Book Review: WHEN TRUTH MATTERED

When Truth Mattered: The Kent State Shootings 50 Years Later

by Robert Giles

Traverse City, MI: Mission Point Press, 2020

Paper, 353pp, $18.95

Kent State seems like such an ordinary place … until you try to reckon with its meaning as a battlefield of the Vietnam War. 

…

The students were defenseless. Still, even against the advancing soldiers, they believed they were safe to speak out on their campus. They were exercising three of the basic freedoms protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: freedom of speech, the right to peaceably assemble, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. 

- Robert Giles, When Truth Mattered

Passages above are taken from the first chapter of Robert Giles’s book. The subject of his book, however, is not about the shootings per se but about the way the Akron Beacon Herald covered the events at the time. Giles was then managing editor, the paper was part of the Knight chain, and Giles had responsibilities all the greater that spring because the executive editor and publisher was out of the country. 

What does it take to get a story “right”? To cover truth from all important and relevant perspectives? As second-in-command thrust into #1 position by his superior’s temporary absence, Giles felt his responsibility for the newsroom keenly. “The proverbial buck,” he writes, “would stop with me.”

Here and now in the year 2020, with cries of “Fake news!” from many different quarters (including our own White House), with foreign and domestic “bots” masquerading as American individuals at the grass roots and fomenting discord among us, the questions posed and answered in this account of one particular news story half a century ago provide perspective to a contemporary national conversation that could not be more vital to our country’s future.

Campus demonstrations were nothing new in 1970. The year 1968 had brought demonstrators and university administrations into conflict across the U.S., with protestors agitating against the draft and against the Vietnam War and demanding more socially relevant courses. Both Students for a Democratic Society and the Black United Students had demonstrated at Kent State in 1968. Fifty-eight students were arrested in 1969, SDS subsequently banned from campus.

Campus demonstrations were not new to the Beacon Journal, either. Because Kent was an Akron suburb and the campus only 12 miles from the BJ offices, the paper had reported campus unrest carefully and in detail in 1968 and 1969. Moreover, the paper’s president and editor, John S. Knight, had been following developments in Vietnam back as far as the French occupation. (Many believed, Giles tells us, that Knight’s 1968 Pulitzer was “a lifetime award for his perceptive and forceful commentary on Vietnam.”) When President Richard Nixon announced on nationwide television that he had sent combat troops into Cambodia, not only was the “smoldering center of protest” at Kent State primed to erupt, but the Beacon Journal was well situated to cover student reaction.

Wednesday, April 29, 1970. Secret infiltration of Cambodia ordered by President Nixon began.

Thursday, April 30. Nixon announced the Cambodia infiltration and rationale to Americans on national television.

Friday, May 1. Students assembled on campus to protest the invasion of Cambodia. Some went on a destructive rampage through downtown Kent.

Saturday, May 2. Kent mayor announced a state of emergency, with curfew from dusk to dawn, and a batallion of National Guard was ordered to the campus. During the night protestors set fire the ROTC building.

Sunday, May 3. Ohio governor James A. Rhodes arrived and took charge of the university, determined to prevent a student rally scheduled for Monday. The governor’s more inflammatory remarks, calling the students “worse than brownshirts” [Nazi storm troopers], appeared only on page 2 of the Sunday paper.

Monday, May 4. It was unclear whether the student rally scheduled for noon would take place. Kent State journalism student and part-time weekend Beacon Journal reporter Jeff Sallot, on campus by 11 a.m. to report on the situation and thinking daylight would keep things calm, expected a peaceful rally. Events proved otherwise.

When Truth Mattered is about journalists putting together a particular story, but for that very reason it must also be a story about the events. Jeff Sallot, with his dual role of student and reporter, and because he was on campus when events unfolded, with an open line to the newsroom 12 miles away, was crucial to the communication of facts to managing editor Bob Giles. Photographer Paul Tople, another student and part-time Beacon Journal staffer, was also where he needed to be. Giles writes of the “potentially combustible tableau” Sallot witnessed with these short, poignant sentences: 

The Guardsmen were clearly outnumbered. The students were entirely outgunned. 

The bloody tragedy unfolded quickly – within a mere 13 seconds, 61 shots were fired, four students killed, and 11 others wounded – but the newsroom had to get the story straight before going to press. Truth, accuracy, facts. Names and numbers. 

United Press International (UPI) first reported two dead Guardsmen. Associated Press (AP) was reporting four dead students. Which was it? Should the Beacon Journal go with UPI or take the word of their own student staffer who had been on the scene, Jeff Sallot, who believed there were four students killed? They went with Jeff. He was there. Other newspapers and radio stations went with the erroneous UPI report and had to correct their stories later. The Beacon Journal was also first to list names of those killed and injured. 

The technology of newspaper work was different 50 years ago, with reporters admonished never to leave the office without a “pocket full of dimes” for pay phones. Only the telephone company had mobile “car phones.” (Thanks to secretary Margaret Brown, secretary in the KSU School of Journalism, Sallot had the only open telephone line out from the campus during the critical time period.) Back in the newsroom, writers banged away daily on typewriters, not computer keyboards, and a serious city newspaper published several editions in a single day, which offered an opportunity to amplify and correct earlier reports but was a far cry from today’s minute-by-minute online publishing. 

Giles calls the daily newspaper of the Sixties a “ponderous” institution, one he and editor Pat Englehart “were pushing … to be nimble enough to do what we wanted it to do,” i.e., to dig out and put together the complete story of what had happened and how and why. Former reporting on the Vietnam War and Kent State University helped, but it was imperative that Beacon Journal reporters ask questions of anyone who could shed light on the tragedy. Questions, questions, and more questions. Interviewing Guardsmen who were on the firing line was of paramount importance. 

Also crucially important, Giles realized, as the story continued to unfold following the shootings, was acknowledgment of team effort in reporting. He cites one time he authorized a single byline, i.e., one name only given credit for a day’s story, and writes candidly that his decision for the single byline was a poor judgment call. He did not repeat his mistake.

Giles devotes an entire chapter to photographic evidence, images that captured the truth moment by moment. We are more skeptical today, aware of how digital images can be manipulated. Fifty years ago exposed film was processed in a darkroom and provided to the newsroom as quickly as possible, and there was no arguing with what the images showed. “The camera did not lie.” But the best images came from student photographers, and one of the best was taken by the photographer to a newspaper other than the Beacon Journal, as a result of the BJ print lab having lost some of his earlier work. Errors can be costly in journalism in more ways than one.

In the weeks following the tragedy, as theories, speculations, brickbats, and calls for investigations circulated throughout the public, the media, and every level of government, the Beacon Journal worked tirelessly to stay on top of it all. Giles tells us that the newspaper staff put together a multidimensional story -- 

…under the pressure of deadline. They did it in the face of powerful opposition from the military, the Nixon administration, the state of Ohio and the university itself, as well as strong currents of negative public opinion. 

Because that is the job of the Fourth Estate: to tell the truth fearlessly, regardless of whose oxen are gored. It is not the job of journalists to serve as mouthpieces for those in power but as gadflies assuring that what is done by the powerful will be exposed to public scrutiny, especially during times of conflict and uncertainty. 

In 1970, as now, the United States was deeply dis-united.

In many ways, the Kent State story was about a nation at war with itself.

And because the country was so divided, there was no quick final resolution to the tragic events at Kent State. Giles tells how the Beacon Journal continued to follow the story for years through various reports, grand juries, and civil suits, as families sought answers and justice for the deaths of their children. In searching for the meaning to his story, the author also outlines lessons to be learned from it.”The Meaning” is an important chapter in the book.

With every cell phone possessor a potential reporter and anyone who can access the Internet able to disseminate an instant opinion, truth can be harder to ascertain today. Giles cites “urgency” – and also impatience – as “the enemy of accuracy and care.” 

But truth will always matter, because it will, in the realest possible way, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, determine whether “[our] nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.”

I recommend this book most highly to all readers. 

“Toujours gai” -- and Snow at Last!

Friday morning surprise

archy seeks to vary his diet

I’d been up since six o’clock, smiling over Don Marquis’s archy and mehitabel, the antics of two transmigrated souls, one formerly a free verse poet, the other Cleopatra, now embodied respectively in the forms of a cockroach and an alley cat. The stories come directly from archy, still a poet but now also a necessarily resourceful little cockroach who can only pound out his adventures and reflections by jumping on one typewriter key at a time, landing on his head with all the force of his little body. Unable to work the shift key, he makes do without capital letters and punctuation.

boss i am disappointed in 

some of your readers they 

are always asking how does 

archy work the shift so as to get a 

new line or how does archy do 

this or do that they 

are always interested in technical 

details when the main question is 

whether the stuff is  

literature or not

Now inhabiting a cockroach’s body, archy has a new view of life: i see things from the under side now

But it is mehitabel the cat who so often steals the show. While protesting that she is “always a lady” and “toujours gai,” mehitabel’s amorous adventures take place within a perilous life of want and near-starvation, and she is not above tearing the ear off some tomcat who promises her luxury and then fails to stand and deliver. Neither do periodic litters of kittens cramp mehitabel’s style for long. She knows she will end on a garbage scow, but until then,

i never sing blue 

wotthehell bill 

believe me you 

i never sing blue 

there s a dance or two 

in the old dame still 

i never sing blue  

wotthehell bill

Underneath the humor and courage of these entertaining characters is the pathos of life in the America of World War I, Prohibition, the stock market crash, and subsequent Great Depression. In “pity the poor spiders,” archy is saddened by roach exterminators and shares the sad tale of a spider who bitterly lament the advent of flyswatters:

curses on these here swatters 

what kills off all the flies 

for me and my little daughters 

unless we eats we dies

The mother spider’s mate, “lured off by a centipede,”  made no excuses for abandoning his family but said only as he left them, “tis wrong but i ll get a feed.”

The cockroach makes do with apple parings left in the newspaperman’s wastebasket but pleads for “a crumb of bread” sometime, while mehitabel’s adventures are as much about food as art or love. In one particularly haunting piece the cat, now with one frozen, crippled paw and nowhere warm to sleep, must dance all night.

whirl mehitabel whirland 

show your shadow how  

tonight it s dance with the bloody moon 

tomorrow the garbage scow  

… 

whirl mehitabel whirl 

leap shadow leap 

you gotta dance till the sun comes up 

for you got no place to sleep

mehitabel remains "toujours gai"

I can’t help wondering if the social commentary aspect reached many comfortable, well-fed readers at the time these pieces first appeared. Illustrations by George Herriman, the creator of “Krazy Kat,” undoubtedly contributed to the reception of archy and mehitabel as comic characters — which, of course, they are, and that implies no contradiction.

As I said at the beginning, though, I was up early, reading, while darkness still surrounded the cabin, and when I finished my book and looked out the windows, what a surprise! We’d only been expecting a rainy day and maybe some snow up on the peaks. Instead, peaks are hidden from view, and snow blankets every twig. Snow is all around us.

wotthehell - as mehitabel would say. archy would add, in words rather than sign, exclamation mark

Reading the Western News

No doubt it is possible to buy The New York Times in Tucson or Phoenix, but no one sells it here – and by “here” I mean Willcox, our nearest real town, not little ghost town Dos Cabezas, where there has been no store of any kind for many years. One can read the Times online at the library, but I say, why bother? “The News Hour” with Gwen Ifill gives me as much national and world news as I can handle. And besides, I’m keeping my online time to a minimum, averaging well under 30 minutes a day on the Internet, most of which time is spent downloading and reading e-mail, updating one or two of my blogs, and briefly checking Facebook to make sure I’m not missing an important message from anyone (though I’ve tried to get across to friends that e-mail is my preferred contact).

Anyway, in general, I like to be where I am. By that I mean that for me the point of being somewhere other than home is immersing myself in that different place. And so, here in southeasternmost Arizona for the winter, it is Cochise County news that really captures my attention. The big Arizona newspaper comes, of course, from Phoenix, but news of where we are is most thoroughly covered by the Arizona Range News, published in Willcox, Arizona, since 1882. The office on Haskell Avenue isn't in a fancy building, and it may look at first like there's not much happening there, but sit and watch a while, and you'll see people coming and going. And every week the paper comes out.

The Range News (like our own Leelanau Enterprise back home) is a weekly newspaper, generally two sections, and it covers news in the communities of Willcox, San Simon, Sunsites, Bowie, Cochise, and Dragoon, which is pretty much the whole Sulphur Springs Valley. There are feature news articles, obituaries, columns, editorials and letters, public announcements, and advertisements. When we first arrived in the area, I couldn’t get enough of the obituaries and loved the one about a woman who was a lifetime rancher and whose favorite activities were knitting, quilting, and “working cows.” Reading a local newspaper is a good way to begin getting acquainted with a community.

Is this week’s Range News particularly interesting, or am I just paying closer and closer attention, the longer we’re here? The following stories pulled me in:

1) Feeding the hungry: “Distribution center to help area hungry,” reads the headline of the story of a $1.2 million donation from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation for what will be called the Willcox Food Distribution Center and will serve Cochise, Graham and Greenlee Counties: The HGB Foundation, I learned from this article, advocates for those who are “food insecure,” not only in third-world countries but right here at home. Howard Buffett (son of Warren Buffett) was born in Illinois, and his foundation owns farmland in Illinois, Nebraska, and Arizona – most interestingly to me, this winter, a research farm right down the pike from us on the Kansas Settlement Road – and his foundation’s threefold mission is to improve lives worldwide through food security, water security, and conflict resolution. I am most interested to learn more about HGB projects, especially as they are being tested so close to Dos Cabezas.

2) Gould’s wild turkey: Have you ever heard of it? I had not, until now, but a long piece in the Range News informs me that a wildlife project in the nearby Pinaleño Mountains (north of Cochise County, in Graham County) has received national awards for habitat restoration and re-establishment of Gould’s wild turkey, the largest wild turkey in the U.S., and found only in southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico, and Mexico. A partnership between the U.S. Forest Service and the National Wild Turkey Federation is “part of a broader effort to restore habitat for Gould’s Wild Turkeys in southeastern Arizona’s ‘Sky Islands,’ 12 mountain ranges primarily managed by the Coronado National Forest.” The article calls the birds “spectacular” and their comeback “incredible,” their population in SE Arizona now standing at an estimated 15,000 birds.

3) Copper mining: The brief boom that brought Dos Cabezos into its most populous era was based on copper, and it was copper and iron that fueled the mining industry in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, so of course a headline reading “Opposition organizes for copper mine” would get my attention. I also know from what I’ve read of mining in the Dakotas (SD my birthplace) that modern mining leaves more than holes in the ground. The news is that Excelsior Mining, having “recently completed a drilling program” in the Dragoon area, is now preparing applications for permits “to inject sulfuric acid deep underground to release copper and pump the pregnant solution back out to retrieve the copper....” Concerns are about “the use of groundwater in an area where supplies are limited” and possible contamination of groundwater. Like fracking, this process bears close scrutiny and “faces a long period of review,” according to the paper. Present-day alchemists take note: there are plenty of metals besides gold and silver much needed by modern technology! Being able to manufacture (rather than mine) copper or a good substitute could solve a lot of world problems and make the successful inventor very, very rich!

4) Auctioneer recognized: Hooray for Paul Ramirez of Tucson, auctioneer extraordinaire of the Willcox Livestock Auction Market! At the Greater Midwest Livestock Auctioneers Championship in Motley, Minnesota, Ramirez carried off the Reserve Championship. We have seen and heard him at work and were very impressed, so we’re happy to see that he holds his own in competition. Good work!

5) Film Festival: This is the next big event coming to the Willcox Historic Theatre, the same little movie house where we were fortunate and privileged to see the Paris Opera not long ago. It’s only the second year of the festival, but it looks like great fun, with 20 regional independent films in competition. Expect to hear more of this in the near future.

6) Junior Rodeo: Expect to hear more of this, too! Admission is free for the two-day junior rodeo, with food concessions operated by the 4-H. “Don’t expect much,” David warned, and I told him, “Don’t expect to keep me away!” Will there be calf roping? Barrel racing? I can hardly wait to find out!

There was more in this week’s newspaper – a community service award for the Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Cooperative; results of the spelling bee in San Simon District; Willcox Middle School Honor Roll; a call to host an exchange student; local team sports news; the usual (but always unique and fascinating) obituaries and letters; and ads, display and classified, just one of which I’ll share. Under HELP WANTED is this notice:

TEMPORARY Open Range Livestock workers needed for Legacy Land & Livestock, Roswell, NM, from 2/15/15 – 11/15/15. Workers will be required to be “On Call 24/7,” perform a variety of duties related to the production of cattle and sheep; feed and water livestock; herd livestock to pasture for grazing and into corrals and stalls; distribute feed to animals; assist with calving, lambing and shearing....

Well, I can’t go on. Yes, there is castration and branding and spraying with insecticide involved, as well as cleaning stalls and pens (not as bad as castration and insecticide and branding). Oh, no, I can’t stop yet. How about this?

Must be able to find and maintain bearings to grazing areas. [Check!] Must be willing and able to occasionally live and work independently or in small groups of workers in isolated areas for extended periods of time. [Check!] Worker must be able to lift and carry items weighing up to 100 pounds. ...

Uh, okay, that’s enough. Hard outdoor work. Much as I love to work outdoors, sadly I think I’m past my cowgirlin’ prime.

Where Do You Get Your News – and What News Do You Get?

Always informative, always relevant

Today's post isn’t about books, but it is about reading, and some of what you’ll read here, if you are persistent enough and read far enough, may surprise you, but if you’d rather just have pictures, see Wednesday’s world of glittering frost over on my photo blog.

“Where do I get my news?”

That’s the question on my mind this week, as I’ve been reflecting on sources I trust to tell me what’s going on in the world. What about you? Are you a newspaper reader, radio listener, TV watcher, Internet viewer, or some combination of different sources in different percentages?

My obvious #1 source in terms of exposure time is National Public Radio. We have it on every morning and every evening at home, and I’d listen at my bookstore if I got a good signal there. “What would we do without NPR?” is a rhetorical question often voiced in our house. Interlochen is our nearest station, with CMU in second place. “All Things Considered” is always interesting, and we value Diane Rehm and Terri Gross for range of topics and depth of coverage in politics, environment, and the arts. Aaron Stander’s local “Michigan Writers” program is also excellent. What would we do without any of these?

We haven’t had television in our home for years now, and the only newspaper I read on a regular basis is our county weekly, but every now and then I splurge on a New York Times or Detroit Free Press or, more often, a Traverse City Record-Eagle.

(I’m hardly what anyone would call a news junkie, but I was shocked to hear that one local man admitted he was unfamiliar with a name that’s been in our local newspaper, week after week, for quite a few years. Do we live in the same planet?)

*  *  *

I come back a day later to make amends for an omission in my original post by inserting this important paragraph. When it comes to news of publishing and bookselling, my trusted daily source is Shelf Awareness, delivering national and international stories from the book world, as well as regional bookstore news that would not reach me otherwise. I cannot say enough good things about Shelf Awareness and recommend it to all who care about the future of independent writers, publishers, and bookstores.

*  *  *

As I reflected further on “where I get my news,” however, I realized that the issues most important to me – and those I feel are most urgent to the future of the world – are only rarely addressed by dailies or weeklies, and seldom are they examined in much detail or depth. I’d love to hear more about them on the radio, but the usual silence there, other than occasional, topic-limited “stories,” is deafening, too. I want more than an occasional “story” about global finance, international trade agreements, genetically modified organisms, farm and food regulation, food and farm safety, farmland ownership and subsidies, hydraulic fracturing, and natural resources in general. What I want is ongoing, nonstop coverage. 

Where do I get it? Mainly from two sources: “Nation of Change” and a magazine called AcresUSA, “The Voice of Eco-Agriculture.” 

The Acres folks have been around since 1970, and the history of the magazine is worth reading about. (How did I miss it back in the 1970s when gardening and rural life informed all my dreams?) These days there are plenty of new rural periodicals, but far too many of them are superficial and “cute,” their content -- intended mostly for hobbyists --  driven by (as is common on the newsstand) by corporate advertising of the worst kind. Acres is different. Every month’s “Eco-Update” and “Industrial Ag Watch” cover the latest, most important studies and legislation affecting not only organic growers but every single American. The magazine’s editorial and opinion pieces are knowledgeable and hard-hitting, their features long on specifics and experience, and the interviews are with experts whose voices deserve a national hearing.

We all eat. We all need to know where our food comes from. Agriculture news shouldn’t be just for farmers.

A 2012 Stanford University meta-study (study of results of other studies) that got a lot of attention in the national media purported to show no nutritional difference between organic and nonorganic food. Imagine two apples analyzed in a laboratory and found to be “nutritionally” equivalent. How much did the study really show?

It did not ask these questions:

Ø  What toxins are present in various nonorganic products that are not present in organic products?

Ø  Which toxins from nonorganic products may remain and accumulate in the human body?

Ø  Of nutrients found in organic and nonorganic products, what are the differences in the body’s ability to access and utilize these nutrients?

Ø  What long-term dangers to health result from toxin accumulation?

Ø  What long-term effects on food prices result from escalating immunity to agricultural chemicals?

Ø  What long-term effects on health care costs will result from continued and escalating reliance on agricultural chemicals?

Ø  What is the truth of studies purporting to show safety of GMO crops? (Find someone who's studied the question seriously here. I learned about her work through an Acres interview.)

Etc.

Sigh! Journalists sometimes make me think of lemmings. One particular story of the day or week, one temporary world “hot spot,” and there they run, en masse; meanwhile, ongoing economic, environmental, and political events continue to unroll, unreported, throughout the world. During the Clinton presidency, for example, reporters and news junkies did a lot of jumping up and down and worrying and shouting and rib-jabbing about President Clinton’s marital indiscretions. I couldn’t care less, then or now. It was NAFTA that took away any enchantment I had with Clinton. And here’s what the current Acres Opinion of Judith McGeary has to say this month about NAFTA:

...Instead of the hundreds of thousands of new American jobs that were promised, a recent report estimates that the United States lost over 1 million jobs. Our trade partners have suffered just as badly. Mexican farmers, in particular, have been some of the greatest losers under NAFTA as subsidized corn from the United States undercut local production and drove Mexican farmers off their land. The “free trade” approach has not simply shifted wealth from American workers to foreign workers – it has shifted wealth from workers of all the countries involved to the large corporations.

Is that news to you? And what about the latest “free trade” agreement, now being negotiated, is the TPP, Trans-Pacific Partnership, an Obama Administration initiative begun under George W. Bush? While NAFTA was ramrodded through Congress under Clinton’s guidance, the substance of TPP is being kept ultra-confidential. Over 600 corporate “trade advisors” are in the know, but the few members of Congress who have seen the text have been sworn to secrecy. Why, if this agreement would be beneficial to our country, are American taxpayers and voters being kept in the dark? That’s what Elizabeth Warren asked, and her question deserves an answer. McGeary warns that a bill to “fast track” TPP and other trade agreements “would empower the Administration to negotiate ... without input from Congress,” which she calls “an abdication of Congress’ constitutional duty to regulate commerce with foreign nations.”

AcresUSA is where I get my most important news.

Along with articles on poultry-raising and bee-friendly farming, the March 2014 issue of Acres features a lengthy, in-depth interview with Margaret Mellon, senior scientist with the Food and Agriculture Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an authority on biotechnology and on environmental law. Mellon was interviewed on the subject of herbicide-resistant weeds. “Roundup Ready” corn and soybeans and cotton, she said, were embraced by farmers who were promised they could lower inputs (costs) by applying only a low dose of a single herbicide, but here’s what happened:

At the beginning the company claimed this was lowering herbicide use while increasing farmer incomes, and they were right. As time goes on, though, the weeds started developing resistance, as they will. ... [Now Roundup Ready seeds are] driving big increases in herbicide use and some people think that in four or five years we’re going to have double the herbicide use that we have right now, and it will be because the glyphosate isn’t working....

Farmers become dependent, and weeds become immune. After an initial drop, costs – and therefore prices – rise. One might draw a parallel in human health and disease, with the enormous increase of antiobiotic prescribing and antibacterial cleaning products and the subsequent increase in deadly resistant bacteria.

But there is more than a parallel between problems confronting farms and hospitals, and there is important news to be found in what at first glance look like mere foodie-health-and-cosmetic sources. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control, has made antibiotics resistance a top agency priority for 2014, says an article in this month’s Prevention magazine, where I read the story told in numbers.

Every year 2 million people in the United States get infections that are resistant to antibiotics, and at least 23,000 people die as a result. Dozens of new, virulent bacteria have emerged over the years, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, which causes more than 11,000 deaths in the United States each year, and resistant strains of E. coli that can turn a run-of-the-mill urinary tract infection into a trip to the emergency room.

Antibiotics, remember, are given to livestock (in heavy doses) as well as to humans, and on-farm use does as much to encourage resistant strains as overprescription by family doctors. According to a report from the Natural Resources Defense Council,

The FDA buried research revealing that 18 types of antibiotics currently in use on farms are considered high risk for increasing antibiotic-resistant bacteria outbreaks in humans. In total, 30 drugs did not meet the FDA’s own safety standards. (Prevention, March 2014, “Special Food Report: Cleaning Up the Farm”)

Health magazines can be important sources for all kinds of important global news stories. I would not have thought to look up the CDC home page if not for the story in Prevention magazine. When one news source leads us to others, our available information is multiplied.

Then the other day David brought home a couple copies of Rolling Stone, where we were both astonished to find important, in-depth features on the banking industry (February 27, 2014, “The Vampire Squid Strikes Again,” by Matt Taibbi) and, in another issue, American energy capture and use, as distinguished from official green “talk” (January 2, 2014, “Obama and Climate Change: The Real Story,” by Bill McKibben). Did you have any idea that investment banks are now buying up entire industries, as well as the natural mineral resources needed to sustain them? Do you believe our country is moving away from dependence on oil and gas? Rolling Stone is a lot more than a rock-n-roll rag.

If I had my way, major U.S. newspapers would carry daily features like “Eco-Update” and “Industrial Ag Watch,” and radio news would cover every day whatever could be uncovered relative to the shenanigans of politicians in bed with corporations and the ramifications of that nonstop fornication for the immediate and long-term future of American farms, food supply, fuel prices, land ownership, workers’ wages, and the health of soil and air and water. But doing so necessitates news sources going up against the biggest money in the corporate world.

Many issues affect the lives of residents of Planet Earth, but agricultural and economic issues affect us all, and if we’re not informed about what’s going on relative to those issues, we have no chance to determine our own future.

What news sources do you trust to tell you what you really need to know?

It's still very cold, but the sun is shining, and we're here now, we're here now, we're here now....

What Does Northport Think About the Sale of the Washington Post to the Online Behemoth?

It's big news, Jeff Bezos buying the Washington Post. I asked a few of my friends for their thoughts, many of them writers, and here are the responses:

A retired community college teacher, fiction writer, and (clearly) someone very careful with words: “This is a paradigm shift indeed.”

A career fiction writer: “Well, as [a mutual friend] said after I sent the email about Amazon trying to control the book business: ‘Well, they do call themselves Amazon, after all.’  Is this getting scary or what?”

Another fiction writer: “When you control all the media you will control the thoughts of a people.  Sad news for every American.”

A retired newspaper writer: “I think people are correct to be nervous, but he is a smart businessman and when he talks about giving readers what they want, my heart soars because for years newspapers have been giving readers what bores and confuses and annoys them – even the smart ones who WANT insight and analysis. And, if he can charge for news online in a way that makes sense – that will be the beginning of the turnaround for news organizations.”

Retired public school teacher: “Certainly true – ‘The Post will mine data about its readers in ways not seen before in the newspaper world.’ I wonder what that means for the paper, its reporters, its readership. We don’t read a newspaper any more, except for my brief online viewing. (The local paper is still free online.) I get too much news from CNN and take complete breaks now and then. Most of what we hear is depressing or silly or just plain mean, it often seems to me. All the sides of “big” stories have their own facts, and it’s hard to know what to believe.  We’re currently watching ‘House of Cards’ on Netflix, and I’m completely skeptical of the whole political system and journalism industry. I’m also unhappy with the education system (at least around here) – so books are a welcome relief. So is yoga.”

Retired state employee (not teacher): “Not sure.  Certainly it will make the Post an e-business but that will probably help keep it alive.  More likely it will go off to the right and give him a ton more leverage on Government than he has already.  But, that's normal now where buying influence is the norm.  Wow, it's still morning but my cynical button is already pushed in.”

Retired university professor of history: “In recent years, visits to DC and via other links regarding this once great newspaper, I felt it was increasingly stogy, predictable, though reliable in a sturdy way (esp when Catherine Graham ran things with an amazing deft touch). Though the editorial page kept up, more or less, competitive with the NY Times (Sunday), the Post seemed almost dead in the water as the winds of change blew harder (pardon the allusion). [A friend] was so put off, after taking it daily for 4 decades, that he got his news on line from the NY Times. I think that, like most literate Washingtonians, he will keep a close eye on what comes.  I more or less felt among 'friends' vis the Post, but a great news system has to be up front and OUT front not therapeutic, not calming the herd, but leading it, like a wolf pack, out front. It was like that in the 70s . . . . When a major organ like this is merely transmitting the canon, the nation is not well served.”

The last reply deals with the newspaper as it has been in recent years, rather than with the sale. A retired law professor had a lot to say, but he said in person, and I neglected to take notes. Also, it would be interesting to hear what some younger people think, so if by some miracle any young person's eyes fall upon this post, please feel free to leave a comment. 

So what does this small bookseller blogger think?

One observation made on Facebook was “He knows how to sell things.” My reaction to that was, That isn’t all he knows. Right off the top of my head I can think of four big additional areas of his knowledge. He knows: (1) how to stomp out competition; (2) how to beat out unions; (3) how to manipulate government, at every level, to his benefit (see first and second points) and to his competition’s detriment; (4) how to keep running on investors’ money despite recent surprising and spectacular losses. (That link is worth following to read the article.) Interesting, isn’t it?

Does your idea of a free press include many competing viewpoints? Do you think we have that now and/or what would encourage it? Are you comfortable with falling wages and salaries? (Have unions encouraged workers to expect too much?) Should reportage and government be bought and sold, subject only to market forces? (Have they always been for sale?) What about more and more people putting their eggs in a single basket – something like Dutch tulip bulbs? Will there really be a big payoff eventually for all investors – and are you on the bandwagon?

Although most people probably do not think of him primarily as Aristotle’s pupil, Alexander the Great is a familiar name worldwide. Did he truly weep when he had “no more worlds to conquer” or upon being told that the number of worlds was infinite – and therefore, presumably, beyond his insatiable reach? What price did Alexander pay for temporarily gaining [most of] the world? Would you pay such a price? Who else paid heavily? Here is a quick biography of his life and accomplishments. Like Molly Malone, in the end he died of a fever, and no one could save him. In the long run, no one gets out of life alive.

The least ambitious goal of any business, I suppose, would be simply to survive, to stay alive, forever struggling, while the most ambitious (here the word ‘overweening’ comes to my mind) would be to take over the entire world. Between these two extremes (and no, whatever you imagine of my bookstore, I do not fall at the absolute bottom of the scale) we can imagine a wide range of possibilities of flourishing (to use one of Aristotle’s favorite ideas), each step up in profitability matched by an increase in complexity and responsibility. Hmmm. Lots to think about there....

Moving along, though, it baffles me how the same people who fear a “single payer” for, say, health care, when the proposed payer is the federal government, have no fear of a “single seller,” however wide that seller casts his product net. Data mining? Terrifying and un-American if done by government! Done by a mammoth corporation? Okay? Really? How so?

Many Americans fear a government takeover of business. I fear a corporate takeover of government. Which direction are we headed? (Your answer might be that I have posed a false dilemma. If so, explain!) More specifically do you have concerns about the sale of the Washington Post, or do you see it as probably a positive change? Whatever you think, what are your reasons?

Someday soon I hope to write about short stories, both in general and as exemplified in some particularly good collections, but we read all kinds of things here Up North, including national newspapers.