It’s always a mistake to put Lynyrd Skynyrd in the car CD player at lunch time. I get all “Lynyrdy” for the rest of the day. Foot-tapping. Wiggly-Jiggly. In a white girl who cannot dance, it’s actually kind of sad. I put the CD in today to listen to “Call Me The Breeze” (for fairly obvious reasons, my favorite Skynyrd tune – which contains only the world’s greatest Southern Rock piano riff), but wound up turning up “Sweet Home Alabama”.
And the title of my 700th post was right there.
Like Edward Cone of the Cones, JR will be JR. He will never admit how his own behavior – as well as the general puerile journalistic practices of the Greensboro N&R . . . contribute to the very negative perceptions that readers currently have (and is perhaps a not-so-small part of the reason print circulation is falling like a stone).
A lot of people have reached the end/limits of their "terms of readership".
In my case, of course, for all of his high-minded talk about “transparency” and “accountability” in local government (not to mention the importance of public access to public records), it’s been three years since I dived into the GSO blogosphere (all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed), and JR has never seen fit to send an N&R reporter down to Asheboro (an area the N&R supposedly covers) to look at the evidence I have proving PERJURY, CONTEMPT and FRAUD on the part of “non-profit” Randolph Hospital officials.
Of course, if Mr. Robinson actually LOOKED at my evidence, he might have to report the story . . . and apply some heat to Garland Yates' seat.
As it is, without looking, he can decide (from his ivory tower) what is “relevant” to his readers and what is not.
I/my family/my friends (just ordinary folks – many of whom used to buy JR’s newspaper) are not supposed to be angry or disgusted about this hypocrisy . . . or point it out on the Editor’s Blog.
And it’s easier to ban me (for saying the exact same thing that half-a dozen others have said in blogs all over Greensboro) than to admit that he/others in his profession have never, ever played fair.
In case anyone anywhere has any question about the kind of journalistic CRAP I/others have been fighting in Randolph County for well over a decade (CRAP many of us had hoped JR & company – as an “alternative” daily – would help us combat . . . alas instead of a reporter, we got a fiction writer named Ethan Fiensilver), please feel free to click on the link to Asheboro’s Courier Tribune.
As of this morning, as soon as you clicked on the Courier's website for what little local news that is available online, you immediately heard a child’s voice talking about the new, “giant magic camera” at Randolph Hospital. Very cute. I’ll just bet the hospital paid a young-gun marketing consultant some really big money for that one.
I personally prefer the “magic cameras” at Baptist. At the rate things are going, I should get my name on one soon.
I’m quite certain the marketing gurus told Bob and his boys, “You gotta focus on the kids.” Healthcare and kids is a sore point in town. I wonder why.
The Courier doesn’t even try to hide its biases any more. I’ve been told the good-ole-boys running our town think it’s real funny when they pull-off stunts like this. It’s great for a laugh with the guys at the gold course . . . or the bar at the Country Club.
Of course, in David Renfro’s Courier, you will NEVER, EVER hear the voices/stories of children/parents not so happy with the hospital’s services.
Likewise, you will never, ever hear this hospital tell the community that it is sorry for some of the garbage that has gone down in the past. They’re all about moving forward and looking to the future and all that. Keeps some folks out of jail, I guess.
And it would simply not do to send Bob Morrison to prison in the midst of a big campaign to build a local cancer center (shored up with public funds minus a public vote). That might embarrass Randolph’s “cooperative” partner, the Moses Cone (as in Ed Cone) Healthcare System.
Ten years ago, not embarrassing Cone Hospital was a good portion of what firing Dr. Mary Johnson was about. The doctor she rescued worked for a Cone affiliate. Dr. Mary, as a “team player”, was supposed to hang up the phone (on the terrified nurses who called her) . . . or (in the equally unlikely alternative) look the other way and keep her big mouth shut after she cleaned up his mess.
Ten years later, the attitude of GSO blogger-king Edward Cone still plays to that hand. He is offended because I have supposedly cast dispersions on his family name. Never mind what he and his potty-mouthed blogging buds have cast on mine since (believing the BS) and coming to their little "community" for some help.
You see, hurling insult upon injury is the sole prerogative of privileged and the well-named.
And never mind that the hospital that bears the name may deserve the dispersions. It’s called guilt by association. It's no fallacy, folks. You are who you cooperate with.
I could tell converging/Blogger-Mama Sue’s political "hons", John & Elizabeth Edwards, a thing or two about real life in a North Carolina mill town . . . not to mention “the Two Americas”. But they do not care. They never really did. It was all an act.
Of course, smiling/lying “Bob” Morrison is now fronting the Asheboro City Council’s effort to annex Dave’s Mountain. He’s been exceptionally well-paid for his services to Randolph so he doesn’t really care about paying the increased taxes. It’s a drop in the bottomless bucket of publicly-subsidized money to him. And the fact that those tax dollars can so easily be diverted to the hospital for future projects (wink, nod) is gravy.
Can anyone say “conflict of interest”?
Of course, money can only be diverted if this annexation effort does not bankrupt the City of Asheboro. The people I’ve talked to (that know much more about the nuts and bolts of the plan – as well as the contortions city leaders have done to railroad this thing through) tell me it probably will. I, for one, don’t want my Mother (a city resident) additionally burdened or deprived of services she may need as the city pours money into a project that will not pay for itself in 20 or 30 years. And I (as a young professional that “Bob” drove out of town to shore up his own “business”) do not want to see even more good tax dollars thrown after bad.
Getting back to the Courier and “journalism” in Asheboro, does anyone really expect a newspaper that thinks its just fine for its publisher to be featured in the hospital’s ads . . . or fronts a cutsie hospital ad with a mere click to its own website . . . to be in any way OBJECTIVE about the way it covers the hospital?
Does John Robinson?
And if the Editor of the almighty/all-knowing Greensboro News & Record sees this kind of stuff going on (right under his nose), doesn’t he have a responsibility (as a journalist – especially a big, bad blogging one) to point it out . . . and/or to counter it?
As a young physician ten years ago, I recognized my own responsibility (towards “policing my own”) and did not look the other way. I’ve been paying for it ever since. But I sleep well at night.
JR, does your conscience bother you?
And if it doesn’t, WHY NOT?
Because I just don’t get it. How DO you sleep? I mean I really and truly do not understand how you think . . . or how you reason out this drivel you spew . . . or how you sleep.
If that baby ten years ago had been your daughter, you would have expected me to do what I did.
But your argument now (and make no mistake, unless you as a local journalist/blogger-king DO SOMETHING to put a STOP to what has been going on right under your nose, it IS your argument) is that everything that has happened to me since that night is a-okay.
As I rot in this pool of local slime, how can your journalistic conscience not bother you?
3/5 Update: As of late yesterday afternoon, when I clicked on the Courier's website, the cute kid's voice and "giant magic camera" bit were gone. Perhaps someone over at that useless rag is reading this blog.
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