The Erie Times-News has launched a new twist on the unethical practice of what has come to be known as "pocketbook journalism" with a long-delayed return to public comment on its online local news content which requires readers who wish to comment to pay $3 per month to the Times-News for the "privilege."
Appended to an article today boasting that Gannon University has joined its all-out campaign in support of County Executive Barry Grossman's misguided and controversial proposal for an Erie County community college, is a an advertisement urging readers of its online edition known as GoErie.com to shell out $2.99 (plus sales tax) for the "opportunity" to comment on selected local news stories. It apparently does not apply to editorials and non-local articles or columns.Here's the complete text of the advertisement:
Thank you for your interest in this article. You can join the conversation about this topic by becoming a member of GoErie.com Insider for $2.99 per month. That's less than 10 cents a day!
Your membership includes writing and reading comments on latest local stories like this one you just read. You will also be able to opt-in for new membership features as they become available.
Sign up below using Press+, an online subscription service for news websites.
Thank you for your interest in this article. You can join the conversation about this topic by becoming a member of GoErie.com Insider for $2.99 per month. That's less than 10 cents a day!
Your membership includes writing and reading comments on latest local stories like this one you just read. You will also be able to opt-in for new membership features as they become available.
Sign up below using Press+, an online subscription service for news websites.
The Times-News is the only newspaper in the country which has adopted this spurious practice, underlining its negative contribution to legitimate journalism in the United States, indeed the world.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
Erie Time-News headline editor grossly mis-states letter's intent
In the headline over a letter to the editor Friday, the Erie Times-News wrote: "School boards to blame for pension woes"
Whoever wrote the headline obviously didn't fully read or comprehend the well-written letter submitted by Selina Servideo of North East.
She wrote: "What caused the shortfall? Not the employees who benefit from the fund. Every employee contributes 7.5 percent of salary to PSERS. Employees have always responsibly contributed to their pensions, but the same can't be said for all school districts and the state (my emphasis).
"Before 2001, contributions were split essentially equally between the district, the state and the employees. But while employee contributions rose from 6.25 to 7.5 percent after 2001, the state and districts gave themselves a contribution "holiday" over the past decade and contributed almost zero percent in the years following 2001.(my emphasis).
Ms. Servideo further wrote: "The state and districts essentially gave themselves a "Buy now! Pay Later! No Money Down!" deal, and now that the bill's come due, they want the taxpayers, students and teachers to pay for their recklessness."
If the editor who wrote the half-correct headline had bothered to read to the middle and end of the letter, he or she would not have grossly mis-stated its full and valid thrust.
Whoever wrote the headline obviously didn't fully read or comprehend the well-written letter submitted by Selina Servideo of North East.
She wrote: "What caused the shortfall? Not the employees who benefit from the fund. Every employee contributes 7.5 percent of salary to PSERS. Employees have always responsibly contributed to their pensions, but the same can't be said for all school districts and the state (my emphasis).
"Before 2001, contributions were split essentially equally between the district, the state and the employees. But while employee contributions rose from 6.25 to 7.5 percent after 2001, the state and districts gave themselves a contribution "holiday" over the past decade and contributed almost zero percent in the years following 2001.(my emphasis).
Ms. Servideo further wrote: "The state and districts essentially gave themselves a "Buy now! Pay Later! No Money Down!" deal, and now that the bill's come due, they want the taxpayers, students and teachers to pay for their recklessness."
If the editor who wrote the half-correct headline had bothered to read to the middle and end of the letter, he or she would not have grossly mis-stated its full and valid thrust.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Letters to the Erie Times-News editor: A more realistic interpretation
In recent months the Erie Times News has published in its Letters to the Editor columns two letters from out-of-towners praising the newspaper. For example, here's one of them published today, with the editor's self-adulatory headline:
Letters to the editor:
Morning starts right with newspaper
My family and I were recently in North East for a visit with family and friends. Every morning, without fail, the morning paper from the Erie Times-News was at the door, and all of the adults sat down to read it from cover to cover with much anticipation. What a great newspaper. Thank you for doing such a good job. The paper made our vacation all the more enjoyable. Keep up the good work.
Sue Dawson Ostrom|West Bend, Wis.
This letter is similar to one published a couple months ago from a Connecticut woman visiting Erie.
Obviously, the Times-News considers these letters to be positive statements enhancing its image.
But there's another implication which projects a contradictory image. One never sees letters from local readers complimenting the newspaper unless it's to comment on the writer's self-interest, such as thanking the newspaper for an article or photo that flatters the letter writer, whether a person or an institution.
That's because local readers are highly aware of and sensitive to the local newspaper's generally inferior and self-serving editorial and journalistic practices which are contrary to the norms and high standards newspapers should espouse. Out-of-town readers, of course, see only a narrow snapshot of the Times-News' news and editorial output which is wildly out of context with the broad reality of its infectiously corrupt and anti-journalistic practices.
Letters to the editor:
Morning starts right with newspaper
My family and I were recently in North East for a visit with family and friends. Every morning, without fail, the morning paper from the Erie Times-News was at the door, and all of the adults sat down to read it from cover to cover with much anticipation. What a great newspaper. Thank you for doing such a good job. The paper made our vacation all the more enjoyable. Keep up the good work.
Sue Dawson Ostrom|West Bend, Wis.
This letter is similar to one published a couple months ago from a Connecticut woman visiting Erie.
Obviously, the Times-News considers these letters to be positive statements enhancing its image.
But there's another implication which projects a contradictory image. One never sees letters from local readers complimenting the newspaper unless it's to comment on the writer's self-interest, such as thanking the newspaper for an article or photo that flatters the letter writer, whether a person or an institution.
That's because local readers are highly aware of and sensitive to the local newspaper's generally inferior and self-serving editorial and journalistic practices which are contrary to the norms and high standards newspapers should espouse. Out-of-town readers, of course, see only a narrow snapshot of the Times-News' news and editorial output which is wildly out of context with the broad reality of its infectiously corrupt and anti-journalistic practices.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Idiocy at the Erie Times-News on a slow news day
In today's Erie Times-News:
Snowy early winter in Erie region's forecast
By ROBB FREDERICK
robb.frederick@timesnews.com
A month from now, when hurricane waves are carving up all that nice Atlantic tline, pay attention. Those storms could have us shoveling in December.
This is perhaps the most idiotic Page One banner story I've ever seen. Snow in Erie in December? What a revelation! Whoever wrote this story must live on the Equator. Must have been a slow news day.
Snowy early winter in Erie region's forecast
By ROBB FREDERICK
robb.frederick@timesnews.com
A month from now, when hurricane waves are carving up all that nice Atlantic tline, pay attention. Those storms could have us shoveling in December.
This is perhaps the most idiotic Page One banner story I've ever seen. Snow in Erie in December? What a revelation! Whoever wrote this story must live on the Equator. Must have been a slow news day.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
11 county school districts agree to subsidize proposed community college
Despite assertions that property tax revenues won’t be used to support the controversial community college proposed by County Executive Barry Grossman, eleven school districts within the county which pay for the operation of the Erie County Technical School from local school district property tax revenues have agreed to subsidize the proposed community college should it materialize.
The technical school has agreed to donate rent-free 35,000 sq. feet of its classroom, lab and welding instruction space worth more than half a million dollars annually for five years, thus circumventing Erie County council‘s prohibition against the use of tax revenues to support the project.
The technical school operating committee, which consists of a board member from each of the participating schools throughout the county, entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Grossman providing for the rent subsidy at its regular monthly meeting Thursday. The specific details remain to be worked out in a lease agreement, according to the unsigned MOU outlined in the agenda for Thursday’s meeting.
The eleven participating school districts include Wattsburg, Harborcreek, North East, Iroquois (Lawrence Park/Wesleyville), Girard, Fairview, Fort LeBouef, General McLane, Millcreek, Union City and Northwestern.
In a resolution adopted at its meeting Thursday night, the technical school's operating committee resolved that it fully supports the establishment of a county community college and the donation of rent-free space to it, even though the 11 school districts its members represent are strapped for operating funds, drastically cutting both personnel and programs to meet budgetary cutbacks.
There was no indication whether the 11 school boards have been consulted or voted on the subsidy, or whether the technical school operating committee members acted on their own without their various boards' knowledge or express consent.
The technical school has agreed to donate rent-free 35,000 sq. feet of its classroom, lab and welding instruction space worth more than half a million dollars annually for five years, thus circumventing Erie County council‘s prohibition against the use of tax revenues to support the project.
The technical school operating committee, which consists of a board member from each of the participating schools throughout the county, entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Grossman providing for the rent subsidy at its regular monthly meeting Thursday. The specific details remain to be worked out in a lease agreement, according to the unsigned MOU outlined in the agenda for Thursday’s meeting.
The eleven participating school districts include Wattsburg, Harborcreek, North East, Iroquois (Lawrence Park/Wesleyville), Girard, Fairview, Fort LeBouef, General McLane, Millcreek, Union City and Northwestern.
In a resolution adopted at its meeting Thursday night, the technical school's operating committee resolved that it fully supports the establishment of a county community college and the donation of rent-free space to it, even though the 11 school districts its members represent are strapped for operating funds, drastically cutting both personnel and programs to meet budgetary cutbacks.
There was no indication whether the 11 school boards have been consulted or voted on the subsidy, or whether the technical school operating committee members acted on their own without their various boards' knowledge or express consent.
Erie Times-News unveils another community college propagandist
The Erie Times-News and its stepchild, Rethink Erie, the elitest group behind the controversial tax-supported community college proposed by one-term County Executive Barry Grossman, trotted out their latest propagandist to reiterate their talking points, an obscure businessman from Fairview whose op-ed column in Sunday's newspaper reeks of naivete.
In a typically misleading headline over his column, the Times-News lamely mis-characterized Andrew Foyle as an "educator" simply because he is a citizen who sits on the Fairview school board, and represents that board on the board of the Erie County Technical Institute, presumably to try to qualify him as a credible advocate for a community college, a futile ploy. Nowhere in his dissertation does Mr. Foyle betray any evidence of expertise as an educator, rather the contrary.
In a specious apples and oranges exercise, Mr. Foyle wrote in the Times-News that the position of the three county council members who oppose using property tax revenues to fund the proposed community college is morally inconsistent with their recent objections to a proposal to privatize the two county-owned and operated nursing homes.
"It's unfortunate," Mr. Foyle piously wrote, "that the slim majority of council doesn't feel the same 'moral obligation' to help educate our young people who are also in need of financial assistance."
That's an inane statement that underscores Mr. Foyle's fundamental misunderstanding of both higher education and subsidized health care. The latter is mandated by federal and state law, the former is not. Morality has nothing to do with it.
Whether the county nursing homes continue to be run by government or are given over to the private sector to operate, the vast bulk of patients' costs will continue to be paid from the same public sources, medicare, medicaid and their various permutations. And the private sector is certain to operate them more efficiently, providing the same or higher level of services for less cost, a plus for both the patients and taxpayers.
With supreme arrogance and utter disdain for the facts, Mr. Foyle wrote: "Inarguably (Inarguably?), an educational gap exists in our region between secondary education and affordable postsecondary education and/or the existing for-profit business and trade schools. With far too many families in our community living at or below the poverty level, demand exists for affordable education."
For one thing, there are numerous public and private sources of post-secondary funding for disadvantaged students which help to level the financial playing field, so the "gap" is not as foreboding as Mr. Foyle implies.
Second, why should county taxpayers have to pay for the specialized vocational training of prospective employees whom manufacturers and industrialists like Mr. Foyle require to operate their for-profit businesses, when they should be providing the training themselves out of their profits as a cost of doing business?
Is it any wonder that, as Mr. Foyle asserts, "Many of the leading employers in this community have been quite vocal in their support of a community college because of a growing demand for skilled workers." Who wouldn't rather have someone else pay for some of their costs of doing business, rather than paying for it themselves? It's the American way.
So, as we can see, Mr. Foyle, GE and other employers who support a tax-funded community college are just as guilty of seeking to avoid certain costs as the vast majority of the county's property taxpayers are reluctant, indeed unable, to finance a community college. His and his cohorts' position isn't the altruistic conceit he attempts to portray it as.
Mr. Foyle says what bothers him most is that the county pays out millions of dollars towards social services, but "Unfortunately, our county government doesn't make the connection that an investment in education today will lead to a decreased demand for social services tomorrow." If Mr. Foyle or anyone else thinks investment in a community college will diminish the entrenched social services bureaucracy in any way, they are self-delusional. The historic experience dictates that it will grow bigger.
Mr. Foyle writes in the Times-News: "Without a community college, or other affordable alternative, many high school graduates from lower-income families can't afford the education necessary to gain these skills. Without a skilled local labor force, how long do you think these companies will stay in Erie?"
Is Mr. Foyle deaf, dumb and blind? Doesn't he know that Erie businesses are leaving Erie in droves for greener pastures offshore like Mexico and elsewhere, not because there aren't skilled workers here, but because there are skilled workers there who will work for much lower wages in venues where taxation, utilities and other key cost factors are a fraction of those here in Pennsylvania. Here a dominant source of industrial energy is electricity, the cost of which will nearly double next year, thanks to the dismal legacy of former governor Tom Ridge's disastrous deregulation initiative back in the mid-90s.
Mr. Foyle says "I applaud Grossman for his vision in continuing to champion a community college." Here we find him at his most naive. Would Mr. Foyle turn over his business to the county government to run? I don't think so. County government has consistently failed in its higher educational initiatives. As Keith Farnham has repeatedly pointed out, county taxpayers are still nearly a million dollars in debt to the state for the county's last failed attempt at post-secondary ed, CamTech. It isn't "vision" that's driving the county executive's pipedream, it's blindness to economic reality.
If County executive Grossman, Mr. Foyle, the Times-News,Rethink Erie and other proponents of a county community college would get behind the promising but aborted effort to align with the highly successful Butler County Community College to provide a proven community college environment here in Erie at much less cost than is proposed for Grossman's boondoggle, Erie County's disadvantaged youth would have their affordable education.
But affordable education isn't really what the county executive, the Times-News, Rethink Erie and their sycophants are really interested in. What they're really interested in are empire building, self-aggrandizement and power-broking at any cost to the taxpayers.
In a typically misleading headline over his column, the Times-News lamely mis-characterized Andrew Foyle as an "educator" simply because he is a citizen who sits on the Fairview school board, and represents that board on the board of the Erie County Technical Institute, presumably to try to qualify him as a credible advocate for a community college, a futile ploy. Nowhere in his dissertation does Mr. Foyle betray any evidence of expertise as an educator, rather the contrary.
In a specious apples and oranges exercise, Mr. Foyle wrote in the Times-News that the position of the three county council members who oppose using property tax revenues to fund the proposed community college is morally inconsistent with their recent objections to a proposal to privatize the two county-owned and operated nursing homes.
"It's unfortunate," Mr. Foyle piously wrote, "that the slim majority of council doesn't feel the same 'moral obligation' to help educate our young people who are also in need of financial assistance."
That's an inane statement that underscores Mr. Foyle's fundamental misunderstanding of both higher education and subsidized health care. The latter is mandated by federal and state law, the former is not. Morality has nothing to do with it.
Whether the county nursing homes continue to be run by government or are given over to the private sector to operate, the vast bulk of patients' costs will continue to be paid from the same public sources, medicare, medicaid and their various permutations. And the private sector is certain to operate them more efficiently, providing the same or higher level of services for less cost, a plus for both the patients and taxpayers.
With supreme arrogance and utter disdain for the facts, Mr. Foyle wrote: "Inarguably (Inarguably?), an educational gap exists in our region between secondary education and affordable postsecondary education and/or the existing for-profit business and trade schools. With far too many families in our community living at or below the poverty level, demand exists for affordable education."
For one thing, there are numerous public and private sources of post-secondary funding for disadvantaged students which help to level the financial playing field, so the "gap" is not as foreboding as Mr. Foyle implies.
Second, why should county taxpayers have to pay for the specialized vocational training of prospective employees whom manufacturers and industrialists like Mr. Foyle require to operate their for-profit businesses, when they should be providing the training themselves out of their profits as a cost of doing business?
Is it any wonder that, as Mr. Foyle asserts, "Many of the leading employers in this community have been quite vocal in their support of a community college because of a growing demand for skilled workers." Who wouldn't rather have someone else pay for some of their costs of doing business, rather than paying for it themselves? It's the American way.
So, as we can see, Mr. Foyle, GE and other employers who support a tax-funded community college are just as guilty of seeking to avoid certain costs as the vast majority of the county's property taxpayers are reluctant, indeed unable, to finance a community college. His and his cohorts' position isn't the altruistic conceit he attempts to portray it as.
Mr. Foyle says what bothers him most is that the county pays out millions of dollars towards social services, but "Unfortunately, our county government doesn't make the connection that an investment in education today will lead to a decreased demand for social services tomorrow." If Mr. Foyle or anyone else thinks investment in a community college will diminish the entrenched social services bureaucracy in any way, they are self-delusional. The historic experience dictates that it will grow bigger.
Mr. Foyle writes in the Times-News: "Without a community college, or other affordable alternative, many high school graduates from lower-income families can't afford the education necessary to gain these skills. Without a skilled local labor force, how long do you think these companies will stay in Erie?"
Is Mr. Foyle deaf, dumb and blind? Doesn't he know that Erie businesses are leaving Erie in droves for greener pastures offshore like Mexico and elsewhere, not because there aren't skilled workers here, but because there are skilled workers there who will work for much lower wages in venues where taxation, utilities and other key cost factors are a fraction of those here in Pennsylvania. Here a dominant source of industrial energy is electricity, the cost of which will nearly double next year, thanks to the dismal legacy of former governor Tom Ridge's disastrous deregulation initiative back in the mid-90s.
Mr. Foyle says "I applaud Grossman for his vision in continuing to champion a community college." Here we find him at his most naive. Would Mr. Foyle turn over his business to the county government to run? I don't think so. County government has consistently failed in its higher educational initiatives. As Keith Farnham has repeatedly pointed out, county taxpayers are still nearly a million dollars in debt to the state for the county's last failed attempt at post-secondary ed, CamTech. It isn't "vision" that's driving the county executive's pipedream, it's blindness to economic reality.
If County executive Grossman, Mr. Foyle, the Times-News,Rethink Erie and other proponents of a county community college would get behind the promising but aborted effort to align with the highly successful Butler County Community College to provide a proven community college environment here in Erie at much less cost than is proposed for Grossman's boondoggle, Erie County's disadvantaged youth would have their affordable education.
But affordable education isn't really what the county executive, the Times-News, Rethink Erie and their sycophants are really interested in. What they're really interested in are empire building, self-aggrandizement and power-broking at any cost to the taxpayers.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Pat Howard's hysteria, histrionics and the community college
In his hysterical advocacy for an Erie County community college opposed, according to his own newspaper's survey, by nearly 90 percent of readers, Erie Times-News Managing Editor Pat Howard, in typically prolix prose, resorted to prevarication and half-truths, even urging an elected public official to disobey state ethics law.
These combined with an array of factual errors in last Sunday's vituperative column denigrating two county councilmen who have displayed the courage of their convictions, undermines what little credibility Howard may have as a putative journalist, none in my estimation.
It would take more time and space than his epistolary histrionics are worth to disprove all of Howard's fanciful notions about the role of two of the four council members - Lyle Foust and Joseph Giles - who, along with two other council colleagues, have bravely withstood the gross falsehoods and misrepresentations published almost daily in the monopoly Erie Times-News by Howard and his cohorts, so I'll just address a few of the most glaring ones.
It begins with the headline Howard wrote over his Sunday column: "Foust's decision to abstain not as clear-cut as he portrays it.", an assertion so at odds with reality it boggles the mind. Foust took his principled stand to abstain from voting on the community college issue based upon a thorough legal analysis by county council's own attorney, Thomas Talarico. He concluded it would be a clear conflict of interest and violation of state law for Foust to vote on the community college question whether he voted yea or nay. It doesn't get more clear-cut than that.
Nevertheless, Howard wrote that Foust should "push" what Howard misperceives as "the legal limits of the gray area," and vote in favor of a community college, but which a rational person would see as a black and white legal admonition against voting either for or against it. In other words, according to Howard, break the law.
Howard claims Foust "advocated" (Howard's word, not Foust's) in favor of an Erie county community college when two years ago he wrote in the Meadville newspaper that it was "an opportunity that northwest Pennsylvania must seize if it is to make progress in the challenging years ahead."
Howard fails to note that was long before first (and quite likely one) term County Executive Barry Grossman was elected to that position and "advocated" that the community college's unknown but considerable costs should be financed by Erie County's already heavily-burdened property taxpayers. That provision is at the very root of Councilman Giles' opposition to the community college proposal advanced by the dissembling county executive.
The most pernicious aspect of Howard's and his newspaper's relentless campaign on behalf of a community college is their abject failure to give not merely equal, but ANY time and space to opponents. Instead they publish slanted news stories, editorials and op-ed columns on its behalf almost daily, but none in opposition, while printing every letter to the editor favoring their pet project, but only one in ten of those opposed to it, despite their pious editorial pronouncements proclaiming freedom of speech and the press. It underscores the cynical truism that "A free press is guaranteed only to those who own one."
These combined with an array of factual errors in last Sunday's vituperative column denigrating two county councilmen who have displayed the courage of their convictions, undermines what little credibility Howard may have as a putative journalist, none in my estimation.
It would take more time and space than his epistolary histrionics are worth to disprove all of Howard's fanciful notions about the role of two of the four council members - Lyle Foust and Joseph Giles - who, along with two other council colleagues, have bravely withstood the gross falsehoods and misrepresentations published almost daily in the monopoly Erie Times-News by Howard and his cohorts, so I'll just address a few of the most glaring ones.
It begins with the headline Howard wrote over his Sunday column: "Foust's decision to abstain not as clear-cut as he portrays it.", an assertion so at odds with reality it boggles the mind. Foust took his principled stand to abstain from voting on the community college issue based upon a thorough legal analysis by county council's own attorney, Thomas Talarico. He concluded it would be a clear conflict of interest and violation of state law for Foust to vote on the community college question whether he voted yea or nay. It doesn't get more clear-cut than that.
Nevertheless, Howard wrote that Foust should "push" what Howard misperceives as "the legal limits of the gray area," and vote in favor of a community college, but which a rational person would see as a black and white legal admonition against voting either for or against it. In other words, according to Howard, break the law.
Howard claims Foust "advocated" (Howard's word, not Foust's) in favor of an Erie county community college when two years ago he wrote in the Meadville newspaper that it was "an opportunity that northwest Pennsylvania must seize if it is to make progress in the challenging years ahead."
Howard fails to note that was long before first (and quite likely one) term County Executive Barry Grossman was elected to that position and "advocated" that the community college's unknown but considerable costs should be financed by Erie County's already heavily-burdened property taxpayers. That provision is at the very root of Councilman Giles' opposition to the community college proposal advanced by the dissembling county executive.
The most pernicious aspect of Howard's and his newspaper's relentless campaign on behalf of a community college is their abject failure to give not merely equal, but ANY time and space to opponents. Instead they publish slanted news stories, editorials and op-ed columns on its behalf almost daily, but none in opposition, while printing every letter to the editor favoring their pet project, but only one in ten of those opposed to it, despite their pious editorial pronouncements proclaiming freedom of speech and the press. It underscores the cynical truism that "A free press is guaranteed only to those who own one."
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Grape expectations
Each year, as grape harvest season rolls around in rural Erie County and neighboring communities, and the fragrance of ripening grapes permeates the countryside, the Erie Times-News trots out one of its reporters to produce a formualic article on the prospects for this year's harvest - its size, volume, quality and value.
An unusual aspect of this year's crop is that the remarkably hot summer days in July and August have ripened the grapes sooner than normal, and harvesting is scheduled to begin in about a week, one to two weeks earlier than usual.
The ritual typically consists of interviews with a couple grape growers, invariably one from North East, the heart of the lake shore grape-growing district; the fellow out at the Lake Erie Regional Grape Research Lab on North Cemetary Rd,John Griggs, a knowledgeable and dedicated grape expert, and a Welch Foods spokesperson whose company processes most of the non-vinifera grapes grown in Erie County and neighboring New York and Ohio vineyards at its North East plant, the biggest in the world.
Rarely, if ever, do the reporters have the slightest knowledge of the grape farming industry, and their articles betray their ignorance. For example, in this year's article, the reporter fails to identify the predominant grape under harvest, the famous Concord grape whose juice finds its way into millions of jelly, jam, preserves and beverage containers marketed by Welch and others around the world.
But later in the article, he writes: "The region's Niagara harvest, which began in 2009 on Sept. 25, is likely to begin before Labor Day, Griggs said."
Clearly the writer doesn't know the difference between Concords, which are purple, and Niagaras, which are white.Typically, local grape growers harvest their Concords first, then when finished with that variety, begin harvesting the Niagaras.
However, this year, a new harvest strategy is being implemented by the National Grape Cooperative members in which some of the Niagaras will be harvested earlier, followed by the Concord harvest, after which harvest of the Niagaras will be completed, one prominent local grape grower told me.
Had the reporter done a modicum of homework, he would have known the Concords are the predominent variety by far, while the Niagaras represent only a tiny percent of the annual harvest locally.
An unusual aspect of this year's crop is that the remarkably hot summer days in July and August have ripened the grapes sooner than normal, and harvesting is scheduled to begin in about a week, one to two weeks earlier than usual.
The ritual typically consists of interviews with a couple grape growers, invariably one from North East, the heart of the lake shore grape-growing district; the fellow out at the Lake Erie Regional Grape Research Lab on North Cemetary Rd,John Griggs, a knowledgeable and dedicated grape expert, and a Welch Foods spokesperson whose company processes most of the non-vinifera grapes grown in Erie County and neighboring New York and Ohio vineyards at its North East plant, the biggest in the world.
Rarely, if ever, do the reporters have the slightest knowledge of the grape farming industry, and their articles betray their ignorance. For example, in this year's article, the reporter fails to identify the predominant grape under harvest, the famous Concord grape whose juice finds its way into millions of jelly, jam, preserves and beverage containers marketed by Welch and others around the world.
But later in the article, he writes: "The region's Niagara harvest, which began in 2009 on Sept. 25, is likely to begin before Labor Day, Griggs said."
Clearly the writer doesn't know the difference between Concords, which are purple, and Niagaras, which are white.Typically, local grape growers harvest their Concords first, then when finished with that variety, begin harvesting the Niagaras.
However, this year, a new harvest strategy is being implemented by the National Grape Cooperative members in which some of the Niagaras will be harvested earlier, followed by the Concord harvest, after which harvest of the Niagaras will be completed, one prominent local grape grower told me.
Had the reporter done a modicum of homework, he would have known the Concords are the predominent variety by far, while the Niagaras represent only a tiny percent of the annual harvest locally.
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