Category: Opinion
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Can We Afford to Play Politics with Disaster Relief?
Read more: Can We Afford to Play Politics with Disaster Relief?My heart goes out to my neighbors and friends in Fernville and the rest of the area that were hit hardest by this disaster. I have witnessed an amazing response by so many individuals and organizations. I’m proud to be a member of a community that is willing to help others in tough times. It’s these values and principals that bind a community like ours together.I was amazed to see the initial clean up effort that occurred in Fernville soon after the flood — people and machinery working to clear debris, the American Red Cross offering food and water, meals being…
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Why Isn’t Local News More Open?
Read more: Why Isn’t Local News More Open?As a librarian at Penn State University, my job centers on helping users—students, faculty, and community members—find the information they need. Focusing on this important task for over fifteen years has given me a valuable perspective on how information is created, published, and made available. To a librarian, there’s nothing more exciting than an information challenge—helping someone find the newspaper articles or the books they need to dig deeper into a research area. During the recent Bloomsburg flood, my skills as a librarian were put to the test. I read about the Bloomsburg Press Enterprise’s paywall—re-erected after five days of…
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Altering the Rhetoric
Read more: Altering the RhetoricIn Friday’s Press Enterprise is a letter to the editor that casts a very critical view on town and University leaders in the days following the Bloomsburg Flood. The letter, written by a Bloomsburg resident titled, “Town’s attitude angers West Ender,” works to explain how it feels to live in the western part of town — to be branded “west enders” perhaps. “You think we are fools who only have ourselves to blame for getting flooded. We choose to live in the West End so we got exactly what we deserved, right? We are uneducated and obviously not as “intelligent”…