- Pronouns
- he / him / his
"ENN's Cabinet Scorecard - Culture & Communications"
HEM
Editor-In-Chief
As a part of ENN's initiative to restore a private media sector and hold the government accountable, we will be reviewing Ministers based on the promises that they made the Senate during their confirmation hearings. We're beginning with the Minister of Culture and Minister of Communications positions and will continue through the entire roster of full-term Cabinet Ministers.
As we are at the mid-term, nobody should expect all Ministers to have all their professed goals reached. But we should expect to see substantial progress made. As to what is sufficient "substantial progress", we'll leave full up to you.
Minister of Culture
Vulturret
Minister Vulturret was a holdover from the Deepest House administration who was appointed halfway through the term and got early acclaim for running the Ovation Ceremony of Sopo. The second half of Vulturret's first term was widely regarded as weaker than his start, but President Ervald gave him a second chance in his Cabinet as an extremely promising newcomer. Here's where he is on the commitments he made during his Senate confirmation hearings:
Most of these determinations are fairly simple. There have been no large-scale events this term, no reintroduction of Euro Jeopardy, no new weekend games according to the participants we spoke to, and no festival to celebrate the Treaty of Klunvorden.
We determined that the Minister had "Mostly" fulfilled his promise to manage and coordinate the weekend games by the fact that the games are indeed happening regularly. However, a casual examination of the game host shows that the Minister has been extremely hands-off in hosting, delegating this task to others in his department and having no obvious role in the weekend games process.
We determined that the Minister had "Not really" fulfilled his promise to set up a Weekend Games leaderboard, because even though instructions for the leaderboard and a basic overview are posted, no actual leaderboard of gameplayers can be found.
Minister of Communications
Punchwood
Minister Punchwood is a something of a new generation veteran of the government, serving in multiple Ministries, the Senate, and even sought the Presidency against Deepest House last term.
Punchwood assumed the Communications Ministry after a short, but sharp period of decline for the EBC. He made many promises to the Senate, maybe too many, and here's how he is stacking up so far:
We can skip the Golden and Silver pens, since those will probably only be handed out at the end of the term.
We said "Not really" to Punchwood's promise to produce regular dispatches, as only two have been created during his tenure. One introducing President Ervald, and one announcing the resignation of President Ervald.
We determined that the Minister "Mostly" made good on his promise to create hard news, with articles covering the election of Ervald, the resignation of Senator Whitmark, the resignation of President Ervald, and treaty with the Communist Bloc. Even with these articles, we felt that key events like the Reform Movement brewing in the region were not fully covered and that the EBC had some glaring holes that should've been filled.
We have no idea whether Punchwood messaged players to get involved in Communications, so if anyone got a message from Punchwood please post here!
It isn't clear what exactly has or hasn't happened with the Upvote Squad. While a Deputy was appointed as promised, there is no immediately accessible evidence that suggests tracking and scoring of Upvote Squad members is being done. Indeed, there really hasn't been much for them to upvote.
The Minister also promised to personally write articles, and while he hasn't done much writing since the start of the term, we think he "Mostly" fulfills that promise.
In terms of content, we also believe that Punchwood has "Mostly" succeeded in creating a variety of it. While we have seen an array of different articles, there are multiple different genres that Punchwood mentioned in his confirmation hearing that he has not yet delivered (investigative articles, op-eds, one-off features).
When showing these scores to the Goldenblock, President Drexlore promised that "Culture will be active again" and that "Vult has been busy with real life events. As of right now, we are hoping to get most of these going again by the end of the week."
He added that Punchwood had been tracking upvote squad points "behind the scenes" and that "we are going to publishing dispatches with regularity again."
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