Chapel Hill News
It isn't "Throwback Thursday" yet it feels like old times. I'm covering the Board of Aldermen (after a more-than-a-decade pause) and Orange County/Northern Chatham at large once again. This time, for the Chapel Hill News | News & Observer. I won't be covering affordable housing for the time being as I continue as Chair of the Housing Authority Board of Commissioners until January, but of course I can pass those stories along and encourage good coverage (like any good reporter would). This is freelance work, not full time, but I'm so glad to at least have my toes in the waters of local coverage once again.
First story should appear on Wednesday. If you have news about Carrboro or the County at large, please send it my way!
Email to jean.bolduc@gmail.com or Tweet to @jeanbolduc
Thanks so much to the Chapel Hill News for recognizing the good work of OrangePolitics and our recent leadership transition. Fortunately (or unfortunately, perhaps) the online version does not include my 1999 campaign headshot! Alert reader John Rees snapped a photo of it though.
Today's Chapel Hill News published a letter by someone named Yelena Francis equating the people who protested at the Silent Sam statue on Sept 1 with Russian Communists who destroyed Tsarist statues. The newspaper gave this letter the title "Leftist déjà vu" and place it just below an amateurish cartoon showing Silent Sam being carted away and replaced by a statue of Dean Smith.
This pisses me off for one simple reason:
The students did not call for the removal of Silent Sam, and the Chapel Hill News should know this.
They called for a plaque to be placed on the side of the statue explaining when and why the statue had been erected and what it represented and still represents. They were wise enough to realize that we need to keep Silent Sam and learn from it over and over.
Sunday's edition of the Chapel Hill News includes two letters in response to Molly De Marco's recent guest column imploring the Boy Scouts of America to welcome gay people into the organization. The paper's editors decided to publish the letters, despite the authors' inflammatory statements and deeply hateful rhetoric toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. In doing so, they have sent a message to our community that the Chapel Hill News is a no-holds-barred forum for the discriminatory fantasies of bigots.
One of the letters, by Tom Evans of Pittsboro, describes LGBT people as defective and mentally dysfunctional. The other letter, by Alan Culton of Hillsborough, likens homosexuality to violent assault, marital infidelity, and pedophilia.
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