Featured in the March 29, 2010 Asheville Citizen-Times

So my public affairs journalism class is helping out John Boyle, a writer with the Asheville Citizen-Times, with his "Answer Man" column that he runs every Monday.

Essentially, people write in to Boyle with questions about things in Asheville that they've always wondered about and he answers them. His column is pretty popular and so he enlisted the help of my class. We get some of the Answer Man questions and we can choose to go out and find who to talk to and answer the questions. If we do a good enough job answering them, we get our answers printed in the Citizen-Times.

Two of my answers were printed in Monday's edition.

Since I'm pretty sure I can't legally copy and paste my snippets, I will include the link to the story (which will be dead in 7 days, I think) and the original, unedited, articles that I sent in from which the printed answers were taken.

http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2010303290020

I will include the question asked by the reader and then the article I wrote for my class...

Question:
How much do all those commercials on WLOS cost the Humane Society? Or are they public service announcements? There’s at least one, often more, per newscast.

For WLOS news viewers, the sound of a woman’s soft singing voice and the images of abused cats and dogs are a popular sight and sound over the commercial breaks.
The Humane Society of the United States’ ad is shown sometimes two or three times during a particular newscast on ABC’s affiliate station in Asheville.
This has led some to wonder if these advertisements are considered public service announcements and perhaps aired for free by WLOS or if these ads are paid for by the HSUS, and if so, how much it costs to air them so often.
The answer, according to Courtney Youngblood, the local sales manager at WLOS, is quite simple.
“They are paid advertisements,” she said.
Youngblood wasn’t willing to divulge the cost of those particular ads, or any other commercial advertisements because they’re considered private accounts.
What she would say is that the cost of ads on WLOS depend on a few factors, the biggest of which is the audience size, other than that, commercial advertisements work much like print ads.
“(They work) just like anything else,” she said. “The rates are pretty much (congruous) with the eyeballs. The larger the audience, the larger the rate.”
Jack Connors, general manager at WLOS, concurred with what Youngblood said, but went on to give a little more insight into the process.
“It is almost always a negotiation,” he said. “There is a rate card, but it’s almost always a negotiation depending on how many other people want to be on (during) that particular program.”
Asked to give a basic rate for a given scenario (Wednesday night during the evening news), all Connors would say is that it depends on various factors.
“It varies on what quarter it is, on whether it’s early in the month or late in the month, early in the week or late in the week. It varies just based on demand.”
While it’s hard to get an idea of how much an advertisement spot costs on WLOS, the HSUS did provide some helpful information on how much they spent on advertising.
According to a spokeswoman at the Humane Society of the United States in Washington, D.C., approximately 22 percent of the HSUS expenditures went to marketing and advertising in 2008, the last year for which statistics are available.
With $125 million in expenses, 22 percent is equivalent to $27.5 million and from that number, it’s anyone’s guess as to how much each advertisement costs in each individual market.
Although the HSUS is a nonprofit organization, that doesn’t necessarily mean that their advertisements are considered to be public service announcements, at least not when it comes to WLOS.
“We determine what is public service. It certainly isn’t anything from a business, (it would be like) something for Eblen Charities,” Connors said.
With that cleared up, all that can really be gleaned from this information is that either the HSUS likes to bid a lot of money to run commercial spots in Asheville, an area that is very animal-friendly and thus potentially more financially supportive, or the spots they’re running their ads in haven’t been in high demand on WLOS’s newscasts. It could also be a combination of the two, which might be more likely.

While both ran in Monday's edition, the above answer was from about two weeks ago. This next one I just answered this past Wednesday...

Question:
An article in the Saturday, March 6, 2010 Asheville Citizen-Times stated
that vehicle owners might be asked to chip in $7 to $27 annually to
help offset costs for Asheville Transit system. I recall that back in
the mid 1960s vehicle owners who resided in the city had to buy a city
tag to help pay for buying new buses. They then changed to buying a
city sticker, and eventually they did away with the sticker and just
charged you this "special" tax on your property tax for your vehicle.
As far as I know they are still charging it on our property taxes even
though those buses are now long gone. Now they want MORE??!!! Isn't
that double taxation? Why do only city residents have to pay this tax
when they run the buses out to the far ends of the county?

With tax day around the corner, people are wondering about a new tax for vehicle owners in the city of Asheville. Since there is already a vehicle tax in place, this has lead some to wonder if they’re being taxed twice for the same thing.
According to Ken Putnam, the City of Asheville transportation department director, the answer, more or less, is yes.
“(For) a car that is registered in the city of Asheville, they pay $10 per year, $5 of it goes to the general fund for the city of Asheville and $5 of it goes to transit,” he said.
For long-time residents of Asheville, they might remember a $5 vehicle tag required by the city back in the 1960s that was used for the up-and-coming bus service.
Eventually, the city did away with parking tags and stickers and just added a $5 vehicle property tax to city residents whose cars were registered in Asheville.
That old $5 tax is now the $10 vehicle tax that has been in place for a while here in Asheville.
As for the new tax, it’s actually not that new, it does really exist and there’s not much that anyone or the city of Asheville can do about it.
“Now, the $7 one, that is something that the North Carolina Legislature put into action about a year ago,” Putnam said. “That allows the towns and the counties across the state to charge up to $7 per vehicle for every vehicle registered in their county. If they do that, all of the money has to be used for transit purposes.”
The alternative to the $7 tax is a sales tax hike, he said.
“Now there’s another part of that law that says they can also take a referendum to the people in an election year and the people can vote if they want their sales tax to go up a quarter of a percent and if they say yes, all of that money would have to go for transit,” he said.
As it stands right now, there are approximately 300,000 registered vehicles in Buncombe County, 60,000 of which are registered in the city of Asheville. That means that the Asheville Transit system is bringing in around $300,000 per year due to vehicle taxes along with $300,000 for a general fund.
“The $5 (that) goes to transit helps the transit operation, it’s being used to help operate the system on a daily basis,” Putnam said.
Using the same 60,000-vehicle figure, that would mean that the city of Asheville can bring in an extra approximately $420,000 from the $7 tax. That tax money, though, is for Buncombe County and that money goes to transit operations. Unlike the $10 city tax, all $7 goes to transit purposes for the county.

So there you have it. I've had a pretty good last two weeks. My last article about the tea party generated 7,000 more hits than any other article in the history of The Blue Banner web site and it also generated nearly 150 comments. Now this week two of my pieces are in the local paper. Not too shabby.

My next article should be up on Wednesday. It's about Glenn Beck, more or less, so that should (hopefully) generate some controversy as well.

Hopefully someone other than myself actually reads any of this...

Tea Party protesters cross line on Capitol Hill

Hopefully now that the debate over health care reform is winding down, some small semblance of respect and civility can return to the American political process.

The chances of that happening completely are slim, but the least we can hope for is a dissolving of the racist imagery and hurtful and inappropriate words the Tea Party used in the anti-government/anti-health care protests last summer will cease to exist.

While it is great that Americans have the right to free speech, there are times when the idea of free speech gets distorted into something it is not.

Last Saturday’s protests on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on the eve of the health care vote in the U.S. House exemplify this distortion vividly.

So long as those anti-health care protestors had the correct permits to protest outside the Capitol, which they seemingly did, they had every right to be there and to let their voices be heard.

What was not part of the permit they received from the city was the right to spit on members of Congress, yell racial epithets at them, call them “faggots” or physically push them as they passed by the protestors.

According to accounts from various news organizations, Capitol Hill staffers and members of Congress, all of those things happened.

On their own, those actions are despicable and unacceptable, but when one takes into consideration that Republican members of the U.S. House were actually there at the protests makings speeches, it really reaches another level of absurdity.

As if that were not enough, not a single Republican there (or not there) has yet to come out and apologize or denounce the behavior of their supporters.

The least they could do is make a private apology to Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a civil rights pioneer and a man who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. Congressman Lewis was spit upon and called the N-word numerous times as he passed by the Tea Party protestors on Saturday afternoon.

So far, there is no word of a private apology.

The actions of the anti-health care protestors were just plain unacceptable.

The fact that in the year 2010 these kinds of things still happen just goes to show how little many Americans have learned from the past and how far we still have to go.

After Obama’s election, television pundits across the land started to talk about how America is now some sort of post-racial, colorblind country and just how incredible it is that a black man could be elected president.

Unfortunately, that whole “post-racial America” thing was a bunch of baloney and was never really the case.

Nothing has made this clearer than the actions of the Tea Party protestors over the past eight months or so.

Calling your president a socialist, fascist, communist, anti-American, Muslim-terrorist and Kenyan-Nazi is really nothing of which to be proud. Bringing guns to protests, yelling racial and homosexual slurs at members of Congress, and then spitting on and pushing our elected officials is nothing to go around celebrating about either.

In some parts of the media and in certain political circles, these protesters continue to be touted as some sort of “freedom-loving patriots.”

This needs to stop and they need to be called what they really are: ignorant, pathetic and embarrassing.

There is simply no place for these kinds of actions and behaviors in a civilized society.

Even in protests, a line needs to be drawn, and in the case of these most recent anti-health care reform protests, that line has been crossed and this nation is worse off for it.
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This one has received a lot of attention and a lot of nasty comments on The Blue Banner's page. Not entirely surprising. As they say, it's not journalism if somebody's not pissed off. Or at least that's what they say about editorials.

Democratic Underground also linked to my article on their message board. Some users on Twitter also tweeted links to my article, though I don't even know who any of those people are, nor do I think they were Tweeting it because they were happy about it. But still, this is all pretty cool.

http://www.thebluebanner.net/tea-party-protesters-cross-line-on-capitol-hill-1.1278938

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8007805

Students should appreciate improved dining hall

Many members of The Blue Banner staff have been at UNC Asheville since 2006, which means we have seen many changes across the campus, including the quality of the food served in the dining hall.

In just three and a half years, the food at the dining hall has gone from truly atrocious to pretty delicious.

It might not be gourmet, but it definitely meets the level of the restaurants most students can actually afford to go to in Asheville.

For those students who may be new at UNCA, and think the food at the cafeteria is not too good, just imagine how bad the upperclassmen had it. It was bad.

There used to be a time when a good meal at the cafeteria meant that there were no bugs (alive or dead) in the chicken gyros, the salad was only slightly soggy and just beginning to brown, the pizza was at room temperature and only one or two hairs wound up in the sandwiches made at the sandwich station.

No longer is that the standard for a good meal in the dining hall.

Now, much of the food is hot and fresh, the salad bar is clean and the vegetables are crisp. Bugs are no longer a side dish and there are many more options for students who are vegetarian, vegan or gluten intolerant.

It is really incredible to look back on how awful the food used to be in comparison to how it is today.

That is not to say there are not some off days at the dining hall, but whereas every day used to be an off day, they are no longer the norm.

Unfortunately, for those who work at dining services, it is not the most glamorous job nor is it one which attracts frequent compliments.

That does not mean dining services employees do not deserve credit for their hard work. They certainly do.

Dining services did what many companies often fail to do, which is consider constructive criticism from customers and actively try to improve their product or service.

For years now, students have been encouraged to make suggestions to those at dining services about how to make their meals and dining hall experience a more positive one. The staff actually listened and made changes.

It is hard to believe the dining hall now is the same one that was at UNCA back in 2006. It has changed so drastically and so much for the better. Those at dining services deserve a lot of overdue credit.

It is pretty rare that anyone actually sends compliments to the chef or the staff anymore, but in this case, UNCA’s dining services deserve to be praised for their efforts.

They have actually listened to the students and have since delivered a tasty, healthy and genuinely pleasant experience. So kudos to them and keep it up.

http://www.thebluebanner.net/students-should-appreciate-improved-dining-hall-1.1270059

Low prices do not legitimize Wal-Mart expansion

In the next few months, Wal-Mart will reopen their Hendersonville Road location as a larger version of the old store, which will bring the total number of Wal-Mart Supercenters in Buncombe County to four.

Wal-Mart’s South Asheville location has been closed since Oct. 2008 and when it reopens it will be around 115,000 square feet, or about half the size of the newest Wal-Mart that opened in Weaverville.

Some are dubbing it a “mini-supercenter,” but whatever you want to call it, it’s just too much.

There are already three Wal-Mart Supercenters in Buncombe County (East Asheville off Tunnel Road, Airport Road in Arden and the newest one just outside downtown Weaverville) and reopening an old store as a new Wal-Mart Supercenter is just overkill.

The Airport Road location is only 4.5 miles, or approximately a six-minute drive, from the Hendersonville Road store. Less than five miles away from the Wal-Mart Supercenter is another Wal-Mart Supercenter. Maybe this would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic and sad.

Before Wal-Mart became such a popular and widespread business, there used to be small hardware stores, corner markets, toyshops and garden supply stores all run by regular people and not a huge corporation.

Wal-Mart came in and within a couple of years, many of these family run businesses had to shut down because they couldn’t compete with the growing behemoth and their low prices.

There are plenty of Wal-Mart shoppers who probably weren’t even alive to experience what mom and pop stores were like. There are some people who don’t know any better than Wal-Mart or Target or any other big box store. To these people, it’s normal to shop at a huge, dimly lit warehouse-type store where one can buy anything from tires to celery.

Wal-Mart is a corporation that prides itself on its low prices. Now there’s nothing wrong with low prices, necessarily, but the way that Wal-Mart provides consumers with these low prices is the problem.

Wal-Mart uses globalization to its advantage and to the American workers’ disadvantage. Jobs that used to make up the fabric of America have been shipped overseas (and this is nothing new) and they’re not being replaced.

Wal-Mart gets many of their items, such as clothing, electronics and toys, for pennies from foreign sweatshops, which enables them to charge such low prices. What’s so ironic about it all is that the steelworker or textile worker who doesn’t have a job because a 14-year-old Chinese girl is now doing it for 75 cents per day, is then more or less forced to shop at Wal-Mart and buy these products so that they can maybe afford to feed and clothe their family.

Maybe the irony would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic and sad.

What also helps Wal-Mart keep their prices down is the fact that they are one of the most fiercely anti-union corporations on the face of the earth. There are numerous instances across the country of people being fired for trying to unionize their department at various Wal-Mart stores.

It certainly keeps prices down when your workers have no one to fight for their right to good pay and benefits.

This newest Wal-Mart hasn’t caused much, if any, discontent in Asheville like big box stores usually do, but that’s more than likely because it’s being built on the site of an old Wal-Mart and doesn’t require the destruction of more land to build it.

Despite this new Wal-Mart Supercenter that is set to open in the next few months, there are still talks of opening even more and even bigger Wal-Mart’s in West Asheville and other parts of town. Whether or not these plans come to fruition, it’s time for people to truly start asking themselves what the cost of these low prices are. Is saving 13 cents on a box of spaghetti really worth contributing to the anti-worker, un-American corporation known as Walmart?

http://www.thebluebanner.net/low-prices-do-not-legitimize-wal-mart-expansion-1.1220407
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I really, truly, absolutely hate this article. I mean what I wrote, but I hated having to write it. It's also not very good. So be it.