Category Archives: Piedmont-Triad

Pictures of That Fly Ash Spill in Tennessee

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A photographer from Banner Elk flew over the site of the fly ash spill in Tennessee and sent the pictures and write up to the folks at the Freakonomics blog.  You can see the pictures and read her comments here.  This is scary stuff:

Three days earlier, a retention pond for fly ash (a waste product from burning coal) burst in Kingston, Tenn., spilling an estimated 1 billion gallons of sludge containing years’ worth of waste from the Tennessee Valley Authority’s adjacent coal-burning power plant over an area of 300 acres, Griffith explains. 

And you might recall that we have an operation similar to the TVA's here in the Triad

Davie County Hospital Adding Sleep Lab

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Sometimes I just get confused.  I distinctly remember sitting in the public hearing the state held when it was evaluating the competing proposals for hospitals in Advance (WFU BMC) and Clemmons (Novant).  The folks at WFU-BMC made it clear that they needed to build the hospital in Advance because the Davie County Hospital in Mocksville, which they currently own and run, is antiquated and it just didn't make any sense to try and upgrade it at its current location.  Thus my confusion: if the hospital in Mocksville is such a dump then why are they opening a new sleep lab there?

Josh Howard Get Front Page Smack Down by Greensboro Newspaper

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Josh Howard, a native of Winston-Salem and former player for Winston-Salem's very own Wake Forest University, got a front page going-over in the Greensboro News & Record because his foundation is the name sponsor of a scholastic basketball tournament being held in the Greensboro Coliseum.  Essentially the article points out that Howard's been in some trouble of late and points out that due to his recent behavior it may not be the best idea to have his name attached to the tournament for high school players.  

The article also quotes the tournament organizer as saying that Howard's foundation came to them about sponsoring the event, not vice versa as is normal.  Clearly the implication is that Howard is trying to repair his tainted image.  Well, duh.  What's he supposed to do, go out and smoke a joint while driving 120 MPH down I-40 and blasting a recording of Jeremiah Wright's infamous "God damn America" speech?  Of course he's going to try and repair his image, and if it means sponsoring a tournament then I guess that's what he's going to do.  Should the tournament have taken the money?  Maybe not, but I also don't think it's the end of the world.  Howard's behavior has clearly been stupid, but he hasn't hurt anyone other than himself that I know of.  

On his blog the News & Record's editor discusses the decision to carry the story on the front page.  Personally I think it's a story for the front page of the sports section at most.

 

Merchants Mirror: New Online Accounting Product Launched by Triad Company

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Ben Hwang, a resident of Winston-Salem, announced on his personal blog the launch of a new small business accounting product that his company created.  The product is called Merchant's Mirror and here's a little of what Ben wrote:

Those of you that know me on a personal level know that recently I've been working diligently on a startup with John Brown called Merchant's Mirror. In planning and development it's been over a year in the making and we're happy to announce that onJanuary 1st, we released it to the public. At $15.95USD per month, we provide a small business with everything necessary in accounting (and if you prepay a year, it's $169.95USD per year!) at a fair price.

Creating invoices for customers and paying your vendors doesn't have to be a difficult process, so why make it such? While only in our first release, we're already looking into methods and ways to make it easier for the small business owner to take full advantage of doing their accounting the way they can understand it, not because they're forced to do so.

There's one thing that we stress and that's the fact that we're not only writing this for our clients, but with our clients. That means that every person that uses Merchant's Mirror is in fact helping craft and shape the tool. Keeping track of your books shouldn't take you all day nor should it confuse you. And as such, we'll be striving to work with our customers on all things great and small to try to provide the best in SMB accounting.

Ben and I had a brief chat via IM last week and I could tell that he was excited to get this thing launched.  I don't even want to think about how many nights he and his business partner lost to developing this thing. 

If you're a small business and are looking for a new accounting product AND you'd like to "shop local" then you might want to give Merchant's Mirror a try.

Reporter Who Gets It Is Gone

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One of the "mainstream media" people I've met who really gets the new frontier of media is Lex Alexander a reporter for the Greensboro News & Record.  Actually he's now an ex-reporter for the News & Record because yesterday he wrote a farewell post on the paper's health blog:

I'm
taking a company buyout and leaving the News & Record and Landmark
Communications, and today was my last day of work. I do not know
whether anyone will succeed me. In the meantime, if you need to inquire
about a health/medical story or pass on some information, please
contact City Editor Teresa Prout at 336.373.7082 or
teresa.prout@news-record.com. If you have a health item for our
calendar, please contact Carl Wilson at 336.373.7145 or
carl.wilson@news-record.com

Thanks to all who have read and commented here or who have talked to
me for stories. Engaging with readers and sources has been the best
part of this job. My best wishes to you all.

Times truly are tough for newspapers and I think this is going to be a bad loss for the N&R.  I've had the chance to speak with Lex a few times and I think he understands as well as anyone what developments like the evolution of blogs and other forms of "conversation media" mean for the news industry.  He's a big part of why the News & Record's web presence, as imperfect as it is, is still superior to other newspapers of similar size in this region.

Hopefully Lex is moving on to great things.

Winston-Salem Journal Full of Itself, or Something

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I was out of town over the weekend so I just had a chance to read the Sunday edition of the Winston-Salem Journal.  In their Opinion section the executive editor Carl Crothers announced some changes to their Opinion section, including changing their "Letters to the Editor" to "The readers' forum" and they carry a column written by their letters editor, Mick Scott, explaining how you can get your letter published by the paper. Let's just say I have a small problem with their attitude.

Really the heart of my problem I have with their approach can be summed up by the following paragraph in Mr. Scott's column:

We are selective, but our selectivity isn't to deny participation; it's
to keep the quality high. Our letter writers expend a little more
effort, a little more thought than you'll find on most bulletin boards
or blogs and we want it to be that way.

Surely he's kidding.  I'll grant that a great amount of total crap appears on blogs and bulletin boards, but let's be honest and say that some of the worst stuff that appears locally is in the comments on Journal stories.  If you want to see exactly how infantile and almost illiterate many of your fellow denizens are then make your way to the JournalNow site and read some comments; just be prepared for indecipherable spelling and lots of really unimaginative spewing.

Still, the comments aren't the vaunted "letters" page that Mr. Scott is referring to, that outlet that is necessarily more selective due to limited space.  Let's see some examples of the greater thoughtfulness and effort that they've carried on the "letters" page of the Journal in just the last couple of weeks:

December 4, 2008: Was Doonesbury any good last Sunday? The print was too small for me to read it. – JEFF SPARKS, Clemmons
December 9, 2008: Thank God and Greyhound that Forsyth County Commissioner Dave Plyler
has taken the chair from Commissioner Gloria Whisenhunt. It's time for
a change. -JIM HATCHER, Winston-Salem
December 10, 2008: While I read the article "DNA Secrets" (Dec. 4) with interest, was
it really key to the story to include a photo of decades-old feces? I
would submit that sometimes an accurately written description is worth
a thousand photos. – PAIGE DEAL, Winston-Salem
December 15, 2008: Congratulations to all who participated in the Dec. 7 performance of Handel's Messiah
, by the Mozart Club. To the local church choir singers who were not on stage — you missed a thrilling experience. Do join next year's performance. I hope that the same conductor, Peter Perret, and the same soloists will be there, too. – ANN W. CHARLES, Winston-Salem

Riveting stuff, eh? I have nothing against the letter writers, but if the space is so limited and special don't you think the paper could have found something more interesting or compelling to print?  Honestly I think my kids put more thought into their Facebook status line than those authors put into their letters.

On another note, something that kind of nagged at me when I read Crothers' column was the question of  why "Editor" is capitalized in "Letters to the Editor", yet "readers'" isn't in "The readers' forum."  To me it reads that the paper feels that editors are somehow special, while readers are the great unwashed masses.  It seems pompous.

Don't get me wrong. I like that the paper is trying to engage the readers, but I think they're hamstrung by their institutional tradition of pontificating rather than conversing.  For their sakes I hope their efforts help save the franchise, but it's not happening until they start to think of their readers with a capital "r".

Piedmont Triad Entrepreneurial Network Shutting Down

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According to this article in TechJournal South the Piedmont Triad Entrepreneurial Network is shutting down because the entities that funded it have decided to go in a different direction.

CEO Jon Obermeyer tells TechJournal South that the foundations backing
PTEN, the Winston Salem Alliance, Action Greensboro, and High Point
Partners, all economic development organizations, declined to continue
supporting it.

The foundations invested $2.75 million in the organization, which was founded in 2004.

"They decided we were not a priority," Obermeyer notes. "It had nothing to do with our results."

He admits the early stage companies PTEN backed are slow on job creation. Many are still in proof of concept…

The companies it backed have raised an additional $8.8 million.

PTEN also distributed $635,000 in prizes to 35 companies through
its annual PTEN GAP business plan competition and did it a unique way
intended to train the companies to deal with investors.

"We gave them the money in tranches and they had to meet
milestones," explains Obermeyer. If they won $30,000, we gave them
three tranches of $10,000 each. If someone was working on a patent, we
would want to see a patent filing."

PTEN also launched the first nanotechnology conference in North
Carolina and ran it for three years. It received national press
coverage in the industry publication, "Smalltimes."

It held an investor conference in August. It had companies from
Memphis, Charlottesville, the Research Triangle and elsewhere present
in additon to Triad firms…

"We worked with other organizations such as the NC Council for
Entrepreneurial Development and the Piedmont Angel Networks. We were
doing all the right things," says Obermeyer.

"My question now, is who's going to do this work?"

This is definitely a negative development for the Triad.  While groups like PTEN may not create lots of jobs in the short term they tend to foster the development of the kinds of companies that attract dynamic people who in turn accelerate innovation that seeps into the surrounding business community.  In other words they create energy that attracts innovators and builders and those are exactly the kind of people we need in the Triad right now.  I think we have plenty of bankers and lawyers, but we're hurting for true entrepreneurs.

BTW, anyone else see opportunity to fill the gap here?

Not a Good Day for Reynolds but Excellent for Their Lawyers

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Ed Cone points to an article at Bloomberg about the Supreme Court's decision to allow smokers to sue tobacco companies over the marketing of "light" cigarettes.  Ed also points to a page at Reynolds' website that is dedicated to litigation.

According to the article some analysts were surprised at the decision, having predicted that the tobacco companies would prevail, but they still don't consider the ruling much of a game-changer.  On the other hand lots of anti-tobacco folks are thrilled (see excerpt below).  I have a feeling that the people most thrilled are the lawyers on both sides; they'll be able to pay for their kids', grandkids' and great-grandkids' Harvard educations with the fees from these lawsuits:

The ruling surprised some industry analysts, including
Morgan Stanley’s David Adelman, who had predicted an industry
victory before the high court heard arguments. Still, Adelman
said cigarette companies retained “very, very valid and
effective defenses” to the suits.

No Turning Point

“I don’t think this is a turning point for the plaintiffs
in either lights litigation or tobacco litigation generally,”
said Adelman.

Anti-tobacco advocates hailed the ruling. “It’s a very
historic day in the field of tobacco litigation,” said Ed Sweda,
an attorney at the Tobacco Products Liability Project at
Northeastern University School of Law in Boston. “There was this
dark cloud hanging over all these cases up until today.”

Cigarette companies face about 40 similar suits, Sweda said.
Smoking foes say Philip Morris and other cigarette makers have
long known that smokers compensate for reduced tar and nicotine
levels by inhaling more deeply and frequently.

An Illinois light-cigarette suit at one point threatened
Philip Morris, the nation’s largest tobacco company, with a $10.1
billion award before it was overturned.

The suit before the justices seeks to recover the money
Maine smokers spent on Philip Morris’s Marlboro Lights and
Cambridge Lights through November 2002, plus punitive damages. A
federal appeals court in Boston had said the suit, which invoked
a Maine unfair trade practices law, could go forward…

Philip Morris also argued that lawsuits would interfere with
the Federal Trade Commission’s oversight of cigarette testing and
its policy of encouraging companies to market low-tar brands.

Stevens rejected that argument, saying the FTC “has no
longstanding policy authorizing collateral representations”
based on the testing method used by cigarette makers. Thomas
didn’t address that question in his dissent.

The FTC last month withdrew its endorsement of the four-
decade-old test that lets cigarette makers claim some brands
contain less tar and nicotine. The test method is “confusing or
misleading to consumers,” the FTC said in a statement then.

“For consumers it’s a major victory,” Jonathan Leibowitz,
a Democratic FTC commissioner said of today’s high court
decision. The ruling reaffirms that “states are full partners”
with the FTC in protecting consumers against deception, he said.

The case is Altria v. Good, 07-562.

New Magazine for Triad Geezers and Semi-Geezers

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A new magazine geared to those 45 and over is being launched in the Triad.  Actually it's an existing magazine, Boom!, that is launching a Triad edition.  From the press release:

Barbara Petty, publisher of Boom! Magazine (www.boomnc.com),
a monthly publication dedicated to the active lifestyle of those 45 and
older, announces today a new territory edition of the magazine will
begin January 1, 2009. Boom! Magazine/Triad will initially distribute
in Alamance, Forsyth and Guilford counties with plans to expand
coverage into Davidson, Caswell, Rockingham and Stokes counties.

Eddie
Goldberg will serve as the Triad edition’s publisher. Goldberg, a
20-year North Carolina resident brings a background in radio sales and
journalism to the Boom! team.

“I’m thrilled with the
opportunity to expand the Boom! enterprise and bring Triad residents
the same array of lifestyle resources we provide in the Triangle,” says
Petty. “Eddie’s media expertise makes him an excellent addition to our
organization.”

The Triad edition will maintain the Boom! brand
by using the same format, cover story and core editorial. But it will
be customized for the new market with articles on local "Fifty &
Fabulous" celebrities, stories on businesses, performing and visual
arts groups, non-profit organizations and a monthly Triad calendar of
events. The first print run will be 20,000 and will be distributed at
approximately 250 locations throughout the area. Distribution locations
will be listed on the Boom! Web site by the end of December. Visit
http://www.boomnc.com and click on “Get the Magazine.”

Beaten, Battered, Bruised and Triumphant – Another Soccer Season Ends

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Well, another soccer season has come to a close.  This weekend my daughter Erin's team, the Twin City Youth Soccer Association Lady Reds (U-15) of which I'm the assistant coach, played in the 2008 adida's Challenge Clash at Bryan Park in Greensboro.  The girls won both games yesterday, one against a team that had beaten us twice earlier this season, and were guaranteed a spot in the tournament final this afternoon regardless of the result of this morning's game.  As it happened the team we faced this morning was the other undefeated team in our bracket so essentially we were guaranteed to play them twice today.  The team was from Triangle and they were tough, well coached and very skilled.  Our girls managed to squeak out a tie in the morning game and then two hours later lined up for another go at 'em.

Before I tell you the result let me tell you that our girls showed more gumption than most teams I've been around either as a player or a coach.  In between today's games the medical tent had at least five of our girls in there getting treatment for sprains, strains and contusions. The girls also knew how big and tough this team they were going to play was because those were the same girls that sent them to the tent in the first place. I should emphasize that the Triangle team did that with hard, clean play and not dirty soccer.  Still, our girls eagerly laced em up and went out to try and win a championship.

For the most part the game was played in our defensive end.  Those Triangle girls really were very good, very athletic and very well coached.  Unfortunately one of our girls had a blatant hand violation in the penalty box that resulted in a penalty kick (and goal) for them.  A few minutes later one of our defenders got tangled up with one of their players in the box, and although it clearly wasn't a foul another penalty kick was awarded that resulted in a goal.  I'm going to be generous and say the ref had a bad day and leave it at that.  Anyway, we entered half time down 2-0.

In the first 25 minutes of the second half we again survived a bunch of action in our own defensive end and honestly I thought the girls were going to just try and make it through the game without breaking something or giving up another goal.  I should have known better.  For the last 10 minutes they fought and scrapped and managed to finally get a goal with three minutes left.  They kept pouring it on and had another couple of chances before the whistle blew and it was all over.

At the end of the day our girls played the best tournament they've had in the three seasons Erin and I have been involved.  They made the finals and gave a very strong team all they could handle.  It was a sight to behold.

As for me, well I managed to get a ref to yell at me for the first time since I've been the assistant coach.  I thought she'd done a terrible job the whole game and with about ten minutes left one of our girls got steamrolled and when I didn't hear the whistle I pulled a John McEnroe and yelled "You've GOT to be kidding me."  Then she blew the whistle and yelled at me to hush up and if I'd given her the chance she was getting ready to blow the whistle.  In my head I said, "This year would've been nice" but out of my mouth came "Sorry."  It cracked the girls on the bench up, but it was a little embarrassing.

My hat's off to our head coach Mac, who dealt with all the crap with the club, the league and the tournaments and never once lost his cool.  It ain't easy being the go-between for 16 fifteen-year old girls, their families and a youth sports bureaucracy but somehow he did it.  Now he'll be able to do his day job uninterrupted for a few months and we'll all get our weekends back for a while.

And of course there was our team manager Rick.  He must have sent out 10,000 email this season and made just as many phone calls in an effort to get us where we needed to be on time and ready to play.  I'm not sure what we would of done without him.

We also had a great bunch of parents on this team.  They were all very positive, never getting down on the girls and never yelling objectionable things at the opponents or the refs. Heck, if anything they were too nice, but I'll take that over the prima donna parents any day.  Not to be overlooked is their time commitment in getting their girls to the practices and games and I hope we were able to communicate our appreciation to them adequately.

Finally, I have to say that these girls were a true joy to coach.  I'm not sure how much good we did them, but they did a world of good for us.  They made us laugh, a lot, and roll our eyes at all the stories about boys and school, and boys and boys and in the process only drove us a little bit crazy.  What more can you ask from a bunch of teenage girls?  Thanks Lady Reds.