Local News(papers)

Once again, the whole block of local newspapers has been bought by a 'media group'. This time the block was larger, containing Clermont, Brown, Adams, and (I think) Highland County papers. Other buyouts have included different combinations of these papers, but not all of them at once.

This sparked some discussion -- again -- of what a sinkhole local papers are, how expensive to publish and distribute, etc. All stories that have been told; all details that have become cliche on the topic.

The "new" publishers speak of how combining reduces costs, increases coverage, blah, blah, blah.

What none of the papers are doing is reporting news that the customers are looking for.

We are all still wondering about the booms we heard all over Mt. Orab last summer. No word of their existence disturbed any of local newspapers.

There was an incident one evening of power outages, road closures, and even a medical helicopter called on the west side of Lake Grant. Neighbors on Pleasant Hill as well as those near the lake are still wondering what and why and even who, although we can all accept that that last info is more for family to share than news sources.

There was an armed robbery of a local business during Fair Week. You know, where someone's children were were working? Did anyone know it happened? Did a neighbor, who only wanted a cup of coffee, tell about it? Did someone find out from a son's classmate, because your local reporter was too busy at the Fair? (Watching tractors? Looking at cows?)

There are fires.

There are times when ambulances cross paths with other ambulances -- Georgetown or Ripley going north, Mt. Orab heading south. Has something happened, or is it 'just' people getting sick or hurting?

There are accidents, often closing roads and detouring traffic. A recent incidence closed 68 during school bus runtime, and there were rumors of body bags. Is this true? We don't know -- no media source has seen fit to tell us.

These are the stories we want to know about.
These are the questions we want answered.
This is news.

Yes, a week later, even a month later, is okay. Of course, by then we know if it was someone close to us or if it impacts us directly, but we are still wondering about WHAT HAPPENED? And WHY?
Can this be fixed?
Can it be improved?
Could it have been prevented?
Can we do anything?
Should we?

These incidences involve us.
They (can) involve our friends, our neighbors, our families. Our neighbors's friends and families.
These are our people. 
We want to help.
We want to know.

Our local newspapers should want us to know, too.

That is what local news is.

If you want to make money, report the NEWS.

Tin Can Mountain

Lately, as I try to clean my cabinets and get rid of "stuff", I've been thinking about hoarding and the struggles we have with it, and why.
Some things that are saved are saved
 for sentimental reasons, or because they WILL be reused, eventually. Like the little outfit my daughters wore that my granddaughter wore out.Only a used play outfit, but the continuity meant a lot to me. I have the first gift my husband ever bought me -- a red pullover sweater. I have a very fancy (to me) dress that a friend bought for me when I lost enough weight to be able to wear it. I have another, similar dress that a different friend gave me when I had gained weight enough to be able to wear her cast-offs as she lost weight.
Neither dress will fit me now, and the older one is unlikely to EVER fit again.

That's one kind of saving.

Another kind is silly, and unhealthy. Like newspapers kept and reassembled and stacked by date because someone might need to know something that was in them. They weren't allowed to be used, or even reread after the first week or so, unless you were doing a school report for that date or something. The newspapers were kept in the kitchen. Not good. Bugs, and dust, and printer's ink and all that. Mice like paper, too. Not a good kind of saving.

My sister, at least one of them, saves butter bowls. Well, margarine bowls, or whipped 'topping' bowls of that nature. Ones with lids.
With strict discipline, I've avoided that trap. Mostly because I like bowls to have what they say they are in them. Hate butter bowls that are peas or gravy -- those items just don't spread well on toast.


No, my bete-noire is coffee cans. Metal, plastic -- it doesn't matter, although it is a tad easier to throw out the plastic ones. That labeling thing, again. I must have been traumatized once, trying to spread gravy on my toast! The plastic cans usually have labels as part of their design.
The paper can be peeled off the metal cans, and when that happens, there is nothing that can't be done with them. I mainly use them as canisters. Was always dissatisfied with store-bought canister sets -- you could only put a whole bag of anything (flour, sugar, corn meal) in one canister, because the others were smaller and smaller and smaller. Coffee cans are all the same size -- just like the packaging for the sugar, etc.  Other ingredients, such as nuts or chocolate chips or brown sugars, can be assigned to their own coffee can, with lid, still in their packages.

But, short of a professional bakery, or maybe a day-care facility, even I have run out of uses for the coffee cans. They can hold anything -- pots, plants, paints. They can be decorated -- that,s why they would be popular at day care -- but eventually they take up space.

So, if you know anyone who need an all purpose container, let me know.

I can give them away, just not throw them away.

Discussing "THE" Debate

from Dictionary.com

de·bate  (d-bt)

v. de·bat·ed, de·bat·ing, de·bates

v.intr.

1. To consider something; deliberate.

2. To engage in argument by discussing opposing points.

3. To engage in a formal discussion or argument. See Synonyms atdiscuss.

4. Obsolete To fight or quarrel.

v.tr.

1. To deliberate on; consider.

2. To dispute or argue about.

3. To discuss or argue (a question, for example) formally.

4. Obsolete To fight or argue for or over.

n.

1. A discussion involving opposing points; an argument.

2. Deliberation; consideration: passed the motion with little debate.

3. A formal contest of argumentation in which two opposing teams defend and attack a given proposition.

4. Obsolete Conflict; strife.

I'm beginning with the formal definition of debate here. Seems like there are many who have no comprehension of what the word means. Sadly,it is supposedly intelligent people who lack this understanding of the definition. Newscasters, reporters, editors.

There was a Presidential Debate the other night.

Not, as the name implies, a debate between presidents. Nor was it a debate about presidents, except tangentially. It is a pre-election debate for presidential candidates. One of the candidates is the current president.

A debate, as you can see from the definition, is basically a discussion -- just like the one we're having here. (Not exactly, since you lack the ability to respond as I'm speaking.)

Discussion of this, of that -- it can even be considered an argument, but that usage has, until now, meant in a formal sense. Not petty kindergarten squabbling.

This is important, at least to me, because there was very little attention paid to or reported on any actual debate topics. The debates had barely started when the media morons began trumpeting "Romney is winning!"


How the Blankety-blank blank does anyone win a discussion?

How do they win a discussion when that discussion has barely begun?


It didn't get any better, folks. I don't know what the debates were about. I don't know what subjects were introduced, what answers either candidate had, or whether either had a solution that was markedly different from the other guys.

As a matter of fact, I don't know if there were any other candidates present or if it was just the two Mr. BigBucks BigMouths running. They were the only two mentioned. There are other candidates, voters. Some of them have great ideas and reasonable policies. Look them up.


I don't know because no one reported on this. No one cared to do straight reporting for those who couldn't/didn't watch the live event.

And if it were a matter of winning -- so what? If winning a discussion means anything at all, I'm pretty sure it does NOT mean winning the election, although Mainstream Media would like you to think it's in the bag now for their guy.

Mitt Romney won the primaries because he could beat Obama -- not on issues, performance, promises, or politics -- just because he breathes higher class air, I suppose. I have yet to figure that logic. See previous blog:http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7971544013891065437#editor/target=post;postID=8130718494167114723

Now he has 'won' a debate -- what does that mean?

It means he talks faster ?

There's the solution to our problems! A slick fast-talker. He must be made to be President! He out-talked the man who was actually working at running the country (possibly badly, but trying) while he was rehearsing his party lines and preening in his mirror.

I'm saving my vote for the election. That's the only WIN that counts.

Chaos in Colorado & the Right to Know

Last week, there was a shooting in Colorado. No doubt everyone has heard of it by now, and they've heard misleading quotes, incomplete assessments, rumors, outright lies, and everywhere the young man's name all over the news. We've seen it and him and he knows he's going down in the history books, so now he's going to act or claim crazy. (As if a sane person would shoot up a theater and booby trap his own home.)

I'm not naming him. There are enough people and mechanisms doing that, and that is what this young man is eating up. He's FAMOUS! He's INFAMOUS! He's on the Front Page, he's the LEAD Story, he's on YouTube, he's shared and reshared on Facebook and other social media.

Everyone knows his name. He can sit back and wallow now. And that's exactly what he's going to do.

To most of the public, especially the politically attuned, the Horrible Happening is a new reason to scream and open debates about gun control. It is somehow the fault of the guns that they were amassed and misused in this fashion.
To me, the issue should be about the media. The Fourth Estate.
We have freedom of the press. That's a good and wonderful thing.
Until something like this happens.

The  media is helpful when there is a question of locating a perpetrator or suspect. The media is at its best when reporting events as they unfold. The media is a force to be reckoned with when someone in the public eye is trying to hide secrets. The media tells us we have a right to know, and they will inform us. They can keep us informed of all rumors and speculations as long as they say they are rumors and speculation. Reporting of the booby traps may have saved lives.

But what, exactly, do we have a right to know about? What is needful and/or entertaining and informative? Do we need to know, on a national level, speculation and gossip?
 Is it right to be shoving their microphones into the faces of families waiting for someone to come outside from the scene of a massacre? Is it our right to know when they finally accept the unbelievable unacceptable fact that their loved one is not coming away from the scene?
Is it our right to know what a mother thinks when her son has admitted to this type of horror? Has she no right to the privacy of thought?
Do we have a right to know about every clipped toenail or late bedwetting incident ever in the guilty person's history?
Do we have the right to decide -- believe -- he's guilty before there is any sort of due process?
Does the media have the right to claim our right to know gives them the right to lionize punks and publicity hogs?

There are no easy answers, which is why the problems have been unresolved for so many years. There is a right to know, but who can or should decide what anyone else has the right to know?  Is there, or should there be, a time that it's right to know.

Difficult questions that need to be looked at and discussed and worked on as intently as gun control or defining insanity. It's no wonder that policing authorities try to conceal identities and evidence from the press. Irresponsible reporting compromises deaf, dumb, and blind justice.

And then, there  are young men like this "joker" who do the deed, then, when the media is fully present, walks up to the police and says "Yeah, I did it," then spends the next three days -- or three months, three years, three decades -- smirking and preening and posing for the cameras.


He has the right to know how important he is

The Adams County Informer

I bought my last issue today.

The Informer is a small newspaper in competition with Brown Publishing's  People's Defender here in Adams County. It was a nice paper, understandably small, but full of the small town (county) news. All the car accidents (well, a lot of them), ambulance runs, fire calls -- this information made it to this paper. The thicker, heavier, and more expensive Defender only reported a few, usually the most spectacular -- ones that made the city news broadcasts --  or the ones somehow involving *names* in the county. And  ad nauseum court news (which never really tell anything) and board meetings ad infinitum.

The Informer had  a Picture of the Week from readers, and a few words from the editor Troy Jolly every week. The personal touch.

There wasn't much advertising, which is normal for a little guy competing against an established and many-armed.competitor. There was some kind of political good-buddying going on that kept public service ads from being listed in the Informer. Something about having to reach more people instead of costing less and it really cost less per person to pay more to the bedfellow newspaper. Not fair. Not fair at all. I always thought that those sort of announcements -- sheriff's sales, village and school bids for goods or services, etc -- had to be published  with/in/through all available public media.

I faithfully bought my little Informer every week, because I liked the tone of the paper, and because I love, love, love the idea of a local paper produced locally.  The paper must have been doing okay, because there were new employees being introduced.

Then, in November, Mr. Jolly was elected mayor of Manchester. He's doing a good job, even according to his competition. They are faithfully reporting the changes and improvements happening under Mayor Jolly's watch.

His paper was faithfully reporting the changes, too. So much so that in the last few months the paper could be called the Manchester Informer. That's a natural enough change, so I didn't mind it. Not so happy about it, but I understood.

But now, the car accidents and fire runs have disappeared. The Picture of the Week is missing, and so are the 'Words'.The articles that appear are mostly publicity sent out by the various organizations. Fresh stories are few and far between. When there are fresh stories, they are badly organized and badly written. There are spelling errors and there are grammar errors.

This week there's a glaring grammar error in a Manchester story. AEP has went around and fixed the street lights.... That's exactly what the paper said.

Well, I have went and spent my last fifty cents on the Manchester Braggart's Bulletin. I expect  literacy when I read a newspaper. News would be nice, but literacy is a MUST.

I will have to look farther afield for my Adams County Information.