Media
I guess this story continues our on-going documentation of the lazyness of professional journalists. You have to wonder about NBC 17 when they decided to do a story about blogs without talking to anyone but Todd Melet and Henry Copeland. They must have picked up on Todd's spokesperson status from his WCHL editorial calling 2004 "The year of the Blog" a few weeks ago.
Here is how NBC 17 introduced their story: "If you are so inclined, you can snoop inside someone's online diary... It's also an opportunity for local businesses to make more money." That pretty much sums up their story. Yep, voyeurism and capitalism, that's blogging.
I say "part II", because readers should be aware that Mark Marcoplos was for many years a columnist for the Chapel Hill Herald and was dropped (fired?) for being too politically active (as I understand it).
On December 27, the Herald editorialized: consider the example of Mark marcoplos, longtime spokesman for the Orange County Greens and the chairman of the Orange Water and Sewer Authority. In recent weeks, marcoplos has used a variety of forums to argue that compulsory schooling at the K-12 level is little more than a day care system, part of a capitalist ploy to depress wages. That's right. "If children weren't forced to go to school, then both parents couldn't take jobs outside the home and there would be great pressure to pay people more," he wrote in one newspaper column. I recommend reading the whole editorial to get the context.
Mark has responded to this editorial on orangepolitics and with his own op-ed
Apart from the issues of education raised and covered here on another thread, this spat raises serious questions of the mis-use and abuse of public figures by the press.
With permission of the Daily Tarheel, we are reprinting a collection of viewpoints they published yesterday about Carolina North. The final essay was by me, and I am including my original, undedited version. The collection also included am editorial cartoon featuring a statue of "Silent Cam."
Carolina North -Elliott Dube, Editorial Page Editor
Another stage has begun in the long history of relations between UNC and the two towns that co-exist with the University. At the center of the action is the Horace Williams tract, a significant portion of which has been earmarked as the foundation for Carolina North: UNC's future satellite campus. From a University standpoint, Carolina North represents progress. It is a giant, 240-acre symbol of UNC's drive to expand its academic...
Today's Chapel Hill Herald has a story about Cam paying his taxes. Actually, the Chapel Hill News covered it too in a cursory headline story. But halfway through the Herald article, we read this paragraph:
Some political activists, unaware that Hill had settled up his tax bill, said that talk has been brewing about a possible recall of Hill, once he takes office. And at least one resident has called the Orange County Board of Elections in recent days and asked, in general, about the local recall procedure.
What "polticial activists?" Someone we should listen to? Why no names? The entire rest of the article is dedicated to this so-called issue about a recall. I'll say again: Cam made a mistake. But unnamed "activists" complaining about people they don't like... that's not news.
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