The media didn't pick up on it? Excuse me?

   I am not afraid to admit mistakes.

   I am also not afraid to defend myself when accused of a mistake I did not make.

   On the matter of last night's public meeting on the proposed Tomlinson concrete and asphalt plant complex, I now have occasion to do both.

   So, to get the first order of business out of the way, I did make one mistake. In my haste to keep the live-tweet stream going during the meeting, I tweeted out the following:

   “Mayor Henderson gets rough ride from audience when he says media did not inform public about #Brockville #concrete #plant.”

   I'll admit this was inaccurate because it is incomplete; I glossed over the more important follow-up in the mayor's comments.

   The full account is to be found in my story accompanying the Twitter stream:

   “Henderson faulted the media for not picking up on council's adoption of the conditional sale agreement with Tomlinson, suggesting this led council to believe there were no issues with the plan.

   “'Nobody thought it was a problem at the time,' said Henderson. 'The media didn't pick up on it. The public thought it was OK.'

   It was the “public thought it was OK” part that got the audience worked up.

   However, a reasonable person might infer, from the mayor's juxtaposition of the two statements that: 1) the media didn't pick up on it, therefore, 2) the public thought it was OK, because the media wasn't around to tell them they might want to ask themselves whether it's OK.

   Which brings me to my second order of business.

   The media didn't pick up on it?

   With all due respect, Your Worship: Huh? Excuse me? What?

   Our first story on the Tomlinson project dates back to Saturday, November 19, 2011, where it is made clear “the Ottawa-based firm R.W. Tomlinson Ltd. has confirmed it is acquiring nearly 40 acres of vacant land at the western tip of Central Avenue.”

   (For the record, that's 44 acres. See the city documents here.)

   It's true the actual vote on the conditional sale agreement – an in-and-out sort of thing that glosses over matters that have to be kept confidential – did not make its way into the news. But the conditional agreement is conditional for a reason: Tomlinson won't consummate the sale until it gets its desired rezoning, and it's the public meeting concerning that rezoning that is the real news.

   This whole thing is giving me one of those flashback experiences. Back in 2007, opponents of Tall Ships Landing griped about The Recorder and Times not reporting on the proposed project, even though we had reported on Mr. Fuller's plans a year before, and months before the kerfuffle and cannon fire started.

   Maybe these public outcries have some sort of natural gestation period. The media reports on something, the issue lies seemingly dormant while concerned citizens talk about it in their kitchens, then suddenly the kitchen-talk grows into a movement.

   And it becomes convenient for someone to forget who brought it to the public's attention in the first place.