I’m not tougher than the flu, after all

January 19, 2020

It was one month ago today that I sat on the exam table in my family physician’s office for my annual checkup. Clacking away on the computer keyboard, the doc entered her notes, then paused and glanced up at me. “Do you want a flu shot, today?” she asked. :No,” I responded. “I never get one. I just don’t like putting unnecessary chemicals in my body.” She kind of chuckled. “OK.” Definitely one of my lesser intelligent moments. Today marks day 10 of, yep, the flu. I missed the entire week of work last week. I can only once remember missing that many ...

Context, balance key in good reporting

January 12, 2020

“Context is key.” I’ve shared those words with young college journalism students when I taught basic reporting classes several years ago. I also shared those words in a column almost exactly one year ago when I wrote about the viral video of young Covington, Ky., high school student Nick Sandmann, portrayed in a negative light by some in the national media. Sandmann had been caught on video facing an elderly Native American man, Nathan Phillips, when their paths crossed by chance in Washington, D.C., last January. The boy and his Catholic high school classmates, who were in ...

High-tech safety comes with controversy

January 5, 2020

An upstate New York school district now is using new technology to keep students safe from intruders. On the surface, it sounds good, but the idea has triggered much outrage and controversy from parents and civil rights advocates who fear it will compromise student privacy. That’s because the $1.4 million high-tech system now being used at Lockport Central School District, about 20 miles west of Niagara Falls, New York, involves new-age facial recognition. Welcome to the future. The school district activated the system Thursday. It originally had been set to go live in ...

Trip down memory lane and glance at future

December 29, 2019

As I wrap up the final week of 2019, like most folks, I’m reflecting on the ups and downs of the past year here and looking forward to what 2020 will bring in the world of news. In keeping with tradition, our newsroom this year has picked what we view as the biggest local news stories of the year. We have been revisiting and updating those big stories and sharing them with our readers as the clock ticks down on 2019. The series of stories began last Sunday and will wrap up New Year’s Eve. In today’s newspaper, we also recap the “stories of the year” in local sports and ...

The strange happenings, history of Dec. 19

December 22, 2019

I meet weekly with Rick Muccio, the freelance artist who creates local editorial page cartoons for this newspaper. He drops by about once a week to pitch cartoon ideas he has for possible use on these pages. While we don’t always agree on political topics of the day, I enjoy chatting with ...

Big money and big egos equally problematic

December 15, 2019

Presidential candidates spent a combined $2,495,740,931 in the 2016 race to the White House, according to OpenSecrets.org, a non-partisan, independent, non-profit research group that tracks money spent in U.S. politics. It sounds like a ridiculous amount of money, but incredibly, that’s not the highest amount ever. Even when adjusted for inflation, 2016 presidential race spending totals come in third highest, behind the $2,799,728,146 spent in 2008 races, and the $2,621,415,792 spent in 2012. In the 2016 race, President Donald Trump spent $66 million of his own money, Fortune ...