Editor’s Note
Back in the old days — that’s less than a decade and before there were such things as blogs and interactive conversations with readers — editors used to respond to their newspaper readers with an “editor’s note.” Sometimes it clarified a point made in a letter to the editor. Sometimes it offered a correction. Sometimes it was just a simple explanation. An editor’s note was a handful of sentences; maybe a four or five paragraphs. It was always a personal link between the editor and the reader. Only difference between it and today’s blog is the immediacy and the platform. Welcome to Editor’s Note.

Why didn’t Rockford go to D.C.?

December 11th, 2008 at 03:31pm Linda Grist Cunningham

Yo, Rockford mayor and assorted other Winnebago County movers-and-shakers: Here’s a reminder for ya: If that Chrysler plant all the way over in Boone County shuts down, you’re going to be in a world of hurt.

Tuesday, Belvidere Mayor Fred Brereton and various suits from Boone’s public-private planning arm, Growth Dimensions, went to Washington to lobby Congress on the auto industry bailout. Like the bailout or not, one has to wonder where the heck was the Rockford-Winnebago County contingent?

Did the invite not come through? Did you get one and have something better to do? Did you  not think about it? OK, the Boone folks’ trip to Congress is just so much window dressing; there’s about a snowball’s chance in the kitchen that anything those guys said would change one vote. But, darn it, they did it. They made the grand gesture; they showed the flag and made sure we all understood this was about the folks back home. Good for them. Someone in Boone County’s got some smarts.

This is the Rock River Valley, admittedly a moniker the newspaper made up and used so often than everyone else started using it, too. But, made up or not, the Rock River Valley is Boone and Winnebago and a touch of Ogle and Stephenson counties. The Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA for short) is officially Winnebago and Boone. The people who work at the Chrysler plant (and the GM plant right up the road in Cheeseland) live, shop, go to school, have their hearts repaired and generally do most of their business in Rockford and its surrounds. It’s a region, darn it, and as a region we can thrive.

But, we’re going to all go down if the two counties don’t present a united front. And, that D.C. trip needed Rockford and Winnebago County people at the podium. You were conspicuous by your absence.

On the same day that the Register Star’s front page had the Boone folks in D.C. pleading for the auto industry, Rockford folks gave us yet another artist’s watercolor of a downtown mall that’s supposed to be a “cool, hip image.”

Give me a car plant any day.

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2 Comments Add your own

  • 1. Joe Powell  |  December 11th, 2008 at 9:58 pm

    Washington DC is a big place and these congressional hearings are busy. If you have a whole group of mayors going to DC, what is one more face in the crowd? Do you think anybody would notice? Do you think Larry being there would make heads turn or sway any votes for the auto industry bailout? Please.

  • 2. VW, NISSAN, TOYOTA, KIA all creating auto jobs in the USA11  |  December 11th, 2008 at 10:38 pm

    Because Morrissey is not interested in bailing out the UAW. Make a meaningful attempt to fix an industry and I can bet you he would be there. Also, these jobs aren’t going away and entry level wages will remain intact. If you have 20 years entrenched in the Democratic Party UAW, then you shouldn’t have been entrenched in the Dem Party UAW for 20 years.

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