about ongoing problem; Slippery Dan says it's not really a problem then describes all things things they coincidentally did ahead of time to fix the non-problem.
My favorite was his explanation of why the commuter rail signs at Back Bay don't display the time the train is coming but use that space for the train number. Like anyone knows their train number (I know them by time like the 5:25 from Back Bay to Roslindale) or cares whether train 1234 is "On Time". I want to know when the next Needham train is really going arrive so I can judge if I have time to stop at Dunkin Donuts or should hustle down to the platform.
Because there are so many
Because there are so many entrenched layers of management at the MBTA / EOT to blame.
Singling him out is not really all that useful if you could replace him with almost anyone and still have the institutional incompetence of the two fighting the good fight against reason and the public will.
Precisely
Grabauskas has met his match.
Maybe he has ...
I can think of somebody who has now turned around two seemingly impossible situations - first he cleaned up Boston Harbor after decades of stalling and under a federal court order, then he turned around a minutes-from-state-takeover teaching hospital. And he actually takes the T to work.
But I'm betting Paul Levy is happy where he is :-).