Your Turn ....

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TOP OP ED FOR Friday, March 5:

Building and maintaining the road to success
By Robert T. Halfhill
Halfhill is director of the Charlotte County public works department.

xxxxxA road is an identifiable route or path that is typically smoothed, paved, or otherwise prepared to allow easy travel. Road building and maintenance is an area of economic activity that remains dominated by the public sector, though often through private contractors. Except for those on private property, roads are typically paid for by taxes which are often raised through levies on fuel. Some public roads, especially freeways, are funded by tolls.

Maintenance

xxxxxIn unincorporated Charlotte County, the interconnected roadway system is maintained by the public works department. The department concentrates on construction, maintenance, renovation and resurfacing. Maintenance crews work throughout Charlotte County maintaining public roads. Maintenance includes shoulder repair, pothole patching, sign and stripe renewal, signal repair, surveying, bridge repair and right of way trimming and mowing.
xxxxx Public works employees take road maintenance seriously. When you are traveling about Charlotte County and hit a bump in the road you usually dismiss it as simply a bump. When a public works employee hits a bump in the road the next thought is usually “I need to fix that.”

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Top story on the local front:


Top story on the local front:

[... ] The remains of a second bomb were found inside the mailbox. Both apparently exploded while the man was inside.

[snip]

The acid bomb was also filled with BB pellets. Kolba said he believed it was the first occurrence of metal fragments inside a homemade bomb.


And from the closing thoughts in today's editorial: "Just remember, the mythic Pony Express operated for only 18 months..."
MYTHIC: fictitious, imaginary, not historical.

Lake Placid Prognosticator Reports Without Sources

The headline predicts “Ethanol Plant Will be South of Lake Placid.”

Readers are right to wonder if there had been a debate about location and if city fathers have now settled the matter: “That plant won’t be north of the lake, dang it, we promise!”

The story mentions neither debate nor decision, so readers now are right to question which reliable source knows the plant will be south of the lake. No source is given in the reporter's Prognosticator's lede, nor in the second graf, or jump. OK, so the guy just knows this. It's not journalism, but it's all we have, so we'll press on.

Prognosticator buffs his crystal ball: More than 200 permanent, full-time jobs, plus $1.6 million worth of road construction contracts, are coming to the southwest corner of Highlands County, by way of an Ethanol plant that will be located six miles south of Lake Placid.

Who said this? No report. When was this decided? No report. When does construction start? No report. Why capitalize “Ethanol?” No copy editor. Nearly all the commas in the sentence are incorrect. We take back the part about "writing." Press on.

Second sentence: Seventy of those jobs, in the state’s first cellulosic ethanol plant, will pay at least $70,000 per year and include first-rate benefits.

Said who? No report. What’s “first-rate?” No opinion maker. When do jobs materialize? No report. Is a factory involved? Cellulosic? Ye gads. This gets curiouser and curiouser.

Third sentence: Also local companies will have the chance to bid on, with the county’s “local preference” advantage, contracts for road work and traffic signal installation totaling more than $1.6 million.

OK, in a nutshell: Who, what, when, where, why and how? (And, please, a copy editor, but that's clearly asking too much.)

As it happens, this interesting and significant local story has been developing in bits and pieces and fits and starts over the last two years or so. This story has real news to report – that is, what has transpired since LPJ last published a week ago -- and it has history to report given that not a word about it has been in the paper in at least three months (maybe more -- the archives are constipated).

Let's guess that the actual news -- the new stuff -- is that a local-government roads engineer (the only one interviewed for the story) now has permission, money, men and whatever to start on his slice of the project, probably soliciting bids if we read between the lines. The engineer might have something helpful to say about bids, detours, construction or something -- right? Wrong.

There is more, but it's not about the engineer and his road building mandate. Instead, Prognosticator trots out information about hefty wages, numerous jobs, stunning factory capacity, ambitious building plans – just to rattle of a few issues – and attributes none of it.

It doesn't take long for the interested reader to locate a well-thumbed 93-page agenda item from the commissioner's meeting last week, including some planning proposals associated with the plant. It's filed in city hall and on the Web , but Prognosticator needn't read or attribute.

Even a cursory skim through the document finds not a single number or figure that Prognosticator reports matches what's published in the document. Discrepancies are sometimes small; sometimes not. Are the differences Prognosticator's errors, typos, "variations due to rounding," or new information from unidentified sources?

This reader likes to be clear when reports about wages, hiring, production and so on are estimates from a company management with a vested interest in selling its factory -- a cane-burning and processing plant that's more than a year away from its estimated first day of work.

Lake Placid deserves a reporter who “gets it:” The pitch is to investors, grant-givers (of which there are several) and local burghers. The big picture includes a several-hundred-thousand acre land-lease and sale transaction to one area farmer.

Old Word Wolf is not implying that building a local ethanol plant is a bad idea – it may well be the best thing to hit Highlands since the Presbyterians moved in.

But the reporter Prognosticator has failed local journalism and embarrassed himself in public.

The Bathroom Ad

A woman in curlers poses on the potty, reading a newspaper. The folks at the Sun-Herald think this is a wonderful moment that describes the paper's "special relationship" with readers.

The publisher is telling readers his full-page, full-color bathroom snicker is more important than news about local government, the school board, public safety issues, or even state news -- and way more important than a weekend wrap up from the Middle East, Philippines, Japan, Somalia, South Africa, Niger, Peru, Panama.

Readers aren't looking for a special relationship. We're looking for news. And we'd appreciate more of it.

"Mommy, are those doggies sleeping?"

This grotesque photo greeted Gondolier readers this weekend. The front page picture was not taken by a staff photographer, but submitted by a citizen photographer as news. The person sitting in the upper right corner is not identified.

The cutline reads: PHOTO COURTESY OF RICHARD SCHILLING Christopher Lee Siringer’s dogs lie dead in the yard of his home after being shot by a Venice Police Department officer who was trying to arrest him for domestic battery.

One of Our Own

Arcadia is a small town and many who live and work within its precincts may feel like family. But that's still not a good reason to write a headline in the first person. If this is the writer's headline, readers have to wonder why the editor endorsed it.

Sun Columnist Struggles with "Unpronounceable" African Countries

Dave Morris, Sun-Herald's tireless consumer advocate, let it slip in his column today that he has trouble pronouncing the names of some "foriegner" African nations. Dave has helped so many readers and now Old Word Wolf is willing to turn the tables and help him. Being a fuddy-duddy old teacher, OWW can't idly sit by while when a nice young man feels the urge to turn ignorance into a small (very small) joke. Making ignorance a laughing matter fosters stereotypes and reinforces the sense that others -- even when speaking of their own nations! -- are somehow not up to Dave's linguistic standards. His joke doesn't bridge global understanding or nurture world peace. But OWW can help.

OWW is convinced that Dave can learn there are no unpronounceable names among African nations. To prove this, OWW has arranged a little chart, scaled from "really easy" to more challenging. It's a self-paced tutorial that Dave can take at home. He can start with the familiar and work through to the very manageable -- and enjoyable -- challenges of mastering how to pronounce the names of every African nation.

Level 1 Easiest: These are African countries whose national names are highly Anglicized in the Western lexicon (that is, Americans commonly say and write them using Dave’s native language family). They should pose no trouble at all to a trained journalist:

South Africa ................... Western Sahara .................... Central African Republic
Ivory Coast .................... Canary Islands ...................... Saint Helena
Democratic Republic of the Congo

Level 2 Also pretty easy. These countries have short names, just one or two syllables, which are easily pronounced with the Anglican sound system:

Chad ... Mali ... Niger ... Sudan ... Ghana (silent h)... Gabon
Benin ... Kenya ... Mayotte ... Togo ... Libya ... Egypt
Seyshelles (say shells)

Level 3 Less easy: Country names of three syllables (forcing Dave to make a decision about stressed-unstressed patterns) or names with adjacent vowels or double L’s (requiring Dave to either separate vowels or master a diphthong or blend.) Practice is easier than theory, I promise.

A. Diphthongs and blends: Zaire ..... Guinea ..... Melilla

B. Three syllables: Angola ... .. Botswana ..... Uganda....... Zambia .... . Maderia ..... Tunisia ...Senegal ..... Cameroon ..... Burundi ..... Comoros .... Malawi .....

Level 4. Maybe Dave finds countries of more than one word hard to pronounce. There are only four, and each can be “sounded out” using common English phonemic groups and stress rules.

..... Sierra Leone ..... Guinea Bassu..... Burkina Faso ..... Sao Tome and Principe

Level 5 The Big Words. Even African country names of four or more syllables are easy to master in about 10 minutes by a motivated learner with a dictionary and unimpeded by a speech impairment. First the rhymers because a little song always helps grasp new material:

Nigeria ..... Liberia ... .. Algeria ..... Somalia ..... Ethiopia ..... Namibia ..... Tanzania ..... Mauritania ..... Eritrea ..... Madagascar..... Mozambique .....

And finally, the Gold Medal for Difficulty is clearly, Djibouti.

The trick is not to let the initial "d" confuse Dave's American sense of what's hard to pronounce. Africans in this eastern continental nation where the local languages are Arabic and Somoli, have not been generally linked to scam letters, which is the context of our helpful columnist's linguistic xenophobia. Djiboutis are, I dare say, just happy if the world just knows they're around and like it when people respect their name enough to say it gracefully. If an American comes calling, they are willing to endure: Jä-BOO-tee.

Dave, if I've overlooked any African nations or if you find one you still can't pronounce, please call and I'll be happy to help. The one that is most commony associated with scam letters is actually among the easiest to pronounce: Ny-jeer-ee-a. Say it and repeat it. You'll get it.

Dunn-Rankin: Global Warming is a Media Concoction

Well, he didn't say conspiracy: he said "media consensus."

The "he" in the "who" is our esteemed newsman, Dunn-Rankin the elder. The "where" is his column this sunny Sunday morn. The "what" is a Goldilocks opinion, "Not too hot, not too cold," wherein our scribe purports to do some myth busting.

Because ice ages and thaws come and go, the nice newsman concludes global warming is a myth, sprung whole from a "media consensus" (and a wrong one at that) that ignores what he knows for sure: this is just the warming trend side of a natural cycle.

Time for a short lesson in close reading.

First, readers will recognize that it's illogical to believe that "the media" have come together to create a consensus (or did we just miss the memo that the meeting was called?). Second, it's illogical to believe that a newspaper's or a television station's efforts can answer a scientific question. That's not their job. (The "media" practice journalism, not science -- two different things with different methodologies, aims, etc.)

However, we'll play along with the media angle for a moment and cite (for bevity's sake) one medium, The New York Times, which the columnist seems to have overlooked. Two years ago, scores of reporters covered a meeting of international climate scientists in Paris. The story ran under this hed:

Science Panel Calls Global Warming Unequivocal.

The reporters summarized the work of "hundreds of scientists and reviewers" who convened first in 1988. Over the next two decades, they collected and weighed data and evaluated possible conclusions. Their 2007 Paris meeting was summarized like this:

"The panel's four [published] assessments since 1990 ... asserts with near certainty -- more than 90 percent confidence -- that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from human activities have been the main causes of warming in the past half century," the Times reported.

Dunn-Rankin is, of course, entitled to deny every bit of the massive scientific evidence for rapid-onset, human-induced climate change. He is also entitled to print and publish his denialism. And, being in a position of great privilege -- he owns tons of newsprint and barrels of ink -- he can broadcast that global-warming evidence is a media conspiracy (which seems weirder and weirder the more we think about it), and along the way he'll undoubtedly garner a few "atta boys" and "way to go's" from the conspiracy theorists at the yacht club.

This reader, however, chalks it up to weak analytical skills combined with willful ignorance of evidence. The two may be marks of a local curmudgeon, but they render the opinionmaker more pitiable than believeable.

Aliens Did It

Yesterday's political cartoon rates a full five barks from Old Word Wolf, based on the apparent failure of a Viewpoints page editor at the Charlotte Sun to apply his history teacher's lessons to the real world. In the cartoon, a tall skinny figure representing the president says, "Let me get this straight -- they built this without government funds?"

Let me set you straight, dear Viewpoints Editor: Archaeologists and historians teach us, starting in about the third grade, that Egyptian pyramids were built by pharaohs -- heads of government. The government had at its disposal thousands of slaves who quarried thousands of acres of limestone and granite. The government ordered the slaves to shove thousands of tons of stone across the desert and make a pile of rock into a figure determined by thousands of engineers because the government, in the person of the pharaoh, wanted a place to rest its bones. Slaves and engineers alike received bed and board from the big guy on the throne -- the government. All these resources, both human and material, were spent at the behest and expense of the government.

So, anyone who can remember the story of the pyramids and how they came to be -- such as an editor who is relatively awake and not a victim of early onset senility -- would take one look at this cartoon and wonder why any ink in this time of frugality and cutbacks -- should be wasted on such an obvious error of generally accepted historical fact. Not at the Sun.

Hed: Happy Days are Here Again. Story: Fooled Ya

Apologies for going over old material, again, but the Sun's copy desk hasn't gotten the message yet: a hed is supposed to tell a bit about the story, like what it actually says. No making stuff up allowed.

And when a copy editor has two decks to work with, well, he/she can tell a whole lot about the story. Or, make it up twice, as happened during the Charlotte Sun's editing session last night.

Subscribers were delighted to turn to page 5 this morning and read the news: Stock surge, investors feeling comfort! Hallelujah! Oh, my dear! Oh, my 401(k)! We are delivered!

But, hold on one minute. Plunging into the story, readers can't help but realize they must be awaking from the copy editor's hallucination dream. No, stet that: hallucination.

The lede: "Investors shuttled between optimism and pessimism ..." No feeling of comfort here.

Next graf: The federal economic recovery plan "sent stocks moderately higher in a partial rebound from a plunge" the day before. No surge there.

Next: Stocks "meandered" for much of the day. No comfort. No surge.

Next, a real-person quote: "I think everybody is trying to get through all this news," the expert says. "Everybody has to digest all the tidbits of information. Everybody is looking for clarity, good, bad or indifferent." Hmmm. No surge mentioned, no word of comfort uttered.

Next: "Stocks had plummeted Tuesday ... on Wednesday the uncertainly continued." No comfort. No surge.

Next: "The Dow's 51-point rise is 'not a strong statement'" another expert opines. No surge. No comfort.

I know it gets old, but let's have the copy editors practice this until they get it right: The hed has to reflect what's actually in the story. No making it up up.

Running fantasy news is not going to return advertisers to the fold or make readers rush to sign up for year-long subscriptions. Fantasy news just makes editors and publishers look silly, unreliable, careless, clueless ...

Strangest Feature of the Week

File this one in the folder tabbed Not News & Never Will Be. The Charlotte Sun plastered all its regional front pages Wednesday with this: Frugal nuptials. You be the judge:

...the bride and groom shopped locally, compared prices, and cut costs any way they could in order to cover their estimated $15,000 wedding budget [... and] used personal touches to decorate their reception, which was held at Hilton Longboat Key Beachfront Resort.

The rookie reporter is parsimonious with facts: she doesn't report how many people, exactly, the frugal bride wined and dined at the Hilton for a mere $15,000. The reporter is naive enough to forget that the major demographic feature of her paper's circulation area is us old folks -- for whom the typical Social Security annual income hovers around $13,000 a year. Frugal: neither bride nor reporter knows the meaning of the word.

Windy Sailing Column Shows Poor Taste

Imagine you own a chain of small-town newspapers. Times are tough, advertising revenues fall, and you are forced to fire half the staff. Your internal memos on the matter “mourn” the loss of “family.”

But soon enough, a particularly lovely day in December dawns (remember, it’s Florida). You decide to “take a vacation day” (!) from your labors and head over to the yacht club where you untie your sloop for a sail around the harbor.

Question: Do you write a column about it?
Answer: Yes, if you are Derek Dunn-Rankin.

Comment: Enjoying his sail under “a milk-blue sky” is one thing. Writing about what is often regarded as an elitist activity is simply rubbing the staff’s nose in the disparity between Dunn-Rankin’s holiday and theirs.

Perhaps feeling a twinge of conscience about spending 20 inches of ink waxing poetic about his personal pursuit of happiness under sail, the company patriarch opines: “If I could get just a few thousand of the millions shoveling driveway snow to spend a few minutes aboard, we would once more have a shortage of houses for sale.”

Oh my! One tack out of the yacht club and consumers would be back on board! Having a full-time job that pays more than collecting aluminum cans and the means to qualify for a mortgage aren't part of the Dunn-Rankin sailing-to-economic-recovery plan.

If, after considering how many of his laid-off staff had to forgo yacht club memberships this year, Dunn-Rankin still decides to publish his lyric to leisure, then he should at least send the column to a decent copy editor. A “tiller arm” and “sheet line” are both silly redundancies. (A tiller is an arm and a sheet is a line, so there’s no need for the pompous inclusion of the extra noun disguised as an adjective.) He describes the boat’s “heel to the wind,” giving a backwards description of what happens when wind moves over sail. (By sailing left or right of the wind’s head-on direction, a sail produces different wind pressures on the front and back of its air-foil shape. The differential propels the boat forward. In the process, the boat heels away from, or “off,” the wind source, not into it.) But these are minor points.

The bigger point is Dunn-Rankin left his better judgment on the dock when he decided to tell his former employees and former advertisers how much fun he’s having, and suggest that all their problems would be solved if they'd only take a little sail, just like he does.

Let's Talk About Something Besides Your Face

The combination of miles of paper, a paid subscriber base, buckets of ink, and high-speed presses combine to breed a special kind of egotism in newsmen and women. It’s an egotism that's too often expressed upon peering into the mirror one morning and thinking, “Wow! That’s a good subject for a column!”

Sun-Herald columnist Steve Baumann is the latest at the Daily Excuse to succumb to the temptation of imagining his readers will better understand their little town if they first read a history of his mustache and sideburns.

Give him credit: he doesn't hide his topic: "Let's talk about my face."
No, Steve. Let's not. Next time you are looking for a subject, try one of these:

• We in Arcadia need to know what’s up with the rural transportation initiative.
  
• We need to know if the local high school’s drop out numbers are down or up.
  
• How about telling us how the state-level budget cuts will affect local school resources?
  
• We need to know what the property appraiser is doing to assessed home values in a time of falling market prices.
  
• We need to know if a proposed 25-acre animal drop-off facility is everything its promoters say it is – and what county permits have been issued.
  
• We need to know why DeSoto County commissioners refuse to institute a can-and-glass recycling program (or create an inter-local agreement so Arcadians can use Charlotte County’s drop-off facility).
  
• We need to know if the teen pregnancy rate is still the highest in the state and what initiatives are taken to keep young women in school.
  
• We need to know the outcome of the investigation into the policeman who shot a citrus worker during a traffic stop.
  
• Whatever happened to those eight high-powered rifles stolen from the local pawn shop?
  
• What are the jail conditions that were evaluated by the feds last month?

There is so much more ... taxpayers, families, and job holders in Arcadia need to know. And, Steve, your goatee is not on the list. <