Blessings of the Juggernaut

UMass Amherst

Nice to have some good news to report just before the holidays: Unemployment in Massachusetts decreased in November to 6.4%, beating the 8.6% national average, with Amherst, not surprisingly, doing w-a-y better than either at 3.7%.

The November seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate for the state was 6.4%, down from 6.8% in October. Amherst's very low 3.7% is down considerable from the (off season) summer where June was the highest at 7.8% followed by July at 7.6% and August at 5.2%, thus upholding Amherst's reputation as a "college town" where low unemployment depends on the University being in full session.

UMass is the largest employer in Western Massachusetts and the number two property owner in town behind our other tax exempt higher education icon, Amherst College.

Shalom

The traditional menorah adjacent to Merry Maple on Amherst Town Common

This one's for you

Matthew H. Lee: Thank you for your service

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul; He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Matthew H. Lee: Dedicated Police Officer

Bad news travels instantly

JasonDunn.com

TV journalists always seem to be in a rush, and as a result the story can suffer, especially bad when it's a story about suffering. Take yesterday for instance. A Facebook friend posts a graphic photo with the succinct caption: "We just lost our house and everything we owed, but we are alive, god is great!!!!"

So looking for more information I search Twitter for "Fire Belchertown" and pull up a tweet linking to CH 3 TV news that breathlessly reports: "CBS 3 was first on scene of a Belchertown house fire. The family has lost everything and are homeless. A firefighter was taken to the hospital. Details in the first five."

Wow! They were "first on scene"? Maybe TV news journalists should carry a fire extinguisher in their trunks. Of course what they meant to say was they were the first journalists on the scene. But even that was wrong as someone posted a comment saying Ch 3 had been scooped by Belchertown-news.com, a hyperlocal--and obviously nimble--news operation.

A few hours later Ch 3 edited the story slightly to say "first TV news station on the scene". But they still thought that such an important fact that it graced two paragraphs out of the story's total of three .

First off a (bricks and mortar) journalist is not supposed to become part of the story--ESPECIALLY THE LEAD. And second of all--equally important--a reporter is a human being first and a reporter second. Try showing some empathy rather than hubris about being "first".

If you come upon a homeless person starting to set himself on fire, put down the damn camera and put out the flames--don't wait until it escalates into a great photo opp.

Beside the death of a friend or loved one there's nothing more painful than watching everything you own destroyed in a marauding mixture of smoke, fire and water. A compelling story like that deserves to be told properly, rather than first.

Hitchcock to Hampshire

Hitchcock Center For The Environment, Amherst

The Hitchcock Center, my neighbor to the north, announced today they have signed a "non-binding Memorandum of Understanding" with Hampshire College to move their environmental education operation--a mile or south to the somewhat sprawling Hampshire College campus, joining fellow non-profit, the National Yiddish Book Center, that opened operations there in 1997.

Hampshire College is the third largest landowner in Amherst behind the other two centers of higher education--UMass and Amherst College--and poorer by comparison as far as endowments go.

Since the Hitchcock Center is already tax exempt the move will have no impact on the town tax base but could result in a net gain if a private business buys their "old" building, although unlikely, as it is owned by the town of Amherst.

News in the modern age

Korea at night from space: A photo is worth 1,000 words. This one says it all.

doctorbulldog.wordpress.com

A sudden influx of visitors coming to my DMZ tour post from a few years back via a Google search forwarns me something is up on the Korean peninsula. And usually it's because of a bad thing--the North flexing military power on land or sea belonging to South Korea or threatening the United States, whom they view as the Republic's enemy number one.

This time, however, the news is different--although not unexpected. Kim Jong Il, age 69, is dead. As tyrants go he was not as bad as Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi but a tyrant never the less. I can only hope his son Kim Jong Eun, like most twenty-somethings worldwide, was an early adopter and has grown up with the Internet.

If anything can lead to the democratization of North Korea, it's the freedom of expression inherently found here.

A new dawn for Korea?

People's Republic: Here & There

Old traditional style Chinese character

So my daughters birth country, which I have only visited twice, is enacting new--some would argue--more stringent rules to control the Wild Wild West, err, I mean Internet, by requiring bloggers and tweeters to register with their full names, thus removing the cloak of anonymity.

And as I'm sure some of you Anons know, that cloaking device is almost as good as alcohol for inducing bouts of bravery.

Since it's China, I'm surprised they did not go even further and threaten users who dare to criticize their government that they will become tank fodder as a result. But then Tienanmen Square was not all that long ago, so many of them probably still remember.

But I wonder what the big difference is between China and, say, New Jersey where the local school board wants to shun reporters who print stories they don't like. Or the People's Republic of Amherst where then Select Board chair Gerry Weiss wanted to enact a motion to publicly spank me because he did not like the facts I was publishing about another Select Board member (that a certain local newspaper was too timid to pursue)?