Breaking News

Brenda J. Linert

Ensure history is accurate, but don’t erase it

Ever since I was a youngster and old enough to realize the interesting information on roadside historical signs that dot our landscape, I’ve often found myself pulling over or urging the driver to pull over so we could read about the significance of the place. Certainly, I’m not the only person who absorbs the information with great interest and assumes every word is factually correct. (Please understand, that’s not an easy admission for me, a journalist who always has been taught to question and independently verify everything. There’s an old adage attributed to long-ago ...

Start prepping now for approaching election

Somehow, it already is election season again. Of course, most astute readers already knew that, considering that our politics writer David Skolnick spent the last several months covering the ongoing legal debate over Ohio’s redistricting process that soon will come into play with this year’s congressional and state legislative races. Along with coverage of redistricting, we also have been reporting for months now about the early efforts of many candidates hoping to take over the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Republican Rob Portman. Our local congressman, Tim Ryan, D-Howland, ...

Another year of wanting to forget COVID-19

Exactly one year ago, I filled this space bemoaning that COVID-19 made 2020 a year we all wanted to forget. And here we are, a full 365 days later, and we again are witnessing COVID-19 case numbers jet upwards. Despite what many readers might believe, we do not sit around the conference room table plotting how we can drive panicked people to the corner market to buy our newspaper. Believe me when I say we truly are not in the business of fearmongering. Granted, our editors do discuss every day what stories should go where. However, we base those decisions on what is the most ...

That’s not how we did it back in Pennsylvania

After living the first 25 years of my life in Pennsylvania, it came as quite a shock to find, when I moved across the border to Ohio, that voters here actually got to decide things like how much tax you want to pay. To be sure, back home in the commonwealth, local government operates very differently. Pennsylvania cities are not “incorporated.” “Village” is just an unofficial label we gave to areas where houses have popped up around crossroads — but they have no real government affiliation. And many of us lived in “boroughs.” As for me, I grew up in very rural Adams ...

Journalism is key to functioning democracy

“Thanks for your support, we need you and your friends.” That was the headline atop a column written by veteran Editor Art Cullen at Iowa’s Storm Lake Times appearing in a PBS documentary I watched last week. Cullen knows the challenges of being a small, mid-America newspaper editor. Like most journalists I know, the lanky, white-haired senior citizen isn’t afraid to speak his mind about stories that affect us, what he believes readers want to know and about the future of local journalism in America. Cullen, 63, has become a bit of a hero in my business. He still fights to ...

Muppet vaccine promo ruffles some feathers

Smokey Bear taught kids the importance of preventing wildfires. McGruff the Crime Dog warned them not to talk to strangers. And in 1972, Big Bird lined up on “Sesame Street” to receive a measles vaccine as part of a campaign to get more youngsters inoculated against the disease. Apparently, that was all good. Then the 8-foot-tall yellow bird had to go and ruin it by tweeting that he got the COVID-19 vaccine. How dare he! “I got the COVID-19 vaccine today!” Big Bird tweeted Nov. 6 on his official Twitter account. (Yes, Big Bird tweets. No, I’m not talking about the ...