I don’t mean the paper is hiring. I mean that they need people who know how to edit news stories.

The paper’s recent profile of new councilman Bill Gates is a classic puff piece. But even by those standards it’s empty. The reporter doesn’t bother to tell his readers how Gates happened to get onto the council, or even what district he represents.

We get passages like this, which I don’t think mean anything:

The Phoenix Mountains Preserve, which lies largely in his district, offers another opportunity for citizens to organize, he says.

“We can encourage people to get together,” Gates says.

And the reporter doesn’t bother to get a single outside person to comment on Gates.

All of these are elements an editor should make sure is in the story.

And consider this hedline from the Republic today: “NE Valley isn’t noticing any housing rebound.” The pleonastic, almost slangy “any” is something a copy editor should have taken out; it looks bad appearing on the paper’s web home page, which is where I saw it.

You have to read the story about seven times and wade through masses of statistics to apprehend the thesis, the significance of which is never articulated or discussed.

I think the point of the story is that northeast Phoenix is the most affluent part of town, and that in some way it may be a bellwether for an economic rebound. But no one is quoted to make that point or say whether that’s typical in housing downturns. And the story never explains what area of town, precisely, is under discussion.

Finally, there’s a news blurb on page two of the Valley & State section about how the city is going to take over a section of drainage ditch near PV Mall.

It’s a funny story, written in an oddly passive way:

According to Hasan Mushtaq, floodplain manager for the Phoenix Street Transportation Department, disputes have arisen over who is responsible for maintenance of the ditch. The City Council last week authorized the city manager to take over the parcels involved.

Emphasis added. The story never says what the “dispute” is. Read on and you find out that the assessor’s office says the ditch is owned by a local homeowners association—and that recent floods have flooded homes of that association because the ditch wasn’t kept clean.

Now, this could be a funny story. Reading between the lines, it seems like the association has been negligent and is now whining and trying to get the city to take over part of its land—and of course, you can imagine the howls we’d hear if the deal weren’t removing a financial obligation from the homeowners. Instead, it’s just another Arizona Republic story that raises more questions than it answers.