Archive for the ‘Beyond our community’ Category
EDITOR’S NOTE: Newspapers are in the unique situation of often being loved while at the same time being despised. There are occasions where school boards use strong-arm tactics to bully spineless corporate newspaper administration into backing off of doing exactly what a newspaper is supposed to do: Serve as a watchdog for the community, not just a cheerleader. Laurie Ezzell Brown has done a masterful job of depicting the fine line community newspapers must walk — whether in Texas or Ohio or anywhere else – while doing their job.
When school officials have sought an ally in the battle over school finance legislation, or in local efforts to stir up support for a multimillion-dollar bond issue for capital improvements, this newspaper has always been there. When public school students have excelled in any number of sports and academic competitions over the last few decades, when school nurses have wanted to announce vaccination requirements, when school administrators have wanted to promote parent/teacher open houses, when local merchants have wanted to congratulate students on their many successes, when Rotary Clubs have wanted to acknowledge their school’s student leaders … The Record and other weekly newspapers like it in other towns like this one have always been there.
Laurie Ezzell Brown
That is why it is even more puzzling that the Texas Association of School Boards would be on the leading edge of a movement among tax-supported entities to circumvent the state’s public notice laws. Or maybe it’s not so puzzling.
You see, there are things most school boards really want the public to know about their students and their schools. They are the stories and images that fill the pages of most community newspapers from Labor Day through Memorial Day each year, and which most publishers welcome as the vital news and information they know their readers count on finding inside the pages of each week’s edition.
We could stack up a long line of witnesses — including parents, students and most notably, our school trustees and administrators — who welcome the newspaper’s ability to shine the light on their educational efforts and would willingly testify to how essential it is to the business of raising the next generation of leaders.
There are other things, though, that some school boards would prefer the local newspaper not report, like low TAKS scores or high dropout rates, errant teachers or contentious school board meetings or principle-less principals or — heaven forbid — school trustees who flout open meetings laws and violate the public’s trust. But even most of them would admit — however grudgingly — that there’s no better way to stir up a hornet’s nest than to land on the wrong side of the local newspaper editor.
That is because this country’s community newspapers are the only media that report the important news of their hometowns — day in and day out, win, lose or draw, and even when hell occasionally freezes over. Read the rest of this entry »
By Ryan J. Foley, Associated Press
MADISON, Wis. – A Wisconsin newspaper editor demoted after writing a column that offended advertisers has started a legal campaign to get her job back, saying she is taking a stand for editorial independence.
Autumn Drussell
Autumn Drussell filed a discrimination complaint with the Equal Rights Division seeking to be reinstated as editor of the Stoughton Courier Hub. Drussell said she is standing up for journalism at a time when struggling small newspapers are especially susceptible to advertiser influence.
Months after being named editor, Drussell wrote in a July 2010 column she was shopping more at low-cost big box stores because of the economy. She suggested that local businesses needed to improve customer service, stop badmouthing their areas and appeal to frugal customers, advice offered at a chamber of commerce luncheon she attended.
The column upset some of the newspaper’s advertisers in Stoughton, a city of 13,000 people, including hardware store owner Jim Gerber, who warned he would stop advertising until the economy improves.
“I will stop short from calling for your job — Walmart and Target need your money,” he wrote to the paper.
Days later, Drussell was called into a meeting with the general manager of Unified Newspaper Group, which owns the weekly and other newspapers in the region. Drussell, 35, said she was removed as editor and asked to sign a document agreeing not to write opinion pieces and be on probation for 90 days.
Jerry Jones' football palace has become an ice palace. (AP photo)
Madison County and much of the nation’s midsection are chipping out from under a crippling layer of ice.
Even in the “sunny” south where the football world’s attention has turned for this weekend’s Super Bowl, ice has paralyzed the Metroplex and wreaked havoc for what was supposed to be a week of gala events. And if that’s not enough, the Super Bowl venue is forecast to receive up to three inches of snow Friday, with temperatures moderating into the 40s for the weekend.
Snow in amounts approaching two feet have all but buried northern locales such as Chicago, Detroit and Boston, bringing life to a virtual standstill for much of the week.
But there are those who realize you might as well make the best of the situation, and have even taken the opportunity to poke a little fun at the weather.
A sense of humor may not keep you warm, but it goes a long way in keeping you sane. (AP photo)
During their recent vacation to Florida, Lynn and Brenda Adams visited the sugar-white sandy beaches of Panama City Beach where Lynn paid tribute to his hometown Buckeye state with the traditional O-H-I-O.
The cause of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald on Nov. 10, 1975 is still unknown. Among the theories are that a rogue wave swamped the massive freighter on the east side of Lake Superior.
The 35th anniversary of the loss of the massive Great Lakes ore carrier the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald during a fierce storm that beat the ship with 35-foot waves in the eastern end of Lake Superior was observed Wednesday, November 10.
The wreck of the steamer on November 10, 1975 has been called the “shipwreck of the century” on the Great Lakes because of her size and the mystery surrounding its sinking. Gordon Lightfoot’s 1976 song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” which rose to the top of the music charts, helped to immortalize the story, as have numerous books and an Imax movie.
The Edmund Fitzgerald was 729 feet long with a cargo capacity of more than 26,000 tons of iron ore.
The super bulk carrier taxed the capacity of the new St. Lawrence Seaway locks, measuring 729 feet long, 75 feet wide, 38 feet high with a 39-foot draft, and carried 26,000 tons of iron ore at 16 mph. It weighed more than 13,000 tons empty, cost $8 million and was the largest man-made object ever dropped into fresh water at the time. The ship was state-of-the-art in every aspect, including safety, and was named after Edmund Fitzgerald, the CEO of the insurance company that owned the ship.
The Edmund Fitzgerald made 45 trips a year back and forth to the Detroit area from the west end of Lake Superior. By November 1975, in her 17th year of service, she had completed 748 round trips over a million miles of water.
On Sunday, November 9, 1975 as the Edmund Fitzgerald went through its five hours of loading a full cargo of taconite ore pellets and departed Superior, Wisc. enroute to the steel mill on Zug Island near Detroit, weather reports were becoming extremely ominous, with extremely high winds forecast. The Edmund Fitzgerald and another leviathan, the even larger 767-foot Arthur M. Anderson which left from Two Harbors, Minn., headed east across Lake Superior. Visibility became poor due to heavy snow, and the weather bureau upgraded the lake forecast to gale warnings. The freighters altered their courses northward, seeking shelter along the Canadian coast. Later, they would cross to Whitefish Bay to approach the locks. When the storm became intense, the Soo Locks at Sault Ste. Marie were closed.
With the Edmund Fitzgerald slowly pulling ahead of the Anderson, the winds were building tremendously. By mid-morning on November 10, the Edmund Fitzgerald turned south toward Whitefish Bay at the entrance to Sault St. Marie. The storm was centered just ahead near Michipicoton, Ontario. As the Edmund Fitzgerald and the Anderson passed between Michipicoton and Caribou Island, the winds pushed the Edmund Fitzgerald close to the shallow and dangerous Six Fathom Shoals.
By Mark Helms
I grew up in a small town in rural upstate New York. It was a place with a corner grocery, a post office with its rows of brass mailboxes and the reliable smell of glue and paper, a bank that was actually a motor home that would visit only on certain days of the week, and a lazy river that flowed through on its way to the Hudson. Once a week my mother would take me shopping in the adjacent, slightly larger community of Middletown, a few miles away. We would go by bus; Mom didn’t get her driver’s license until years later, and I enjoyed the up high view of the passing scenery. We would walk down the friendly, spacious Main Street, looking in shop windows, occasionally popping into the places Mom needed to go. Eventually, my patience would be rewarded with a grilled cheese and chocolate milk at the Woolworth’s lunch counter. If I was very lucky, I would be allowed to make a quick stop in the Sport Shop, where I would lustfully gaze at the selection of BB guns (You’ll put your eye out, kid!), before the ride home for the cooking of dinner and the arrival of my father from work.
Then one day the big shopping mall moved in, and like so many places in America, the town, with its quaint atmosphere and comfortable, neighborly commerce, evaporated. The library, the train station, the drug store; the bustling street, the corner Santa, the fountain in the square. It all faded away to a place somewhere in the back of my mind. From then on, I have lived in various places throughout the country, all interesting, and all with their own unique character and personality, but all lacking the component that put them on the map, so to speak, in my own mind. I began to consider it de rigueur for a community to be nothing more than a mall culture event in a drive-thru existence.
It wasn’t until my wife and I moved to Alamosa, Colo. that I started thinking about the things that set the villages and towns of America apart from vapid, uninspiring dots along the interstate. I walked into the Post Office, where I found rows of mailboxes and the reliable smell of glue and paper. I walked down the Main Street, with its personable shopping district and friendly feel of commerce, and over the lazy river that flows through on its way to the Gulf of Mexico, and thought: Yes.
I have yet to meet a stranger here. I have accepted the fact that when someone waves at me on the street or from their truck, they are not mistaking me for someone else — they are being friendly. I am enjoying the hospitality and the friendly feel of that town in America where people shop on the street, speak to one another with kindness and tolerance, and have an overview of life that dates back to a place and time that was a little less complicated. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m on my way down to the local sport shop to check out the BB guns.
Copyright 2010, The Valley Courier
Mark Helms is the night editor for The Valley Courier in Alamosa, Colo., and writes a slice-of-life column entitled “Mark My Words.”
An old bank now a heaping pile of bricks sits near the corner of the city street that leads to his ranch house. A few foundations are scattered in the neighboring pasture where cattle graze across sidewalks that lead to nowhere signs that people once inhabited this farming and ranching community.
Those taking U.S. 183 to the Oklahoma border will find Sitka, Kansas, a small pit stop in southern Clark County. It seems the town, once a center of commerce, has quietly slipped away.
One local resident told McMinimy she recalls as many as 300 people living in Sitka at one time, but McMinimy considers that number a little high. She does know that Sitka Township peaked at 559 residents in 1916.
The school, once the home of Probst’s restaurant, still stands, as well as well a few dilapidated homes. Trucks loaded with grain come in to dump at the elevator during the season. Old cisterns and well pumps are scattered about, including one near Hazen’s home and one near the site of the Methodist church. A few sidewalks are still visible amid the grass and weeds. In the distance, not far from Hazen’s home, is a railroad bridge.
David and John Timmons thrilled a near-capacity audience at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C. with their "Timmons Brothers Rock 'N' Roll Trivia Show"
The Timmons Brothers are taking their popular Rock ‘N’ Roll trivia show across the United States.
David Timmons of Mount Sterling was in Rock Hill, S.C. recently for quite a busy week with this brother, John. David served as the guest lecturer for an honors course John teaches at Winthrop University called “The Beatles: A Music and Popular Culture Revolution.” David’s topic was the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, a presentation which proved quite compelling for the students.
David Timmons (right) was a guest speaker for the Winthrop University honors course “The Beatles: A Music and Popular Culture Revolution.”
The Timmons Brothers also appeared on the WRHI 1340AM Palmetto Mornings radio show in Rock Hill, where they promoted their “Timmons Brothers Rock ‘N’ Roll Trivia Show.” John followed that up the next day by being interviewed for a short segment on the Rock Hill TV station CN2, which gave him another opportunity to promote the trivia show as part of the Winthrop University Family Weekend.
John Timmons of Winthrop University is interviewed by Rock Hill TV station CN2.
To top off the week, the Madison County duo presented “The Timmons Brothers Rock ‘N’ Roll Trivia Show” before a near-capacity, enthusiastic audience of more than 225 in the newly opened DiGiorgio Campus Center Theatre.
John serves as assistant director of Residence Life at Winthrop University.
