More Copspeak

DeSoto County trauma patients can be choppered to either Tampa General or Lee Memorial, Blosser said, and six to eight patients are flown out in a typical month. When weather makes it impossible for helicopters to fly, Blosser said EMS can usually get a patient to Lee Memorial within an hour by ground.

That's what a reporter wrote in this morning's paper. And no, it's not a direct quotation. That would have been colorful. Once the writer paraphrased, however, it was time to restore the language of the land.

Don't click for more; I can't top this.

And, We Know This How?

Most papers this morning reported Friday's release of statewide jobless data, courtesy of the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation. But Bob Fliss, Charlotte Sun business news editor, leads us to believe he woke up just knowing all that stuff. No where in his 30-inch story does Fliss attribute the long list of percentages and comparisons he reports to the hardworking folks who were kind enough to gather, describe and make all those figures available to him.

Readers might like to know that this agency is in charge of collecting Florida's labor market statistics, among other things. Also under the agency's umbrella are the state's unemployment compensation program and its Office of Early Learning, including a prekindergarten program. The agency oversees regional workforce boards and "One-Stop Career Centers."

It would be interesting to know how the agency gathers its data and how often it releases it -- monthly? quarterly? Does the data come from the agency's own unemployement applications or from a university research department? Does it provide any analysis along with the data, such as a suggestions about seasonal adjustments, linkages to the construction or tourism industries? Sun readers, evidently, don't need to know any of this.

Community Reporting Gone Bad

Jason Witz turns in a story, headlined "Focus on Fitness," about schools that are squeezing 150 minutes of physical education into the school week. As it turns out, the story is not about fitness at all. And it falls short of doing any job readers might expect of community journalism.

In the first few paragraphs, Witz recaps initial skepticism about the program by reporting that school districts noted, feared, thought, and finally adjusted. I'm not a prescriptivist who goes apoplectic when an abstract object is said to behave in ways usually associated with real people. After all, I'm an English major, and in my department, rocks talk and daffodils weep.

I was going to let it go, but the more I read, the worse it got.

Witz manages to combine poor sentence-construction skills with the weakest type of reporting to torpedo what should have been a useful contribution to the community. Instead, Witz quotes half a dozen elementary teachers and a couple of principals, all singing the same song: It's a good thing, this 150 minutes a week of state-mandated physical education.

Witz swallows whole the assertion that one teacher's game "where students attempt to balance a peacock feather on their hands" in science class contributes to the physical-education minute. Witz willingly reports that a five-minute exercise tape played over the school's television system is "innovative" physical education. And Witz's editors obviously think a photo of a boy running at the school-bus ramp illustrates physical education.

And worse, all his sources seem to come in over the telephone. Readers get no sense that the reporter left the newsroom and visited any of the schools named. There's simply that string of quotes: teacher at School One followed by teacher at School Two followed by teacher at School Three and so on. No hallway smells, no classroom energy (and the piece is about phys ed!), no feel for the building, grounds or milling hordes of elementary school kids doing their P.E. minutes. If I were editor, I'd ask the reporter, "Did you really go to a school?"

And speaking of editors, someone cleverly inserted a little box in the photo titled "REQUIREMENTS." The editor's failure is the box lists nothing of the sort. Here it is, word for word, not a "requirement" in the list:

REQUIREMENTS

What area district's [sic] think about the new physical education requirements:
-- Student energy levels remain consistent throughout the day. [sic]
-- Teachers noticing less [sic] behavioral issues and student absence. [sic]
-- Students don't seem as sluggish. [sic]
-- Activities incorporate other learning skills, such as math or science. [sic, sic]
-- Kids excited about learning as result of activites where subject and exercise combined. [sic, sic, sic and sic]

(This is what I mean when I say picking on grammar, spelling and basic sentence construction is too easy.)

In the end, all I learned is Witz writes as if he didn't want this assignment and decided to blow it off. As a result, Charlotte Sun readers missed an opportunity to learn some important things about what happens when local schools try to meet state-mandated guidelines.

A Real Reporter Would Help Readers Understand:

0 Who thinks the "activities" that the teachers described constitute physical education?

0 What do real phys ed teachers think of a 2 - 1/2 hours of phys ed each week? What efforts are made to hold a real phys ed class?

o What's educational about running around at the bus ramp? What attempts are being made to fufill the "education" part of physical education?

0 When the order came down (and when, exactly was that?) to make room for phys ed, did the fiat arrive with guidelines or definitions? It was reported in Jason Witz's own newspaper that "walking between classes" was deemed to contribute to this program at one school. Is that so, or just a rumor?

0 Where are the schools that are trying to create a genuine phys ed program, in keeping with the spirit and intent of the mandate? Where does the funding, if any, come from?

0 Why is this worth reporting? Why is there such (frightening) unanimity among teachers? Is there a downside to the program? Or how it's being executed?

0 How does 150 minutes affect the school week? Witz found one teacher who claims her Spanish class was canceled, but I'm skeptical about blaming that on phys ed unless some credible evidence is reported to justify the cause and effect. Just because she said it doesn't make it so.

0 How effectively does the local interpretation of 150 minutes for phys ed contribute to a child's health? Every "this is wonderful" quote sounds suspiciously like the party line, the company song, to this old cynic. Is everyone really so thrilled at having sweaty rounds of jumping jacks carried out in the classroom?

There's more. But, Jason, you get the idea. You let 30,000 readers down: it's not just daffodils that weep.

All They Had To Do Was Copy the Dateline

I don't usually pick on spelling or grammar. It's too easy and there's lots of people blogging about it who really shouldn't . But the Charlotte Sun this morning, for maybe the seventh or eighth time, produced a headline that spells a place name differently than the dateline. All the sleepy copy editor (page designer?) had to do was copy, but no, someone opted out of the reading part. Philippines has one L and two P's. The two-L Phillips would Henry, who invented a screwdriver.

Don't click to read more because I've nothing else to say on this matter.

Special to the Sun and Other Thoughts on Sourcing

There's so much obfuscation at the Charlotte Sun about where our news come from -- particularly for the cow-zone edition -- that I thought I'd make a point, even if it's not a big one. I call it puffing up one's place in the news stream.

The gripe is that fake byline, "Special to The Sun." The example today is a travel piece -- not terribly interesting because it's Belize and we're not. But there is it, sprawled under the byline, "Sara Widnes, Special to the Sun."

Do an Internet search on Widnes. It turns out she's a nice PR lady based in Vermont who produces a lot of travel copy. It's all good stuff, I'm sure. Do another Internet search on her subject, Casa del Caballo Balnco's eco-lodge, and it turns out her story has been plastered -- word for word -- all over the travel-and-tour blogs since at least early September. Some sites give credit to Widnes and some don't. The point is, this space filler is not special and it's not special to the Sun. Sun editors need the ego boost, I guess, even if it's a lie that deceives readers about the the source of their news. Be honest. Tell readers the story is "By Sara Widnes, President of Widnes and Wiggins Public Relations."

The day's second tidbit is an imperative from the editors: "Look for more veteran news from Joseph McKenney that will be provided on a regular basis for the DeSoto Sun."

I hope everyone involved in produing and publishing this unpaid-for column will take care to check the gentleman's sources. Today's item, headlined "History of Veterans Day," appears to have been taken word for word from our federal government's Veterans Affairs site. Not that McKenney was the first to copy the paragraphs and not that he will be the last to copy the text without acknoweldgement (after all, it was written by the government, and those are his tax dollars, right?). Unfortunately, the DeSoto Sun isn't well known in these parts for employing professional writers who know how to produce unplagiarized work, particularly on time-worn topics.

Amusing Contradictions Form an Incoherent Editorial Postion

Iwas under the impression newspapers had editorial meetings to hammer out positions the paper takes in “Viewpoint” pages. That way, there’s consistency among the opinion pieces written by various staff pundits as they go forth to inform and recommend. Apparently, that’s not the case at the Charlotte Sun.

The example today is the on-going news that Florida lawmakers are trying to overhaul the state’s property appraisal system (there’s a special session of the legislature underway). Here’s three editorial opinions from three days, all this week.

On Monday, the house pundit writes: “Property tax reform makes system more complicated but the real solution is simplicity.” (Yes, he wrote it exactly like that.) He/she recommends a two-step solution: (1) assess all property, residential and commercial, at “true market value” and (2) collect taxes on that value.

On Wednesday, the house pundit writes that storm shutters should be exempted from a property's appraised value. Creating an exemption introduces complexity, no? Are 15-year-old shutters valued the same as new ones? Are my hand-crafted, maple-planked, Cape Cod wood and iron-hinged shutters the equivalent of my neighbor’s plywood? I don’t sense simplicity. Anyway, on with the main topic.

Today, the house pundit advocates that lawmakers create “a tax cap on all property.” So, what happened to Sunday’s simplicity: assess and collect?

Today’s editorial confusion deepens. The writer effusively praises a local representative for supporting a committee bill to “cap valuation increases on all property in the state” (but doesn’t bother to inform us if the cap is one percent, five percent, ten percent). Then, three paragraphs later, the Sun Pundit admits, “We are not convinced budgeting by legislative fiat is the best approach.” Sun Pundit thinks a tax cap might stop localities from building jails and such. He/she goes on: “We also feel the proposed measure perpetuates the inequity between those who bought homes years ago and new and future buyers.”

Let’s review – just today we have praise for the guy who votes for a tax cap in committee; we send Bronx cheers to the legislature that might implement the bill because that would budget by fiat, and we send more raspberries for a tax cap because it stems the flow of money localities can collect. And furthermore, a cap will “perpetuate inequity” among tax payers based on when they bought a house. If a tax cap does all these bad things, why does it "makes sense?" He/she doesn't actually say.

I don’t rely on the men of the Dunn-Rankin family (our esteemed publishers) when deciding what to think. And I don't fault them for taking a particular postion on this or any other issue. The crime I'm fighting is writing incoherent and disjointed assertions about a complicated topic that many readers care deeply about. Any freshman-composition class instructor would immediately detect their errors of fact (dealt with in two earlier posts) and amusing contradictions are the root of today's inability to articulate a coherent argument.

Editorial Uses Scare Tactics Instead of FCAT Math

The Charlotte Sun’s house pundit this morning advocates that storm shutters should be exempt from property taxes. About halfway down in the essay, he/she informs readers: “Shutters, which can range from $5,000 to $25,000 or more depending on the size of a home, could wind up costing twice that amount when taxes on the added value are factored over time.”

Sounds scary – add shutters, pay twice as much! Here’s the reality.

Let’s assume a 10-mill tax rate (the highest allowed, although I can’t find a county that actually uses that rate). More importantly, 10 is an easy number for English majors and sleepy copy editors to deal with. And, just to review: A mill is one one-thousandth of a dollar, and a 10-mill rate means $10 in tax for each $1,000 in value.

In my head, no pencil and paper: If I add $5,000 shutters to my house and the property appraiser appraises the whole sticker price, I’ll pay $50 a year in taxes on the new shutters. At $50 a year, it would take a hundred years for $5,000 shutters to “wind up costing twice that amount when taxes on the added value are factored over time.”

I don’t do a lot of math, but I like that it works pretty much the same all the time, even if the numbers change. In my head, again: If those shutters are the expensive kind, the $25,000 shutters, my 10-mill tax bill is $250 a year. It would still take a hundred years to “wind up costing twice that amount when taxes on the added value are factored over time.”

Two factors I didn’t consider here make Sun Pundit’s scare tactic even sillier: Most Florida counties’ tax rates are much less than 10 mills, and appraisers don’t add the retail sticker price of add-ons to a home’s appraisal. Either way, by the time shutters “wind up costing twice” what I paid, the grandchildren will be dead.

To be fair, I must account for local school-district taxes, which also depend on property appraisals. So, double the taxes (which really doesn’t happen), and it still takes 50 years to “wind up costing twice that amount when taxes on the added value are factored over time.”

I don’t care one way or another about this issue. I do care that when he/she writes about it, Sun Pundit uses FCAT -level math (that would be the 10th grade) instead of scare tactics to make the point.

A Resounding Silence

Some newspaper publishers are willing to correct errors that appear in their pages. Other publishers seem willing to let errors go, expecting (I suppose) that memories are short. This seems to be the case with Sunday's editorial page fiasco, " Property tax reform needs a reality check ."

Among other things (see yesterday's entry,"Facts: They're What We Do," below) the editorial calls for tax reform because, the newspaper's writer informs readers, "In some counties, the property tax values on the tax rolls are so low that not a single homeowner pays ad valorem taxes. Not one."

I asked (in an e-mail) the Sun publisher and two top-level editors the question: Which counties would those be? The response: No response Sunday, no response Monday, and here we are, no response Tuesday.

So I had to do some digging on my own.

Because the editors who wrote the editorial and made the assertion wouldn't reveal their sources, I spent a few hours yesterday and this morning looking at Florida Department of Revenue's 2006 Databook. It's a great document that includes more than a hundred tables, nicely organized by county. The tables show the source of just about any ad valorem appraisal one might want to know about, including residential, commercial, government, and even railroad real-property appraisals. The tables also show exemptions, including ones for homesteads, widows, disabled servicepersons, folks over age 65 and more. All in all, there are more than a hundred tables of last year's tax dollar assessments compared to the four prior years, all neatly and clearly arranged for all 67 Florida counties.

In searching for places where the property tax values on the tax rolls are so low that not a single homeowner pays ad valorem taxes, I paid special attention to the five poorest counties and the counties where the tax folks reported the greatest number of exemptions.

Try as I might, I did not find a single county (much less counties, plural, as the editorial asserts) reporting all its residents were exempt from paying property taxes or because tax values on the tax rolls are so low that not a single homeowner paid ad valorem taxes.

Now, I'm not a tax expert, and the 2006 Databook has a lot of numbers for an English major to crunch. So I telephoned the property appraiser in my little town and explained to him the how, what, and why of this little investigation. He was quick.

"The paper was wrong," said Dave Williams, a DeSoto County property apprasier. He went on to explain that an individual may own and live in residence whose assessed value is less than $25,000 ("I can assure you it's not a house that you or I would want to live in," he said.). And, if that individual claimed the $25,000 homestead exemption, then he or she would pay no personal property taxes. "But that's an individual, not the whole county," he said.

Did he know, I asked him, of Florida counties where every resident has enough exemptions and/or where property tax values on the rolls are so low that not a single homeowner pays ad valorem taxes? His answer: No. The situation does not exist.

So where did the editorial writer get this information? To what extent did he or she attempt to verify the statement? Did any editor in charge of reading the editorial page question a remarkable assertion that has not appeared in any other newspaper or magazine article that I can find on the Internet during this entire year-long debate?

I don't know the answer to that one. I'll let you know when I find out.

Facts: They're What We do. Let's Get'em Right

Charlotte Sun editorial writers this morning advocated a simplified property tax system for Florida. Unfortunately, the writers mixed up and misrepresented a significant number of important facts that are well-known to even cub reporters assigned keep an eye on the local property appraiser's office.

For starters, the writer insists on referring to a property’s “true market value.” This phrase is not part of the tax code, tax legislation, or the paragraphs in the state constitution (Article VII, section 4) that tackle the topic of property taxes. It’s misleading to readers to insert a vague, undefined, and emotion-charged phrase into a discussion that’s already breaking hearts (and bank accounts) across the state.

The state’s constitution, legislation and the rules about appraising property all refer to “just valuation.” In the many places where it’s used, the term “just value” is carefully defined. Every citizen would do well to know that definition. Here it is: “Just value” is the present cash value of a property, which is the amount a willing purchaser would pay a willing seller, exclusive of reasonable fees and costs of purchase, in cash or its immediate equivalent in an arm’s-length transaction.

Perhaps the editorial writer intended his phrase, “true market value,” to mean the same thing as the recognized term. If so, he would best serve readers who want to understand the issues, who may want to write their representatives, or who plan to talk to local property appraisers by using the language of the primary documents.

But that’s not even the big error. The most egregious mistake shows up about halfway down, where the writer wrongly informs readers: “Perhaps the greatest flaw in the property tax system is that by law, homestead property is on the tax roll at only 80 percent of its true market value.”

This is simply not true. Properties that qualify for a homestead exemption are listed on the property appraiser's rolls at 100 percent of their just value, just like any other property. This is "by law." The first $25,000 of the homestead's appraised value is exempt from taxes. But the property is on the roll at its full, just value: its appraisal.

The writer may have confused certain parts of First and Eighth Criteria, a Department of Revenue rule based on the first and last of eight paragraphs in section 193.011 of state statutes, where every citizen can read the language that guides property appraisals. The rule is well known to reporters, journalists and editorial writers who bird-dog the property appraisal and tax issues. It says property appraisers may exclude from “just value” the cost of “usual and reasonable fees and costs of sale, including the costs and expenses of financing,” among other, similar items. As a result, local property appraisers generally deduct about 15 percent from the recorded selling price to arrive at a just value. .

It would not be wrong to describe this process as creating appraisals that are about 85 percent of the selling price that buyer and seller agreed to in an arm’s-length transaction, or about 85 percent of an estimated fair market value, in cases where there is no recent sale and “comparable properties” are used as a guideline.

Any valuation that employs greater than a 15 percent “reduction” below selling price is justified, documented, and explained in an appraiser's narrative for each such property. There is no statute or legislation, as the editorial writer claims, “allowing property appraisers to undervalue homes, but only by 20 percent.”

Once the editorial writer corrects these mistakes, the rest of the essay pretty much falls apart. Readers who see the holes in this piece of Swiss cheese will be quick to detect a decided lack of substance. Informed readers can easily see that editorial Steps 1 and 2 are already facts of life and taxes; they are not the writer's new proposals, as he claims.
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The writer’s cutsy Step 3: “That’s all,” (i.e. do nothing more that 1 and 2), is qualified by his own words: “our simple solution to tax equity would need some tweaking.” Unfortunately, he has spent 700-plus words not saying what tweak he proposes. However, his tweak will, evidently, be based on errors and misunderstanding. But even that's no so bad; many people are misinformed and still hold opinions. The sorry part is The Charlotte Sun's editorialist articulates a position for the entire paper -- and recommends to the community -- based on his own ignorance of how his government operates.

Shame on you, Charlotte Sun. Please send someone downtown to talk to a local property appraiser and bone up on the state constitution. Your readers deserve better.

Sunday is Quack Day

Sunday is Quack Day at America's Best Community Daily. While the believers are in church, I’m home reading the “Health and Fitness” tab, an unending source of humor, better than the "funny papers" of my youth.

Today, for example, “Ask the Experts: Local medical professionals answer health-related questions and give straight answers on various subjects” contains this bit of hilarity:

“Q: I have heard a lot about internal cleansing, but why is this important? A: Internal cleansing is a common term used to describe the act of process of [sic] ridding the body of toxic substances that enter or are produced by the body. Harmful toxins existing in the body are of two types, those produced by external or environmental sources such as factories, industrial plants or mold. These are called exogenous toxins. The other -- called endogenous toxins – is caused by the body during its various processes. Accumulated toxins existing in the body are a serious problem. The results of numerous studies indicate that a number of toxic substances are responsible for many of the diseases prevalent today. Because of the vast amounts of toxins, the body is unable to naturally cleans itself completely. Internal cleansing assists the body with the removal of toxins. The process uses special herbs, foods and a number of other therapies and procedures.”

This little bit of Q&A compiled by De Soto Sun Editor Dawn Krebs (I don't believe for one moment a reader wrote in with this question), concludes with the note: “Gregory N. Whyte is a health education specialist and holistic health practitioner. He writes and lectures on topics and areas within the spectrum of fitness, holistic health and natural healing, and provides consulting counseling and training services."

Now, no one with an ounce of sense would read Whyte's Quack Day contribution without asking: what toxins? what studies? what prevalent diseases? what cleansing assists? what special herbs? what therapies? and what procedures?

But, silly me, I thought newspaper editors were supposed to ask these questions. After all "what" is about 20 percent of the five W's, right?

Here’s what the editor doesn't report about her featured "medical professional:"

Gregory N. Whyte makes no claim to having a medical degree, although he says he earned a bachelor's degree in phys ed from Hunter College in New York. Neither does he have -- or claim to have -- any health-related license in the state of Florida.

He does claim to be author of a book he has for sale: “Mold Management and Tutorial.” The book is a self-published book and costs $34.95. It is available only at his his Web site, “Advanced Health and Safety I.T.D. Inspection Testing Design." The Web site also sells home inspections for "air quality and other pollutants.” Whyte claims to identify “Environmental Disharmony” through poor interior design and decor.

A five-minute Internet search turns up Militant Islam Monitor, a Web site that lists Islamic activists and credits Whyte as “creator of Tiririka survival and development system.” That site's broken link to Whyte's bio is available in the Wayback Machine. It's a November 2005 page for The Truth Establishment Institute, listing a Chicago post office box address and several still-active links to stories about Louis Farrakhan and a mission statement about a "justified" society.

On his own bio page, Whyte says he has a master’s degree in exercise physiology from Columbia. He claims a fourth-degree black belt in Goshin-Jitsu and that he has “mastered” karate, judo, akido and weaponry. He says he developed a “personal martial arts system called Triririka [...] an African New World Martial Arts.” Whyte claims expertise in “African/Caribbean Folk medicine” based in part on “holistic health and herbology at the School of Holistic Health and Natural Living in New York City." On the same page, Whyte says he developed Modern Yoga.

I'm sure Gregory Whyte is a very nice man and well qualified to lead a phys ed or martial arts class. He may even have some unmentioned credential that qualifies him to detect and correct mold in the house, or advise me about decor or the arrangement of my landscape plants (another service he offers). But, Madam Editor, what makes this guy a "medical professional," and why have you directed a "reader's question" to him for a "straight answer?"

The Check's in the Mail

Someone at the newspaper must have read my little blog. Yesterday, all out of proportion to the urgency of a third-day school board story, a rewrite appeared, over the fold, five columns wide. The nice editors must have asked Our Man in Arcadia to please, please, please tell that annoying lady which line items had been cut from the school district's budget.

The nice newsman, it appears, may have taken offense at being told to try, try again. In the rewrite, he sounds almost testy when he calls the budget cuts "state mandated." Twice. As I pointed out yesterday, this just isn't so. (see No News is Good News, just below.)

By parroting the official rhetoric -- "state mandated" -- ("Don't blame us; they made us do it) the reporter perpetuates, with emphasis, a major misrepresentation of the state's role in local education. Readers get a false picture of the way government works and the things it can and cannot do.

For details, turn to page 2.
Over at the schoolhouse, boardmembers, nice people one and all, cut some $500,000 from the local budget. The line items they selected for whacking were killed because state found it has less money to distribute to the local districts for education.

Way back in March, the folks in Tallahassee estimated they'd have about $71 billion or so in the state coffers. By September, it started to look like they were going to be short a billion, give or take a couple million. Less for the state, less for the school district. -- Take a Letter: Dear DeSoto County: Enclosed please find half-a-million dollars less than we promised.

After reading in the news story (both of them) about "state mandated" budget cuts, I called the school board chairman. It was dinner time, but he took my call anyway.

I asked him: "If I asked you to come over and get my check for $500,000, could you put back all the things you took out?" That made him put his dinner roll down: "Sure! Yes! Of course!" When I thought I heard his car keys jingling, I had to confess this was a hypothetical check.

But my fictional check is factual proof that the budget trim, however necessary and unavoidable, was not state mandated. It had to be done only because I was flat out of that kind of cash. But, had I the money, then the school would still have a travel budget and the cafeteria manager would still have a cell phone.

Yes, this is a small town, and the school board chairman is a nice guy. Report his face-saving quote. But somewhere nearby in the story, do the journalist's job of composing a sentence or two to help readers understand the facts behind the rhetoric. There are, indeed, mandates in Florida's complex school-funding formula, but this is not one of them. Readers appreciate an accurate picture of how government works and the things it can and cannot do.

School board members did their jobs. The reporter should do his.

Good News is No News

Small-town, family owned newspapers tend to tread lightly. I understand that. After all, publisher, editors, and reporters all belong to the same Rotary and Red Cross organizations as their sources. They see each other at Wal-Mart. Advertisers and sources operate restaurants where nice newsmen eat and garages where the family van is serviced. But that's not a reason to surpress news the community needs and wants to know. Today's example is last night's school board meeting.

DESOTO COUNTY -- School Superintendent Adrian Cline announced last night that because of shortfalls in state revenues, the state is asking the school district to make cuts in its budget amounting to $511,000.

0 The state did not ask the school district to cut the local budget. The state said it was sending less money down the pike. If the district had found money elsewhere, it could well have kept its budget intact. I'm not saying that's possible; my point is the state did not, in fact, ask the district to reduce its budget.

The good news is, the district will not be laying off any personnel in order to meet the cuts.

0 Not necessairly. It's bad news if deadwood, malingerers or the unqualified remain on the payroll another year. I'm not saying such goldbricks exist in our little town. I am saying second-sentence editorializing doesn't serve the reader.

The School Board met in a workshop two weeks ago to prepare possible cuts that would be the least hurtful in the event such a request came from the state

0 This sentence alerts us that the lead, "announced last night," is a canard. The board knew the situation a fortnight ago -- and before that, if news reports are to be believed.

"We're ready to proceed with cuts as prepared," Cline told the board.

0 This innocuous quote adds no substance. It clarifies nothing that has gone before and foreshadows nothing on the horizon. We expect the superintendent to be ready to proceed. Here's something readers would like to know: Half a million is what portion of the overall budget? Half? 10 percent? Something in between? It makes a difference.

At the workshop, the board drew up a list of cuts that would least impact students' education.

0 If I thought it would do any good, I'd scold the writer for using "impact" as verb. But I'm really looking forward to finding out about the "list of cuts" that will "least impact" education, so I'll move on.

"We had a group that looked at our entire budget to see what we could cut from the budget or not implement from the new budget to try to save that money in anticipation of the state cutting us, which obviously they did," said School Board Chairman Ronny Allen.

0 More procedure. And more evidence the super didn't suddenly announce the news last night. It would be interesting to know who was in the group that examined the budget. Teachers? Citizens? Friends of ... ? But, hey, this is a small town and everyone gets a nice soft quote. Any moment now, the reporter will report what's on the won't-be-bought list.

Allen said the cuts came to $552,000 at that time. Since then, the cuts requested had dropped.

0 Declined. Lessened. Been reduced. "Dropped" says the budget-reduction request had been rescinded, eliminated, revoked. The reader is whiplashed -- cuts or no cuts?

He said the board could "look at every single employee opening that comes open and see if we could have that task done by an existing employee or by not implementing certain programs that do not directly impact students' education.

0 "could," or "did"? The reader has been told that the work has been done and the decisions have been made. There's no conditional left to speculate about. Give us the list, for crying out loud.

"We're going to go ahead and implement the cuts now that we've heard from the Legislature." Allen said. "Right now, legislators are trying to see if the cuts they've requested are enough to meet their revenue crisis."

0 Sigh. Since the reporter isn't ready to report what's been taken out of the local budget, this might be a good place for a crisp sentence or two recapping the state-level "revenue crisis." But the reporter seems short on info that might help readers understand the relationship between the state level "revenue crisis" and local actions.

"But we are not handing out any pink slips like the surrounding counties are," Allen said. "I don't think the general public is aware of it, but the surrounding counties are dropping pink slips right and left."

0 If the public isn't aware of it, let's insert a snappy sentence or two that justifies the source's assertion that surrounding counties are dropping pink slips right and left. Which of seven surrounding counties?

On another notable matter, the School Board gave final unanimous approval for the purchase of V-Soft, a Web-based software application that has been developed with the purpose of aiding educational facilities in tracking their visitors, students and faculty.

0 Eeeeek! We've reached the end of the budget-cutting story only to be handed a rehash of yesterday's full-length story about "tracking" visitors with software. Worse, the reporter opines that is a "notable matter." Maybe, but what happened to the budget?

The value of the purchase is $20,000, to provide and deliver Web-based visitor security identification software access, hardware, accessories and technical support.

0 I'll skip the grammar, punctuation, style, and jargon issues. I sure wish I knew exactly what those darn budget cuts were.

The software was developed by Raptor Technologies Inc. of Houston, Texas. "V-soft not only provides an effective, efficient method for tracking, but also goes beyond conventional applications by utilizing available public databases to help control campus security," Raptor states.

0 Same quote as yesterday's story. A company can't talk. Never mind, I'm still wanting to read about the budget cuts. Which ones were implemented that would least affect students?

The program enables school districts to check for registered sex offenders as people enter campus.

0 The identical sentence appeared in yesterday's story. And the budget-cuts were ...?

According to V-soft, visitors to a campus would have their driver's licenses scanned when they check into a school.

0 Read it yesterday.

The software then compares the driver's license data against databases and prints out a disposable photo identification badge.

0 Read it yesterday.

The system checks on only sex offenses, not other criminal information such as traffic tickets or warrants.

0 Read it yesterday.

So, what about those budget cuts?

Drop that serial comma, or I'll shoot!

MEDFORD, Ore. -- High school English teacher Shirley Katz insists she needs to take her pistol with her to work because she fears her ex-husband could show up and try to harm her. [She said] she's also worried about a Columbine-style attack.

A nice pearl-handled .22 also discourages students from dangling their modifiers.

--30--

More Community News: Olympia, Wash.

Okay, the world is contracting and the global village is expanding. And I, as a citizen of both, would do well to spend some time caring deeply about the folks in Olympia, Wash. I'm sure they're nice, one and all. I wouldn't mind reading how Olympians address crime, taxes, jail overcrowding, student test scores, or rural health care, to name just a few concerns our communities might have in common.

.

Instead, America's Best Community Daily dedicates its most valuable real estate this morning to a story from the Evergreen state about a Big Foot museum. Opening-day festivities are represented by interviews with four persons, the oldest of whom is 12. The two adults quoted are clearly delusional, although the reporter can't properly say that.

.

Don't bother clicking the read-more link because there isn't any.

--30--

Community News From Harrington, Del.

Today's front page headline tells a sweet story: "When cash dried up, strangers stepped in." It tops a four-column family photo of a returning war vet and a smaller two-column picture of dad in a wheelchair cradling his infant daughter.

Ahh, I thought: A story of hard times arriving on the heels of patriotic sacrifice, mitigated by the kindness of strangers. I grew genuinely excited to see the byline: Kimberly Hefling, Associated Press Writer. It's great when a national news service find a good story in little old DeSoto County or nearby Hardee, or Polk or even the metropolis of Punta Gorda over in Charlotte County. .

I dove into the story in all its tender detail: The family hails from Delaware. Dad joined the Arizona National Guard (Arizona?) and moved the clan to Phoenix when he shipped out to Iraq. He was injured. The time and expense of his recovery put the family's finances on the ropes. They were rescued from ruin by a nice couple from Pennsylvania who paid the mortgage and heating bills. Another charitable group, For Our Troops, built them a new house with an exercise room. There is just one problem.
None of this happened in southwest Florida, much less DeSoto or Charlotte counties.

The report is chock full of human interest, highlighing the plight of one soldier who came home wounded (but not so badly that he couldn't make a new baby). But it raises the question of why my local newspaper, which bills itself "America's Best Community Daily" can't find a local veteran who'd benefit from having his or her story told? This couple went from being on the ropes to getting on the wires -- and they've already been helped.

Even overlooking the omitted local angle, this story falls apart on so many other levels. There's not one number in the story reporting how many soldiers and their families find philanthropists to pay their bills. There's not one sentence about how to locate a benefactor, or how many houses the charitable organization has built for vets, and no mention of whether similar programs or services are available locally. Need I mention the picture readers get of bright pink skin, the Leave it to Beaver-era nuclear family of five, mom with nicely streaked blonde hair? This is not even a representative family.

It's a one-shot, feel-good story that says essentially nothing, helps no one, and sheds no light on what awaits the next war-wounded family -- say a single mom with decidedly darker skin. An angel who pays the bills? I doubt it.

News and Not News

This is what blogs are for, not newspapers. And this. These wonders occupied nearly 80 inches of DeSoto Sun newshole today. Meanwhile, I had to go to the competing Herald-Tribune's Charlotte edition to read the EPA approved a highly toxic spray for strawberry growers (relatively large farming interest around here) and extension agents are releasing neutered Med flies from airplanes to reduce a pest that threatens citrus crops.

But most important, it was the Tribune's Joe Follick who gave readers a meaningful inside look in his report from the special legislative session on the state's nasty no-fault insurance battle, "one of the messiest special-interest fights [...] seen in years."

The Sun's business editor apparently went to Tallahassee, too. Unfortunately, his yawner relied heavily on process and procedure, details meaningless to the poor folks who must figure out whether to buy or not buy no-fault car insurance next month: "The Republicans had enough of a council majority to carry both amendments on voice votes. Then the bill itself was then passed on a roll call, with both barties going in both directions. Brown voted for the amendments but against the bill, just has he had in his own committee Wednesday."

I could forgive Our Man in Tallahassee had he followed up on Saturday or Sunday with an analysis, wrap-up, op-ed, editorial, or something, anything to put this in perspective.

When You Really Need a Cliché

In all the years I've been teaching and editing, one of the most enduring pieces of advice given and taken is to avoid clichés. So, it was with some interest that I visited a Web page called Cliche Finder. I expected some sort of word search, like a spell-checker, that might identify shop-worn phrases. Not so.
Actually, that very site may have been the inspiration for a unintentionally near-perfect parody of the op-ed genre that ran in the Charlotte Sun at the opening of the state legislative session back in March. The stage is set in the headline, and I couldn't resist elaborating. First the original.

-----------------

We might call it a revolution of sorts, this power struggle over the piggy bank between state and local governments in Florida. Hey, wars have been started over such matters. For centuries, countries have been divided by clashes between classes which have sprung up over taxes and the distribution of wealth.Perhaps nothing is stronger than the territorial imperative, so the infliction upon homeowners of excessive fees for insurance and absurdly high taxes has riled the citizenry. And where’s all that tax money going?

The counties have enjoyed a huge windfall with the real estate boom, but with it has come higher property taxes. This has led to more spending, which the counties say they can justify by the higher cost of doing business.

Gov. Charlie Crist wants to lower property taxes, but can’t do it without making up the lost dollars with an increased sales taxes or a state income tax. If the state added 2.5 cents to the current rate of 6 cents, as proposed, it would be the highest state sales tax in America.

Some are calling the Crist proposal a tax on the poor because those with luxurious homes get the huge tax break.

What we have going on these days in the Sunshine State is a power struggle over money and who gets to spend it. The local government or the state.

To use the old cliché, what he are talking about here is The Golden Rule. He who has the gold rules.

There is this pile of cash stacked ups somewhere and everybody want to get their mitts on it.

Both sides are firmly entrenched, as subscribers to the Sun have been reading about in recent weeks, and it doesn’t appear there will be any backing off anytime soon.

What we would hope for from our governor and state Legislature is that the prevailing campaign promises of working out compromises between parties might be honored.

More than ever, we need them to represent the best interest of the people of Florida and to conduct their business without special interest leanings. We need answers to our insurance woes. We need relief from taxes. And despite some of the strong actions and interesting proposals that have come out of Tallahassee in 2007, there are still storm clouds brewing.

We just hope the feud isn’t exacerbated by making it a party line issue that will create further division in our government. Frankly, we all hoped we were getting past this gridlock monkey business.

Say what you will about Crist and House Speaker Marc Rubio, who proposed the controversial no-property-tax bill, but they have stirred up things in the state capital, even if it is a hornet’s nest.

The near-perfect parody of the op-ed genre, "Deciding who gets the gold determines who rules" (Saturday, March 18), left me thoroughly delighted with a virtuoso performance of cliché-hitching called "Boxcars."* Unable to resist, this humble hobo hopped aboard a boxcar and made a few travel notes to share with those left behind.

Buddy's Boxcar Line pulled out of the station as his whistle blew a major, three-toned chord: "Call it a revolution ..., " and a "power struggle," over the "piggy bank" (the last being a cute high-note, signaling greater things to come) -- all sounded in one sentence: a masterful departure.

The chief engineer's second and third sentences pick up the rhythm of the rails with that old boxcar, "clashes between classes ..." (only slightly less clichéd than "class conflict" but still worth the ticket price). That boxcar is hitched to a boxcar carrying to bones of poor old Konrad Lorenz: "... perhaps nothing stronger than the territorial imperative ...." (not sex? not hunger? not Jihaad?)

"Riled the citizenry" is a boxcar anti-tax engineers have been riding since American Revolution, when the English king used stamps and tea leaves to round up another venerable boxcar, the "huge windfall." (Was ever a windfall small?)

Since the home- and land-sale sectors of the economy have just two newsworthy conditions (boom and bust), "real estate boom" is an obvious pickup for the busy boxcar driver. But our engineer didn't overlook "the cost of doing business ..." It's a phrase no op-ed column about taxes wants to leave on the sidetrack. He clearly understands it's the cost of writing "in the Sunshine State" where an "endless power struggle" goes on.

Amid all this praise, this humble hobo has a quibble: A cliché's beauty is often in direct proportion to how well it's spliced into the sentence without calling attention to itself. So when the engineer writes, "To use the old cliché ..., " it's like setting up a big blinking X at the grade crossing. The cagiest readers will detect the master's work without a directional signal. This small blunder is fully redeemed when our engineer doesn't actually use the old cliché, as announced. Instead, he corrupts it beyond recognition, ultimately producing a second-generation triteness to be tooted in the headline.

While we long to stop and savor the climatic, the boxcars aren’t ready to slow down. "The sides are firmly entrenched ..." (whenever have sides not been firmly entrenched? spoil-sports may ask) is the locomotive that pulls "backing off" and "more than ever." This last is the rare cliché of transition, which nicely hitches up "best interest of the people," "special interests" and "relief from taxes," just to count off a few of the boxcars now whizzing by.

At this point, your humble hobo is tempted to say this train is gathering steam, but the old pro beat me to it with " ...storm clouds brewing." (I always wake up and smell the coffee when I read this classic.)

And, like any excursion train whose terminus takes riders into territories beyond populated centers (the railroad less taken, one might say), our drivers offer the surprisingly original coupling of not one but two venerable images: The penultimate paragraph closes on the hope that debate moves past "gridlock monkey business." With this phrase he commands every reader to stop and ponder the unexpected possibilities of city streets clogged with simians wearing Charlie Chaplin suits.

And, finally, like any good conductor, he lets riders know the train is safely back at the depot, boxcars intact, because he sounds the familiar toot-toot-toot that has "stirred things up" around the "hornet's nest."
_____________________

* (Boxcars: Prefabricated, empty phrases; clichés; writers hitch boxcars into a sentence train that rumbles along the track, almost under its own steam. My definition is loosely based on Ken McCrorie's many wonderful texts for college students about writing well.)

Children Might Read This

The dangers of writing the way we speak are all too evident in yesterday's edition.

-------------- What’s going on at Sun-Herald.com

It's not the same, but useful
Ok, click on the Community Calendar link and you’ll see something different from what you used to see. It’s a new calendar that will help our users. This calendar allows users to look at calendars by category, by town, by date and the items can be e-mailed to friends or to you to remind it is coming up. And if you want to put an item on there, click on Submit Event, and that will be posted, too. Of course, that item will go through an editor and with the anticipation of what we will get, please wait 4-8 business days before the item is posted.

I know things are tight over there, but readers deserve a little copy editing and proofreading for their 25 cents. The gem, by the way, appeared yesterday in a box postioned over the boilerplate brag "Pulitzer Prize Finalist 2005."

Read All About My Pet Peeve

It's nice the newspaper learned it wasn't eliminated in the first round of judging for the 2005 PP. I read the entry. It is a two-parter, published Dec. 30 and Dec. 31, 2004, detailing the struggle of staffers to get out the news in the days after Hurricane Charley, four-plus months earlier. Despite the time lag between the event and the story's publication on the last two days of the year, the story was full of typos, confusing time references, and a bunch of other terrible writing. As in today's gripe, it needed editing.

I'm guessing PP judges have an unofficial soft spot in their hearts for The Big Storm Story: How My Little Newspaper Made It Into Every Subscriber's Driveway.

Give it up, Eds. It's been three years and counting; the runner-up in a beauty contest is famous for about a week -- in her family circle.

Nose for News Award Still Up for Grabs

Yesterday's headline: City to swear in council members
Today's headline: Council members take oath

The process is rarely the news. It's a corollary of the law that news is not what's expected or predicted. Democracy in action -- particularly when the action proceeds in complete accord with Robert's Rules of Order -- does not warrant a headline or lead. Both the reporter and the headline writer are out of the running for that most coveted award, the golden Nose for News. There's a lot of this type of misguided reporting in the local gazette. A reporter sits through a long meeting, mini-tape recorder running, pen scratching, and all the news we get is couched in the exciting detail: "After tabling the motion, the council moved to bring up the next item on the agenda.”

All Those Imperatives

Local front headline: Meet DeSoto's new assistant public defender
Back page headline: Meet DeSoto High's administration

The imperative bark is a poor way to invite readers into a story. Barking twice in the same paper is just plain annoying. Invite us in by writing something notable about the contents.

Don't "click for more," because that's it for today.
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Confluences

photographs by John Tarnowski
This may looks like just a side yard, but it is also part of the Peace River watershed. It's our own "river of grass," to borrow from Marjory Stoneman Douglas. The green swale disguises a commodious trough that slopes gently away from the neighborhood road, descending about ten feet in elevation over 330 yards. Deep in the woods, the slough reaches an arm of Joshua Creek, and the rainwater runoff it carries burbles into that more robust flow. The confluence eventually reaches the Peace River, which snakes through my little town, about three miles from here, before joining the Myakka River and forming the estuary that gives rise to Charlotte Harbor. Another body of water on our little acre is the artificial pond, pictured at the bottom of this page. It was excavated to provide enough dirt to form a small hill on which to build the house we live in. The pond is always full of water -- and wildlife -- but its level rises and falls dramatically with the cycles of the subtropical wet and dry seasons.

It's clearly part of the local watertable, just as the newspaper reported.
The cedar-stained water of a Joshua Creek feeder marks the boundary of our little acre.
Photograph by John Tarnowski

Laura Schmid's article in the morning Sun, "Water projects unveiled," helps remind readers of the interconnections among yards, neighborhoods and the regional water supply. The dog-and-pony show by quasi governmental types with flip charts, maps and Power Point presentations that she attended was, most likley, a bit dull. But she served her readers well in covering it.