Hoping to hear from local ambassadors
For those of you who know the local kids who just left for Europe in the People to People student ambassador program, I have talked to one of the kids’ mothers and have offered to have them email us updates and photos of their adventures. She wasn’t sure that would be possible, but we agreed that at the very least we would be happy to run a story on them when they get back with their photos and great memories. If you know of any one of these students who is over there and is able to get to a computer, we would be happy to share their thoughts and experiences while they are over there.
Thanks for joining in Elaine. I appreciate your feedback on the content and the online edition. You should be able to get the letters, calendars and just about everything on line now. The ads are controlled by our advertising department and our advertisers don’t always choose to go from the print edition into the online edition, but many do.
As for the archives, we do have free archive search for any previous two weeks then there is a paid service that allows you to search everything. Look in the left hand lenu for "Fee based archives." In our early on-line editions unfortunately, not everything got posted regularly but there is still a lot of information out there.
I like the BBS idea and I know there are other newspapers that have something like that. I’ll ask our online editor to find out how it’s done.
I guess I knew that at some point just being up front about things would get me in trouble. Of course I would love to have a staff of long term reporters with real roots in the community and great sources they’ve developed over years. That goes - I thought - without saying. And anyone who’s been reading this newspaper for a long time knows that it does happen and in fact many of the people we’ve had over the years were long term folks. My point about young reporters on a career track is that it is simple reality for me and more money is not what would keep them here. Should I refuse to hire a talented young reporter because I know he or she is likely to leave in a year or two? Plus, I think the assumption that they will do no serious or worthwhile reporting while they’re here is unfair. Reporters catch up pretty fast. But it does take some time.
The “business as usual� one commenter picked up on is simply an observation that many people on the street feel unaffected by this turn of events. If you’re frustrated with them - and the ones who don’t care about what their government is doing in Iraq - take it out on them.
As for Schat’s, anyone should feel free to join in any time for a face to face. It’s been called a cabal before, now a support group. Well I guess I prefer the latter, but wish people would show up and see for themselves what happens. And maybe that commenter would be delighted to know that lots of the conversation at Schat’s is about national politics and the problems our nation is facing from interesting and well-informed local people.
And yes, we are getting a copy of Ball’s contract and will share that with our readers.