The ER gets a point for having the story first. (ER 1, TS 0)
Fred followed up on his blog.
And only today, three days later, does the T-S take a look at Eureka's own Jesus Camp.
But when it comes to the billionaire-funded upstart vs. the traditional corporate rag, first doesn't always mean better.
What we do get (besides the de rigeur parenthetical) are two angles on one story. Unsurprisingly, the ER takes the Christian angle: Is RTC bound to cut the Jesus from their program?
But God help us poor readers trying to figure out what's going on from Wendy Butler!
From the ER:
Redwood Teen Challenge’s philosophy could be compromised, Director Fred Lamberson III said, per a state or county alcohol/drug treatment license.
Teen Challenge is not governmentally licensed nor does it have any licensed medical staff, and the only on-site counselors are those trained at Teen Challenge.
Nevertheless, Teen Challenge, by virtue of contracts with its participants, often receives state or federal money from avenues such as Social Security, disability, tax refunds or Supplemental Security Income. If a participant cannot pay the cost of $1,400 per month (room, board and other rehabilitation services), they must agree to give Teen Challenge 85 percent of the cost of the above-mentioned services.
Something's going on. If only Butler, oh, conveyed it.
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Meanwhile, over at the T-S, Thaddeus Greenson, who has now had time to not only take a different approach, but you know, actually write the story in a way that makes sense.
EUREKA -- At first, Kari Swearingen didn't seem to have any problem with a substance abuse treatment facility moving into an abandoned church building just a few doors down from her house.
”I think that it's a good thing,” she said on the stoop of her brightly painted Wabash home. “I'm not one to say, 'not in my backyard.' Look around. There's people on drugs, and I feel good about having a place to get people off drugs.”
Informed that the Redwood Teen Challenge facility would include 50 beds, making it one of the largest -- if not the biggest -- residential treatment program in Humboldt County, Swearingen appeared taken aback.
Ah, so a big drug-and-alcohol treatment center is being placed in a neighborhood without input from the people who live there? Got it.
(ER 1, TS 1)
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3 comments:
Thaddeus Greenson is going to be a superb city hall reporter for the T-S. He wrote some really interesting stories for the Lifestyle section; his editor there raves about him.
Good job, Postmaster. You're getting cheers from the Times-Standard after just one week of blogging.
I doubt that there's a working writer alive who hasn't see their story in print and wondered what the hell they were thinking. Sometimes you get so immersed in information that you can't see the forest for the trees. This leads to cumbersome verbiage.
That said, we do have to convey in the simplest possible terms. What helps for me is to try to distill the story down a sentence in my mind , then turn that into a lead and take it from there.
And you always have to ask, what do I really know?
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