Lawrence mayor, paper call temporary truce

mayor william lantigua’s successful appeal for the state to run the Lawrence Public Schools brought about another big development: the mayor sat down to talk with an Eagle-Tribune reporter who was writing about the takeover.

It was a temporary cease-fire in the mayor’s long-running war with the newspaper, the Merrimack Valley’s largest regional daily. Equally surprising, the Eagle-Tribune followed up the next day with an editorial applauding the mayor for “publicly acknowledging the schools are in crisis and taking the lead by calling for immediate receivership.”

It was a rare moment of cooperation between a mayor and a newspaper who rarely have anything good to say about each other.

The Eagle-Tribune has been relentless in its criticism of the mayor for failing to focus on the city’s major problems. “Lantigua has shown time and time again that he cannot be trusted to do what is right for the people of Law­rence,” said one November editorial.

In a City Hall interview with CommonWealth magazine last year, Lantigua said he rarely talks to the Eagle-Tribune because the paper relies on inaccurate quotes, does not give enough detail about certain stories, and generally serves up biased reporting.

“We know that the people we represent could care less about what’s printed now,” he said at the time. Eagle-Tribune Editor Al White, who has been with the paper for nearly 40 years, says the lack of access to the mayor is frustrating. “I can’t remember any mayor who was so often inaccessible when you want to talk to him about a story,” he says. “He doesn’t do himself any good by not talking to us or anyone else.”

Lincoln McKie, a Northeastern University journalism professor and a former executive editor at The Sun, the daily paper in neighboring Lowell, says the relationship between Lantigua and the Eagle-Tribune is not the norm. “Most chief executives of municipalities at least try to do their best to get along with the local press,” he says. “It’s in their best interest to do so.”

From schools to finances to street crime, Lawrence is one of the state’s most troubled cities and Lantigua is one of the state’s most colorful and controversial mayors. A state receiver is coming in to run the schools and Robert Nunes, the Revenue Department’s Commissioner and Dir­ector of Municipal Affairs, is already there overseeing the budget. Lantigua has feuded with the police department, called two city councilors “enemies of the people,” and failed to lead a successful search for a new school superintendent. He is reportedly a target of federal and state law enforcement investigations into corruption in the city and, at press time, was facing a fourth attempt by city residents to recall him from office.

Marcela Garcia, the editor of Boston-based El Planeta, the largest Spanish-language newspaper in Massa­chu­setts, says she thinks the Eagle-Tribune coverage of the mayor has been fair. “The Eagle-Tribune is widely respected in Lawrence, not only by Anglos. A lot of Latinos read the Eagle-Tribune, particularly the new generation.”

Garcia can relate to White’s frustrations. Although Lantigua has the reputation of being open to interviews with the local Spanish language media, El Planeta also has trouble catching up to him. She says he did not respond to calls or emails about a recent story on the latest recall effort. Nor did he respond to requests from an El Planeta reporter for comment on the state takeover of the school district.

“Being from Latin America, I understand how politicians treat or deal with the media in Latin America and it’s a very playful way of doing it,” says Garcia, who is from Mexico. She speculates that his attitude toward the media is not based on a lack of respect. “It’s just a laid-back attitude.”

How could the mayor turn his media relations around? “He needs to be more transparent, certainly be more ac­countable,” says McKie. “The people calling for his recall are saying he’s not accountable, he is not doing the job he was elected to do.”

As for providing a comment for this story, Mayor Lan­tigua, through his acting chief of staff Patrick Blanchette, declined a request for an interview.