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The Beacon…

Obviously, as anyone who actually reads my blog can tell, I love the Beacon Journal. The Beacon is my “hometown paper,” and even though it’s technically a metro, it has always felt like my local paper (a vibe I definitely don’t get from the Plain Dealer). I read it every day. When I have time to stop and buy it in print, I do. But even when I can’t, such as all summer when I was in Findlay, I still read Ohio.com throughout the day to keep up with the latest Akron news.

All that said, I just want to comment on a few stories from today…

First, I saw they gave out the monthly Do the Right Thing awards yesterday. This program is always great, and it holds special meaning for me because when I was in 8th grade, I was in the very first group of students to receive the award. That was a decade ago. I wonder if the officers who organized the program ever saw it taking off as much as it did. This is also the type of story many reporters dread, but it proves my mantra of “everything’s important to someone.” It’s not about corruption or about telling the untold story. It’s just about giving little kids and their families something to smile about because everyone can read about them in the paper. How do I know? Well, somewhere around here, I still have the clipping with my name and headshot that ran with the article the day I got the award.

Second, although I don’t understand the headline, this was a cute story… However, I am left wondering… what Wal-Mart at the Stow-Kent Plaza? There of course isn’t one. There’s a K-Mart that’s going out of business. There’s a Wal-Mart in Stow, which is what he’s talking about, but it’s at least a 10 minute drive from the Stow-Kent Plaza. I don’t recognize the byline. He is apparently a BJ business writer, which is probably why I don’t know the name as well as the metro reporters. But he could be new and from out of the area, which is the point of bringing this up… A local would have (and several beside me probably did when they read the line) scratched their head and said, that’s not right. But if you weren’t from the area, you probably wouldn’t have had occasion to know the particularities of what makes up the Stow-Kent Plaza. But still, an editor or someone in copy should have caught that; for all I know, one of them could have inserted it, creating a fact error by trying to give more context to the location. So, how did it get through? Because, chances are they’re new, too, or just plain busy. (I know several students who’ve been hired PT for copyediting. All of them good, but none of them are Akronites.) It definitely makes me hope that wherever I take a job, I’m able to pick up on these little nuances about the city and that I have editors who know the town well enough to do the same.

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