Communications Minister Nominee Faces Hiccups





Recombis Under Microscope
A Face of Misfortune

Written by Unmighty Hezekon








This past Wednesday, in a post made to the Ministry of Communications, Vinage Vinage resigned from his role as Minister. In his post he bid farewell to the office, citing events in his real life as being major barriers to his ability to do the role as well as he would have liked. After a short period of time, First Minister Rand nominated Deputy Minister of Communications and Deputy Director of the EBC recombis to fill the void as Acting Minister. Within the conference hall, senators initially presented standard questions to the nominee. These topics included what recombis considered to be the weakest sections of the Ministry, his plans for the Europeia Opinion Institute, and how he would lead the Ministry for the remainder of the term. Recombis answered them in turn: He plans to focus on getting a better idea on how to use the EOI, especially on how best to use its "certification" system. As regards his end-of-term plans, he made special mention of the need to get more new citizens to be brought into the Ministry, and to focus on the Europeia Information School to help guide them as they write their first articles. "There's no way we're going to get new members, unless we address their concerns properly," he explained. While it seemed that the senators had not come to final conclusions on recombis' potential future, there did not appear to be any serious road blocks between him and his confirmation as Minister.

However, that seemed to change as HEM, Founder of Europeia, began a discussion of his own about the nominee. In the Grand Hall, HEM challenged the fruitfulness of the EBC -- and the future of the Ministry as a whole -- under the lead of recombis. He made particular mention about the lack of pieces the Deputy Director had produced during his tenure as such, and claimed that the EBC lacked material in volume in general, citing the low article count this past month. "[T]he nominee has written one article all term in a department that has come out with three articles this month. The focus needs to be on volume, and I really think we need a Minister who is going to inspire other people to write by writing a lot themselves." In response, recombis pointed out the dwindled supply of active writing members of the EBC as a whole, claiming in addition that a lack of clear instruction for new writers is an obstacle for the Ministry's output.

Other citizens filled into the Grand Hall, pushing forth other related concerns as a whole. Sopo, for his part, questioned recombis' ability to follow through on an appeal to increase output: "[D]uring his time as a deputy of communications leading up to the first minister election which he ran in, recombis only published one article. . . . Well, here we are again. As Director of the EBC, he has published one article this term. I could excuse this if he had successfully driven his team to publish, but as HEM pointed out, we've seen incredibly low output from the EBC as a whole." Vulturret argued that the nomination should not be accepted if recombis is facing such real-life distractions, as the nominee admitted to having in response to the earlier senators' questions back at the Swakistek Conference Hall, as Vulturret made mention that having had similar distractions during a nomination he had accepted made for a poor outcome. Comrade Prim, for his part, defended HEM's point of low volume: "[W]hen we're only seeing raw interview transcripts as the main content being pushed out and very few of those, we should be re-thinking our strategy regarding content creation."

Senators, having witnessed to varying degrees the discussion that happened in the Grand Hall, seemed to proceed more cautiously in the lead-up to a vote. Senator Lloenflys himself even asked baldly: "Recombis, if you are confirmed as the head of the Ministry of Communications, will you commit to publishing at least one article in each of the two remaining weeks of the term that you personally authored . . . ?" The answer from recombis was direct: "Absolutely." However, it remains to be seen how the Grand Hall debate affects the votes.

In conclusion, it appears that the worry lies in recombis' ability to inspire in others an urge to write content and submit them for publication. Recombis has attempted to defend against these worries by offering up plans to help clarify instructions for newcomers in the EBC scene. GraVandius and Prim point out that what may need to occur is a greater example of duty from the Director, being both the font of ideas as well as the one to assign -- likely personally -- articles to extant writers in the EBC.

There are other questions that one might raise: If not recombis, who else might be a potential nominee for Minister, with so little time left until the end of the term? As Darcness said, there is "just enough time to be a caretaker for the last couple of days. The only thing left to do is cheer people on for content, and that's pretty much what Recombis has been doing the entire term." How will recombis' answers to his latest criticisms affect the worries engendered in the comments of his critics? As of the date of this writing, it is unclear how this matter will resolve.
 
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Solid overview and great "sound-bites" from the threads. Really spices up the reading.
 
Great summation of what's going on. I don't think my post was the reason Senators were skeptical though, as there were some tough questions before I started my thread!
 
Perhaps one reason more people aren't interested in writing for the EBC is they'd rather have the freedom of having their own newspaper?
 
It’s not like our private outlets are on fire, either, though. EBC is pretty good about letting people write things with a fair amount of freedom.

I hope recombis gets the nod. I think this has been a learning process for him and we can expect to see him finish the term strongly if confirmed.
 
I don't know which private outlets you're referring to, our private outlets are pretty on fire lately :)

I completely support Recombis, agreed, I think he will do well
 
I think Recombis was a little overly defensive initially at what I saw as pretty reasonable questioning, but his answers to the Senate show that he’s listened and is willing to evolve. In light of that, I would probably for Aye if I were in the Senate.
 
I think the Ministry desperately needs a Minister, so I hope recombis gets his confirmation and gets it back on track.
 
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