{"id":8321,"date":"2017-08-02T07:00:42","date_gmt":"2017-08-02T11:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=8321"},"modified":"2019-05-29T04:04:50","modified_gmt":"2019-05-29T08:04:50","slug":"politicians-rejoice-as-bill-turque-leaves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=8321","title":{"rendered":"Politicians Rejoice as Bill Turque Leaves"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

The most feared person in MoCo politics is not an elected official.\u00a0 He\u2019s not a union leader, a developer, a big contributor or even a blogger.\u00a0 He\u2019s Washington Post reporter Bill Turque, who has covered the MoCo beat for over four years.\u00a0 Happily for politicians and unhappily for the rest of us, Turque has stepped down and it\u2019s unclear what the Post will do next.<\/p>\n

MoCo officials did not fully understand what they were getting when Turque began writing about the county.\u00a0 Among his many previous assignments, Turque covered former D.C. public schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, a FAR tougher figure than any MoCo politician.\u00a0 Turque\u2019s battle for information from the school system escalated to the point when his own bosses tried to censor him<\/a>.\u00a0 Then there\u2019s the story of when the Post allowed Rhee to use one of their conference rooms to hold a meeting.\u00a0 Rumor has it that Turque quietly walked in with a notepad.\u00a0 Rhee was about as pleased as a bride who sees a cockroach in her wedding cake and wedding gown<\/a>!<\/p>\n

Politicians in MoCo had it easy from the Post until Turque showed up.\u00a0 His two predecessors on the MoCo beat were Mike Laris, who wrote one or two articles a month, and Victor Zapana, who was fresh out of college.\u00a0 Neither knew a lot about the county.\u00a0 Turque, in contrast, was a long-time resident who quickly learned the history and the players.\u00a0 Before long, inconvenient stories began appearing in the paper.\u00a0 Politicians began longing for the days of scanty coverage!<\/p>\n

How to pick the Best of Turque?\u00a0 There are so many articles to choose from.\u00a0 There\u2019s the time when he outed a union-linked operative<\/a> as the author of an anonymous attack website targeting former Council Member Valerie Ervin.\u00a0 Then there was the article in which he called out the County Council for violating its own law on Public Information Act disclosure<\/a> in taking down email addresses from the county\u2019s website.\u00a0 Council Member Marc Elrich, who has long said he turns away developer money, was caught by Turque taking money from an attorney who represents developers.<\/a>\u00a0 Council Member George Leventhal has yet to recover from Turque\u2019s posting a video of his berating budget director Jennifer Hughes from the dais<\/a> which was cited in Bethesda Magazine\u2019s coverage of his Executive campaign launch<\/a>.\u00a0 And then there\u2019s the Silver Spring Transit Center fiasco, the subject of countless Turque articles up to his flaying the county for getting fleeced by lawyers and experts<\/a>.\u00a0 Years ago, a Leggett administration official complained to me about Turque\u2019s relentless coverage of the transit center.\u00a0 Your author replied, \u201cYou can\u2019t blame the wolf for liking the taste of meat!\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps no politician in the county will be happier to see Turque leave than David Trone.\u00a0 Turque wrote a story on Trone\u2019s political contributions early in his candidacy for Congress including the now-infamous Trone quote \u201cI sign my checks to buy access.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 Trone\u2019s campaign never got past that statement.\u00a0 But there was more, including coverage of the Trone Spy<\/a> and a Trone company\u2019s payment of a fine for making illegal campaign contributions<\/a>.\u00a0 We think Trone should celebrate Turque\u2019s retirement by instituting a blow-out sale at Total Wine.\u00a0 Spread the joy, Mr. Trone!<\/p>\n

The key to understanding Turque is that he\u2019s an old-school, all-business reporter.\u00a0 If you have real information, he\u2019ll look at it.\u00a0 If you have BS, spin or rumor that repeatedly doesn\u2019t pan out, he sniffs it out lickety-split.\u00a0 The worst thing one could ever do with Turque is tell him \u201cthere\u2019s no story there.\u201d\u00a0 To Turque, that is proof that there actually IS a story and it will make him dig harder.\u00a0 One more thing.\u00a0 Your author has spent countless hours eating sushi with Turque and to this day I have no idea who he voted for.<\/p>\n

The future after Turque is hazy at best.\u00a0 The Post is searching for a successor<\/a>.\u00a0 It’s possible that the Post will bring on another newbie like Zapana or perhaps have its MoCo beat reporter take on work outside the county as its solicitation suggests. \u00a0Either of those possibilities would likely result in declines of coverage here.\u00a0 Add that to the demise of the Gazette and the Examiner and, other than Bethesda Magazine and a couple online outlets, we could have a news desert at a time of historic change in county politics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. The most feared person in MoCo politics is not an elected official.\u00a0 He\u2019s not a union leader, a developer, a big contributor or even a blogger.\u00a0 He\u2019s Washington Post reporter Bill Turque, who has covered the MoCo beat for over four years.\u00a0 Happily for politicians and unhappily for the rest of us, … Continue reading Politicians Rejoice as Bill Turque Leaves<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151,186,185],"tags":[1545,1875,937],"class_list":["post-8321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-media","category-washington-post","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-media","tag-washington-post-2"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2ad","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8321"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12115,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8321\/revisions\/12115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}