Are We Ignoring a Community News Crisis?

“O-H … I-O!!”

That’s one of the few cheers I remember from my days at The Ohio State University. Oh, and the “We don’t give a damn for the whole state of Michigan” song. That was always funny.

I bring up Ohio for one specific reason: The Ohio Credit Union League. This morning while I was muted on a group call, I watched a short “Breaking News” video posted on the OCUL’s Twitter feed concerning a judge’s ruling to dismiss the ADA case Mitchell v. Dover-Phila Federal Credit Union. A couple of observations: Yes, I use my mute button often while on calls. And bravo to OCUL for posting that 29-second video.

While still muted on the call, I went to Slack and pinged Tina Orem about the news. Orem has been following dozens of ADA cases around the country. She has an exhaustive spreadsheet to prove it too.

I mention all of this to you because this is a pretty good example of how some of our news-gathering day happens. Maybe I’m on the phone with the NCUA to check in about an issue; maybe one of our reporters bumps into a source on the street; maybe we peel away enough layers of the information onion and find the news. All of these things work together to create the news that you read each day. Most days it’s a blast and some days it can really make you feel like a bug under someone’s shoe.

Natasha Chilingerian, Peter Strozniak and I had a lengthy discussion about those negative feelings we get occasionally and how to figure out the source of them.

Because, our purpose is to report on the credit union industry. We’re not here to burn it down.

We understand that credit union brands love to promote the good things they’re doing. That’s great and it’s easy for credit unions to do that.

And the same thing goes for natural disasters – hurricanes, floods, lava flows. We truly love hearing the stories of credit union employees and executives doing what they can when any type of disaster hits their community or little corner of the world. It’s important and it’s a happier item to share with our audiences.

What happens though when there is a community crisis that isn’t a natural disaster, but still requires the same urgency and responsive need as one does? Silence.

Silence opens up a vacuum that is looking to be filled. When we hear nothing, what does that mean? Does it mean they have no comment? They’re not getting involved? They don’t know what we’re talking about? Or, is it that they see the situation as a controversial issue? We don’t know the answer, because literally no one has returned our calls or emails. And that’s pretty strange, yet it’s not the first time it has happened.

The story we were looking at concerned the needs of the credit union communities along the Texas-Mexico border. We reached out to credit unions close to, if not literally down the street from, immigration detention centers that have been the focus of a lot of national and international news for the past couple of months. We reached out because I ran across organizations in those areas that were begging local businesses to help with supplies: Books, games, clothing and donations to give to the children and families. I cross-checked these organizations with local credit unions, and found that normally credit unions supported and promoted their work with these non-profit community organizations. Yet, in this instance, we have heard nothing from CUs.

Again, we’re not holding your feet to the fire on some grand criminal scheme. We’re just asking if you are helping out with this emergency community need. That’s it.

Our gut tells us that this community need is too political for credit unions to comment on. But, we cannot and do not report on our guts. If credit unions aren’t publicizing their help with this emergency need, that’s fine. I sincerely hope credit unions are doing what they can for their communities. It just seems odd that any time we approach anything that might have the slightest appearance as some Republican vs. Democrat issue, credit unions stop returning our calls and emails. For us, it’s about the good things credit unions do and are able to accomplish for members and non-members.

Speaking of that, I wanted to take a minute to let you all know that after a hiatus due to, well, just being incredibly busy, we are bringing back our Community News section in print and online, led by our Tahira Hayes.

Not that the news has slowed down at all, but we’ve been able to reshuffle a few things and resources to devote back into our community items we receive all the time from our credit union contacts. I think Community News is an important and refreshing bit of color that we all need and we’re happy to have it back in our news rotation.

So, please send along your community items (i.e. ribbon cuttings, scholarships, new branch openings/expansions or just some unique things your credit union does in your community) to thayes@cutimes.com. Promoting yourself, and your good deeds and good news is a good thing.

This is where the Ohio Credit Union League comes back into play. I just wanted to say thank you for posting that short news update concerning something that’s being watched closely and has been on the mind of your league, its members and other credit unions around the country – all of whom are looking for guidance from the government and a possible solution to this mess and how we are going to deal with it going forward.

Sure, ADA compliant website lawsuits can be pretty frightening for the credit unions involved – and Orem has reported on that often.

Thank goodness, though, it wasn’t some unclear future or community crisis like helping human immigrants caught up in a confusing governmental policy. If that were the case, we probably wouldn’t hear about it.

Michael Ogden is executive editor for CU Times. He can be reached at mogden@cutimes.com.