Sunday,
Dec. 31, 2006
A year later,
Sago Mine families say safety problems still need solving
A year ago Wednesday, 12 West Virginia coal miners
died in one of the nation's biggest mine disasters in
recent years. Families of the victims told Tara Tuckwiller
of the Charleston Sunday Gazette-Mail that
"serious, deep-seated problems with mine safety
. . . are being brushed aside by state investigators’
theories about lightning igniting the explosion."
The problems include availability of rescue teams, emergency
air supplies and what the families say is a code of
secrecy in the largely non-union coal industry.
"Nobody alerted rescue crews for more than an hour
and a half after the explosion. It took rescuers another
two and a half hours to get there. Officials wouldn’t
let them into the mine for another six and a half hours,"
Tuckwiller writes, "saying it was too dangerous.
Federal mine safety regulators now say coal companies
must report accidents to emergency authorities within
15 minutes. ... But rescue teams still have to travel
to a disaster. Congress ordered companies to provide
more rescue teams, but federal regulators don’t
have to implement that until the end of next year."
"In other countries, underground emergency shelters
keep miners alive until rescuers can reach them. But
Congress is waiting on a federal study before it will
decide whether to force mines to buy them. It, too,
isn’t due until the end of next year," Tuckwiller
continues. "Rules now require more emergency oxygen,
but miners do not have it. Coal companies say they can’t
get the additional air packs right now, because two
suppliers are backordered. The Sunday Gazette-Mail reported
last week that a third supplier has thousands of air
packs sitting in a warehouse." The packs are bulkier
than those of the top two suppliers.
Families say an underlying problem in making coal mines
safe is the industry's code of secrecy. "They said
coal miners feel afraid to criticize any company for
fear they will be blackballed and never get another
mining job anywhere. They said inspector friends have
told them they’ve gotten their wrists slapped
by their bosses for doing their jobs, citing mines’
safety violations in certain instances. Families said
they have tried to explain this to lawmakers, but lawmakers
won’t bring it up publicly either." (Read
more)
C-J brings
more focus to debate over mountaintop-removal coal mining
The
debate over mountaintop-removal coal mining in Appalachia
often devolves into a shouting contest, and news coverage
of the complex subject often focuses on the debate and
not the underlying facts. The Courier-Journal's
Forum section goes beyond the usual today, with a 1,950-word
article by Stan Macdonald, the Louisville newspaper's
retired special-projects editor and investigative reporter.
Newspapers that want to explain the details of the issue
could get The C-J's permission to reprint the article.
Photo shows the Rev. John Rausch, a foe of mountaintop
removal, at a reclaimed mine.
One linchpin for the story is a federal study that
didn't lead to more restrictions on mountaintop removal
but pointed out the importance of ephemeral streams
-- those than come and go, depending on rainfall and
runoff. Coal executives such as Bill Caylor, president
of the Kentucky Coal Association, call
those "dry ditches" that can eventually be
replicated by required reclamation, but scientists disagree.
"Denis Newbold of the Stroud Water Research
Center in Pennsylvania and J. Bruce Wallace
at the University of Georgia say headwaters
are vital partly because they collect organic matter
from their intimate relationship to surrounding forests
and transport it downstream, where it serves as food
for fish and other aquatic life," Macdonald writes."These
streams, which supply over 50 percent of the water in
rivers, also help remove pollutants, including excess
amounts of nitrogen, that otherwise would reach the
rivers downstream, Newbold said." He told Macdonald,
""If you destroy two or three headwater streams,
nobody will know the difference," he said. "But
when you start destroying large numbers of them, then
the impacts will be felt downstream."
Another study, by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service in 2003, found "worrisome levels
of selenium in fish in West Virginia streams below valley
fills," which are made of material blasted from
strip-mine sites and placed in the heads of hollows.
"Coal mining can release selenium, which is naturally
occurring, and excessive amounts are toxic to fish and
fish-eating birds. Prompted by the discovery in West
Virginia, Kentucky is just starting a study of selenium
in its eastern streams," Macdonald writes.
Macdonald offers much more data, such as: The Army
Corps of Engineers has permitted more than
180 valley fills in southeastern Kentucky in the last
five years. "If all these fills are constructed,
corps records show that almost 50 miles of streams would
be permanently buried by leftover mining debris, and
about 30 more miles would be subject to what the corps
considers to be temporary disruptions," such as
"in-stream sediment ponds that are supposed to
be removed during the required reclamation." (Read
more)
Mountain
Eagle publishers celebrating 50th anniversary of their
purchase
On
New Year's Day, Tom and Pat Gish will have published
The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky.,
for 50 years. They "have survived floods, death
threats, arson and theft. They've covered poverty, corruption
and mining disasters. And when they weren't hunched
over typewriters and printing presses, they fought for
the First Amendment," reports Samira Jafari of
The Associated Press.
"These people have demonstrated more tenacity
than almost any crusading rural newspaper in the country,"
Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism
and Community Issues, told Jafari. "Fifty years
is a long time to ride a white horse." Photo
shows the Gishes at the 2004 announcement that
the Institute was establishing the Tom and Pat Gish
Award for courage, tenacity and integrity in rural journalism.
They were the first recipients. The next award will
be given in April at the National Summit on
Journalism in Rural America in Lexington, Ky.
Click here for
an article adapted from a tribute to the Gishes when
they got the first award.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the weekly Eagle published
"scores of stories that attracted national attention
to Appalachia, serving as an impetus for the War on
Poverty and the 1977 Surface Mining and Reclamation
Act. They covered the lack of health care in the hills,
the dilapidated schools, jobs lost to the mechanization
of the coal industry and dangerous mining conditions,"
Jafari writes. "And in an unusual move for most
rural weeklies, they followed stories that took them
beyond the county line. Cross cited The Mountain Eagle's
stories that held the Tennessee Valley Authority
-- established as a federal natural-resource
agency -- responsible for encouraging large-scale strip
mining without adequate reclamation."
Jafari notes that the Gishes have won several national
journalism awards. Mimi Pickering, an Appalshop
filmmaker who is doing a documentary about the Gishes,
told the AP reporter, "I think they've set the
standard for what high-quality journalism should be,
whether it's in a small town or big city." (Read
more)
Friday,
Dec. 29, 2006
Interstate
system is showing its age at 50, and needs money for
a fixup
The interstate highway system "is imperiled by
crumbling concrete, decaying steel, insufficient lanes
and overstuffed traffic – and federal and state
gas tax receipts can’t keep up with the cost of
the needed improvements," reported Matt Milner,
a fellow in the Community Newspaper Holdings
Inc. News Service Elite Reporting Program.
"Millions of more cars and far heavier freight-hauling
trucks are pounding away at the aging system than engineers
anticipated," Milner wrote, and the U.S.
Department of Transportation reports that "more
than one-fourth of the interstate highways, bridges
and beltways in America are badly in need of immediate
repair, upgrade or expansion." The agency's Federal
Highway Administration says commercial trucks
cause 40 percent of the damage, but the American
Trucking Associations "argue that interstate
highways need to be rebuilt and repaved to carry more
volume." The Bush administration opposes higher
fuel taxes, but supports letting states lease "high-volume
roads to private companies that then charge tolls to
pay for improvements and also make a profit," as
Indiana, Illinois, Virginia and Texas have done.
"Tom Lewis, author of a book on how the interstate
system transformed everyday life in America, said too
many transportation experts and motorists took the highway
network for granted as the nation’s population
shifted from rural to urban regions," Milner reported.
“Now we’ve got this wonderful legacy that’s
going to hell,” Lewis told Milner. “We’re
celebrating a skeleton on this 50th anniversary year.”
(Read
more)
Milner also did a story on how the interstate system
shaped the nation, helping towns along the new roads
and hurting those that weren't. "Hundreds of small,
rural communities that popped up across America in the
19th century when the railroads ran through them but
then found themselves far off the interstate path,"
he wrote. "For a public addicted to motor travel,
the socioeconomic consequence has meant urban sprawl,
overcrowded highways, road rage, lost productivity and
wasted fuel." (Read
more)
Database
spurs stories on subsidies as debate begins on new Farm
Bill
With the new farm-subsidy database from the Environmental
Working Group, more detailed information available
from the U.S. Department of Agriculture,
and debate over the new Farm Bill ratcheting up, now
is the best time ever to do stories about agricultural
subsidies in your area -- and how they are viewed by
various interests and those who represent you in Congress.
One recent example: NebraskaStatePaper.com
did a few keystrokes on the
EWG Web site and found that the 3rd Congressional
District of Nebraska "was first among the nation’s
congressional districts in farm subsidy dollars for
2005 with a staggering $991.5 million." That line
was followed by a link to the EWG
page giving the individual subsidy recipients in
Nebraska in 2005, ranked by amount.
The site gives data going back to 1995, and the State
Paper mined that, too, reporting that : "35 percent
of all farmers and ranchers do not collect government
subsidy payments in Nebraska," that 10 percent
of the farmers collected 58 percent of the subsidies
in the last 11 years, and "Recipients in the top
10 percent averaged $45,117 in annual payments between
1995 and 2005. The bottom 80 percent of the recipients
saw only $2,066 on average per year." (Read
more)
The story also added new state-by-state
data from USDA on organic farming and picked up
a
story from the Grand Island Independent
about Nebraska leading the nation in red-meat production.
The Washington Post has done the best
job we've seen lately at examining farm subsidies and
the Farm Bill debate. For the latest Post story, with
links to other articles, click
here. (Also see Dec. 24 blog item.) For the Society
of Environmental Journalists' take on the issue,
click
here. CattleNetwork.com reports,
"The Bush administration says major reform is needed
for government farm subsidies, setting the stage for
confrontation with those seeking to prolong the status
quo . . . There is just too much international pressure
to reform, U.S. Department of Agriculture officials
say, to leave in place subsidies that may violate World
Trade Organization rules." (Read
more)
Dutch bank,
rebuffed in Farm Credit bid two years ago, sets stake
in U.S.
Rabobank Group, the Dutch bank that
tried to buy part of the government-backed
Farm Credit System two years ago,
"has quietly built a force of 30 loan officers
in Nebraska and Iowa," reports Steve Jordon of
the Omaha World-Herald. Its corporate
lenders seek out large agribusinesses [and] its California
bank is equipping some Midlands farmsteads with electronic
banking devices."
The company is also shopping for "an attractive
farm-oriented bank ... in the agriculture-rich region
that stretches from Texas to the Dakotas," Jordon
writes. "Every banker wants to do business with
Midwestern farmers," Cor Broekhuyse, the bank's
head of U.S. operations, told Jordon. "They're
very good operators. They have nice balance sheets.
In the long term, we believe in agriculture in the Midwest."
In 2004 Rabobank tried to buy Omaha-based Farm
Credit Services of America, which serves Nebraska,
Wyoming, South Dakota and Iowa. The bid "collapsed
amid opposition within the Farm Credit System that caused
delays and ruined the sale's chances," the World-Herald
reports. (Read
more)
Md. newspaper
war: Establishment vs. the opinionated vs. the Post
There's a newspaper war "in the unlikeliest of
places: rural St. Mary's County in Southern Maryland,"
where the Potomac and Patuxent rivers empty into Chesapeake
Bay (see Dec. 27 map below), reports Megan Greenwell
of The Washington Post. The County
Times, "a softer, kinder paper, has just
joined an occasionally salacious local tabloid,"
St. Mary's Today, and the Enterprise,
a biweekly published by the Washington Post
Co. The Post also circulates its Southern
Maryland Extra in the county of 98,000.
The new paper is owned by James McKay, 87, "the
patriarch of one of St. Mary's most prominent political
families, [who] got sick of being mercilessly mocked
by the tabloid," owned by Kenneth Rossignol. "Rossignol
had no experience in journalism when he started the
paper in 1989, but he takes accountability and entertainment
as equally important tenets of what a newspaper should
be," Greenwell writes. "He said he sees no
need for a division between news and opinion in the
pages of his tabloid, a philosophy that feeds a constant
stream of attacks on local political figures . . . "
Zach Messitte, a political scientist at St.
Mary's College, told Greenwell: "There
are things that are said in its pages that don't seem
to serve any civic purpose except to be mean. And sometimes
that has a chilling effect on civic life."
Rossignol took a jab at the Post Co., telling Greenwell
he hopes his competition is successful. "It's independent
and locally owned, and we'd love some real competition
on the juicy stories," he said. The new paper "mails
10,000 free copies of the newspaper to subscribers every
week" and hopes to have "12,000 paying customers
for a twice-weekly edition in the next two years,"
Greenwell reports.
Meanwhile, St. Mary's County is certainly getting covered.
"As many as five reporters have been known to attend
the same routine county commission meeting," Greenwell
writes. "The length of the sheriff's press contact
list rivals that of Montgomery County, which is 10 times
the county's size." (Read
more)
Wednesday,
Dec. 27, 2006
Medicare
drug program is Wal-Marting rural pharmacies, CBS says
"What
Wal-Mart once did to rural downtowns, Medicare is doing
to the rural drug store." That was how CBS
correspondent Wyatt Andrews summed up his report
last night on how the new Medicare Part D program for
prescription drugs is hurting the small, independent
pharmacies prevalent in rural areas -- a story to which
The Rural Blog has been calling attention for months.
"My life's earnings have gone right out the window,"
said Columbus, Miss., pharmacist Don Walden, the focus
of Andrews' report.
"Walden says the problem is that seniors get Medicare
coverage through private insurance companies, which
in turn, have lowered the fees and reimbursements they
pay him." (Photo of Walden in his Medical Arts
Pharmacy from CBSNews.com.)
Walden is resisting chain pharmacies' offers to buy
his store, but Andrews lists several that have gone
out of business: "Gone this year is the old Taylor
Drug Store in tiny Granville, Ohio. There is no more
Centennial Merit Drugs in Monte Vista, Colo. When Randy
Spainhour closed down Penslow's pharmacy in Holly Ridge,
N.C., he mailed his license back blaming, the 'low reimbursement
of Medicare'."
The Rural Blog reported Aug. 24 that a survey of more
than 500 community pharmacists revealed that nearly
nine out of 10 (89 percent) are getting less money and
a third are considering shutting down since Part D started
last Jan. 1. "The survey found that more than half
(55 percent) of respondents said they have had to obtain
outside loans or financing to supplement their pharmacy’s
cash flow because of slow reimbursement by health care
plans," according to the National Community
Pharmacists Association.
A May 8 item in The Rural Blog referenced a study that
shows rural residents are paying more for drugs than
urbanites under Medicare Part D prescription drug plan.
The study by the Center for Rural Health Policy
Analysis of the Rural Policy Research
Institute reported that average monthly premiums
for Medicare Advantage prescription drug plans vary
from $6 in urban New Hampshire to $53 in rural Hawaii.
Click
here for the archived item and click
here for the study.
The Economist
takes a look at rural economic development
The Economist, the British magazine
that likes to write about solutions as well as problems,
tackled the subject of economic vitality in American
small towns in its Dec. 19 edition. As many such pieces
do, it painted the problems with too broad a brush,
but offered a good sample of some new approaches, the
obstacles that stand in their way and organizations
that try to help rural places implement solutions.
“There's usually a lot of skepticism that another
approach can really make a difference,” said Doug
Loescher, director of National Trust Main Street
Centre, which tries to preserve historic buildings
through state and local branches. “Chuck Hassebrook,
executive director of the Center for Rural Affairs
in Nebraska, says it is expensive to provide
small business development services in rural America,
even if there is a good return on investment. Rather
appealingly, he proposes that the federal government
shave 5 percent off its enormous farm-subsidy program
— which goes mostly to mega-farms — and
give it to small businesses.” Hassebrook told
The Economist that his prescription would “quadruple
what the federal government spends on entrepreneurial
rural development.” Hassebrook also suggests philanthropy.
“Rural communities are not going to be rescued
by large corporations setting up large factories,”
he says, but could get help from “local boys who
have made good in Chicago or Omaha.”
The magazine concludes: “Two promising themes
for revival emerge. First, art. There is money in painting
and plays. . . . The town of Nelsonville, in southern
Ohio, has become an 'artists' Mecca' in recent years,
according to Will Lambe, a research associate at the
University of North Carolina, who is
working on a book about small-town economic development.”
The article also cites the "Swamp Gravy" storytelling
festival in Colquitt, Ga., and the bed-and-breakfast
entrepreneurship of Salado, Tex. “A second theme
is alternative energy. Across the emptying Great Plains,
towns are praying that sun, wind and plant matter will
stop them from withering away.” Lambe told The
Economist (which doesn't use bylines), “Everybody
I talk to is trying to get on this bandwagon of biodiesel
and ethanol and wind.” (Read
more)
New rural
sales pitch: Put your office outside D.C. nuclear blast
zone
Some
federal agencies are moving their offices into rural
Virginia at least in part because of the threat of a
nuclear attack on Washington by terrorists. Winchester,
Va., 75 miles west of the capital, is advertising itself
as just outside the "blast zone" of a nuclear
blast but is "still close enough so that employees
can get to the District relatively easily when they
need to," The Washington Post reports.
(Post map by Laris Karklis)
Winchester is on Interstate 81 in the Shenandoah Valley,
the favorite spot for relocations. "Federal officials
argue that the valley is not only more secure, it's
preferable for planning and budget reasons. The cost
of land and labor are lower in the valley, and with
workers moving into the fringes of Northern Virginia
and even West Virginia in search of affordable homes,
moving operations to a place such as Winchester could
mean shorter commutes for many. That, in turn, could
mean lower turnover and a more productive workforce,"
Alec MacGillis writes. "Leading the shift is the
FBI, which chose Winchester over other
towns of similar distance from the District as the site
for a big centralized archive that by 2009 will employ
at least 1,200 people, many of them now working in Washington
and Baltimore."
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is
moving 700 employees to Winchester. "Local officials
say this would include positions moved from Mount Weather,
the government's hilltop emergency center on the border
of Loudoun and Clarke counties, so that that facility
could be devoted to national security instead of natural
disasters. Real estate brokers working in Winchester
say that FEMA is looking for additional space for its
accounting department and that the Department
of Homeland Security is looking for space around
Harrisonburg, farther south along I-81. Activity is
also picking up north along the corridor. Outside Martinsburg,
W.Va., the Coast Guard is building
a new National Maritime Center, a 200-person office
now in Arlington. (Read
more)
Eagle coming
off endangered list; polar bear may go on threatened
list
"Seven
years after the U.S. government moved to take the bald
eagle off the endangered species list, the Bush administration
intends to complete the step by February, prodded by
a frustrated libertarian property owner in Minnesota,"
writes Peter Slevin of the Chicago bureau of The
Washington Post. "By February 16, the
bald eagle will be delisted," said Marshall Jones,
deputy director of the U. S. Fish & Wildlife
Service.
"The delisting, supported by mainstream environmental
groups, would represent a formal declaration that the
eagle population has sufficiently rebounded, increasing
more than 15-fold since its 1963 nadir to more than
7,000 nesting pairs," Slevin writes. As few as
417 nesting pairs were found in 1963. (Photo by
Paul Davis of the Daily American Republic
of Poplar Bluff, Mo., via The Associated Press)
The government had to act by Feb. 16, or explain why
it was not acting, under an order from a federal judge
in a lawsuit filed by Minnesota property owner Edmund
Contoski, who wanted to develop property near an eagle
nest. But the Fish & Wildlife Service is drafting
new rules to protect eagles.
"What we're trying to work toward is ensuring,
if the bald eagle is taken off the list, people won't
see that much of a change," Chris Tollefson, chief
spokesman for the service, told the Post, which reported,
"Rules are being polished, for example, to define
activities permitted near eagle habitats and what can
be done near nests that eagles are not using. A debate
has been underway over what it means to "disturb"
an eagle, a crucial but imprecise word in the Bald and
Golden Eagle Protection Act." (Read
more)
Meanwhile, the Post's Juliet Eilperin reports,
"The Bush administration has decided to propose
listing the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered
Species Act, putting the U.S. government on record as
saying that global warming could drive one of the world's
most recognizable animals out of existence."
(Associated Press photo by Jonathan Hayward)
Wisconsin
farms and rural life changing; academy and paper take
a look
Dairy farms in Wisconsin are getting bigger to complete
with those in the West. "Organic farming also continues
to grow, carving out an increasingly important niche.
Small towns, too, are angling to restore Main Street
shopping districts, lure entrepreneurs and create jobs.
And alternative energy, such as ethanol and biomass,
is beginning to make inroads in the state."
Those lines sum up a four-part series in the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel about rural life in Wisconsin,
which calls itself "America's Dairyland" and
is 30 percent rural. "For the past year, the Wisconsin
Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters has pulled
together farmers, business executives, academics and
politicians to examine the
future of farming and rural life in the state. The
group is due to issue a report before the middle of
next year. Depending on the recommendations and the
political reaction, the report could either provide
a blueprint to the future or gather dust. But for Wisconsin's
farms and rural communities, the future is now,"
Bill Glauber wrote in the opening
installment of the series.
Tracy Porter, a designer of home décor, fashion
and jewelry in Princeton, Wis., population 1,500, told
the paper, "People ask me, 'How do you run a national
company from a small town?' I tell them, 'How do you
run a national company from San Francisco? How do you
afford the costs?'" The paper added, "And
here's the other thing about running a rural business:
You can live upstairs. That's what a lot of the entrepreneurs
do in Princeton." (Read
more)
Schools and health insurance were the two leading concerns
voiced by citizens at public forums over six months.
For Glauber's story on that, click
here. To read his story on the growth of organic
farming in Wisconsin, click
here. For Raquel Rutledge's story on the ethanol
boom in the state, click
here. UPDATE: To grasp the
competition Wisconsin faces from the West, read this
story from the Fresno Bee about
Tulare County supervisors approving a dairy with 12,000
cows!
Idaho county
produces guidebook to rural living for newcomers
"To help newcomers adjust to the unique nature
of rural living, Madison County Commissioners voted
last week to pay for a new book, one that will help
Utahans, Californians and others adjust to the slow
country pace of southeastern Idaho," The
Associated Press reports from The Rexburg
Standard-Journal.
"Newcomers will receive a copy of the code when
they arrive at the County Planning and Zoning Office,"
AP reports. "It isn't an ordinance, it's a guideline,"
commission Chairman Roger Muir told the newspaper. "Commissioner
Robert Hansen said a similar booklet helped lifelong
community members and newcomers adjust to growth in
Madison County, Montana," AP reports. (Read
more)
"The commissioners said they noticed some frustration
from new residents over some of the hardships of rural
life familiar to farmers and lifelong rural residents,"
AP reports. "The code is necessary to inform transplants
from metropolitan areas that living in the country requires
an acceptance of the lack of amenities like paved roads,
quick responses from fire departments and cell phone
service. The guide also warns newcomers that there are
some necessary nuisances of rural living, such as farmers
baling through the night during harvest season and burning
their fields. The booklet also provides details on roads,
utilities, property issues, emergency services, the
impact of nature and weather and agricultural and public
land issues."
Sunday,
Dec. 24, 2006
When ignorance
begets fear, rural news media need to shed light
When Rep.-elect Keith Elliston, D-Minn., the first
Muslim elected to Congress, said he would use a Quran
for his ceremonial oath, Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va., wrote
constituents, "I fear that in the next century
we will have many more Muslims in the United States
if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that
I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs
traditional to the United States of America."
Goode has Muslim constituents, and they want an apology.
“This is a country of immigrants,” Sarwat
Ata, chairman of the Danville Masjid Islamic
Center, told Bernard Baker of the Danville
Register & Bee. "Ata said he voted
for Goode in the November election," Barker reports.
"Ata said Goode should sit down with local Muslims
and learn more about them if he won’t apologize.
Ata said Muslims are peaceful and law-abiding. They
want to be free and share many of the values Goode supports,
such as the Ten Commandments, he said." Goode not
only refused to apologize, but repeated his words for
local TV.
Baker quoted a Danville resident calling Goode's letter
an embarassment, but Brian Todd of CNN reports
that in Goode's home town of Rocky Mount, "Nearly
everyone we spoke with stands by Virgil Goode. Does
that make them racist? Not neccesarily, but their comments
reflect the gray areas of race, religion and demographics
in small-town America." Todd followed that with
interviews of the misinformed and the uninformed at
a Rocky Mount restaurant. "I'm not against the
Muslim faith," a man said, "but I'm against
him forcing his rules, his opinion, upon us." A
woman said everyone who takes the congressional oath
should use the King James Version of the Bible. You
have to wonder if those folks know that last winter,
a Muslim cleric from Roanoke, next to Goode's district,
gave the invocation in the state House. (View
story)
In Danville, The Register & Bee published an editorial
that made more sense. The newspaper called Goode's remarks
"mean-spirited . . . because in the 5th District,
Muslims are an easy group for him to pick on. Their
numbers are small and their influence is nil."
Then the paper explained why rural Americans need to
learn more about Muslims: "The only way to defeat
radical Islam is to recognize that it’s not the
same thing as the mainstream branches of that faith.
Some of the people Goode would bar from this country
are part of the force we need to defeat radical Islam.
Insulting Muslims won’t hurt Goode in the 5th
District, but it makes it harder for his views on immigration
to be taken seriously in a big, complex, diverse and
dangerous world. Pandering to hometown fears and unfounded
worries by attacking a defenseless local minority is
certainly no way to make this country safer." (Read
more) For the Bee's news story, click
here.
We'd like to see some other papers in Goode's largely
rural district follow the 21,000-circulation Bee's lead.
They could take some cues from The Washington
Post, which verbally horse-whipped Goode for
what it called "colossally stupid . . . bigotry,"
and concluded: "Mr. Goode was evidently napping
in class the day they taught the traditional American
values of tolerance, diversity and religious freedom.
This country's history is rife with instances of uncivil,
hateful and violent behavior toward newcomers, be they
Jewish, Irish, Italian or plenty of others whose ethnicities
did not jibe with some pinched view of what it means
to be American. Mr. Goode's dimwitted outburst of nativism
is nothing new. No, the real worry for the nation is
that the rest of the world might take Mr. Goode seriously,
interpreting his biased remarks about Muslims as proof
that America really has embarked on a civilizational
war against Islam. With 535 members, you'd think that
Congress would welcome the presence of a single Muslim
representative. Whether it can afford a lawmaker of
Mr. Goode's caliber is another question." To read
the entire editorial, click
here. For a Post story today giving background on
Goode, immigration and his district, click
here.
Post takes
close look at farm subsidies, to which many propose
changes
Most American farmers don't get subsidies form the
federal government, but most of the big ones do, and
with the Farm Bill up for a rewrite by a newly Democratic
Congress, Dan Morgan, Sarah Cohen and Gilbert Gaul of
The Washington Post have taken a timely
and detailed look at the farm-subsidy system.
They point to Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack's calls for cuts
as an example of how the debate has changed. "I
didn't get much of a reaction from farmers, because
deep down most of them know the system needs to be changed,"
said Vilsack, who is the only major Democrat who has
declared he's running for president.
"Politicians such as Vilsack have joined a host
of interest groups from across the political spectrum
that are pressing for changes in government assistance
to agriculture," the Post reports. "They want
the money moved from large farmers to conservation,
nutrition, rural development and energy research. Vilsack,
for example, favors programs that improve environmental
practices on farms."
But proponents of changes -- which include Bread
for the World, the free-market Club
for Growth, the National Corn Growers
Association and fruit and vegetable growers
who want their first subsidies -- " will be going
up against one of Washington's most effective lobbies
as Congress takes up a new farm bill next year,"
the Post reports. "The farm bloc is an efficient,
tightknit club of farmers, rural banks, insurance companies,
real-estate operators and tractor dealers," led
by such groups as the 5.2-million-member American
Farm Bureau Federation, the National
Cotton Council and the USA Rice Federation.
Farm subsidies "are heavily tilted to large commercial
farmers growing a few row crops in a handful of states,"
the Post notes. "But the money also is widely distributed
to a middle group of more than 130,000 farms, each receiving
$25,000 to $100,000. The federal dollars ripple through
local economies, adding to purchasing power at stores
and businesses -- and creating a political constituency
for the programs."
Large farners "often use the money to acquire
more land, pushing aside small and medium-size farms
as well as young farmers starting out," Gaul writes
in a
story explaining how subsidies have turned farms
into big businesses. The Post found that in the latest
year available, 2004, at least 1,900 corporations and
other entities "collected $312 million more than
they would have if their farms were held to strict limits"
on payments, circumvented by "complex legal structures,
such as dividing a single farm into many paper corporations."
Click
here for that story, which explains how efforts
to limit and reform subsidies failed. For a story by
Gaul on a mid-size Nebraska farmer who says he depends
on subsidies, click
here.
USDA releases
more data on subsidy payments to individual farmers
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is revealing for
the first time "just who has received billions
of dollars in farm subsidy payments," reported
Libby Quaid of The Associated Press. "But
people will have to wait to look up their neighbors'
payments, because the 64 million records are too unwieldy
for the department's Web site. Instead, the department
is providing the information to several news organizations
and the Environmental Working Group,
a public-interest group that tracks payments and intends
to post the data online for Internet users." (See
Dec. 18 blog item on annual update by EWG.)
"It should provide a lot more information than
we've been able to get, particularly for farmers who
have been receiving money through co-ops," EWG
President Ken Cook told AP. "This will be the first
chance to see how much they've gotten." He said
the records are especially relevant as Congress prepares
to pass a new farm bill next year. "I expect it
will once again highlight the inequities in the program,"
Cook said. "The big guys get most of the money.
I don't think anything will change with respect to that.
We just may be able to quantify it a little bit better."
Farm subsidies are public records, but the government
has often limited the information to the names of corporations,
cooperatives and other groups. The 2002 farm bill directed
USDA's Farm Service Agency to record
those entities' ownership and membership interests and
their payments. (Read
more)
Journalist-turned-entrepreneur:
Internet is new farm-to-market road
Roy Bragg of the San Antonio Express-News writes
from Snyder, Texas: "Bill Robertson sees a future
for this remote West Texas oil-patch town that involves
a global conference center, a vibrant tourist economy
and a work force of big-city expatriates who'd rather
telecommute from cattle ranches than waste time in urban
HOV lanes." (For the uninitiated, that acronym
means high-occupancy vehicles.)
Robertson, a former television journalist and a native
of the town of 11,000, plans to open its first Internet
cafe next year. "This is the technology that will
take Snyder into the 21st century and beyond, but still
have a town where visitors will feel like they've stepped
into a small town of the past. And this is where local
people will see it," Robertson told the Express-News.
Just as Texas' farm-to-market road system "revolutionized
life for thousands of country towns, the Internet is
bringing about a fundamental change in small-town Texas,
yanking isolated communities out of the sticks and putting
them on the grid," Bragg writes. "With the
ability to move terabytes of information in seconds,
stretches of empty highway become insignificant and
small businesses that sit hundreds of miles from customers
can compete with larger competitors in larger cities."
Examples in Snyder: A novelist who does research more
quickly, and thus produces more books; and a caterer
who "makes a living selling seasonings over the
Internet. His factory is near Fort Worth [230 miles
to the east]. His distribution center is here. And he
has customers on three continents." Greg Clary
of the Texas Center for Rural Entrepreneurship
told Bragg, "It's allowed them to do business
in a completely different way. They're not tied to their
local economy anymore. . . . You still find rural towns
that are dying, but a lot of them aren't willing to
do that. They're trying to build on their assets and
figure out how to change and grow and be progressive
without losing the quality of life that's valuable to
them." (Read
more)
Self-rescuers
and other reforms prompted by mine disasters slow to
come
Safety reforms enacted in the wake of last year's major
coal-mine disasters "will be months — or
years — in actually being enforced," Ken
Ward Jr. reports in the Sunday Gazette-Mail
of Charleston, W.Va.
Ward's leading example: "Thousands of West Virginia
coal miners are still waiting for the additional emergency
breathing devices promised by Gov. Joe Manchin and the
coal industry." The two leading makers of the "self-contained
self-rescuers" have them on backorder, but Draeger,
a German company has thousands of similiar, slightly
bulkier devices in a warehouse at the Pittsburgh airport,
and "We don't have a backlog at all," the
president of the firm's North American operations told
Ward last month.
After the Sago Mine diaster killed 12 miners last January,
"State and federal lawmakers ordered mining companies
to provide additional emergency breathing devices to
underground coal miners," Ward notes. "But
now, regulators are accepting purchase orders as proof
of compliance. No one has set firm dates for mine operators
to actually give miners the additional SCSRs."
Ward notes other delays: Plans for better communications
systems are not due to West Virginia officials until
Aug. 31, and purchase orders will be accepted; a study
on rescue shelters is not due until December 2007; and
the Mine Safety and Health Administration has
until the end of next year to write regulations requiring
additional mine rescue teams. (Read
more)
Wednesday,
Dec. 20, 2006
Miss USA's
hometown editor reflects on how his weekly did the story
"World
media uproar . . . " How many times have you
seen those words above a local story in a weekly newspaper?
Greg Wells used them in a secondary headline this week
in The
Times Journal of Russell Springs, Ky. (population
3,000), hometown of Miss USA Tara Conner, who got a
reprieve from pageant owner Donald Trump after expecting
to be fired for misbehavior in New York City.
Wells told that story, and didn't sugarcoat it, relaying
most of the reports about Conner's scandalous behavior,
including a local connection: "Since winning the
national pageant, Conner has broken off her engagement
to Russell County's Adam Mann and has been linked to
club owners, disk jockeys and television personalities
in the New York club scene." The Times Journal's
cutline for the photo above in a local bank read, "Life
in Russell County halted momentarily as news networks
carried live the news conference at which Donald Trump
agreed to keep Tara Conner as Miss USA, following a
week of allegations about her New York lifestyle."
In an article written at the request of the Institute
for Rural Journalism and Community Issues,
Wells offered this advice to rural editors in similar
situations: "Tell the story, tell the feelings
of the people involved if you can, and let others tell
all the not-so-nice details about the allegations. But
take those and add them to the story. Remember, at the
end of the day, or in our case the end of the week,
you’ll have to live in your town. Be fair, honest,
up front and nice. That makes life better all around,
and it’s good for business."
Wells expressed disdain for many out-of-town journalists
who called him: "They all wanted the same thing,
my sources. They are more than my sources, though. These
are my people. They are the people that look to us for
the news, and the community that looks to this paper
for support and comfort when troubling things come along.
I can categorize these callers in two groups: Those
who were amazed that the first words out of my mouth
weren’t “Howdy” or “Hey y’all”
and those who acted like trained, experienced professionals.
It was so easy to hear the contempt in some of the voices
at having to call the lowly country folks, and, heaven
forbid, a weekly newspaper editor." The paper's
circulation is 5,000.
Wells added, "During all of this was the first
time I’d ever heard anyone say, “Name your
price” when talking about a photo. It was a little
surreal. I didn’t name a price. I didn’t
have to wrestle with that ethical problem, since I don’t
think the kind of photos they wanted exist." His
story in the newspaper said they wanted photos of "anything
of her less than fully clothed or with a beer at a party."
Amid the uproar, Wells had another big story to chase,
the quick recovery of a drowning victim in Russell County's
signature feature, Lake Cumberland, with special, rarely
used sonar equipment from Idaho. "I’d also
been trying to chase a story on a murder from last Wednesday,"
he wrote. "So now there were three major stories
working, and there was only one of me, and the calls
were still coming in." (Read
more)
The sonar story, big news in a county that has many
drownings, shared the top of the Times Journal's front
page with the headline “Tara: 'I will not let
you down'” and the above photo. A secondary photo
showed a Lexington, Ky., television reporter doing a
stand-up. The story quoted Conner's parents, who had
rebuffed national media. The headline above the story's
jump read, "TARA: She has a second chance, the
praise of her father for facing the music, and media
from all over the world buzzing." For a PDF of
the newspaper's front page, click
here. For the jump page, click
here.
Rural schools
use retired part-time teachers, resist consolidation
Rural elementary schools in Oklahoma "are able
to keep fantastic educators in the classrooms, even
if it is just a few days a week," through part-time
employment of retired teachers, reports Josh Newton
of the Talequah Daily Press. “Little
schools like this can benefit from people that are available
from retirement,” a Skelly School superintendent
told Newton. “Two or three little schools can
share.”
Newton puts the topic in context: "Other rural
schools around the nation aren’t faring as well
as Skelly is. Once part of thousands of smaller schools,
many are dipping so low in student numbers, they are
being forced to close the doors, sending students and
parents to neighboring school districts." Newton
cites the Organization
of Rural Oklahoma Schools, the main goal
of which is to “oppose legislation mandating consolidation
or combining of administrative units based on number
of students, number of districts, and/or size (square
miles) of a district.”
Newton cites research by Dr. Wenfan Yan of Indiana
University of Pennsylvania that argues against
consolidation of rural schools: “Rural countywide
school districts had much larger total district expenditures
than the other types of districts [in Pennsylvania],”
Yan wrote. “If ‘economies of scale’
exist, the expenditures per-pupil for rural countywide
school districts should be less than those from the
other types of non-countywide school districts. The
results of this study, however, did not find any statistical
differences ... in their per-pupil expenditures. To
merge small rural school districts in Pennsylvania on
the basis of cost efficiency, therefore, is not supported
by this study.” (Read
more)
Georgia
school district agrees to drop textbook stickers about
evolution
A suburban Atlanta school board agreed Tuesday to stop
using a disclaimer that calls evolution "a theory,
not a fact." To settle a lawsuit from parents,
the Cobb County schools "agreed not to take out
or edit materials on evolution in textbooks and to pay
$166,659 toward attorney fees in the case," report
Diane Stepp and Kristina Torres of the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution. (AJC photo)
The stickers were a compromise with parents who opposed
the teaching of evolution, but other parents "argued
that the sticker promoted religion in classrooms and
violated the separation of church and state," notes
the AJC.The school board chairwoman, Teresa Plenge,
said yesterday that the stickers are constitutional
but the board felt "the need to put this divisive
issue behind us." A federal judge ordered the stickers
removed almost two years ago, and the board complied
but appealed. This May, the appeals court said "declined
to rule on the constitutionality of the disclaimers
because the records of the proceedings sent to it were
incomplete," the Journal-Constitution says. The
court told the judge to retry the case
or add to the evidence with new proceedings. Faced with
more legal action, the board capitulated. (Read
more)
The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans
United for Separation of Church and State, which
joined in the case when it was sent back to the lower
court, praised the decision.
“Students should be taught sound science,
and the curriculum should not be altered at the behest
of aggressive religious groups,” Lynn said in
a release.
Texas jury
rejects lawsuit against largest wind farm; appeal planned
"A company that built the world's largest wind
farm has won a lawsuit filed by neighboring landowners
who said the wind turbines were too loud and devalued
their property," the Houston Chronicle
reports.
The jury ruled for FPL Energy, a subsidiary of Florida
Power & Light, after a two-week trial.
Trey Cox of Dallas, an attorney for FPL, "said
he also believes that jurors considered the benefits
and promise of wind energy to the state and nation.
The plaintiffs said they will appeal," the Chronicle
reports.
The farm is in Taylor County, of which Abilene is the
county seat. Similar lawsuits have been filed against
wind farms in Jack and Cooke counties in North Texas,
northeast of Abilene.
"Plaintiffs attorney Steve Thompson said the verdict
was the first of its kind in Texas," reports Jerry
Daniel Reed of the Abilene Reporter-News
-- one of the few papers that tells not only who wrote
the story, but who edited it and who wrote the headline.
(Read
more)
Tuesday,
Dec. 19, 2006
Ask your
member of Congress: Will you endorse C-SPAN cameras?
C-SPAN has asked House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi
to let the network "bring its own cameras into
the chamber, under its own direction," the Los
Angeles Times notes in an editorial. "That
way, viewers would get more of the flavor of the House
and the personality of its members. They would be more
likely to see such excitement as members' reactions
to provocative remarks, committee chairmen holding court
in the back of the chamber and last-minute cajoling
to win badly needed votes."
Citing Pelosi's pledge to make the House more open,
C-SPAN Chief Executive Brian Lamb "also wants immediate
access to voting records. A giant electronic display
board inside the chamber provides a real-time view of
how individual members vote (and change their votes),
but C-SPAN currently can show nothing but the total
for each party until long after the tallying has ceased.
It's not unusual for the majority party's leadership
to extend the voting period while they woo holdouts,
but unlike people watching from the gallery, C-SPAN
viewers can't tell who those holdouts might be,"
the Times notes. (Read
more)
The Times says the House should "bring some reality
to its TV," but says Pelosi is likely to reject
Lamb's request. We say: Don't give up so fast. The more
pressure Pelosi gets on this issue, the more difficult
it will be for her to reject it. The pressure that counts
for her is pressure from members; the pressure that
counts for members is pressure from constituents. Local
news media need to tell those constituents about the
issue, and put their local members of Congress on the
spot about it -- especially Pelosi's fellow Democrats.
Ask them to write Pelosi a letter saying they endorse
C-SPAN's request.
We'd like to see some editorials making these points:
C-SPAN is a key device for Americans to keep up with
and understand what's going on in Congress, but its
coverage of House and Senate proceedings is not really
journalism because it's not independent. Why should
TV coverage of Congress be restricted in a way that
coverage of state legislatures and city councils is
not? Until those who run the chambers relinquish control
of the cameras, C-SPAN viewers will always wonder what
they're not seeing. Pelosi should realize that making
the cameras independent would not only be consistent
with her pledge for a more open House, but build trust
with the public -- which would be good for Congress
and for our republic. --Al Cross, director, Institute
for Rural Journalism and Community Issues
Marijuana-decriminalization
group says pot is nation's top crop by far
Marijuana is now the most valuable cash crop in the
United States, exceeding the value of corn and wheat
combined, says the Marijuana
Policy Project, which wants to eliminate
criminal penalties for pot use.
The report by Jon Gettman of Lovettsville, Va., who
has a Ph.D. in public policy from George Mason
University and is an economic-development consultant,
is at www.drugscience.org/bcr/index.html.
Based on an estimated average value of $1,606 per pound
and estimates that only 8 percent of the outdoor crop
and 2 percent of the indoor crop were seized, the report
values this year's crop at $35.8 billion. The U.S. corn
crop was worth $23.3 billion and wheat was worth $7.45
billion, the report says.
The study concluded that the top marijuana producing
states are California, Tennessee, Kentucky, Hawaii,
and Washington (which was No. 2 in indoor production,
behind California). The top pot-exporting states, in
ratio of production to use, were Hawaii, Tennessee and
Kentucky.
In Kentucky, the estimated marijuana crop was worth
$4.47 billion, more than 10 times the value of the state's
hay or tobacco crops, which ranked second and third.
Marijuana also ranked first in the top tobacco state,
North Carolina, at $672 million compared to $540 million
for the legal leaf. Pot was estimated to be the top
cash crop in 10 other states: Alaska, Alabama, California,
Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Oregon, South Carolina,
Tennessee ($4.79 billion) and West Virginia. In 18 other
states, it was estimated to be among the top three cash
crops.
Monday,
Dec. 18, 2006
Retiring
judges have looser tongues, can make news and commentary
On the bench, judges are obliged to suppress their
personal beliefs and apply the laws passed by the legislative
branch and enforced by the executive. Especially at
the trial-court level, judges are supposed to keep mum
about the policy decisions made by lawmakers. But when
judges leave the bench, they become free to make their
views known, so interviewing them can make news or good
commentary.
Nick Cenegy, a Knight Fellow of Community Journalism
at the University of Alabama’s
master’s degree program at The Anniston
Star, interviewed retiring Circuit Judge Sam
Monk and found that he no longer supported the death
penalty, though in 28 years on the bench "He has
sentenced six people to death and has sent at least
as many to be locked away for a lifetime," Cenegy
wrote in a Sunday column.
Cenegy continued: "Monk, in part, is guided by
his religion. Any New Testament Christian should have
a few fundamental issues with a society murdering one
of its own, he says. . . . Still, more than 70 percent
of Alabamians strongly support the death penalty. Perhaps
they find no conflict with their religion — or
choose to ignore it. Through their comments, Monk and
others [appellate judges quoted in the column] reveal
that they are tired of carrying the cross for an imperfect
system of revenge by death. Even if it’s the small
cross: the syringe" of lethal injection.
Cenegy makes plainer his own opposition to capital
punishment in a riveting piece about the judge's last
case, a double murder in which Monk gave a death sentence.
Click
here to read it. Click
here to read the column, and here
for a transcript of Cenegy's interview with Monk. Access
to the Star's site requires a subscription, but a free,
one-day pass is available.
Group updates
its database of farm subsidies, which rose 68% in 2005
The Environmental Working Group has
completed the annual update of its Farm
Subsidy Database, a useful tool for rural journalists.
It includes more information than before on individual
owners whose identities may have been hidden by complex
ownership structures. The database is searchable by
name, city and ZIP code of residence, county of the
farm, and gives histories of payments.
For example, the available data include the amount
of payments to farms in a given county last year, with
the top recipients in any of the three most recent years
or since 1995; and the same type of data by the mailing
addresses of the recipients. Data are also available
by congressional district.
EWG, which wants Congress to base crop subsidies on
conservation practices rather than prices, said in a
release that farm subsidies rose 68 percent last year
to a four-year high of $21 billion, from $12.5 billion
in 2004. The main causes of the big increase were hurricanes
and low commodity prices. The figures do not include
payments for land conservation and compensation to tobacco
growers for the end of their quotas and price supports.
Those payments (itemized in the database only by number
of recipients, not amounts) brought the total to $24.3
billion.
Payments are projected to fall sharply next year --
mainly for corn, which reached an all-time high last
year but is now being boosted by ethanol demand -- "but
also for soybeans and other crops, highlighting the
relative importance and advantage of multi-year, contract-based
payments to farmers and taxpayers," EWG President
Cook wrote. "They are predictable and far less
trade-distorting than price-triggered subsidies,"
and do more for rural communities, he said.
"Subsidies, which encourage lower prices, benefit
commodity buyers such as Archer Daniels Midland
Co., Bunge Ltd. and ConAgra
Foods Inc.," Alan Bjerga of Bloomberg
News reports. (Read
more) In any given year, 90 percent of the payments
in any given year go to growers of five crops -- rice,
wheat, corn, cotton and soybeans, EWG says. Ten percent
of the recipients collected 73 percent of all subsidies
in the last 11 years, totaling $120.5 billion.
Cook noted that some conservation programs use multi-year
contracts: the Environmental Quality Incentives Program,
the Conservation Reserve Program, the Wetlands Reserve
Program, and the new Conservation Security Program.
"If refined and expanded in the upcoming Farm Bill,
these instruments and others like them could provide
billions more in support to farmers and ranchers, in
effect bridging a significant part of the gap between
the current fixed direct payments and costly, unpredictable,
price-triggered payments," Cook wrote " A
conservation framework has the additional substantive
and political advantage of being available to all farmers
and ranchers."
New form
of agri-tourism: City slickers pay to do farm work!
"For many of today's tourists, getting to do farm
chores is a vacation opportunity they'll gladly pay
to enjoy," says a story from Lee Agri-Media, part
of the Lee Enterprises newspaper chain.
"The sophisticated and city-weary travelers have
seen the bright lights and the tinsel and are looking
for things that are real," Tom Benson, owner of
Benson Communications Inc. of Minneapolis,
said at the recent AgriCultural Heritage Tourism Conference
in Sioux Falls, S.D.. "Travelers may be drawn to
rural locations because they're concerned about safety
or want to spend quality time together, Benson said.
Many people had grandparents or great-grandparents who
farmed and are wide open to the idea of a rural vacation.
With today's larger farm operations and fewer people
in agriculture, people are losing touch with agriculture.
Many kids think their food originates from a fast-food
restaurant or a grocery store, he said."
At the Adams Family Farm in Vermont,
adults pay $12.95 per day ($10.95 per child) to gather
eggs, bottle-feed baby calves and milk a goat. It's
not all work; there are bonfires, barn dances, star-gazing,
hayrides and outings to see wildlife.
Billie Jo Waara, director of the South Dakota
Office of Tourism, told the conference that
research and partnerships are key elements for success
in agri-tourism. (Read
more)
FCC ownership
rules have big implications for rural areas, center
says
The Federal Communications Commission should
prevent common ownership of newspapers and broadcast
stations, and further limit the number of stations that
a company can own, to protect the interests of the 60
million rural Americans, the vice president of the Center
for Rural Strategies told the commission at
its hearing on the issue last week.
"Those who suggest that the marketplace will make
media accountable in rural areas have a difficult --
and I would say impossible -- burden of proof,"
said Tim Marema, vice president of the center, based
in Whitesburg, Ky. "Media consolidation and relaxation
of public service rules have created additional hardships
for rural areas that were already hard hit."
Marema cited the well-known example of Minot, N.D.,
where warnings could not be issued for a chemical spill
because all the town's radio stations were automated
or remote-controlled because of chain ownership. He
said coal-mine safety "has escaped metro-media
attention," the major exception being the Sago
Mine disaster in West Virginia.
"When workers die because of federal safety violations
and that isn't news, that in itself is a story,"
Marema said, noting that The Courier-Journal
recently closed its Eastern Kentucky bureau
and now covers the industry from Louisville. "In
some rural areas, there is no metro-media news coverage
to improve. Rural America is falling off the metro-media
map. I fear that does not bode well for other commercially
marginal markets and issues." For more from the
Center for Rural Strategies, click
here.
Sinclair
settles with fired bureau chief who questioned show
on Kerry
Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns
many stations in rural America, and Jonathan Lieberman,
the former chief of its former Washington bureau, "have
decided to end a two-year legal battle over his dismissal
during the 2004 presidential election campaign,"
The Baltimore Sun reports.
The Maryland-based company fied Leiberman in October
2004 "after he publicly criticized Sinclair's decision
to pre-empt normal programming at 40 of the company's
stations to air what he called 'an extremely one-sided
and negative' documentary about Democratic nominee John
Kerry," writes the Sun's Nick Madigan. "Sinclair
later sued Leiberman, saying he divulged confidential
information about the company in an interview"
with the Sun, and Lieberman counter-sued, saying his
dismissal was "retaliation, pure and simple, for
his public stand that Sinclair's plans were inconsistent
with journalistic ethics."
Both suits have been dropped. "Under the terms
of the settlement, no one involved in the case may speak
publicly about it," Madigan writes. "Sinclair
had prevailed in an earlier case before the Maryland
Department of Labor, which found that
Leiberman had violated provisions of his contract that
prohibited speaking to the press without permission
about internal company matters."
Ohio boosts
records law, except on gun permits; S.D. paper prints
them
"A bill that mandates public-records training
for elected officials and stiffens penalties for withholding
records has cleared the Ohio Legislature," The
Associated Press reports. "The bill also
would increase the likelihood that those denied records
will get their attorney's fees paid."
The bill, supported by newspapers in Ohio, "does
contain one key concession," AP reports. Journalists
will no longer be able to copy data about holders of
permits to carry concealed deadly weapons. They will
still be able to look at the lists.
The Argus Leader of Sioux Falls, S.D.,
recently published the names of local people who had
permits to carry concealed deadly weapons. Metro Editor
Jeff Martin defended that by quoting his old boss, Mike
Gartner of the Ames Daily Tribune in
Iowa, who said this when the Tribune printed the names
of gun-permit holders: "We print the names of people
in the news because that's our business. Our pact with
readers is that we'll tell them what is going on in
Ames and Story County. That means we'll tell them not
only what's happening at the city council and at Iowa
State University, but also who is arrested,
who is having babies, who is selling his house (and
for how much), who has died (and of what cause). People
expect that from us. If we leave out just one name,
just one fact, we have failed in our mission and damaged
our credibility."
"That's why we printed those gun permits in Iowa,"
Martin wrote. "It's the kind of journalism that
goes to the heart of the First Amendment. It was then,
and it is now." (Read
more)
Friday,
Dec. 15, 2006
Western
states with much federal land want funds from it for
schools
Thirteen Western states that hold 93 percent of the
nation’s federally owned land are asking the government
to compensate them for the lack of property-tax revenues
from the land. “A coalition of those states, led
by lawmakers from Utah and Nevada, has been formed to
lobby for an annual $4 billion in lost local and state
property-tax revenues on the federal land, nearly $1.9
billion of which would have gone to pay for public education,”
writes Jessica Tonn of Education Week.
According to the Department of the Interior’s
Bureau of Land Management, nearly 52
percent of the land in the 13 states is owned by the
government, compared to only 4 percent of the land in
all other states.
“To compound the problem, the National
Center for Education Statistics reports that
Western states have higher pupil-teacher ratios and
higher enrollment projection through 2013 than do their
Eastern counterparts,” writes Tonn. “The
result, officials from those states say, is that although
the Western states have property-tax rates comparable
to those in the East and devote comparable percentages
of their budgets to education, they are experiencing
lower growth in per-pupil spending” than elsewhere.
School districts can receive funds for public land
in their borders, but only from those acquired after
1938, reports Tonn. Most of the land in the West was
federal long before then, so California and Colorado
are the only states that receive any money from the
program that helps school districts. A bill proposed
by U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, suggested selling off
5 percent of the federal land in each state and passing
control to local governments that could sell or lease
it to fund education. No hearings have been held on
the bill, but Bishop says he will bring the issue up
again. (Read
more)
National-forest
school district subsidies are not renewed by Congress
Rural schools in 42 states may face budget cuts after
Congress did not reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools
and Community Act, which subsidizes about 4,400 small
school districts around national forests. “Congress
first approved it in 2000 to make up for declining revenue
in timber-producing areas and to guarantee districts
a steady income. The law was up for renewal this year,
but lawmakers left Washington on Saturday without approving
it, leaving many districts scrambling to replace funding
that, in a few cases, amounts to more than half of their
budgets,” writes Greg Toppo of USA Today.
“School advocates say it would cost about $430
million to extend the law for one year. Unlike many
funding bills, the forest schools act is not part of
a continuing resolution and would likely have to be
approved on its own,” writes Toppo. “Rural
superintendents this month are planning a lobbying blitz
as members of Congress head home to their districts.
It's expected to extend into January and February, when
lawmakers return to Washington for the start of the
110th Congress.” (Read
more)
Update, Dec. 20: The lack of
reauthorization "could mean layoffs of school staff,
program reductions and potholes that go unfilled in
some areas," writes Alisha Wyman of The
Union Democrat in Tuolumne County, Calif. "Historically,
national forests have given counties 25 percent of the
revenues from timber sales to make up for property tax
losses on the tax-exempt federal land. But when logging
declined 80 percent in Northern California, Washington
and Oregon due to environmental pressures, the funding
dropped precipitously" and the act was passed "to
make up for the drop." (Read
more)
Miners'
widows angry at W.Va. governor and aide with industry
history
“Frustrated by a cursory briefing and a confusing
report, families of the miners killed in the Sago Mine
disaster are focusing their anger on Gov. Joe Manchin
and his pick to run the state mine safety office, longtime
Consol Energy official Ron Wooten,”
writes Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette.
During a private briefing for the families, Wooten responded
to their questions by simply instructing them to read
the report. In response to a question about what would
happen if there were another lightning storm nearby,
he answered, “I wouldn’t want to be in there.”
“During the private meeting, Manchin stepped
in and told Wooten he had expected a more detailed briefing,
similar to one given a month earlier to the widows of
two miners killed in the Aracoma Mine fire. Administration
officials promised the families a better briefing, and
then canceled an afternoon news conference, but not
before copies of the report leaked out and were splashed
all over the news.”
“Our governor has to be totally embarrassed for
appointing him to this position,” Pam Campbell,
the sister-in-law of Sago miner Marty Bennett told the
Gazette. “We’ve got miners in coal mines
that our director of mine safety and health would not
want to be in. They have no plan implemented about what
they’re going to do if there is a lightning storm.”
(Read
more) For more background, see another
story on the findings and the families’ reactions,
which appeared in the Tuesday, Dec. 12 edition of The
Rural Blog.
In southeastern
Kentucky, dead miners’ families seek medical benefits
In southeastern Kentucky, widows of coal miners picketed
yesterday to have their health insurance extended. “The
widows of three Harlan County men who have died in separate
coal mining accidents in the last two years picketed
a Cloverlick mine Thursday that is being operated by
the owner of the Holmes Mill mine where five men died
in May,” writes Deanna Lee-Sherman of the Harlan
Daily Enterprise.
“Melissa Lee and three other Darby families have
requested that Ralph Napier, the owner of the Darby
mine and Orion Resources Inc., provide
an 18-month extension of their medical coverage through
COBRA, which requires most employers with group health
plans to offer employees the option of continuing their
coverage if it would otherwise cease due to a termination,
layoff or another change in employment status,”
writes Sherman. Their health insurance will expire at
the end of this year. (Read
more)
"I think this is kind of a first at a coal mine
where there's no labor agreement in effect," Johnson,
a former safety representative for the United
Mine Workers, told the Lexington Herald-Leader.
“There are no union mines in Eastern Kentucky
these days, but this year, especially in contrast with
last year, there are plenty of widows. Of 46 coal miners
killed nationwide this year, 16 have died in Kentucky,
federal statistics show,” writes Lee Mueller of
the Herald-Leader. (Read
more)
Study
finds that wind power can be practical, with reserve
planning
A new Minnesota study found that utilities can integrate
up to 25 percent wind power into their systems at a
cost of less than half a cent per kilowatt-hour of generation.
The Midwest Wind Integration Study “is the latest
in a series examining how utilities can manage ever-larger
amounts of wind power on their systems, and it comes
at a time of strong growth for the wind industry. Even
though wind provides less than one percent of total
U.S. electricity generation today, with 2,700 megawatts
expected to be completed in 2006, wind will be the second-largest
source of new power generation (in both new capacity
installed and new electricity produced) for the second
year in a row,” said a news
release from the American Wind Energy Association.
The study said that “energy from wind generating
facilities must be taken 'as delivered,' which necessitates
the use of other controllable resources to keep the
demand and supply of electric energy in balance.”
It said that utilities must plan ahead to predict what
wind conditions will be like and adjust the output from
their other resources accordingly. To read the report,
click
here.
Texas journalists
propose Free Flow of Information Act as shield law
Journalists in Texas are pushing for a shield law to
protect journalists and their sources. Thirty-two states
and the District of Columbia already have such a law.
All other states except Wyoming have case law that provides
a shield, but the strength of the shield varies widely.
Texas journalists have "virtually have no protection
at all right now, and the general public is being harmed,"
said media attorney Laura Lee Prather, testifying for
statewide newspaper and broadcast associations.
“Under a proposal the news groups call the "Free
Flow of Information Act," government agencies generally
could not force a journalist to disclose legally obtained
information from a confidential or non-confidential
source,” reports The Associated Press.
“The Texas House Judiciary Committee is studying
a possible shield law before the 2007 legislative session
convenes in January. News industry groups fell short
in previous efforts to pass one in Texas.”
AP added, “Wichita County District Attorney Barry
Macha said his opposition to a shield law centers on
grand juries, where testimony must be kept secret by
law. "It would destroy the grand jury process in
our state," said Macha, who with other prosecutors
also opposed a shield law in the 2005 Legislature. It
is illegal to leak grand jury testimony. However, if
someone does and the journalist is shielded from revealing
the source, there would be no way to find out who violated
the law, Macha said.” (Read
more)
Thursday,
Dec. 14, 2006
Rural editors
sometimes need to look well beyond the county line
Decades ago, many rural editors opined on national
and international events. Some, like William Allen White
of the Emporia Gazette in Kansas, became
nationally known for their editorials. But with the
advent of national TV networks and national circulation
of major newspapers, rural and other community papers
tended to their local-news franchises and observed the
maxim "The world ends at the county line."
Larry
Timbs of Winthrop University even
wrote a good book about community journalism with that
title.
But the world does not end at the county line
-- especially now, when American workers compete in
a globalized economy and American youth are sent to
all parts of the world to risk and lose their lives
defending the nation's interests, real or perceived.
So from time to time, we like to see rural editors have
their say about bigger events. It brings the events
home to their readers -- many of whom don't read a daily
newspaper and get little substance from the sound bites
of radio and television. But those readers are just
as much citizens of the United States as readers of
metropolitan papers, and they discuss the same big issues
with each other, so the local editor ought to join that
conversation and bring knowledge to it. We believe that
if you pay money for a newspaper, you deserve to know
what the editor thinks.
One rural editor who often goes past the county line
is Ben Chandler of The
Woodford Sun in Versailles, Ky. This week,
in his column (which is not online), he started with
the 65th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack and
took readers to current conflicts, calling the war in
Iraq "one of the greatest mistakes ever made by
a U.S. president." He said President Bush, "a
decent, patriotic man," took a "cowboy approach,
and his foreign-policy team either didn't or couldn't
give him the correct advice -- or he wouldn't take it."
But Chandler rejected suggestions for talks with Iraq's
neighbors-- in vivid, personal terms. "It makes
me sick to see pictures of the beanpole from Syria hugging
and kissing the little squirt from Iran," he wrote.
Suggesting a withdrawal of troops to Kuwait and Kurdistan,
he concluded, "I say get our people out of harm's
way without the humiliating 'hat in hand' approach to
Syria and Iran. When we regain our military strength,
spending on our own self-interest rather than throwing
billions to the winds trying to fashion a democracy
where there has never been one, then we will be able
to talk to those skunks as equals."
As you may know, Ben Chandler is the father of the
Democratic congressman of the same name, and son of
the late A.B. "Happy" Chandler, who was governor
twice, senator, and baseball commissioner. But it doesn't
take a political pedigree to write about national and
international issues and help rural readers think about
them. --Al Cross, director, Institute for Rural
Journalism and Community Issues
Innovative
small dailies thrive while larger newspapers decline
Constant reports that the daily newspaper is in trouble
may largely take into account only the larger metropolitan
newspapers, and smaller dailies may be doing better
than those reports imply. The Inland Press Association
found that the profit margins of smaller newspapers
averaged above 20 percent, some above 30 percent, and
many have had consecutive years of circulation growth.
"While large papers account for a majority of the
total circulation in the U.S., they account for a fraction
of the newspaper titles serving American readers. Said
another way, 99 percent of American newspapers have
circulations under 250,000, and 86 percent have circulations
less than 50,000," reports Editor and Publisher.
Roger Plothow writes, "The top 10 newspapers in
the country account for 20 percent of the total circulation.
So, in a way, it's understandable why they get all the
attention. But ignoring the other 1,420 daily newspapers
means ignoring successful new models for serious journalism
that readers are willing to pay for. ... Beyond the
metrics, it's easy to find small daily newspapers doing
innovative, cutting-edge work in print and online. We're
finding new revenue sources and new ways to attract
readers, and we're experimenting with different business
models with our long-term future in mind. Because many
of us are owned by smaller companies, we are often more
agile and able to try (and, when necessary, quickly
discard) new things. And perhaps because we're staffed
by younger folks, we tend not to be overly invested
in defending traditions." (Read
more)
"Attend a gathering of the Pacific Northwest
Newspaper Association and you'll hear an exchange
of ideas rivaling -- dare I say, exceeding -- those
I hear at Nexpo," writes Plothow. "Upbeat
publishers, editors, and ad directors talking about
ways to combat Craigslist and Monster
are inspirational. They expect to develop paid
online models and to reach young readers. But our industry's
trade journals obsess over the metros' devotion to the
kind of national and world news readers no longer get
from newspapers."
Democratic
Congress plans to turn rural America into ethanol cash
cow
Rural America is fertile with renewable energy sources
and the incoming chairman of a key congressional committee
said his party is ready to put that potential into commercial
production next year.
"Rural America is rich with potential energy sources
of biomass, of wind power, of biogas, ethanol and biodiesel.
Nudging those into commercial production will be a top
goal of the Democrat-led Congress," writes Tom
Webb of the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., the incoming chairman
of the House Agriculture Committee, said Wednesday at
the Midwest Ag Energy Network conference
that he aims to get commercial plants built to make
cellulosic ethanol from plant residue.
Peterson wants to see plants opening "all over
the U.S., not just in the Midwest," and sees many
communities developing their own small cellulosic ethanol
plants. "This would revolutionize rural America,"
Peterson said. "And it will work, if we get this
done right." Incoming Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.,
called promoting energy independence her "No. 1
priority," and incoming Rep. Tim Walz, D-Minn.,
said renewable energy could preserve "the viability
of our rural areas," reports Webb.
With the nation's energy demand growing, farmers can
cash in by jumping on the ethanol train. "Jackie
Gleason, rural business administrator at the Department
of Agriculture, noted that the United States
will spend $300 billion this year on importing oil —
exceeding the entire U.S. farm output for the year.
If farmers can successfully capture even 20 percent
of that oil revenue, he said, it will yield revenue
'greater than the total of net farm income' for the
nation," writes Webb. (Read
more)
Immigration
agents arrest illegals at processing plants in six states
Federal agents arrested 1,282 meat processing plant
workers Tuesday, nearly all with immigration violations,
at plants owned by Swift & Co.
in Colorado, Nebraska, Minnesota, Texas, Utah and Iowa.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement
agents raided a company billed "as an $8 billion
business and the world's second-largest meat processing
company," reports Kim Nguyen of The Associated
Press. The plants raided Tuesday represent
"all of Swift's domestic beef processing capacity
and 77 percent of its pork processing capacity. . .
. Since 1997, Swift has used a government pilot program
to check Social Security numbers. Company officials
have said one shortcoming may be the program's inability
to detect when two people are using the same number."
(Read
more)
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff called
the raids an example of "striking a blow against
illegal immigration," reports Robert Pore of The
Grand Island Independent in Grand Island, Neb.,
where 261 people were arrested. "This investigation
has uncovered a disturbing front in the war against
illegal immigration," Chertoff said. ICE's investigation
revealed that genuine identity documents traveled across
the country to help illegals gain employment. Click
here for this story and a list of arrests per plant.
An editorial
in today's St. Paul Pioneer Press said
the raids are "symbolic of everything that is bad
about our wreckage of an immigration system. . . . The
U.S. has not developed a uniform, secure identifying
document. So we have a brisk trade in fake documents
of all sorts. We have a workers' ID system that is riddled
with so many loopholes that employers who want to do
the right thing have a hard time separating the legal
from the illegal. We even have civil rights laws that
inhibit employers from checking too closely."
Meanwhile, union representatives for 261 workers arrested
in Greeley, Colo., "went to court Wednesday to
try to force the federal government to release the identities
and whereabouts of more than employees who were arrested
Tuesday," writes Maria St. Louis-Sanchez of The
Greeley Tribune. Union attorney John Bowen
said workers are not allowed to communicate with anyone,
including attorneys. Meanwhile, people are flocking
to the plant to fill job openings, which come with $1,500
signing bonuses. (Read
more)
Abandoned-mine
cleanup program renewed, improved, expanded
A coal industry package approved by Congress provides
14 more years of a tax that funds abandoned mine cleanups,
protects the fund from raids by deficit-cutting budgeteers,
and allows for some of the money to fund health care
for retired coal miners.
"In West Virginia, the legislation would double
the state’s current mine cleanup funding to about
$40 million next year, according to U.S. Office
of Surface Mining estimates. Over the next
dozen years, the changes promise to give the state average
annual mine cleanup budgets of more than $70 million,"
writes Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston Gazette.
Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine
Workers, said the extension and expansion of
the program will help 52,000 retired miners.
One significant change to the program is taking annual
distributions of cleanup money “off budget,”
which protects funds from being spent in other ways
by budget appropriators. The bill approved Saturday
requires annual allocations in specific amounts. "For
states like West Virginia, this change will be a huge
benefit, providing major increases in annual funding
as a $1.1 billion pot of state coal taxes are distributed
in equal amounts over seven years," writes Ward.
"The bill eliminates a broad 'general welfare'
provision that many states had used to divert AML money
to reclamation and water cleanups that did not threaten
public health or property. But the bill also allows
such lower-priority environmental projects to continue
if they are adjacent to public health and property cleanups."
(Read
more)
Small-town
Kentucky mayor ends 32-year run with one last drug round-up
A drug raid Wednesday in Beattyville, Ky., provided
the last hurrah for the town's mayor, who had become
a regional hero for fighting drugs that have become
a scourge in his part of Appalachia.
Charles Beach III was defeated in November after 32
years in the post, apparently for reasons other than
his anti-drug mission. "He and others in town went
to war against drugs as the misery, crime and death
of substance abuse mounted, spreading into Beach's circle
of friends and acquaintances," writes Bill Estep
of the Lexington Herald-Leader. "Ultimately,
the city's efforts figured in the creation of Operation
UNITE, an anti-drug task force that has arrested
more than 1,600 accused drug dealers in 29 Eastern and
Southern Kentucky counties since early 2004."
For drug dealers in the rural area, Beach served as
the grinch who stole Christmas during his initial drug
round-up the week before Christmas in 2001, appropriately
code-named Operation Grinch. "The investigation
stood out for a number of reasons, including that it
was a tall undertaking for a small police department
and because the bank owned by Beach's family advanced
$18,000 that officers Joe Lucas and Matt Easter needed
to make drug buys because it wasn't in the city budget,"
writes Estep. (Read
more)
Rev. Billy
Graham troubled by fight among sons about his burial
place
Evangelist Billy Graham, 88, is deciding between a
final resting place near the North Carolina mountains
or in a museum in Charlotte. The Graham family has lived
in a log home in Montreat, N.C., population 630, for
60 years. Graham's wife, Ruth Bell Graham, 86, wants
she and her husband to be buried together at the Cove,
a sylvan retreat off the highway near Asheville, N.C.,
where the Billy Graham Training Center was constructed,
and youngest son Ned Graham agrees. But eldest son Franklin
Graham wants his parents to be buried at a memorial
library that the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association,
which Franklin runs, is constructing in Charlotte.
The split was revealed yesterday in The Washington
Post by Laura Sessions Stepp, who got an unusually
intimate look into a family that she notes "has
been called the royal family of American religion."
Stepp accompanied author Patricia Cornwell, a family
friend, to a session with Billy and Ruth Graham in which
Cornwell urged the reverend to be buried where his wife
and younger son want. The Charlotte Observer
reprinted the Post story today. Click
here to read it.
Wednesday,
Dec. 13, 2006
How about
some boar ribs? Farmers just want someone to kill feral
pigs
"There
is an omnivorous menace spreading across the American
farmland and now reaching into suburbia. It is smart,
fast and dangerous, and is multiplying at an almost
unstoppable pace. It is the feral pig, and its population
has been exploding. It is now found in nearly 40 states,"
Jean Garner of ABC wrote for a "Nightline"
program that ran last night.
California health officials say the pigs might be the
source of last summer's E. coli bacteria outbreak
in spinach. Few predators want to take on the feral
pigs, so they rampage through farms and ranches; in
Texas last year, their crop damage totaled about $50
million.
Catching the wild things can be profitable, though,
since there is a big demand for the meat in Europe and
an emerging market in the U.S. "where it sells
for about $7 a pound and is known more delicately as
wild boar," writes Garner. No matter how much feral
meat the hearty American population consumes, though,
the agricultural damage is sure to continue since the
pigs' growth rate far exceeds the demand for their meat,
notes Garner. (Read
more) Photo from the National Geographic Society.
Mandatory
part of animal-tracking proposal gets squashed by farmers
The Agriculture Department has dropped the idea of
a mandatory system for animal identification after it
came under fire from many directions, and now hopes
financial incentives and market pressure will encourage
participation, reports The New York Times.
The plan is "intended to trace a sick animal to
the property it came from within 48 hours," writes
Theo Emery. "Criticism has centered on the system’s
cost, its potential for government invasion of privacy,
perceived biblical prohibitions against its technology
and the question of who would benefit."
Lawyer Mary-Louise Zanoni, the executive director of
Farm for Life, an advocacy group for
small farms, calls the proposal a “scam”
that aims to eliminate small farmers. “The only
reason for an animal identification system,” Zanoni
said, “is to serve the economic interests of large
meat packers and people who are going to sell the technology
that will be indispensable in the system.” Amish
farmers, who do not believe in using technology, also
oppose the effort, notes Emery.
When additional opposition came from ranchers and livestock
farmers, the Agriculture Department took away the mandatory
proposal in hopes of keeping the overall idea alive,
reports Emery. The agency has yet to offer specifics
on incentives that might be offered to participants.
(Read
more)
New Hampshire
legislator wants dairy farmers to get more for milk
With a gallon of milk costing consumers twice as much
as what dairy farmers get paid, one New Hampshire legislator
wants to narrow that gap to help the state's struggling
dairy farmers.
"State Rep. Fred King, R-Colebrook, has filed
legislation that would mandate that the retail price
of milk in New Hampshire could not be more than twice
the price paid to farmers by dairy processors. King,
a former state senator and the outgoing chairman of
the House Finance Committee, acknowledges that his legislation
could drive prices up if processors and stores seek
to maintain their profit margins, but it would also
translate into more money paid to farmers themselves,"
writes John P. Gregg of the Valley News.
Agriculture Commissioner Steve Taylor said the bill
may be a "long shot" for passage, but it will
spotlight the market forces affecting the 140 dairy
farms left in New Hampshire, reports Gregg. “It
tells consumers, ‘Hey, farmers aren't getting
much for your milk, you should be getting your milk
cheap,'" Taylor said. "And it says to the
retailers, ‘If you guys want to get top dollar
for the milk in the case, you ought to give farmers
more.’” (Read
more)
Taylor wrote in an e-mail to The Rural Blog that an
agricultural-economics professor at the University of
Connecticut, Robert Cotterell, "has been pitching
this approach for several years. . . . Maine, Vermont
and Connecticut legislatures have all dipped into state
treasuries to help their dairy farmers this year."
Growing
population, congested power lines equal higher electric
bills
Tens of millions of Americans are facing the prospect
of higher electricity bills because of congested lines.
Meanwhile, some rural, scenic areas oppose construction
of lines that could relieve the problem.
Similar to the problems facing some highways and bridges,
the country's network of transmission lines is under
strain from years of not being maintained or expanded
to meet the nation's growing population, reports David
Cay Johnston of The New York Times.
That leaves areas that are bulging at the seams with
people without enough lines to receive electricity in
an efficient manner. That congestion forces utilities
to buy electricity from costlier power plants and customers
end up paying more.
"Over all, the Energy Department estimates,
congestion charges in 2008 will add $8 billion or so
— about $40 a person — to electricity costs
on the Eastern grid, which serves almost 200 million
people east of the Rockies except for Texas," writes
Johnston. "The department did not make an estimate
for the Western grids. These congestion charges would
raise electricity prices by about a nickel on the dollar
if they were spread evenly, but in fact some customers
pay far more and others pay nothing."
"The Energy Policy Act signed by President Bush
last year seeks to speed construction of transmission
lines by preventing state and local officials from blocking
lines, or even influencing where they are built. A federal
proposal to invoke these restrictions for a proposed
high-voltage line through the Allegheny Mountains in
Virginia has generated hundreds of complaints. Business
owners, local officials and refugees from big cities
said it would be irresponsible to mar their mountain
vistas and small towns with a row of 17-story steel
skeletons supporting the lines," writes Johnston.
(Read
more)
Fla. governor-elect
starts open government office to aid Sunshine Law
Florida's Gov.-elect Charlie Crist made the state Sunshine
Law one of his top priorities Tuesday, announcing the
creation of the state's first Office of Open Government
to make sure public officials comply with open-records
laws and train their employees.
"Creation of the new unit follows an election
campaign in which news executives and editorial writers
in Florida voiced frustration with the sometimes slow
pace of state agencies in providing public records and
urged Crist to make it a higher priority," writes
Steve Bousquet of the St. Petersburg Times.
"Florida has a long history of ensuring public
access to government records, dating to passage of the
first open-records law in 1909."
Crist received the First Amendment Foundation's
annual Pete Weitzel Friend of the First Amendment Award
last year for his ongoing work with promoting open government,
notes Bousquet. (Read
more)
Former publisher
donates $100,000 for seminars in North Dakota
A $100,000 pledge from a former North Dakota newspaper
publisher is providing the funds for three summer seminars
in the state, which will cover reporting, advertising
and newspaper technology.
Former West Fargo Pioneer founder
and publisher Donovan Witham designated the money for
the North Dakota Newspaper Association Education
Foundation, which in turn announced the Donovan
Witham Excellence in Newspapers Symposiums in the latest
issue of its newsletter, The Cornerstone.
The symposiums will become an annual event and something
that should benefit small and large newspapers, announced
foundation President Don Gackle.
All three summer seminars will be free and the first
on June 14 in Bismarck will feature Jock Lauterer of
The Carolina Community Media Project at the University
of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. (Read
more)
Tuesday,
Dec. 12, 2006
Journalists,
entertainers support FCC restrictions on media ownership
Journalists,
singers and songwriters sang the same tune in Music
City yesterday, at the second of six public hearings
by the Federal Communications Commission on
rules limiting media ownership. (Photo of witnesses
Naomi Judd and George Jones from The Tennessean, Copyright
2006)
Wendell "Sonny" Rawls, a Pulitzer Prize-winning
reporter and editor and acting director of the Center
for Public Integrity, "testified that
the basic argument of media owners is about money, not
good journalism," writes Kate Howard for The
Tennessean. "(Newspapers are) the only
business protected by the Constitution," Rawls
said. "That protection was not to guarantee a profit
for few, but to guarantee access to information for
many."
"Consumer groups and some professors disputed
any need for easing ownership rules," reports Ira
Teinowitz of Television Week, quoting
Alex Jones, another Pulitizer-winning reporter who runs
the director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press,
Politics and Public Policy in the Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard University. "Cross-ownership
of major media properties is a bad idea," said
Jones, a Tennessee native. "The news of politics,
public affairs, comes from newspapers and local television.
It is talk that is in ready abundance [on the Web],
not the news." Jones, who is on the advisory board
of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Commuity
Issues, "warned that further combinations
would give individual owners too much power," TV
Week reports. (Read
more)
"Those speaking in favor of relaxing media ownership
rules, including Tennessean Publisher Ellen Leifeld
and Deborah McDermott of WKRN-Channel
2 [owned by Young Broadcasting], argued
that more flexibility was necessary to compete in a
new-media landscape in which consumers have seemingly
limitless choices for getting their news," Howard
reports. "Leifeld said she didn't believe cross-ownership
would result in a less competitive environment, and
that the idea that newspapers and TV stations would
speak with one voice was contrary to fundamentals of
journalistic autonomy. "Cross-ownership robs the
news media of options in confronting changes,"
said Leifeld, an employee of Gannett Co.
(Read
more)
Ryan Underwood writes in another Tennessean story,
"Jack Dempsey, general manager of WJHL-TV
... in Johnson City, said its newsroom had grown significantly
after it was purchased by Richmond, Va.-based Media
General, which also owns the nearby Bristol
Herald-Courier." (Read
more)
Underwood's story focused on entertainers who argued
that concentration of ownership had made it more difficult
for new singers and songwriters to gain success. Singer
Porter Wagoner, who brought Dolly Parton to stardom,
said her "music probably would never have made
it to the airwaves if today's media ownership rules
were in place in 1967," Underwood wrote. Wagoner
said, "The days of new acts receiving reasonable
airplay are over."
"Newer stars John Rich and Big Kenny Alphin of
the group Big & Rich, along with fellow MuzikMafia
member "Cowboy Troy" Coleman, were added to
Monday's agenda to say their piece," Underwood
writes. The Associated Press quoted
Bayard Walters, past chairman of the Tennessee
Association of Broadcasters, as saying that
many small-town stations are viable today because of
consolidation: "Many of those stations provide
opportunities for new and local artists, as well as
local content like news, weather and traffic, he said.
Walters argued that there are 11,000-plus commercial
radio stations nationwide. The biggest five companies
own 2,000 of those, while the next 20 only own 1,000
stations. There are more different licensees today than
there were in 1972, he said."
The FCC started re-examining rules for media ownership
in June, and it is addressing how many radio and television
stations one owner can have and restrictions on cross-ownership
between newspapers and broadcasters. A set of 2003 changes
that were eventually tossed out in federal court would
have permitted one corporation in a single community
to own up to three TV stations, eight radio stations,
the cable system, the daily newspaper and the biggest
Internet provider, reports AP. (Read
more)
Sago Mine
families, upset by handling of report, may never get
answers
After almost a year of investigation, "State
officials concede that they have come nowhere near providing
definitive answers about West Virginia’s worst
coal-mining disaster in nearly 40 years," the Sago
Mine disaster that killed 12 men on Jan. 2, 2006, reports
Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston Gazette.
“Answers to all questions associated with this
tragedy may never be answered,” Ronald Wooten,
director of the state Office of Miners’
Health, Safety and Training, wrote in a cover
letter for the report. Investigators suspect lightning
ignited more than 400,000 cubic feet of methane gas
in a sealed area," Ward writes. The report does
not address the issue of why state officials allowed
families to continue believing for several hours that
all 12 trapped miners had survived." (Read
more)
The report was scheduled to be released yesterday,
after a briefing for victims' families, but the press
conference was scrapped after complaints from the families.
They were "given little time to read it" before
the press conference, and "When they asked questions,
family members said, state officials suggested they
read the report," Tara Tuckwiller writes for the
Gazette. Gov. Joe Manchin III "told mine safety
officials to put together a presentation for the families
to explain the findings, and not to release the report
to the public until that happened. Families were told
it would take a week. But minutes later, family members
discovered that the mine safety office had meanwhile
posted the report on its Web site." (Read
more)
For a copy of the report, from the Web site of the
Gazette, click
here.
Mississippi
native aims to rid state of backward image via PR campaign
Heritage groups and state marketing committees are
the ones usually try to better Southern states' reputations,
but now Jackson, Miss., advertising executive Rick Looser
is spending $275,000 on a campaign to debunk the myth
that Mississippi is the most racist state in the nation.
Looser "is using the tools of his trade to defend
Mississippi from the barbs of comedians, cultural critics,
and non-Southerners who suspect that the civil rights
movement never really came to the Magnolia State. With
all the tongue-in-cheek spin of Madison Avenue, he created
a poster featuring Mississippi writers ranging from
Richard Ford to Richard Wright, with these words: 'Yes,
we can read. Some of us can even write.' Then he sent
a copy to every school," writes Patrik Jonsson
of The Christian Science Monitor.
His campaign called "Mississippi, Believe It!"
includes posters featuring Delta blues singers and the
words "No black. No white. Just the blues."
"A conversation two years ago with a 12-year-old
Connecticut boy, during a plane trip to Atlanta, spurred
Looser to try to remake Mississippi's image. The boy,
Looser says, asked him if he hated blacks and how often
the Ku Klux Klan marched in his hometown," writes
Jonsson.
Mississippi and the South are not the only places tagged
with a "backward" image. Maine resident Phil
Bailey told Jonsson, "I could say people look at
Maine and say it's backwards, rural, a bunch of dumb
fishermen, and we're really only here to serve Massachusetts
and New York as a summer vacation spot -- but the reality
is different." Bailey visited Mississippi to take
part in Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts and he is
not sold on the idea of Looser's PR effort. "I
don't think that we fix problems with a campaign that
implies that problems don't exist," he said. (Read
more)
Kentucky
hopes incentives lure maker of Willie Nelson's biodiesel
Kentucky
officials have approved $1 million in tax breaks and
$120,000 in income-tax refunds to entice Earth
Biofuels, which makes Willie Nelson's brand
of biodiesel known as "BioWillie,"
to the western tip of the state.
If the company ends up building the $11 million refinery,
the 30 million-gallon-per-year output would require
50 workers who would earn about $29,000 per year. "Biodiesel
blends for sale at truck stops have between 5 percent
and 20 percent vegetable oil with the remainder being
traditional diesel. BioWillie uses the 20 percent blend,"
writes Robert Schoenberger of The Courier-Journal.
"Founded in Mississippi in 2004, Earth Biofuels
signed an agreement to use music star Willie Nelson's
name and image to sell soybean diesel fuel in 2005.
Now based in Dallas, the company sells BioWillie in
California, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi,
Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina," Schoenberger
writes for the Louisville newspaper. "In sales
pitches to gas stations, Earth Biofuels uses the star
power of Nelson and others, noting that Nelson's image
can help 'differentiate your fueling location from the
187,000 other fueling locations in America.'" (Read
more)
Rural Minnesota
county sees decline in many areas, except crime, jail
costs
One rural Minnesota county is experiencing a decline
in farms, schools, population and church attendance,
but unfortunately one statistic is not dropping -- crime.
"In 1986, the population of Redwood County was
hovering around 20,000 people. Today Redwood County
has about 4,000 fewer people. Logically, one would assume
that few people would mean fewer police and fewer crimes.
Right? Wrong," writes Erik Posz of the Redwood
Falls Gazette. Demands for tougher sentencing
on DUIs and domestic abuse are also creating a shortage
of jail space, and Redwood County spends about $500,000
a year renting space for prisoners in other counties.
"Out of the 87 counties in Minnesota, about one
half are in some sort of a jail crisis, whether it is
expansion, remodeling or building a new jail. Most of
those counties are rural. In addition to increasing
numbers in jail populations, the Sheriff's Department
and local police departments have been forced more and
more to deal with problems related to methamphetamine,"
writes Posz. (Read
more)
Homer Ledford,
legendary bluegrass musician, instrument maker, dies
Homer
Ledford died Monday at age 79, leaving behind the legacy
of a man who rose from the edge of the Cumberland Plateau
to make bluegrass music and build instruments that now
reside at the Smithsonian Institution.
Ledford was born in Ivyton, Tenn., in Overton County,
near its conjunction with Pickett and Fentress counties.
He spent his latter years in Winchester, Ky., and illness
forced him to sit out this year from appearances with
the Cabin Creek Band. Long before starting that band
in 1976, Ledford began making instruments in Tennessee
and at age 18 wom a scholarship to attend the John Campbell
Folk School in Brasstown, N.C., reports Shawntaye Hopkins
of the Lexington Herald-Leader. Ledford
built 5,776 dulcimers, 475 banjos, 26 mandolins, 26
guitars and 18 ukuleles. Those at the Smithsonian Institution
include a fretless banjo and a dulcitar, an instrument
he invented, reports Hopkins. (Read
more)
Monday,
Dec. 11, 2006
Weekly papers
hail passage of postal reforms after decade of lobbying
In one if its final acts, early Saturday, the 109th
Congress passed a postal-reform bill that included several
measures long sought by weekly newspapers, which depend
largely on the U.S. Postal Service to
deliver their product -- and say the quality of service
has gone down while rates and regulations have gone
up.
The bill was a breakthrough, said Max Heath, vice president
of Landmark Community Newspapers Inc. and
chairman of the postal committee of the National
Newspaper Association, mainly weeklies. “We
looked for an ironclad guarantee that within-county
mail would not see a continuation of the unjustified
increases that the Postal Service wants in 2007,”
Heath said in an NNA press release.
The Postal Service has asked the Postal Rate
Commission for a 27 percent hike in rates for
mailing inside a newspaper's home county, which usually
has the majority of its circulation. The bill, if signed
by President Bush, would also give preferred rates to
outside-county mail under 5,000 copies -- a preference
that was lost in the mid-1980s, the NNA release said.
(Read more)
Sago report
withdrawn; fails to explain how lightning entered sealed
area
West
Virginia investigators say lightning caused the Jan. 2
Sago Mine disaster that killed 12 coal miners, but a report
that was scheduled to be released today does not explain
how the strike ignited methane deep inside a sealed area.
(Photo from report, via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, shows
where miners were found.) The blast "was
nearly five times more powerful than the mine's underground
seals were able to withstand," reports The
Associated Press, who obtained a copy of the
report this morning. "Six months after the deadly
blast, the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration
ordered that all seals must now withstand 50 [pounds
per square inch]- still less than the force of the Sago
blast." The report says, "How the electricity
from the lightning entered the sealed area is still
under investigation, and in that regard this report
is not complete." (Read
more)
Gov. Joe Manchin III stopped release of the report
after meeting with families of the dead miners, Dennis
Roddy and Steve Twedt of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
report today. (Read
more) Investigator Davitt McAteer said in the report,
"Our work is not complete until the specific mechanisms
which allowed lightning to enter behind the seals at
the Sago mine have been identified." He said lightning
may have entered the sealed area through a submerged
pump or pump cable, or wire roof mesh. He also questioned
whether the mine's owner, International Coal
Group Inc. took all the required steps to protect
the mine against lightning strikes, reports Ken Ward
Jr. of The Charleston Gazette. (Read
more)
Post-Sago safety reforms in place:
MSHA finalized rules Friday that require miners to learn
to use emergency air packs. The new rules could cost
the industry "about $44 million annually, or about
0.4 percent of yearly revenues for the nation’s
underground coal mines. At the same time, MSHA estimated
that, had the rules previously been in place, at least
36 and perhaps 41 of the miners killed in four major
disasters over the last 22 years would have survived,"
writes Ward in another story.
"MSHA added the requirement when it finalized
a new set of ... rules initially proposed two months
after the Sago Mine disaster. The rule forces coal operators
to increase the emergency oxygen supplies underground
and greatly tightens the requirements for reporting
mine accidents to regulators. In requiring better training
in the use of self-contained self-rescue devices, or
SCSRs, MSHA made a significant change to its initial
rule, issued on an emergency basis in early March,"
writes Ward. (Read
more)
Blame this
year's mining death total on the calendar, safety chief
says
The new U.S. mine-safety head blames the coal industry's
deadliest year in more than a decade on the calendar,
arguing that if the Jan .2 Sago disaster had occurred
two days earlier, this year and last year -- which had
the lowest number of fatalities on record -- would have
both had average death tolls.
Forty-six coal miners have died this year, making the
most since 47 died in 1995, and West Virginia claims
23 of this year's deaths. U.S. Mine Safety and
Health Administration Chief Richard Stickler
does not want to make a big deal out of this year's
total since it follows last year's record low of 22.
“Mine safety doesn’t see a calendar,”
Stickler told Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston
Gazette. “It doesn’t know what
year it is or what day it is.”
Stickler took over MSHA in October, following a 30-year
coal career. He spent most of that time as mine manager
for Bethlehem Steel’s coal arm,
before working briefly for Massey Energy.
He told Ward that he came to Massey only because the
company bought amine he was running. "Stickler
declined to comment for the record on the safety practices
he saw at Massey, or on the company’s overall
safety record over the years. But he said the state’s
report on the January fire at the company’s Aracoma
Alma No. 1 mine — still under investigation by
MSHA — was disturbing." Stickler said, “The
conditions that existed are not reflective of a mine
that is being properly managed in the area of safety."
(Read
more)
Take U.S.
mine-safety agency off death investigations, newspaper
says
After a May coal-mining disaster killed five in Kentucky,
the Mine Safety and Health Administration
acted like it had something to hide, and that is one
reason is should not be in charge of such investigations,
the Lexington Herald-Leader in an editorial
yesterday.
"One of the first things the new Congress should
do is shift responsibility for investigating mine deaths
and injuries from the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration
to a more impartial body. In the aftermath of the Darby
tragedy, MSHA appeared to be more interested in covering
its backside than uncovering every facet of the disaster,"
said the newspaper, the most widespread in Eastern Kentucky.
"An MSHA inspector had spent three days in the
mine during the week leading up to the fatal explosion
on May 20. But MSHA refused to let Kentucky investigators
question him. No one other than another MSHA employee
was allowed to directly question inspector Stanley Sturgill
-- not state investigators, despite making a formal
request to interview him, not the United Mine
Workers of America, not the Darby miners' representative,"
continues the editorial.
"We're not suggesting that Sturgill did anything
wrong, or that by shielding him, MSHA was doing anything
other than following its lawyers' advice on avoiding
lawsuits. But it looks like stonewalling. And that appearance
alone damages public trust. How much confidence can
there now be in MSHA's investigation when its findings
are finally released?" asks the Herald-Leader.
(Read
more)
U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA) wrote in a January report
that the Bush administration undermines miners' health
and safety by putting mine operators' interests ahead
of enforcing mine-safety laws. The report criticizes
the administration for reducing "the amount of
major fines for mine safety and health violations"
and says MSHA does not ensure that reserve oxygen chambers
are in place. To read that report, click
here.
Hundreds
of tiny Georgia towns fall off the map; residents not
happy
Many small Georgia towns have been removed from the
official state road map, prompting some protest from
rural residents in the state, where the map has long
been overcrowded -- partly because the state has more
counties, 159, than any other state except Texas.
"A total of 519 communities have been erased from
the newest version of Georgia’s official map,
victims of too few people or names too long," reports
The Associated Press. "The state
Department of Transportation . . . said that the goal
was to make it clearer and less cluttered and that many
of the dropped communities were mere “placeholders,”
generally with fewer than 2,500 people. Some are unincorporated
and so small they are not even recognized by the Census
Bureau." (Blogger's note: Those of us who grew
up in towns of fewer than 2,500 take umbrage at the
"placeholder" appellation.)
“This gets back to respect for rural areas,”
said Dennis Holt, leader of a community group trying
to restore Hickory Level, a town of about 1,000 in western
Georgia. "It’s about history and heritage,"
said State Rep. Tim Bearden, who represents the county
that includes Hickory Level and eight other towns that
were removed. The victims include Climax, pop. 297,
in Decatur County. "Georgia transportation officials
said they would take another look at their guidelines
for what constituted a community," AP reports.
"Mapmaking criteria vary by state, and it is not
unusual to have a little housecleaning over time, often
to be rid of place names now considered racially offensive,"
said the AP. "But state mapmakers elsewhere said
it was almost unheard of to see hundreds of communities
removed in a single year. In Texas, for instance, few
of the 2,076 cities and towns are ever deleted because
of strict standards that weigh whether a spot is along
a state highway, has a post office or has a population
of 50 or more." Texas has 254 counties. (Read
more) For a map of Georgia, click
here.
Wal-Mart
is more overtly Christmasy; Tennessee columnist takes
note
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which has about
half its stores in rural areas, is wishing "Merry
Christmas" rather than "Happy Holidays"
this year. "The announcement comes a year after
religious groups such as the American Family
Association and The Catholic League
boycotted retailers including Wal-Mart last holiday
season for excluding the word "Christmas"
from products sold in stores," reports CNN.
(Read
more) "We, quite frankly, have learned a lesson
from last year," a Wal-Mart spokeswoman told USA
Today. "We're not afraid to use the term
'Merry Christmas.' We'll use it early, and we'll use
it often."
John Fleming, Wal-Mart's executive vice president of
marketing, said that Christmas will be advertised almost
as much as value to shoppers, with the retailer's holiday
ads centering around "Christmas" for the first
time. The Christmas decorating shop's name, The Holiday
Shop for the past several years, is now The Christmas
Shop. "Store signs will count down the days until
Christmas, and Christmas carols will be piped throughout
the season. About 60 percent more merchandise will be
labeled 'Christmas' rather than 'holiday' this year
over last," writes Jayne O'Donnell of USA Today.
(Read
more)
David Spates, a columnist for the Crossville
(Tenn.) Chronicle, notes the
changes. "Wait, wait, wait. Isn’t there something
about separation of church and state? Wal-Mart is larger
and more powerful than most industrialized countries.
The chain is, in some ways, an Arkansas-based government.
How can it endorse one particular religion? . . . "It’s
refreshing when people start to buck the political correct
nonsense that keeps everyone walking around on eggshells
in this country," he said. (Read
more)
Utah gas
prices go down, but not so much for rural residents,
diesel users
After being among the highest in the country, the price
of gasoline in Utah has returned to almost average,
but rural residents and owners of diesel-powered vehicles
may still be paying more. "Late this summer, when
the average cost of unleaded in Utah was nearly 40 cents
higher than the national average, consumer outrage led
to a state investigation. The probe eventually placed
most of the blame on gasoline retailers for 'price-gouging,'
though a report in the The Salt Lake Tribune
showed that high demand driven by a strong economy also
played a key role. But that investigation, said Department
of Commerce chief Francine Giani, focused on unleaded
gasoline, not diesel, and also was not targeted to the
state as a whole, where it might have addressed the
disparity between urban and rural areas," write
Lesley Mitchell and Steven Oberbeck of the The Salt
Lake Tribune.
John Hill, executive director of the Utah Petroleum
Marketers and Retailers Association, told the
Tribune that rural areas have higher prices because
they don't have much competition to keep them down.
Also, rural gas stations sell less gas and have to charge
more to maintain profit margins, he said. One of the
reasons for high gas prices in the state overall is
its limited access to pipelines. "In addition,
Utah's refineries are operating near capacity, and high
demand for gasoline is expected to remain that way because
of Utah's sizzling economy and the prospects for long-term
growth in population," write Mitchell and Oberbeck.
"The average cost of a gallon of diesel fuel in
Utah, which peaked at $3.50 on Sept. 1, is still averaging
$2.78 per gallon -- or about 9 cents higher than the
national average, according to AAA Utah,"
write Mitchell and Oberbeck. Diesel would usually be
cheaper to produce than unleaded, but not this year,
Lee Peacock of the Utah Petroleum Association
told the Tribune. "Utah refineries were forced
to spend millions for capital improvements to meet ultra-low-sulphur
diesel-fuel standards mandated by the Environmental
Protection Agency. . . . Add high demand, particularly
from a national trucking industry responding to a booming
economy, and you have a recipe for high prices."
(Read
more)
Dec.
8-9, 2006
Wildlife
poaching up in West; Oregon officers are aided by decoys
"A
wave of poaching . . . has alarmed state and federal
wildlife officials" in the West, reports The
New York Times. "The authorities said
they are seeing more organized rings of poachers and
unlicensed guides chasing the biggest elk and mule deer
with the largest antler array." Randal Archibold
reports that wildlife enforcement officers are "sparse."
(Photo, of Nevada game warden checking tags after
an elk kill, by Brad Horn, NYT)
It’s a busy time of year for poachers and game
wardens, with both legal and illegal hunters on the
move, reports Paul Daquilante of the News-Register
in McMinnville, Ore. "There are a lot of factors
that go into ruling a hunter illegal. From tagging violations
to taking wrong-sex animals to taking an animal out
of season, like taking an elk during deer season,"
Oregon game officer Greg Oriet told the News-Register.
Oriet found two does shot and simply left to decompose.
"That's a major game violation, waste of game animal.
It's a Class A misdemeanor,” he said. Poaching
is treated as serious business. For the death of the
does, “evidence was collected at the scene of
the shooting and sent to the Oregon State Police Crime
Lab,” writes Daquilante. “He said ballistic
tests are run on spent cartridges, and fiber, hair and
bodily fluids are tested when it's warranted.”
The Oregon State Police’s “Fish
& Wildlife Division also runs the Wildlife
Enforcement Decoy Program, launched in 1991,”
Daquilante. “It relies on decoys mounted in areas
where illegal hunting activity has been noted. The decoys
are kept under surveillance. That allows a game officer
to catch a violator in the act and make an immediate
arrest. The decoy program minimizes loss of actual wildlife.
It also minimizes collateral losses to stray arrows
or bullets. And contact with the violator then can be
controlled, with a focus on the safety of all concerned.”
(Read
more) For the New York Times story, click
here.
Top
Wal-Mart ad execs leave, firm kills agency deal; rural
papers curious
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has fired two
top marketing executives and the company has "dismissed
the lead advertising agency the executives had helped
pick little more than a month ago," The
Wall Street Journal reports this morning. The
executives' departures have raised eyebrows among rural
newspaper publishers, whose effort to get Wal-Mart to
advertise in their papers was rebuffed after an experiment
last year.
Gone from Wal-Mart are Julie Roehm, senior vice president
of marketing communications, and Sean Womack, vice president
of communications architecture, "who served Roehm
closely," MediaPost's Marketing Daily
reported yesterday. The company's chief spokeswoman,
Mona Williams, declined to comment on the departure
"or any potential repercussions of it," wrote
Tom Siebert and Sarah Mahoney.
Roehm joined Wal-Mart in February, after the company
had placed a full-page, four-color ad for electronic
items in 336 papers in Missouri and Oklahoma, states
near its Arkansas headquarters. The company said the
ads increased sales, but its margins are so thin that
it didn't "come close to offsetting the cost,"
Williams said at the time. The cost was later reported
to be $73 million. The decision was announced in April.
Many rural newspapers say has Wal-Mart made life hard
for them, by rarely advertising and running out of business
local stores that do. After complaints from the National
Newspaper Association, a group dominated by
weeklies, Wal-Mart agreed to the experiment. An NNA
survey of members last spring found that 87 percent
had a Wal-Mart in their coverage area, and 67 percent
said it had a negative effect on them.
About half of Wal-Marts are in rural areas, but the
company has been shifting its focus to more affluent
cities and suburbs. It has had trouble adapting, and
same-store sales are slowing. It hired the new agency,
Draft FCB, "as part of an effort
to trade its mass-market approach for customized appeals
to suburbanites, ethnic groups and city dwellers,"
Suzanne Vranica and Gary McWilliams report in the Journal.
Quoting unnamed sources close to Wal-Mart's review
process, the
Journal also reports that Roehm "may have violated
Wal-Mart's strict corporate policy of not accepting
gifts from vendors" by attending a swank dinner
thrown by Draft FCB. Siebert and Mahoney reported
for MediaPost that Wal-Mart executives were upset
by an ad the company ran in Creativity magazine soon
after getting the account, with a picture of two lions
mating, captioned, "It's good to be on top."
That's rural, but lacking rural sensibility.
Urban-rural
compromise on AIDS program funding leaves both satisfied
A battle over funding of federal AIDS programs between
the Northeast and the more rural South ended with a
compromise Tuesday. The “five-year renewal of
the $2.1 billion-annual law had sparked a funding fight
between cities where the disease first made its mark
and the rural communities where it is now spreading
fastest,” writes Devlin Barrett of The
Associated Press.
“Northeasterners had held out, claiming the original
five-year version of the program's renewal would cut
their state's funding by at least $70 million each,”
writes Barrett. “Sen. Mike Enzi [Wyo.], the measure's
Republican champion, disputed both figures, saying the
cuts would be far less. A deal crafted by Sen. Ted Kennedy,
D-Mass., won their support by shortening the renewal
to three years so the money disbursements will be revisited
sooner, and the large funding cuts expected in the final
years are eliminated.”
“Southern-state officials had been frustrated
that opposition from the Northeast was holding up a
bill that would send them more money,” writes
Barrett. “They cheered the compromise. ‘We're
thrilled that we finally have gotten the bill,’
said Kathie Hiers, head of AIDS Alabama.
‘I think overall it's going to help the deep south
states a great deal,’ she said, estimating Alabama
would get $7 million in new money in the first year
of the deal.” (Read
more)
Community
planner urges rural towns to develop skills and education
Dr. Vaughn Grisham, a community development expert,
speaks in Southern rural communities, holding workshops
on how rural areas prosper economically. “You
run the risk of becoming obsolete. You are in a remote
part of the world that can easily pass you by,”
Grisham said at a visioning session at Breaks Interstate
Park on the Kentucky-Virginia border, reports the Coalfield
Progress in Norton, Va.
“‘Soon, all jobs will be mechanized, so
what will we have left?’ questioned the facilitator.
The answer is what he calls ‘the Knowledge Industry,’
which are jobs that require constant updated training
and education to stay abreast among modern developments,”
writes Hannah Morgan of the Progress. “Health
care is an example, as it requires consistent education
to keep up in the rapidly changing industry.”
“Education is also an integral part of community
development, says Grisham. He urged participants to
encourage parental involvement in the schools, as he
says this is the key factor in student success, regardless
of socioeconomic setting,” writes Morgan. “Well-educated
children are also the future of the county, if we can
keep them here, says Grisham.” (Click
here to read more; subscription required)
Texas Farm
Bureau fights eminent domain to keep land in rural hands
The Texas Farm Bureau wants to change
eminent domain law to help rural residents keep their
land and spare it from development, or profit more from
it. “The Farm Bureau's eminent-domain bill was
filed during the 2005 special session in Texas two months
after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that governments
can take land for private development to generate tax
money, prompting worries that local entities would grab
homes and turn the property over to developers,”
reports The Associated Press.
“Under a proposed bill, not as many entities
would have the power to take land and homes from residents,”
said AP. “Also, if land were to be seized for
pipeline or utility lines, residents would receive ongoing
royalty payments in addition to the property's fair
market value. No matter what the land would be used
for, residents would be paid for their attorneys' and
appraisal fees and given enough time to move.”
“The Texas Farm Bureau also is proposing a constitutional
amendment based on a bill passed during last year's
special legislative session,” said AP. “The
new law, among other things, prevents governmental entities
from seizing private property for economic development
projects. Passing the state law and getting it into
the constitution would guard against legal challenges.”
(Read
more)
Urban clean-air
initiative is hard to sell in Texas' rural coal-plant
towns
In Texas, big-city mayors have met with little success
in trying to convince small-town politicians to join
a coalition against pollution from coal-fired power
plants. Dallas Mayor Laura Miller began visiting rural
towns to try to get them on board with the Texas
Clean Air Cities Coalition. “She wanted
to take part in the state hearings that began last week
on permits for the coal plants. But only people who
live close to the plants can testify,” writes
Elizabeth Souder of the Dallas Morning News.
“TXU Corp. wants to build 11
coal-fired power units across the state, including expanding
Big Brown, a plant in Freestone County,” writes
Souder. “TXU is counting on support from the farming
and ranching towns near existing plants. In August,
chief executive John Wilder assured investors that opposition
came mostly from cities far from the plant sites. Around
80 community groups have told the company they support
the coal plan.” (Read
more)
Mayor Roy Hill of Fairfield, population 3,094, wants
the company to expand to promote growth, reports Souder.
He said that the plant supports the town and he didn’t
want a coalition to “mess this thing up.”
He asked an executive of the company to consider building
a nuclear power plant in the town as well. David Weidman,
a council member in Mount Vernon (pop. 2,286), abstained
from voting. "I asked both parties there: Why are
we so important? Why is the mayor of Dallas making two
trips out here? It's not the pies," he told the
Morning News. "To me, there was a feeling, a little
bit, that I was being used by both sides.”
Thursday,
Dec. 7, 2006
Senators
to FCC: Study local broadcast before tackling ownership
issue
Eight U.S. senators -- six Democrats and two Republicans
-- are urging the Federal Communications Commission
to settle the question of whether local broadcasters
are adequately serving their coverage areas "with
sufficient regional news and public interest content"
before considering changes to limits on media ownership,
reports National Journal's Technology Daily.
The senators told FCC Chairman Kevin Martin in a letter
that combining questions about local broadcasting into
the larger ownership matter "would cause us grave
concern." "A critical component to any changes
to the ownership rules is an understanding of the ways
in which broadcasters currently are serving their local
communities," the senators wrote. "They contended
that the agency, which is holding nationwide hearings
on revamping the limits, should first ensure that stations
are meeting local needs before considering the broader
review," writes National Journal's David Hatch.
Senators who signed the letter were Republicans Olympia
Snowe of Maine and Trent Lott of Mississippi and Democrats
Barbara Boxer of California, Maria Cantwell of Washington,
John Kerry of Massachusetts, Frank Lautenberg of New
Jersey, Bill Nelson of Florida and Mark Pryor of Arkansas.
(Read
more)
Homosexuals
struggle for acceptance in rural America churches, towns
A three-part series in the East Oregonian
is using real-life stories to talk about the difficulties
of living as a homosexual in rural America, which were
highlighted in the film Brokeback Mountain.
"According to one local gay man, Frank Roa, last
year's film accurately portrays the mental agony many
gays go through - especially those in rural America,"
writes Kathy Aney in part one. "Living gay in a
small town, he said, is often a mix of confusion, loneliness,
rejection and, sometimes, outright violence. Roa and
a friend, Jane Holeman, sat around Roa's kitchen table
on a recent evening and shared some thoughts about living
gay in northeastern Oregon. . . . Both said they found
more acceptance in the city. But, eventually, both came
back to the place of their youth."
That place is Irrigon, Ore., and they say it is representative
of how many rural towns react to gay residents. "Upon
his return to Irrigon, Roa began looking for a church
that would accept him," writes Aney. "Roa,
a Pentecostal Christian, phoned several ministers, introduced
himself as a gay man and asked if he would be accepted
at their churches. He received chilly responses. 'One
of the ministers hung up on me,' he said. When he finally
got brave enough to go to a church in person, he introduced
himself to the pastor afterwards. The minister, Roa
said, told him he was only welcome if he sought change."
Holeman and her girlfriend once encountered a man outside
a Wal-Mart in nearby Hermiston collecting
signatures to place an initiative on a state ballot
that defined marriage as a union of one man and one
woman. "I looked over at my girlfriend," Holeman
remembered, "and said, 'I don't know, Hon - what
do you think?'" Holeman told Aney that the man
looked flabbergasted and called the couple "sinful."
(Read
more)
Unsafe practices
make hilly Appalachia at risk for surface mine deaths
Stories about coal-mine safety are almost always about
underground mines, surface mines have their own share
of dangers, including large vehicles with low visibility,
unstable ground and falling debris, reports Ken Ward
Jr. of The Charleston Gazette. Some
accidents could be prevented, but mines have been cutting
corners on safety measures, according to Ward's "Beyond
Sago" series, based on a six-month investigation.
Mine safety problems are especially prevalent in Appalachia,
a region producing one-fifth of the nation's surfaced-mined
coal, but accounting for 75 percent of surface mine
deaths.
"Nationwide, 71 strip miners died on the job between
1996 and 2005, an average of about seven per year,"
writes Ward. "Like their counterparts at underground
mines, most of those miners didn’t have to die.
Sixty-two of the U.S. strip mine deaths — 88 percent
of the total — could have been avoided if existing
safety rules had been followed, the Gazette-Mail’s
investigation found."
Ward gives vivid examples: Two miners were killed and
one injured at Progress Coal’s
Twilight Mountaintop Removal Surface Mine in Boone County,
W.Va., when a rock truck ran over a van, reports Ward.
It was found that the strobe light on the van, meant
to warn larger vehicles, was broken, as well as the
rock truck's right camera, meant to cover its blind
spot. At Lone Mountain Processing Inc.’s
coal-waste dump in Lee County, Va., a haul-truck operator
died after his truck rolled and he was buried in mud.
He had driven over a safety berm that was too soft to
warn drivers that they were too near the edge of the
road. A highwall excavator operator was buried in rocks
at Massey Energy subsidiary Endurance
Mining’s Red Cedar Surface Mine in Boone
County. The wall was unstable and had been collapsing,
but the company had developed not safety plans. (Read
more)
Is Florida's
rural land heading for extinction? Probably, studies
say
Florida's rural land may disappear during the next
50 years, as the state's population doubles from its
current 18 million residents, according to two studies
released Wednesday by the 1000
Friends of Florida, an organization formed
to "keep the state's communities livable."
The first study, "Florida 2060: A Population Distribution
Scenario for the State of Florida," from the University
of Florida's GeoPlan Center "projected
that another seven million acres of rural land statewide
will be urbanized — either paved over as roadways
or subdivided into housing lots or otherwise conscripted
for development. And, if current development patterns
continue, a 'sea of urbanization' will surround what
are now protected conservation lands," writes Karen
Voyles of The Gainesville Sun.
The second study, "A Time for Leadership: Growth
Management and Florida 2060," conducted by Georgia
Tech's Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development,
recommended the following steps to ensure sustainable
and environmentally-friendly development: Expand Florida
Forever, the natural-lands acquisition program, to include
agriculture and forestry lands; establish a policy that
rural land only be used in urban density in return for
significant public benefit; and develop a 100-year plan
for what land should be preserved and what should be
developed, reports Voyles. (Read
more)
To learn more about the studies and access the full
reports, click
here.
Enrollment
declines prompt recruiting efforts by rural schools
in New York
In northern New York, rural schools facing enrollment
declines are planning out creative ways to draw in more
students. The upper part of the state has many schools
districts with no more than a few hundred students in
their entire K-12 population, and that presents several
financial issues, reports Rick Karlin of the Times
Union in Albany.
"That many of these districts have shrunk despite
a real estate boom illustrates one dilemma facing the
Adirondacks: Almost all the growth is through second-homeowners
or retirees. Rising land costs, combined with a lack
of jobs, has made working families with school-age kids
as scarce as surfboards," writes Karlin. "The
trend is apparent in other parts of rural New York --
even sections of Long Island -- where the dearth of
work combined with high taxes has led to a smaller permanent
population."
The school district in Keene Valley, a hamlet south
of Keene, N.Y., population 1,063, has 173 students.
The cost for each is about $20,000 per year, whereas
the state average is $13,826. Keene plans to take advantage
of growth and tourism. "Among the possibilities:
reaching out to businesses and others in Plattsburgh,
a small city about an hour to the north," writes
Karlin. "That community near the Canadian border
is on the verge of a mini-boom thanks to plans to create
a large aircraft refurbishing plant at an old Air Force
base there, which could generate 1,600 jobs over the
next four years. Keene boosters also want to capitalize
on their location in the heart of the Adirondacks' High
Peaks region, minutes from the Whiteface Ski Center,
by appealing to young athletes, including aspiring ski
racers and other winter-sports competitors." (Read
more)
Pennsylvania
township booms; residents want rural character preserved
Once-rural East Coventry, Penn., has seen not-entirely-welcome
rapid growth as Pennsylvania spreads outward and housing
developments sprout on lands sold off by retiring farmers.
The township's population jumped 25 percent from 4,566
in 2000 to 5,698 in 2005. There are nearly 1,000 housing
units currently planned or under construction, reports
Evan Brandt of The Mercury in Pottstown,
Penn., (pop. 21,859).
Once lightly traveled farm roads are now contending
with traffic, reports Brandt. "Our roads are rural,
18 to 20 feet wide, and we are going to have to widen
them, and that will be an expense," Board of Supervisors
Chairman Robert F. Preston told The Mercury. The township
is having trouble keeping up the fire department because
the volunteers work outside the community. It may soon
have to switch to paid firefighters. More police have
been added to keep up with the growing population. Because
of the demand on its infrastructure, the township's
property tax rate rose from .75 mills to 1.5 mills two
years ago.
Some East Coventry residents dislike their community
becoming a suburb. Zoning was changed for the southern
part of the township in September 2005 to make lots
larger and only permit single family homes. "That
approach is mirrored by other townships participating
in the eight-member Pottstown Metropolitan Area Regional
Planning Commission, which, with the exception of Pottstown
borough, are trying to limit development and maintain
as much open space as possible," writes Brandt.
The planning effort "tries as much as possible
to steer development to areas that want it, like Pottstown,
to somewhat reduce the projected density." (Read
more)
Dallas Morning
News to cut circulation, again, this time to 100-mile
radius
Belo Corp. will likely cut The
Dallas Morning News' circulation area next
year to a 100-mile radius, following a move last April
to stop distributing papers to most areas beyond a 200-mile
radius.
This announcement comes as much of the newspaper industry
is struggling with severe financial losses. Belo chairman,
president and chief executive Robert W. Decherd said
circulation changes at The News and its other three
dailies are saving the company about $8 million annually,
reports Terry Maxon of The News.
Decherd did not specify the areas on the circulation
chopping block, but he said, "There are still areas
more than 100 miles from Dallas that are still very
profitable and important for us. So we're going to keep
them, but try to probably bring it in." (Read
more) Belo's other dailies are the Denton
Record-Chronicle in Texas, The Press-Enterprise
in Riverside, Calif., and The Providence Journal
in Rhode Island.
Institute
hopes to boost community-college coverage via fellowship
The Hechinger Institute on Education and the
Media has created a $7,500 journalism fellowship
to support in-depth coverage of the nation’s 1,157
community colleges, and will award six fellowhsips to
journalists based on plans they submit for an ambitious
reporting project.
The six journalists will get transportation to New
York City, housing for two seminars (one in Sept. 2007,
and a short one in Feb. 2008), and a per diem for meals
and other expenses. The seminars will cover issues facing
community colleges, include visits to community colleges
and provide help from a panel of journalists. To be
part of the second group, journalists must write an
essay that demonstrates an interest in covering community
college issues, but they do not have to submit a reporting
plan. They will not get a stipend.
The fellowship is aimed at U.S.-based print and broadcast
reporters, online writers and editorial writers, and
the applications are due April 30, 2007. For more information,
contact institute Director Richard Colvin at 212-870-1073
or colvin@tc.edu.
Wednesday,
Dec. 6, 2006
Ga. county
targets illegals via landlords; writer asks what Jesus
would do
Commissioners
in the fast-growing Atlanta suburb of Cherokee County
voted yesterday to establish fines for local landlords
who rent to illegal immigrants and make English the
official language of government. The hot-button issue
attracted an overflow crowd to a hearing last month.
(Photo of hearing from the Cherokee Ledger-News,
Woodstock, Ga.)
"The measures are among the most sweeping actions
a local government has taken against illegal immigrants
in Georgia," write Chris Quinn and Brian Feagans
of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
"Cherokee commissioners have maintained that illegal
immigrants drain local resources. And because the federal
government hasn't tackled the issue, commissioners said
it was up to them to send a message to those living
in the county illegally."
"Across the United States, at least 20 towns,
cities and counties have approved or discussed English-language
ordinances in the past few months, said Rob Toonkel
of U.S.
English, a group that advocates making
English the official language of the federal government.
Advocates say the measures are intended to encourage
immigrants to assimilate, preserve English as a national
unifying language, and minimize government expenses
of printing information and providing services in other
tongues." (Read
more)
A columnist for the local Ledger-News, Fauve Sanders,
said the county "should go after employers who
hire illegal aliens," not landlords. "That
would address the problem so much quicker and more even-handedly.
Policing the construction industry alone would probably
cut the illegal population in half, but, the way the
developers and construction interests are protected
in Cherokee, that’s probably not going to happen
any time soon." We call that speaking truth
to power, an essential job of an editorial page.
Sanders' column was headlined "WWJD about illegal
immigrants?" She wrote, "Making Cherokee landlords
evict illegal aliens will only send them into overcrowded
houses. It will not make them return to their homelands,
and it will do nothing to address the issues of taxation
and the burdens on our infrastructure. And, more importantly,
scaring people in the winter that they might lose their
homes is not, I think, what Jesus would do." (Read
more) For the paper's story advancing the meeting,
by Gerry Yandel, click
here.
Bush may
propose cap on state provider taxes; would limit Medicaid
The Bush administration may try again to effectively
limit the taxes that states can impose on nursing homes
and long-term-care hospitals, which could create a crisis
in many rural states' funding of Medicaid, the federal-state
health program for the poor and disabled. It has proposed
capping at 3 percent state taxes on health-care providers,
which states send back to Washington, where the money
is matched by a ratio of as much as 3 to 1 and goes
back into Medicaid, which pays the health-care providers.
“West Virginia would take the biggest per-patient
hit,” Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., warned
at a news conference “with other opponents of
the proposal: Republicans, Democrats and interest groups
fighting the idea, including the long-term health-care
providers being taxed,” writes Tom Searls of The
Charleston Gazette. The change could not take
effect until at least May, and Congress could block
it. There is much evidence of bipartisan opposition;
82 House Republicans have signed a letter urging President
to drop the idea, proposed as one way to reduce the
federal budget deficit. (Read
more)
Safety commission
urges stronger regulation to make coal mines safer
A deadly year in coal mines has spurred an industry-backed
panel to call for 75 more safety measures, just a few
months after Congress strengthened the federal mine-safety
law and days before a report is due on the January 2005
Sago Mine disaster, in which 12 West Virginia miners
died.
So far this year, 46 U.S. miners have died in accidents.
Yesterday, the Mine Safety Technology and Training
Commission called for "a comprehensive
approach, founded on the establishment of a culture
of prevention." That concept is " likely to
be hard to put into the language of law," reports
Dennis B. Roddy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,
but the panel recommends more underground shelters for
stranded miners, more research into sealing off sections
of mines, and upgraded communications systems.
"The panel's call for standards to be developed
for fresh-air safe rooms along mine escape routes and
training miners to use barricades only as a last resort
was a clear outgrowth of the Sago disaster," Roddy
writes. It also builds on this year's reforms, calling
for "hardened communications systems -- blastproof
and fireproof -- that will allow trapped or stranded
miners to communicate with the surface." (Read
more)
Meanwhile, West Virginia officials are still working
on a Sago Mine report that is scheduled to come out
Monday, but little is known about its content. Also,
an ongoing federal investigation by the U.S.
Mine Safety and Health Administration is expected
to result in a report on the accident in the first quarter
of 2007, reports The Associated Press.
(Read
more)
Fast-growing
Va. county puts new limits on rural housing development
Three counties near Washington, D.C., took steps Tuesday
to restrict development in the growing metro area, and
one -- Loudoun, in Virginia -- specifically restricted
housing in its rural western section.
The other Virginia county, Prince William, put a one-year
freeze on most subdivisions, and Montgomery County,
Maryland, is considering a moratorium on most large
developments to allow leaders to come up with a plan
to handle the growing developments. Loudoun and Prince
William are "among the fastest-growing counties
in the country," writes Alec MacGillis of The
Washington Post, and "recent elections
have reflected the anti-development tide."
Loudoun's move reduces by about half the number of
homes allowed in the rural west. Backers saw it as a
way to preserve "the county's rolling piedmont.
But smart-growth advocates are much less enthusiastic,
saying that the rules, although stricter than the limit
of one home per three acres allowed now in the west,"
will still allow more homes than the ideal number, reports
MacGillis. Malcolm Baldwin, a Loudoun sheep farmer and
slow-growth advocate, said, "This is considerable
density for a rural area." (Read
more)
The weekly Leesburg Today of Loudoun
County recounts the lengthy political battle required
for the county's "rural downzoning plan" to
gain approval, and mentions "the concept of promoting
commercial uses in western Loudoun as a means of making
the land value for uses other than housing development."
(Read
more) For more background on Loudoun, by the weekly
Times-Mirror, also of Leesburg, click
here.
In Prince William, supporters of the freeze on rezoning
for subdivisions "acknowledge that it is intended
mostly as a symbolic action, because, with the housing
market slowing, there are few major rezonings on the
horizon. New homes that don't require rezonings could
still be built," MacGillis writes for the Post.
For a report on Prince William from a local daily newspaper,
the Potomac News, click
here.
Local governments
considering broadband should think twice, study says
Telecommunications providers have been slow to deliver
high-speed Internet to rural areas. But governments
thinking about providing broadband should consider seven
key factors before jumping into the high-speed race
where finances and technology are the two keys, says
a study for a free-market think tank.
Jerry Ellig, former deputy director and acting director
of the Federal Trade Commission's Office
of Policy Planning, identified the following factors:
competition facing municipal cable and Internet offerings;
needs to consistently upgrade speeds or drop prices;
difficulty keeping up with continuous improvement; whether
to subsidize technology and get locked into it; how
to cover operating costs and recover initial capital
outlay in three to five years; that broadband is a high-risk
investment; and holding such projects accountable.
To illustrate such concerns, the study provided Provo,
Utah as an example: Its municipal broadband owes more
than it's worth and the report says the gap "shows
every sign of increasing and will slowly eat away at
iProvo's value and prevent the city from ever getting
out from under the debt." iProvo says
it needs 12,000 to 15,000 subscribers to break even,
and there are currently 7,700.
The study also warns cities to be weary of companies
like EarthLink and Google
that want to provide free Wi-Fi, because many of those
deals give the companies rights-of-way and access to
public infrastructure like light and telephone poles.
Ellig conducted the study for The Reason Foundation,
"a nonprofit think tank dedicated to advancing
free minds and free markets," according to a release.
For the study, click
here.
Helping
hand: Community papers can boost historic preservation
efforts
Newspapers can help preserve their communities' histories
not only by reporting on preservation efforts, but by
editorializing about the issue and taking more of a
direct role in such efforts, opines Ken Blum in the
latest Publishers' Auxiliary, the monthly
newspaper of the National Newspaper Association.
A newspaper should be a sentinel for its community's
"historic buildings and structures. Don't dismiss
the local historical society as a group of old fogeys.
Instead, join the cause. Be a crusading, reporting,
vigilant, editorial-writing junkyard dog when it comes
to preserving the heritage of your town," writes
Blum, the publisher of Butterfly Publications,
an advising/speaking/publishing business that helps
community newspapers. (Column not available online.)
Blum cites three towns and their papers: Galena, Ill.,
and The Galena Gazette; Lexington,
Va., and The News-Gazette; and Ouray,
Colo., and The Ouray County Plaindealer.
The News-Gazette supportes preservation efforts and
promotes scenic Rockbridge County's history with a "What
to See and Do" feature. The Galena Gazette
routinely reports on preservation efforts, and its
Web site mentions the town as the "Home of
President and Civil War Hero General Ulysses S. Grant."
A recent Ouray County Plaindealer editorial
supported the preservation of neighborhoods' character.
Tuesday,
Dec. 5, 2006
Senator
kept 'dossier' on rural editor, showed it at endorsement
meeting
When
the U.S. Senate's current minority leader, Mitch McConnell
(photo from his Web site), visited a large
Kentucky weekly in the fall of 2002, seeking the newspaper's
endorsement, he took aim at its editor -- who recalled
the experience in a recent column.
"In the fall of 2002, the county weekly newspaper
where I was editor was paid a visit by one of the most
important politicians in the country," writes Randy
Patrick, now editor of The Winchester Sun,
a small daily. McConnell "was in an easy re-election
race against a little-known, inexperienced opponent.
But he was taking nothing for granted, so he had come
to Nicholasville to seek the endorsement of The
Jessamine Journal. He had scheduled an interview
with our publisher, Dave Eldridge, but Dave thought
that, as editor, I, too, should be involved in the conversation.
"When McConnell and his entourage arrived, we
greeted them warmly. We weren’t prepared for what
happened next. An aide produced a manila folder, opened
it and showed Dave a photo taken of the rear of my car
10 years before showing bumper stickers opposing the
United States’ illegal proxy war in Nicaragua.
'This is the kind of guy you have working for you,'
McConnell said. Dave laughed and brushed it off. There
were no secrets between us where our politics were concerned.
We argued politics for fun.
"But I couldn’t believe a United States
senator had a 10-year-old dossier on me! I was flattered.
The intent, I’m sure, was to embarrass. And I
was embarrassed — but for him, not myself. How
petty for someone of his stature to engage in gutter
fighting. But that’s the kind of guy you have
working for you," Patrick told readers of his paper
and The Courier-Journal, which reprinted
it Sunday. (Read
more)
Medicare
drug plans present problems for rural pharmacies, study
finds
Medicare Part D Plans are straining rural pharmacies
across the nation, according to a new study.
Based on reports from 12 rural independent pharmacists
located at least 10 miles from the next nearest pharmacy,
the study found that: Payment per prescription was lower
from Medicare drug plans than from either Medicaid or
cash amounts paid by individuals who previously lacked
drug coverage; the time from service to receipt of payment
was longer when such plans were involved; pharmacies
had few chances to negotiate payment rates; and pharmacists
had difficulty communicating with Medicare drug officials.
The study suggests the creation of a category of safety-net
rural pharmacies that would get reimbursements at a
level that equals or slightly exceeds their costs and
the development of a grant program for small pharmacies
that need new information systems. The study, "The
Experience of Sole Community Rural Independent Pharmacies
with Medicare Part D: Reports from the Field,"
was done by the North Carolina Rural Health
Research and Policy Analysis Center and the
Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis
of the Rural Policy Research Institute.
To read the study, click
here.
A press release from the National Rural Health
Association calls for action: "We are
concerned about the financial effect Medicare prescription
drug plans are having on rural pharmacies, We must work
to ensure a fair reimbursement system and continued
access to these local pharmacies that cater to the needs
of more than 20 million rural residents," said
NRHA president-elect Paul Moore. (Read
the release)
Government
subsidies for ethanol getting out of control, study
says
Rural communities are benefiting from the country's
vibrant ethanol industry, but a sustainability study
contends that billions of dollars in government subsidies
to the industry need critical evaluation.
"Hundreds of government programs have been created
to support virtually every stage of production and consumption
relating to ethanol and biodiesel, from the growing
of the crops that are used for feedstock to the vehicles
that consume the biofuels," notes the report, Biofuels:
At What Cost. The author, energy-subsidy analyst Doug
Koplow, "questions whether billions of dollars
in government support for the ethanol industry is the
best way to achieve the goals of reduced dependence
on foreign oil, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and
rural development," writes Seth Slabaugh of The
Star Press in Muncie, Ind.
"Koplow estimates that by the end of this decade,
assuming continuation of current policies, government
support for ethanol will be as much as $8.7 billion
a year. According to him, ethanol subsidies lack transparency
and coordination, are growing without constraint, lack
coherence in achieving policy aims, create a risk for
state and local government, are low in cost-effectiveness,
are causing environmental stress, and need to be questioned
and researched," writes Slabaugh.
Koplow's report "didn't look at the increased
tax revenue to state, federal and local government that
ethanol incentives produce," Matt Hartwig, spokesman
for the Renewable Fuels Association,
told Slabaugh. "He didn't consider the increased
economic activity that local communities, counties and
states are realizing. The incentives the federal government
put in place have worked as intended. We are seeing
the ethanol industry getting its legs underneath it
and growing with confidence." (Read
more) To read the report, click
here.
As automotive
industry moves to South, rural areas see economic boost
A changing automotive industry, where success is moving
south, tells a tale of two cities located in different
regions and moving in opposite directions economically.
"Twenty years ago, Livonia, Mich., was a prosperous
Detroit suburb, with upscale neighborhoods and high-end
stores in a new mall selling Hermès and Chanel,
which some locals wore on special occasions to dine
at the romantic Fonte D’Amore restaurant. The
local economy was thriving because of the Big Three
automakers, which operated humming factories near Livonia
and employed thousands of managers who commuted about
20 miles to the auto companies’ headquarters downtown.
Three hundred miles to the south, drivers back then
on Interstate 75 could zip right by Georgetown, Ky.,
and barely notice it," write Micheline Maynard
and Nick Bunkley of The New York Times.
"Now, two decades later, the two cities have seemingly
switched places economically. Livonia is stumbling,
as Detroit’s automakers close factories and eliminate
blue- and white-collar jobs. Just last week, Ford
Motor announced that 30,000 workers had opted
for deals worth up to $140,00 to leave. In all, with
similar offers at General Motors, about
70,000 auto workers, or one-third of those in American
plants, have decided this year to leave. Georgetown,
however, is booming because of Toyota,
which has invested more than $5 billion in a sprawling
manufacturing complex, leading to the construction of
new schools, hotels and dozens of smaller factories
run by suppliers to Toyota." Its newspaper went
daily this year.
The two towns reflect "a broader economic shift
of the nation’s auto industry from north to south,
as Detroit falters and [American companies'] surging
Asian competitors invest in Southern states," the
Times reports. "Over the last two decades, for
example, the number of automotive-related manufacturing
jobs in Michigan has fallen 34 percent, according to
Economy.com.
By contrast, the number of automotive jobs in Kentucky
rose 152 percent over that period. ... The shift carries
with it not just thousands of well-paying jobs and billions
of investment dollars, but also a sense of prosperity
gained or lost." Evidence: Livonia's fancy Italian
restaurant is closed, and the city hasn't had a Christmas
parade in three years. (Read
more)
Ohio struggles
to clean up abandoned mines; pollution threatens residents
An ongoing Columbus Dispatch series
on the current coal boom and its ramifications, titled
"Back In Black," today explores the ongoing
push for new laws and more funding to clean abandoned
mines and protect residents near those sites.
"Ohio will spend about $7.5 million in federal
taxes this year to erase environmental problems created
by abandoned mines. But there are more than 36,600 acres
of land to clean at a cost that some estimate could
exceed $300 million. Ohio relies almost entirely on
federal money to clean up abandoned mine lands. The
work includes shoring up weakened hillsides, covering
acres of crushed rock and waste coal and treating the
acid that leaks from mines and contaminates streams,"
writes Spencer Hunt. (Read
more)
On Monday, Hunt explored the thousands of acres of
Ohio that are still polluted from mines abandoned long
ago, noting the the acreage is "about as much land
as Pittsburgh occupies. And it has to clean up more
than 1,000 miles of polluted streams. To put that in
perspective, the Ohio River stretches 981 miles."
Hunt also wrote, "Mines abandoned years before
federal mining laws were enacted in 1978 are among Ohio's
oldest environmental problems. They have left crumbling
man-made cliffs, poisoned streams, landslides, cave-ins
and toxic heaps of waste coal that leak acid and catch
fire." (Read
more)
This ongoing series carries the following premise:
"Our increasing need for power is good news for
Ohio coal. But will more mining mean new environmental
problems? A Dispatch investigation found that state
laws and programs designed to safeguard the land and
water are riddled with problems." For photos, graphics
and more, click
here.
Virginia
man, called 'Boss Hogg,' faces prison time for vote
fraud
A vote-fraud case in Virginia could end with the town
of Appalachia's former mayor and acting town manager
spending 21 months in prison for his role in illegal
activity during the 2004 town council election.
Ben Cooper pleaded guilty Thursday to 233 counts of
vote fraud and no contest to 10 counts of crimes committed
in his mayoral re-election bid. The counts "included
forgery, making fraudulent entries or stealing or aiding
and abetting to steal ballots with Owen Anderson 'Dude'
Sharrett and Andy Sharrett, casting ballots for specific
voters, making false statements on forms and aiding
and abetting voting violations," writes Bonnie
Shortt of The Coalfield Progress in
Norton.
Cooper’s attorney, Patti Church, "said it
was distressful that titles such as 'kingpin,' 'mastermind'
and 'Boss Hogg' have been used in reference to Cooper.
She went on to say Cooper has a positive reputation
of doing community service and has a positive military
record," writes Shortt. (Read
more)
Monday,
Dec. 4, 2006
Conservative
support for conservation efforts rises in western U.S.
Conservatives are getting behind environmental initiatives
in the West, choosing to preserve the rustic lifestyle
over unfettered economic growth, The Washington
Post reports. Last month, several states such
as Idaho and Washington "rejected ballot measures
that could have shredded state and local land-use rules
limiting growth, controlling sprawl and ensuring open
space," writes Blaine Harden.
"Democratic and Republican politicians from New
Mexico to Montana have found common ground with hunters
and anglers in opposing widespread energy development
on wild public lands, halting drilling in several areas
where the public felt that wildlife and scenic values
trumped economic consideration. In the past year, bipartisan
grass-roots opposition has also killed off a number
of proposals to sell federal land and use the revenue
to pay for governmental operations."
Harden continues, "While it remains the most rural
part of the country in terms of land use, the West has
also become the most densely urban in terms of where
people live. Compared with new neighborhoods in the
East or South, houses in new developments in the West
tend to be planted much closer together.". Ray
Rasker, executive director of Headwaters Economics,
a think tank in Bozeman, Mont., said, "The New
West is best understood as islands of urban economics
in a rural setting." Around a third of personal
income in the Rocky Mountain West is made up of retirement
and investment money accounts. Although these newcomers
tend to be conservative, they want to protect the natural
beauty that drew them to the West.
"It used to be that the West was big enough that
you could pretty much do anything you wanted. The natural
surroundings are now being lost, and we sit in traffic
like everyone else. We want to protect what's left.
We just don't like Washington, D.C., telling us how
to do it," Rick Johnson, executive director of
the Idaho Conservation League told
Harden. (Read
more)
Specialty
crop growers seek subsidies to combat foreign competition
Fruit and vegetable growers in Florida, California
and other states are facing more international competition,
especially from China and they have started lobbying
for federal subsidies to protect them.
A group of 75 specialty crop growers, representing
producers of "everything from broccoli to strawberries
to nuts and flowers and wine, submitted a bill in September
asking for what most likely would amount to more than
$1 billion for programs they say could help their crops
compete better in a tougher global marketplace,"
writes Alexei Barrioneuvo of The New York Times.
They are not asking for direct subsidies, but for funds
for marketing, conservation and research. "But
whatever money the fruit and vegetable farmers might
get would probably have to come out of the allocation
that already goes to other sorts of farmers." Federal
farm subsidies currently pay more than $15 billion a
year, mostly to growers of corn, cotton, wheat, rice
and soybeans.
"Fruit and vegetable growers have the political
advantage of being in states like California, Florida
and Arizona, which are likely to be critical in the
2008 presidential election," writes Barrioneuvo.
"But it is unclear how important the farm vote
will be to the Democrats in the next election. Under
the proposed bill, an overseas marketing program would
rise 75 percent, to $350 million a year. An existing
specialty crop block-grant program would leap tenfold
to $500 million a year. And the government would buy
at least $400 million worth of fruits and vegetables
annually for school lunch programs." (Read
more)
Wal-Mart
to use discounts, meetings to combat worker discontent
Wal-Mart is planning to use seasonal discounts and
town-hall meetings where workers can air grievances
to deal with the discontent expressed by employees at
its stores, about half of which are in rural areas.
"As part of the effort, Wal-Mart managers at 4,000
stores will meet with 10 rank-and-file workers every
week and extend an additional 10 percent discount on
a single item during the holidays to all its employees,
beyond the normal 10 percent employee discount,"
write Michael Barbaro and Steven Greenhouse of The
New York Times. "The program, described
in an internal company document, was created during
a volatile six months period, starting when the company
instituted a set of sweeping changes in how it managed
its workers."
"Over that time, Wal-Mart has sought to create
a cheaper, more flexible labor force by capping wages,
using more part-time employees, scheduling more workers
at nights and weekends, and cracking down on unexcused
days off. The policies angered many long-time employees,
who complained that the changes would reduce their pay
and disrupt their families’ lives. Workers even
staged small rallies in Nitro, W. Va., and Hialeah Gardens,
Fla., the only such protests in recent memory."
The effort, dubbed “Associates Out in Front,”
will require regional general managers to hold monthly
town-hall meetings for all workers. "Not all of
these perks are new. During previous holiday seasons,
Wal-Mart has paid health care premiums and offered an
additional 10 percent discount. But they were sporadic
or at store managers’ discretion, rather than
offered annually across the chain," reports The
Times. (Read
more)
Discount
retailer Dollar General will not withdraw from rural
markets
Concerns cropped up in rural towns served by Dollar
General Corp. after the discount chain
announced it would close 400 stores. "Similar in
concept to old five-and-dimes, Dollar General Stores
offer a wide array of what the company calls 'highly
consumable' products, with 35 percent of each store's
stock selling for $1 or less. Dollar General focuses
on opening stores in rural and metro communities the
company considers under-served by other retailers,"
writes Bob Niedt of the Post-Standard
in Syracuse, N.Y.
"Dollar General Stores are primarily located in
communities of less than 25,000 people or in selected
locations within larger metropolitan areas. Many of
the company's customers earn a small paycheck or depend
on monthly government assistance. A considerable number
are retired," said the company's web site."The
good news is this: If there's one Dollar General in
your town, don't expect it to close," writes Niedt,
adding that the company does not plan to withdraw from
any market.
There are more than 8,000 Dollar General Stores in
35 states, which generated more than $8.58 billion in
sales last fiscal year. Despite its planned closings,
the company added 600 stores this year, with plans for
another 300 in 2007, 400 in 2008 and 700 in 2009. It
is based in Goodlettsville, Tenn. (population 13,780),
and got its start in Scottsville, Ky., (pop. 4,327),
where a distribution center remains. (Read
more)
Males rarely
teach kindergarten; three work in rural Wisconsin district
Male kindergarten teachers are a rarity in the education
field and those who do attempt the career encounter
questions about whether they are best suited to instruct
young children.
David Fiala one of a small group of male kindergarten
teachers in Wisconsin, and he encountered a stigma when
he started working at Woodside Elementary School in
Wisconsin Rapids (population 18,435), writes Adam Wise
of the local Daily Tribune. "People
would wonder if a man should really be working with
small children, but over the last few years it seems
people are more used to having me here," Fiala
said. His school district employs three male kindergarten
teachers, making it an oddity in Wisconsin.
Grove Elementary School kindergarten teacher Chris
Weinhold works in the same district and is currently
mentoring a new male kindergarten teacher. Weinhold
told Wise that a teacher's gender is not as important
as the person's characteristics. "Teaching kindergarten
or primary kids is more personality than (anything else),"
he said. "It takes a certain type of person rather
than a sex." (Read
more)
Al's Morning Meeting has a list
of related stories and sources on the lack of male kindergarten
teachers.
Turning
paper into energy: Virginia company to create energy
from timber
A Virginia-based company wants to fuel a trend by turning
a paper mill in southeast Mississippi into an alternative
energy source, which could pay big profits for the timber
industry.
Intrinergy is building a $10.5 million
biomass energy generator at the Cellu Tissue Coastal
Paper plant in Wiggins, Miss., and it "will create
energy using 1,000 tons of unwanted wood byproducts,
such as barky scraps discarded at lumber mills or the
damaged wood products that sat in useless piles after
Hurricane Katrina," writes Reuben Mees of the Hattiesburg
American. The renewable energy could then replace
natural gas, fuel oil or coal.
"In addition to the Wiggins facility, which is
expected to be operational near the end of 2007, Intrinergy
is beginning projects in Bessemer and Birmingham, Ala.,
and completing a project in Coshocton, Ohio, that utilizes
plastic and rubber byproducts instead of wood, which
is not as easy to come by in the Midwest," reports
Mees. (Read
more)
Muncie Free
Press attracts readers, community support in rural Indiana
An online newspaper is still afloat after launching
more than a year ago in Muncie, Ind., and rural media
everywhere might learn more about getting the most out
of limited resources by visiting its Web site.
Publisher K. Paul Mallasch launched the Muncie
Free Press after deciding to leave the
city's Muncie Star Press, a Gannett-owned
paper that towers over its competition both in newsroom
space and staff size. "Mallasch still runs the
site out of his apartment, and still does a lot of the
reporting and other editorial and business chores, while
also juggling freelance balls to pay the bills. But
he's finally getting help from the community,"
writes Tom Grubisich for the University of Southern
California's Online Journalism Review.
A retired professor writes columns and a citizen makes
recordings of city council meetings. To listen to an
example of that audio, click
here. "Between January and September, Muncie
Free Press more than tripled its monthly visitors (from
2,543 to 8,035) and almost doubled its page views (from
38,867 to 74,651). All this with one person in charge
of everything from bandwidth to blogging," writes
Grubisich, a California screenwriter who was a reporter
and editor for The Washington Post.
(Read
more)
Friday,
Dec. 1, 2006
Weekly editor
in rural Oklahoma shares tale of grief, blame, and courage
Sharon
Johnson came under fire after writing an article
about a kidnapping and assault, when two days later
the man came back to kill his wife and himself. Johnson
is the editor of the weekly Stigler
News-Sentinel in Stigler, Okla., population
2,731. In the latest issue of the Oklahoma Publisher,
from the Oklahoma Press Association,
she summed up the original incident: “The man
held his wife hostage in their home, struck her in the
stomach and later vandalized the home, taking many of
her personal items.” She wrote a story about the
incident, and “Everything in it was based solely
on the D.A.’s report. I was satisfied that it
was beyond legal reproach,” she said. “What
it was not beyond, however, was reproach from the public.”
An in-law of the couple, who handles advertising for
his family’s car dealership, called the paper
immediately, saying angrily about the husband, “We’re
afraid this is just going to set him off.” The
ads were cut, but Johnson said that was “the least
of our concerns.” The murder-suicide occured two
days later, and some local residents said the article
triggered it. “We have been told that we need
to ‘watch our backsides’ and even had some
that said they were praying something would happen to
us,” said Johnson. She said the paper probably
would have been accused of a cover-up if it had not
reported the first incident.
Some questioned why the paper did not publish her husband’s
suicide six years earlier. She said she didn't understand
how people could compare the incidents, because her
husband was alone when he killed himself and “It
is not our policy to publish stories about suicides.
If the man involved had simply shot and killed himself
that first night, there would have simply been an obituary.”
Johnson said the National Newspaper Association
convention in Oklahoma City in October came
at just the right time for her. “It allowed me
to share my heartache and fears with those who understand
it best – fellow journalists,” she wrote,
adding that that “journalists do bleed like everyone
else. They also hurt like everyone else. No one but
other journalists understand this.” (Read
more)
Small daily
helps resort town deal with population boom, new industry
The Post
Independent, a daily with a circulation
of 12,000, is helping its community of Glenwood Springs,
Colo., adjust to rapid population growth created by
natural-gas drilling. Most residents of the ski-resort
town of 8,564 work in tourism. The gas industry has
brought new jobs and a newcomers who have filled schools
and increased housing demand. The incidence of crime
and methamphetamines has also risen, reports Jeremy
Weber of The Inlander, the monthly
newspaper of the Inland Press Association.
Andrea Porter, publisher of the Independent, told Weber
that the paper has learned how to deal with the impact
on the community -- “how to report it, and how
to take different approaches to it. It’s fun –
it makes the day and what you’re reporting on
very interesting.” Monday papers have reader-submitted
photos, and a section called “Community Faces”
features residents nominated by readers. The Independent
has begun offering an online edition this year to give
extra coverage and provide fast access to breaking stories.
The Independent is one of 16 papers in Swift
Newspapers’ Colorado Mountain News Media
group. “The 36-page tab highlights local news
and entertainment, produces 20 special sections and
regularly seeks reader input,” writes Weber. The
paper is unusual in that it has both a paid circulation
and distribution on free racks, brought on by the merger
of a paid daily and a free paper. Porter said that their
paid and free circulations are about evenly split. (Read
more)
Medicaid
rewards healthy behavior in W.Va.; proposed in Ky.,
Idaho
West Virginia, a state with much rural population and
some of the highest rates in the country of smoking,
diabetes, heart disease and obesity, is offering incentives
for Medicaid recipients to make healthy choices. Kentucky
and Idaho are considering carrying similar incentives.
“Under a reorganized schedule of aid, the state,
hoping for savings over time, plans to reward ‘responsible’
patients with significant extra benefits or —
as critics describe it — punish those who do not
join weight-loss or antismoking programs, or who miss
too many appointments, by denying important services,”
reports Erik Eckholm of The New York Times.
“In a pilot phase starting in three rural counties
over the next few months, many West Virginia Medicaid
patients will be asked to sign a pledge ‘to do
my best to stay healthy,’ to attend ‘health
improvement programs as directed,’ to have routine
checkups and screenings, to keep appointments, to take
medicine as prescribed and to go to emergency rooms
only for real emergencies,” writes Eckholm. In
return, they will get “mental-health counseling,
long-term diabetes management and cardiac rehabilitation,
and prescription drugs and home health visits as needed,
as well as antismoking and antiobesity classes,”
writes Eckholm. “Those who do not sign will get
federally required basic services but be limited to
four prescriptions a month, for example, and will not
receive the other enhanced benefits.”
The effort was approved last summer and is the first
of its kind. However, there has been some criticism.
“A stinging editorial in The New England
Journal of Medicine on Aug. 24 said it could
punish patients for factors beyond their control, like
lack of transportation; would penalize children for
errors of their parents; would hold Medicaid patients
to standards of compliance that are often not met by
middle-class people; and would put doctors in untenable
positions as enforcers,” writes Eckholm. (Read
more)
Virtual
farmers' market lets Inland Northwest tap into online
sales
The
Inland Northwest virtual farmers' market offers
opportunities for farmers and artisans to sell their
wares to people across the country, with just the click
of a mouse. The site is a cooperative work created by
entrepreneur Malcolm Dell and multiple organizations,
including groups from the University of Idaho,
Lewis-Clark State College, Rural
Roots and others, reports the Capital
Press, an agriculture weekly.
"The real purpose of the VFM is to broaden the
market potential for people doing things in their kitchens,
or maybe doing metal or wood work in their shops. By
developing the entrepreneur base and offering some training,
we can add to the tax base here and even help people
with extra retirement income," Chris Kuykendall
of the Clearwater County Economic Development
Council, based in Orofino, Idaho, population
3,247, told the Barbara Coyner of Capital Press.
Vendors sell goods ranging from turkey, lamb, cedar
fencing and wood products to honey, cashmere, fleece
and gourmet soaps, reports Coyner. The moderator, Carmen
Syed, from Weippe, Idaho (pop. 416), offers suggestions,
helps sellers design ads, and monitors the site. Now
the site could use more buyers. It is currently offered
free to residents of certain counties in Idaho, Washington
and Oregon and members of the Western Huckleberry-Bilberry
Association. The site operators hope to make
it free for all of Idaho, Montana, eastern Washington
and eastern Oregon if they can get enough funding. (Read
more)
Hog farmers
concerned that ethanol demand may drive up corn prices
Some hog farmers fear that they may soon have to compete
with the ethanol industry for corn and that substitute
grains will slim down their pigs. William Holbrook of
the ProExporter Network estimates that
the tax-subsidized ethanol industry could afford to
pay up to $3.50 for a bushel of corn. Hog farmers are
not as likely to be able to pay that much for feed and
are likely to turn to the processed grains that are
a byproduct of ethanol distilling, reports Dan Looker
of Agriculture Online.
“Part of the reason for ethanol's ability to
survive high corn prices is the 51 cent-per-gallon tax
credit that fuel blenders get for using ethanol, as
well as the federally mandated renewable fuel standard
that requires the U.S. to consume 7.5 billion gallons
of ethanol and biodiesel by 2012,” writes Looker.
Hog farmers “will be using more distillers grains
from that ethanol industry and will have to know their
suppliers well to be assured of getting quality feed,”
writes Looker. “And they're likely to feed pigs
to lower finishing weights to offset higher feed costs.”
Pigs are not able to consume as much of the ethanol
bi-products as cattle are. “Iowa State
University economist John Lawrence said that
pork producers can currently feed up to 10 percent distillers'
grains in the ration with no impact on feed performance
or returns. And, over time, he expects the industry
to reward lower carcass weights.” (Read
more)
Cotton's
comeback spreads to the far western end of Kentucky
"Few people think of Kentucky when they think
about cotton farming. But cotton was grown in the far
western part of the state for many years and, recently,
it has begun making a comeback of sorts. A handful of
farmers have returned to the crop for a second year
with nearly 3,000 acres planted in Fulton County in
2006," writes Laura Skillman in a University
of Kentucky College of Agriculture news release.
The small group of growers have prompted prompted the
Kentucky Farm Bureau Federation to
create a new cotton advisory committee. (Read
more)
Cotton was grown in Western Kentucky for more than
a century, but disappeared in the 1970s when yields
and prices decreased, reports Skillman. Cotton was replaced
by corn and soybeans, but the price of nitrogen fertilizer
needed to grow those crops has since increased 280 percent.
Similar factors have boosted cotton production in Kansas,
The Rural Blog reported last month.
Cotton has also been genetically modified to be easier
to raise, and new machinery makes it easier to harvest,
"although cotton has to be more intensively managed
for weeds, worms and boll weevils than other field crops,"
said Cam Kenimer, the agriculture and natural resources
agent for the Cooperative Extension Service in Fulton
County, at the far western tip of the state. “We
tried some cotton last year and it turned out good so
we added acres and bought equipment,” said Joey
Parker, a Fulton County farmer. “Prices are not
great but you can make some money. You can easily put
$300 to $350 per acre into it but you can get back $600
to $700 and, if you have a really good crop, even more.”
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