Okay, so, I’m no economist, but I have been following along with this whole economy fiasco for quite a while now. The government dumped a ton of cash into TARP with the idea that it would revitalize the entire system, causing credit to flow and eventually the stock market to rebound. Well, it hasn’t really happened yet and with stocks down, the proverbial cards are starting to fall in other areas, including pensions. In Baltimore, there’s an upcoming public pension fund crisis because the system is now underfunded and investments in the pension fund are in the dumps. Surprised? Well, it’s not too startling to think that a system that pays people as much as 66 percent of their ending salary after they retire (adjusted for inflation, and sometimes it pays them longer than they actually worked) might be teetering on the brink. A few people have been predicting this for awhile now.
Reason Magazine thinks this thing could be huge. I’m not a huge fear mongerer, but you have to wonder: unlike GM and Chrysler, whch can declare bankruptcy and just void contracts with employees, the goverment might have a different type of responsibility. Pensions aren’t neccessarily a bad thing as far as I’m concerned, but maybe we need to take a look at the benefits we afford our public employees.
Forget writing music criticism or presidential races. This is the stuff that matters; people overlook the real problems in their own communities every day (I am including myself in this statement.). If you live in a small town, this is happening there, too.
My article on the rural homeless of Ashland, Ohio.
Today, Cincinnati’s scrappy afternoon newspaper, The Post, printed its final edition. A bunch of things led up to the demise of the paper that once outsold the larger morning paper, The Enquirer, including a 75 percent decrease in circulation over the last decade, decreasing ad revenue and a few other things. But it’s all moot now. It’s over.
For Ohio, this spells a pretty significant change. Cincinnati was the last big market in the state to have two papers competing for readership. The Cleveland Press succumbed to The Plain Dealer in 1982, and the The Columbus Citizen-Journal buckled under pressure (perhaps unfairly) from The Columbus Dispatch in 1985. Those papers have enjoyed pretty good times since then, and have been able to focus attention on battling the Internet’s effect on the news. Cincinnati journalists, of both the Post and Enquirer varieties, had to scoop each other while keeping their eyes on the Web. That’s a difficult feat these days. I think that the Enquirer was better off for it, and I’m sure the Post journalists wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
When a newspaper closes its doors, it’s like watching a dog get shot. Despite what people would like to think, newspapers are filled with people who really do care about their readers and getting them the information they need. For many communities, the newspaper is a defining part of the lives of their residents. The first draft of history is written in newspapers, from wars down to engagement announcements. To think that subsequent generations of readers won’t get to experience a paper that documented their parents’ lives is almost unimaginable.
The original link I had to the Post’s last story is broken, but here’s the Enquirer’s tribute to their last major competitor. Here’s to giving the people light. -30-
This guy is IT:
Mike Gravel in action.
I haven’t found a YouTube version of his greatest hits from tonight, but I am eagerly awaiting. This guy, for all his bravado, is more straight talking than any of the rest of these clowns (Kucinich excepted). But, it won’t get him the nomination. I’d love to elect this guy. MIKE GRAVEL BABY!!!!!!
Obituaries. They’re weird things. I’m not talking about the death notices that you see in the paper every day that state time of death, survivors, preceded in death by, former employment and hobbies, etc. I’m talking about the obituaries that you see when someone of notoriety in a community dies. I’ve done a few of these in my short career, and I haven’t gotten used to them. Many hit close to home. I did one about my former middle school principal, a well-known, caring leader. One about a man, aged 21, who was killed in Iraq, leaving a wife and kids behind. One about a former college president who took his university from the ashes to prosperity and nearly back to ashes again. One about a high school teacher who refused to give up his old school habits in the face of changing opinions on education. One about a pharmacy assistant, well-loved by her colleagues and customers alike, for her loyalty and friendly demeanor.
The other day I had the unfortunate task to have to write about a car crash that killed two high school students. It started out like all the others. I called up administrators, I got quotes about their lives.
Then I scared myself.
In most of the obits I’ve written, I get to know the person I’m writing about. It’s no secret that writers often get the best profiles about individuals when they write an obituary. But in the case of these two girls, all I could think of while writing was how they died. Nothing else struck me. It’s not that they weren’t excellent people; they were well-liked. But they were so young and had so much ahead of them.
I am not certain exactly why I got so scared. Maybe I was being selfish; maybe I thought of how my obituary would read if I died tomorrow. Maybe reminded me of my own mortality. I’m hoping that it makes me want to avoid obituaries all together (not that I like them anyway). I’d rather focus on writing stories about people like this while they’re sitting across the table from me. Maybe that’s what I should do.
