The New Georgia Project “Financial Investigation” Nothingburger

On November 11, the left-leaning newspaper Politico published a report of financial irregularities at the New Georgia Project (NGP), a progressive GOTV organization to which I contribute monthly. After reading the report quickly, I almost struck NGP from my list. But on more careful re-reading and reflection, I reconsidered. This short essay explains why I reconsidered, and why I think the report, although based on a long and necessary investigation, was abysmal journalism.

Here are the key facts that I gleaned from the report:

Amounts possibly misappropriated or embezzled from both taxable and nontaxable arms of NGP:

$57,693 by an unnamed administrator, since fired;
$13,242 by Nse Ufot, fired former head of NGP, and
an unstated portion of $11,000 in gift cards used for employees’ expenses.

Maximum total of amounts possibly misused: $81,935
Amounts donated to NGP during the relevant period: $51.5 million
Ratio of suspect amounts to total donations: 0.16 percent
Status of major figures involved: fired and under requests for reimbursement
Status of minor figures (employees) involved: under investigation and/or with requests for reimbursement under discussion
Involvement of rising progressive stars (Stacey Abrams and Senator and Reverend Raphael Warnock): NONE (both left NGP before the alleged/possible misuse and long before it was discovered)

Why was this report abysmal journalism?

First, in defense of the author, whom I will not name, let me say that the investigation was necessary, that I’m glad it was done by a progressive rag, and not by Fox or the WSJ, that it appears to have been thorough, and that it took the author a reported six months.

That said, here are its sins, in decreasing order of gravity:

Defaming innocent rising stars by implication. The story’s use of the names of Abrams and Warnock, in the headline no less, was inexcusable clickbait, worthy of Fox. The actual reporting revealed that neither had anything to do with the events under investigation, except possibly by having appointed or having helped appoint some of the figures involved. But I had to read the whole, long report carefully to discover this vital fact.

Dismal organization. Like much, if not most, of mainstream journalism these days, this story reads like a short story or a cleaned-up daily journal of the investigation. Facts appear in chronological or random order, or in the order in which discovered. There is no lead paragraph summarizing the results, and no logic or coherence to their presentation. This non-organization made me wonder whether the author ever took a class in journalism, let alone majored in it, and whether, if so, classes in journalism now focus on clickbait and media profit rather than informing readers logically and writing strong lead paragraphs.

Failure to make the facts clear: The culpability of the suspected figures remains unclear, probably because NGP’s internal investigations and disputes were (and maybe still are) ongoing. The only exception was the unnamed administrator, who appears to have deliberately taken money surreptitiously. It’s understandable that, after six months of discovering so little wrongdoing, neither the reporter nor Politico wanted to wait around for the ultimate denouement. But the extent of knowledge of the suspected actors’ culpability should have been part of that missing lead paragraph.

Exorbitant length and fulsomeness. The published story was five to ten times long as good journalism required. Its length should not have reflected the reporter’s labor, but the reliable results discovered. If scientists can report months or years of experiments with a few pages and a half-page abstract—equivalent to the lead paragraph in journalism—journalists can do likewise. This report’s excessive length and byzantine organization only increase its susceptibility to misuse by the likes of Fox, Breitbart and the Freedom Caucus.

Why I reconsidered. As I read the report carefully a second time, three key facts emerged for me. First, the maximum amount of money possibly misused—even if all had been criminally embezzled—was rounding error compared to the amount of donations processed and presumably applied ably to GOTV efforts. I believe that the percentage of employee pilferage in the average department store is far higher. In the worst possible interpretation of the facts, no one at NGP, even those fired, was getting rich from stealing.

(There was also the matter of a $1.5 million marketing contract with an apparently external firm, but that appears to have been be a matter of poor business judgment, or possibly a fleecing by the external firm. No evidence was reported of anyone inside NGP being involved or in cahoots with that firm.)

Second, the minor suspected pilferage through misuse of the $11,000 of gift cards apparently arose because some or many of NGP's grass-roots workers had no bank accounts. So the alternatives were giving them cash, always a bad idea, or gift cards whose amounts were clear and recorded. Receipts for individual expenditures could have been (but apparently weren’t) sent to a central accounting point by having the employees input a central email address to the terminals that charged their gift cards, and requiring them to reimburse improper amounts and amounts for which no receipt had been sent. No doubt the lawyer who is now in charge of NGP will figure this out and implement this or another good accounting plan.

Finally, NGP is a worthy organization, and a vital one in turning Georgia permanently blue. The report itself reveals that all alleged irregularities and improprieties have been fully vetted, that discussions are under way and lawsuits being considered to recover the money, that people believed responsible have been let go, and that much of the trouble relates to the lack of financial sophistication among NGP’s workers. The last point begs tolerance, if only because the workers were chosen precisely for their ability to relate to and persuade poor, marginalized and cynical people who are reluctant and only occasional voters.

In my view, door-to-door and neighbor-to-neighbor GOTV work like NGP’s is the best, if not the only, way to insure that we remain a democracy, and that Georgia become fully blue. In comparison, spending money on thirty-second sound bites or video clips in an attempt to break the oligarchs’ and right-wing media’s death grip on electronic media is a fool’s errand and a waste of money.

So, yes, I will continue my monthly donations to NGP, which will increase fourfold next month until the election. And I will have confidence that NGP’s new leadership will figure out the nuances of accounting and documenting employees’ business expenses while doing God’s work of saving our democracy, one battleground state at a time.

P.S. Anyone has my permission to distribute or republish this post, in full and without editing, on any platform and to anyone anywhere, for the purpose of supporting NGP.


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