It was both scary and exciting to approach the newspaper box this morning, knowing that an article about the Fairview renaming effort, and my online poll, probably would be in the Statesman-Journal. You never know how a story will come out, after you talk to a reporter. Laurence Cruz, the environment reporter, called me yesterday afternoon after I had written a letter to the editor about the poll, and had been told by the editorial page editor that it really was a press release, not a letter. OK, whatever.
I had gotten some resistance from the management of Sustainable Fairview Associates to the whole idea of asking the general public what they thought of four proposed names, so I reluctantly had told the newspaper to back off the story. But Laurence said that his editor had asked him to write a story on the renaming, and as an old journalism major (for one semester, my freshman year) I couldn't let Laurence down. Plus, when he asked me, "Why don't you want to ask people what they think?", I couldn't come up with a good reason. So I talked to the reporter, along with Russ Beaton and Bob Lindsey.
It's a nicely written story, accessible here. Laurence did a great job weaving together the various quotes and themes. My only gripe is that, for some reason, my age had to be cited, whereas Russ' and Bob's ages are absent. Guess they are familiar quasi-public figures, whose age has already been reported. However, when I saw "...Brian Hines, 54,...", I said to myself, "hey, that guy isn't so old." As they say, Da Nile isn't just a river in Egypt. Newspaper readers have to go to StatemanJournal.com, then click on a link, then click on another link to my online poll in order to vote. A few have so far; maybe more will when evening comes, and people curl up with the morning paper.
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