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.

Archive for April, 2009

HOW much for nCENTER?

1 comment April 2nd, 2009

Let me be generous. Some good people with good hearts wanted to do a good thing, so they created a public-private partnership and built a place for teenagers to hang out. Thus was born the nCENTER, a collaborative project among the city, private businesses and the Salvation Army.

The nCENTER opened in June 2008, at 220 S. Madison St., just up the street from the News Tower and across from the school district offices.

That’s the generous part. Now, for the “what were you thinking” part. The Register Star reported this week that the nCENTER is a couple of “oh, nos” away from shutting down. In the same story, these were the jaw-dropping numbers:

* The Salvation Army is losing $7,000 a week in payroll. That’s $364,000 annually. I don’t know if it includes benefits, or if benefits are extra.

* It cost about $1.2 million to retrofit the Salvation Army facilities into a teen place to hang. Granted $700-$800,000 was “in-kind” construction and such, but, that still leaves almost half a million in hard cash.

All for (being generous again) 60 teens a night and 125 in the summer — so says the Salvation Army’s business administrator.

That’s $26,066.666 per teen. Or, being generous, it’s $12,512 per teen. Either way, the nCENTER is good-hearted and wrong-headed. It’s time to cut the losses and close it down. The Salvation Army can get back to its core business, and the money that would be spent on nCENTER can be (assuming there is any to be had) disbursed to programs already meeting the same needs — like the YMCA and YWCA.

Lessons we ought to learn from this: Teens always have and always will complain about not having someplace to go and something to do. Teens never have and never will think it’s “cool” to go to a place adults thought up, no matter how good the intentions. Focusing on core mission is best. Let those whose core mission is taking care of teenagers do it; support them; don’t compete.

And, last lesson learned: You need good hearts and good heads at the same table at the same time.

“Less than expected”

Add comment April 1st, 2009

Whodathunkit? That we’d be joyous to read sentences like this one: “Construction spending falls, manufacturing sector shrinks again, but both less than expected.”

Yeehaw as my Mountaineer family would cheer. As the first quarter 2009 comes to an inglorious and painful end, we’re all casting about for any glimmer that we’ve hit bottom. We know the bottom has to happen, and if it’s now, then, well, yeehaw.

Obviously, we’re not shed of this dollars and nonsense year, and 2009 will be a challenge right through its last gasps in December. I for one am hanging my hat on the idea that the dark stuff I’m seeing every time I look down is the bottom. And, if I can land with a full-body splat and roll, rather than head first, well, then, yeehaw.

The Associated Press captures this sense of “well, maybe, might be time to yeehaw” in its story on the latest performance indicators.

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