WHQR NewsRoom: The Front Porch
WHQR NewsRoom: The Front Porch

The Front Porch: Primary Elections & Stinky Water
Catherine Welch and the StarNews' Si Cantwell sit on the Front Porch and chew the fat on local stories and their media coverage.
The Front Porch: Meetings, Gaming & Beach Kites
Catherine Welch and the StarNews' Si Cantwell sit on the Front Porch and chew the fat on local stories and their media coverage.
The Front Porch: The Battleship & Staff Changes
Catherine Welch and the StarNews' Si Cantwell sit on the Front Porch and chew the fat on local stories and their media coverage.
Front Porch: Busting Willie & Delivery Hold Ups
Catherine Welch and the StarNews' Si Cantwell sit on the Front Porch and chew the fat on local stories and their media coverage.
Front Porch: What's Downtown?
Catherine Welch and the StarNews' Si Cantwell sit on the Front Porch and chew the fat on local stories and their media coverage.
Front Porch: How Long To Return Calls
Catherine Welch and the StarNews' Si Cantwell sit on the Front Porch and chew the fat on local stories and their media coverage.
The Front Porch: ABC & RC Soles
WHQR's Catherine Welch and StarNews' Si Cantwell sit down and chew the fat on local news and how it was made.
Front Porch: We're Back!
Catherine Welch and the StarNews' Si Cantwell sit on the Front Porch and chew the fat on local stories and their media coverage.
Front Porch: Election Roundup
Catherine Welch and the StarNews' Si Cantwell sit on the Front Porch and chew the fat on local stories and their media coverage.
Front Porch: Wilmington City Candidates
Catherine Welch and the StarNews' Si Cantwell sit on the Front Porch and chew the fat on local stories and their media coverage.
Front Porch: Housing Authority & Middle Schools
Catherine Welch and the StarNews' Si Cantwell sit on the Front Porch and chew the fat on local stories and their media coverage.
Front Porch: Film Incentives & D'town Bar Scene
Catherine Welch and the StarNews' Si Cantwell sit on the Front Porch and chew the fat on local stories and their media coverage.
Front Porch: This, That & The Third
Catherine Welch and the StarNews' Si Cantwell sit on the Front Porch and chew the fat on local stories and their media coverage.
Front Porch: Running for Office, Running From Office
Catherine Welch and the StarNews' Si Cantwell sit on the Front Porch and chew the fat on local stories and their media coverage.
The Front Porch: Wilmington Emails - Private
Catherine Welch and the StarNews' Si Cantwell sit on the Front Porch and chew the fat on local stories and their media coverage.
Front Porch: Interns & Gov Sanford (unrelated subjects)
Catherine Welch and the StarNews' Si Cantwell sit on the Front Porch and chew the fat on local stories and their media coverage.
Front Porch: Twitterism & G'field Lake Park
Catherine Welch and the StarNews' Si Cantwell sit on the Front Porch and chew the fat on local stories and their media coverage.
Front Porch: Jon & Kate +8
Catherine Welch and the StarNews' Si Cantwell sit on the Front Porch and chew the fat on local stories and their media coverage.
The Front Porch: Kris Kristofferson
Catherine Welch and the StarNews' Si Cantwell sit on the Front Porch and chew the fat on local stories and their media coverage.
Front Porch: Bills That Ban & Remembering Cmdr Springle
Catherine Welch and the StarNews' Si Cantwell sit on the Front Porch and chew the fat on local stories and their media coverage.

Keep an eye on this page — it syndicates new Front Porch episodes as they appear here. You can use your iPod or MP3 player to syndicate the episodes yourself from this RSS URL.

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A minor case in point: The UNCW men’s soccer team just suspended its star player for the season. Here’s how the S-N put it:

“Head coach Aidan Heaney announced Monday the program has suspended forward Devan Carroll for the duration of the 2009 season.The press release noted Carroll, a senior, had violated team rules. He was the Colonial Athletic Association Player of the Year in 2008, and wrapped up the season with nine goals and 20 points. So going forward, the question becomes, who will take over the scoring load?”

No, going forward most readers would like to know what Carroll did to warrant such a draconian punishment (an earlier report had him booted from school as well). Let’s not rely on a press release but instead ask the right people the right questions. The reporter spoke to the coach, who tip-toed around the issue. OK, so pry further. Talk to an assistant, a player or two, a school official. This is what journalism is all about, and it’s why the S-N is so exasperating.

When I asked the paper’s semi-new myreporter.com if there was any truth to the rumor that a new YMCA was coming to Monkey Junction, a very nice woman got back to me a few weeks later saying she emailed and called the Y but never got a response. Sheesh.

The Star-News does many things well, but getting answers to tough (and not so tough) questions isn’t one of them.

As a local software developer I completely reject the idea, put forth by Bob Warwick and others, that allowing the Titan Cement company to pollute the air and water, drain our aquifer, manipulate our legislative process, mislead our citizenry and then ship its profits out of the country positions us for a better economic future or represents in some general way a “pro-business” view. I am enthusiastically pro-business and I can’t think of anything more harmful to our actual prosperity than this.

I am one of literally thousands of “information economy” workers who live and work here in home offices and small offices, who’ve settled in the area for its eclectic charm, for its genuinely friendly, engaged people, for its outdoor activities, and above all for the area’s natural beauty.

Even if the estimate of 160 jobs that Titan holds up weren’t debunked so easily, as it has been by UNCW’s Craig Galbraith and others, the number represents a trivial fraction of the losses the industry would bring long term to high-tech jobs, to a large local financial and service economy, to outdoor livelihoods going back generations, and especially to emerging lower impact, higher tech opportunities. We are building these opportunities right now. “Cementing” our role forever as a heavy industrial corridor for the Southeast is nuts environmentally, and it’s nuts economically.
Ian Oeschger
Wilmington

The counterpoint comes from Scott Satterfield, who runs the “Committee of 100″ that was instrumental in attracting Titan Cement to the area in a back-room deal that started three years ago, and has involved the county commissioners and at least 4.2 million dollars in tax incentives to the giant cement company.

Satterfield says that in addition to dirt cheap oil prices, the fundamentals of this economy are strong because the Committee has had such as flurry of inquiries recently. To Satterfield and presumably to the reporter, a bright future for the region is axiomatic with a portfolio of interested clients of the Committee of 100, which is also known as Wilmington Industrial Development (wilmingtonindustry.com). What’s not discussed, and what seems worth talking about to me, is whether unflagging interest in industrial development of the region is really a good sign for this area. My sense is that industrial development may be rather more scavenger-like than beneficial: When an area struggles to prosper with white collar jobs, retail and services, and other work that capitalizes upon that area as a unique place, with an educated and innovative workforce, the heavy industries draw up close to the fire ring looking for scraps.

Is industrial development, in the long term, not inversely related to real prosperity for a region? Is industrial development not a kind of lowest common denominator, a last ditch effort?

Doubtless Satterfield and his Wilmington Industry have done a hundred good things for the area, macro-economically speaking. This area needs jobs; it needs industry. But the Titan application and the rosy prognostications of Satterfield in this article exemplify what’s wrong with the Committee of 100, and that is that, in their closed-door dealings, they operate on assumptions we don’t share, or get to ratify.

Do we want more industry? Do we need it? Are there alternatives to heavy industry? What are the trade-offs?
These questions should be put instead to the “Committee of 100,000″ that is New Hanover County and its neighbors.

That’s the focus of a piece on the Editor & Publisher website, which details how AP’s new rate structure has many publishers looking elsewhere for sources of news. The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., for example, published its entire Sept. 10 issue “without AP, using a combination of local staff, non-AP news services, and PA Sports Ticker, a growing sports outlet that has already signed on with New York’s Daily News to provide sports coverage.”

Other publications are using Politico, the political website that recently launched a content-sharing arrangement with several newspapers. Additional sources include McClatchy-Tribune, Hearst, and the Star-News’s other favorite, The New York Times News Service.

It’s no secret that the demise of the daily newspaper is occurring before our eyes. I wonder what the Star-News has up its sleeve to stave off not only irrelevancy but extinction. For starters, its website — a certain link to the future — needs drastic improvement.

You can view the entire E&P story here:

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003872622

“Are you someone who uses the same purse all the time or are you always switching them out?” This is followed by “Describe your favorite purse” and “How did you decide what to wear on Leno and Letterman?”

Tift, Tift — you deserve better than this. Exclamation Point!

Everyone diagnosed with cancer deserves to experience the disease in his or her own way. Some choose to be upbeat, refusing even to entertain the possibility of negative outcomes. They may go so far as to describe cancer as a positive change, one that should be embraced and for which we might feel a sort of gratitude.

Many people find comfort in such sentiments, but I can’t help but be impatient with them…

Stars News: There’s nothing good about cancer