Skeptical of current conventional wisdom

Journalists are taught to be skeptical, so maybe that’s where I get it.

I am always skeptical of those Internet stories that Aunt Martha sends right after she watches Fox News for 12 hours.

And when a politician promises change, I am skeptical of that, too.

“If your mother says she loves you, check it out,” every new generation of reporters is told.

So, in the run-up to the Great Oil and Gas Boom in Tuscarawas, Carroll and Harrison counties, here’s what we’ve been told:

–The water’s going to be contaminated.

–The energy companies are only concerned with selling OUR natural resources to China.

–Trucks are going to run roughshod over the roads.

–Landlords are going to make a fortune by charging oil and gas workers exorbitant rents and therefore forcing our poorer renters into the streets.

–The energy boom will result in a home building boom.

–Hotels will be full all the time, leaving no rooms for tourists.

–Bars will be full of drunken oil and gas workers and cause mayhem in the streets late at night.

–Energy companies will be building many huge facilities to accommodate the energy extracted from the ground and will employ thousands.

I’m not sure what exactly the truth is, but I believe we’ll have to be patient, keep our options open and remember that we are in charge of our destiny.

Ultimately, I hope the oil and gas-drilling boom provides more opportunities for our young people. Already, Kent State-Tuscarawas is preparing curriculum tracks that might help graduates enter the field. And that might help keep some of our best and brightest here.

So, while I’m skeptical, I’m also hopeful for a period of prosperity, the likes of which we haven’t seen in awhile.

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The Carroll County commissioners have contracted with Radius Hospitality Group of Canton to operate the Atwood Lake Resort and Conference Center, which has been closed for the last year and a half.

Radius operates the Holiday Inn in Canton and a number of other hotels or conference centers.

Radius says it plans to renovate the hotel, add an indoor water park and improve the golf course by relocating some holes.

The news story contained no financing information, but one can assume that we’re talking millions of dollars.

I will withhold offering an opinion until the financing details become available. If they don’t become available, then color me skeptical.

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If the developer husband-wife team of Kathy Pietro and Bob Martinelli says it’s going to happen, well, it usually does.

The Pietro-Martinelli team acquired the former Ohio Department of Transportation site on W. High Ave. in New Philadelphia for $750,000 and plans on building restaurants and hotels on its 7.8 acres.

Pietro is the broker/owner of Experts Realty, while Martinelli owns and operates R.E.M. Construction.

The Great Recession has not been kind to people like Pietro and Martinelli, and I’m glad to hear they’ll be involved in redeveloping what has been an awful-looking parcel of land for some time.

Actually, all of W. High is awful looking. Can we fix that? Maybe get rid of all the overhead signs, utilizing environmentally friendly low-profile signs…?

That’s too much to ask, isn’t it?

Hopefully, we’re getting over the lull in retail development, which has been nearly non-existent since the recession hit in 2008. There are still retail properties – some never before occupied – that could use tenants.

And while I’m at it, this area could use a legitimate big city bistro with garage door walls that open into fresh air, with sprawling patios and flat screens overhead and decent food on the menu…

OK, then, how about an (gulp) Olive Garden?

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Media math: Online plus print equals really bad news

Over the last few years, traditional media has been dealt a tough hand because of the Internet and then because of the Great Recession.

Daily newspapers have suffered the most. Advertising is down – scary down – and if you really pay attention to what they’re doing, you can feel the terror in the corporate board room.

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism reported that the state of daily newspapers in 2012 is bleak. Well, we kind of knew that, but the numbers really underscore just how bad it is.

The current strategy is to move resources to the digital side of things, rather than continue to operate as if the print side will come back. You’ll see that strategy played out on corporate websites where the digital initiatives get all the ink and newspaper holdings get little or none.

“If this transformation (to digital) were going well, one would expect the new revenues to get closer each year to replacing ad revenues lost in print,” said Pew. “In 2011, according to Newspaper Association of America statistics, online advertising was up $207 million industry-wide compared to 2010. Print advertising, though, was down $2.1 billion. So the print losses were greater than the digital gains by 10 to 1.”

A couple of things struck me last weekend.

My daughter and her husband, both under age 40, are subscribers to the Cleveland Plain Dealer and during visits to their home I get a chance to wrap my hands around the paper I’ve been reading since I was a kid. In last Saturday’s PD, there seemed to be plenty of automobile dealer advertising, but little else in the form of true revenue streams.

The real estate tabloid inside it was a dozen or so pages. If it was your only source of real estate information, you couldn’t actually peruse the available properties in your community or look for new housing to buy or rent. It forces you to head to another source, which is more than likely to be Trulia, or Realtor.com, or Zillow on the Internet. Does anyone not go to the Internet to buy a home today?

So, what happens to the PD, I thought, when the loyal automobile dealers flee for the greener pastures of the Internet? I’ll answer that: Less revenue, more layoffs and tighter, smaller papers. Keep an eye on those dealers.

Meanwhile, in Columbus, Dispatch Editor Ben Marrison explained to readers in his column that the size of the newspaper will be trimmed in the fall and that focus groups seemed to like the change.

“Each page is about a third shorter,” he said.

He explained in detail how the Dispatch would be better with its redesign.

“Those who loved the size mentioned how much easier it is to hold, how its pages won’t flop onto their breakfast partner’s cereal bowl and how their arms won’t get as tired holding up the paper,” Marrison wrote.

“Those who were concerned about finding less news and information inside quickly realized that it was all there, because we added pages and new sections to compensate for the smaller page size.”

Marrison neglected to mention that the overriding reason to trim length from newspaper pages is to save money because newsprint is a newspaper’s No. 1 expense after salaries and benefits.

But, no, the Dispatch is changing the size of the newspaper so readers’ arms won’t get tired holding it up. Remember that one the next time you hear someone in the daily newspaper business tell you everything is hunky-dory.

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A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned in my commentary that my favorite Cleveland Indians player has been and always will be Rocky Colavito. A few days later I received in the mail a baseball card from an anonymous source who is more than likely a Bargain Hunter reader.

The card features a photo of Colavito making a one-handed catch in front of an outfield wall. “Colavito’s Great Catch Saves Game,” says the headline on the card.

Research reveals the card was issued by Topps in 1959 (No. 462). Similar cards are going for about $10 on eBay, but it’s worth a million bucks to me. Thanks, dear reader, whoever you are.

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'Obamacare' easy target of scorn in doctors' offices

I think my sister’s doctor is blowing smoke.

My 71-year-old Medicare-covered sister needed a certain medical procedure recently that would reveal whether she was on the mend or not.

Her doctor was ready to order the procedure but came back with something like this: “Under Obamacare, I can’t order that procedure in situations like yours.”

So, following her doctor’s lead my sister then informs me that it’s President Barack Obama’s fault that she was denied this particular procedure and asks me to guess the candidate who’s not getting her vote.

Duh.

OK, she wasn’t going to vote for Obama anyway, but that’s beside the point, which is that some doctors are doing their part to paint the president as the grim reaper. In the aftermath of my conversation with my sister, I spent considerable time trying to find evidence that the Affordable Care Act of 2010 actually has had an impact on specific Medicare treatment guidelines. I couldn’t find any.

I related my sister’s story to a doctor I know very well and whose practice includes patients covered by Medicare. He said it sounded as though my sister’s doctor didn’t want to jump through the current Medicare hoops to get the procedure done. Those are hoops that have been in place since – I don’t know – Ronald Reagan?

And therein lies the problem with Medicare.

Current Medicare guidelines are overwhelming and doctors aren’t covering their costs when Medicare reimburses. And the fear is that that problem will only get worse. Given the choice, most doctors and hospitals would choose treating someone with traditional, comprehensive medical insurance coverage over someone covered by Medicare and its supplements.

The Affordable Care Act, which is so wide ranging and has so many unknowns attached to it, scares the heck out of physicians (and other health care providers) because it potentially could further reduce their operating margins.

If you want some credible sources – and I won’t promise you’ll be any smarter after immersing yourself in the details – check out healthcare.gov (the government’s website dedicated to the Affordable Care Act); nejm.org (New England Journal of Medicine; search “Affordable Care Act”); and WebMD (search “Affordable Care Act”).

In light of all this, I hope the nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court do become experts on the law and can consider today’s challenge of caring for the health needs of 300 million people with the founding fathers’ intention of how deeply the federal government should touch our lives.

The Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – is now on trial. We’ll see…

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For what it’s worth, I declare Republican Josh Mandel to be an arrogant twit. Mandel, Ohio’s treasurer, is running against Sherrod Brown, who’s making a bid for re-election as U.S. senator.

Mandel has maintained that Brown is responsible for Ohio losing jobs to China. PolitiFact Ohio found no evidence to support that claim and gave Mandel a “pants on fire” rating.

When asked for examples by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Mandel couldn’t come up with any.

“If that’s the level of specificity you’re looking for, you’re the reporters – you go do the grunt work,” he said. “Any reporter who doesn’t believe Sherrod Brown is responsible for jobs going to China is simply out of touch.”

Mandel has indicated he will continue to make the claim regardless of, well, the truth. And that forces me to honor him with my “arrogant twit” award.

OK, I just came up with this award, but I think it’s a good one and I plan on giving it periodically during this crazy election year. Careful, Newt.

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Got a kid ready to play ball? Don't be an idiot

Every spring I used to take a break from writing an original commentary by re-publishing a column on youth league baseball that I wrote some 20 years ago after my brief stint as a coach.

With a little updating, I could put that piece back in the can in about 20 minutes, far less time than it would take to write something from scratch.

Readers didn’t seem to mind that I was recycling old stuff because every year there was a new set of idiot parents who were trying their best to ruin the game for the kids even though all of those parents had the best of intentions.

This year I offer a totally new version of my youth baseball/softball league rant.

The youth league game has evolved not only from when I was a kid but also from when my kids were kids. At the risk of alienating some of those new parents in the baseball pipeline (here comes the cliché), when I was a kid parents weren’t really involved. In fact, we were lucky if our dads got to see us play one or two games a season.

Here’s how it worked back in the day: A group of pals, taking a break from playing ball, would decide to form a team. The guys would pick a “captain” from the group who then would collect a dollar from each kid who wanted to play on the team.

Team members then would vote on a name chosen from the names of current major league players. Cleveland Indians players were the most popular, and one year I was lucky enough to play on the Rocky Colavitos. Rocky was the best Cleveland Indian ever, at least in my mind.

Anyway, when he got enough money, the captain would hike across the street to the city’s recreation office, plop down the team fee of $15 and find out when the jerseys would be available. (Jersey Distribution Day really was a great day in the neighborhood.)

The league would start after school recessed for the summer and be played – get this – mornings and afternoons at various parks in the city. Kids got to their games by riding their bicycles. How novel is that?

Do you get it? Fathers couldn’t be involved in the process because they were working.

And moms? Well, they were too busy tending to the house to pay much attention. If they did come to the games, they sat quietly in the stands and clapped at inappropriate times because, well, it was the ’50s and ’60s and moms didn’t much pay attention to baseball back then.

Baseball was everything to me. Maybe that was because a fun Saturday was riding a bus with my pals to the Rapid Transit train and then walking a short way to Cleveland Municipal Stadium to catch a day game with the Tribe. Two bucks was all you needed, but you couldn’t be in the doghouse with Mom or Dad because if you were, wrangling money from them was nearly impossible.

The sport so captivated me that I used to dream about finding an abandoned semi-truck trailer full of Reach baseballs, which were the official ball of the American League.

I also coveted the Wilson A2000 baseball glove, which by all standards was the best glove in the world. The price tag, if I remember correctly, was $35 and not within reach of the Farrell family. One of my life’s regrets is that I never owned one. (They are still being made and now cost more than $200.)

Anyway, I’m getting away from the purpose of this commentary, which is to lay into parents who are bent on killing the game for their children. For goodness sake, let them play for the sake of playing baseball (or softball).

Chances are the kids in Dover or New Philadelphia or Sugarcreek or wherever are not headed to the big leagues anytime soon and frankly they aren’t that good and won’t be. Oh, maybe one or two or even three. But that’s about it. So, the odds are that your kid better study.

Seriously. They’re not that good. Sorry to burst your bubble.

And you know who doesn’t care how your 9-year-old did on the diamond last night? Mostly everyone. They’re just not interested, so don’t bore your friends with the intimate details of your star’s Little League game.

Today, the games are played not for the kids but for the parents. Now there are travel teams for kids in coach-pitch leagues – you know, where the score is 25 to 12 after two innings. And you traveled two hours to the game to see that? For goodness sake, get a grip.

Think your 5-year-old wouldn’t be happy playing a game up at the park with an ice cream cone later at Softies?

Oh yeah, ever notice what the losing players do after a close game? They head right to the parent in charge of snacks. Having been a coach, I can testify that snacks will always ease the agony of defeat. They don’t even have to be good snacks, like Snickers. They can be generic potato chips.

I don’t know about all the leagues, but I heard at least one is offering teenagers $25 to umpire youth league games this year.

Think about that. That’s about $10 an hour. Is it because few teens want to umpire games and put up with idiot parents yelling at them about subjective ball/strike calls? Of course that’s the reason.

I have a couple of words about all-star teams. Hate them. Want a real all-star team? Let the kids pick them. Don’t ask the adults/parents to pick the all-stars. Ask the kids. You’ll get kids on those teams who deserve to be on them.

And for goodness sake, don’t openly criticize your kid from the bleachers when he drops the throw from third or forgets to tag a base or strikes out. From my experience, public humiliation never works. I’ll bet it doesn’t work for you, Dad.

Not every kid wants to or needs to play youth league baseball/softball and some of that has something to do with their lack of hand/eye coordination. Please don’t force them. There are plenty of other alternatives.

The best thing you can do for your kids is play catch with them. Hit balls to them. Explain the rich history of the game. But stay out of it otherwise. Leave them with good feelings about their youth, not some forced play-the-game-so-dad-can-be-happy remembrance.

OK, there’s my 2012 version of the rant. Play ball, kids.

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Time to quit the Rush to judgment

Editor's Note: This is the only place you'll be able to read this one -- No. 43. Topic is too hot to handle for my publishing partner, the BH. Tell your friends they can find Dick's column here.

Few readers know that I worked as an orderly during my college years because, well, because I couldn’t land a job at a newspaper and my sister happened to be director of nursing at the hospital that hired me.

Yes, it’s whom you know. But that’s not what this story is about. It’s about Cleveland’s Gary Dee, perhaps the first radio “shock jock,” to whom right-winger Rush Limbaugh owes his career. Dee paved the way.

So, one morning at the hospital, I entered a room to do what nurses and orderlies are so good at doing – waking patients from sleep because, well, that’s what nurses and orderlies do. But in this particular room, the patient was already up, sitting on the side of his bed. He had the radio on. And he was cursing.

“Geez, what are you so upset about?” I asked.

“That darn Gary Dee,” he said (except he didn’t use the word “darn”).

“He’s an idiot!”

I told the patient that he shouldn’t get so worked up because, after all, he was a heart patient and really needed to watch the blood pressure.

“I can’t help it,” he said. “I just hate that guy.”

“Why do you listen to him?” I asked.

“I don’t know. He gets me all fired up.”

When Gary Dee first joined WERE Radio in Cleveland in 1972, he had shocked enough to scare $1 million in advertising away from the station, according to his obituary published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1995.

But after the ratings came out – they skyrocketed for Dee’s show – the money flowed back to the station.

Dee’s rants included, “Get out of here, you yellow-bellied, lily-livered pinko.” The PD called that “a common refrain.”

Blacks were often targets, the PD said.

“You black people are fools,” Dee said on the air. “You are fools to put up with what you have, inferior leadership and all that.”

At one point, while working for another Cleveland station – WHK – Dee proclaimed that Jerry Lewis was skimming 40 percent for personal use from the Muscular Dystrophy telethons. WHK took out advertising to disconnect itself from that statement.

Dee kicked around radio for the next couple of decades, but, at least in some people’s minds, had set the standard for talk radio – say outlandish things, drive ratings and make lots of money.

I’m not sure what happened to the patient addicted to Gary Dee’s show. But I think if he were alive today, he’d probably be listening to Rush Limbaugh and his crazy rants. I know he’d be reading those online comments that debase individuals on a regular basis.

The Plain Dealer, for example, posted an online story the other day on a new anchor hired at Channel 3. The online commentators saw that as an opportunity to attack a half-dozen or so Cleveland TV personalities who didn’t measure up in their simple minds. Hours after those comments were first posted, they were still there.

But back to Limbaugh, who has chased big time advertisers from his syndicated radio talk show with his comments about Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke.

Fluke testified before a congressional committee about the need – as she saw it – for Georgetown, a Catholic institution, to provide female students medical coverage for contraceptives. She told of a friend who had an ovary removed because of the prohibitive cost of birth control pills, which are often prescribed by doctors not for sexual reasons but for medical ones.

It’s a debate we probably ought to have in this country, because it involves the rights of women vs. the rights of churches vs. the power of the government and so on. We should be able to discuss such issues as adults and explore solutions together – as Americans.

Here’s Limbaugh’s take (Sources: Many):

“What does it say about the college coed Susan Fluke (sic), who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex…

“Can you imagine if you’re her parents how proud of Sandra Fluke you would be? Your daughter goes up to a congressional hearing conducted by the Botox-filled Nancy Pelosi and testifies she’s having so much sex she can’t afford her own birth control pills and she agrees that Obama should provide them, or the Pope…”

Limbaugh wasn’t done.

Fluke is “having so much sex, it’s amazing she can still walk,” he cracked.

And then, Limbaugh offered this: “So, Ms. Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it, and I’ll tell you what it is. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”

I think the Republic will be far better off when we dismiss the “shock jocks,” the cheapshot TV pundits and the hateful online commentators from the discussion. Hopefully, Limbaugh will be the first to get on the train out of town. I hope the others follow him. Rest in peace, Gary Dee.

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