Re: COLUMBINE AND GOD IN THE SCHOOLS?

[Don Coombs <dcoombs@uidaho.edu>]

Please, please, though I still feel separation of church and state is a
good idea, I think it is time to put a different heading on messages so
that "Columbine and God" (as a heading) can be laid to rest. (This is in
no way intended to be disrepectful of either Columbine or God.)

Someone suggested about a month ago that Vision2020 would benefit if
people limited themselves to two postings a day. As you can imagine, this
is a major sacrifice to succinct me, but still:

This is my second and last posting of the day.

How did the Daily News do in covering the hearing on fish and dams at
Clarkston? The Daily News threw in on the traditional opportunity to
follow up when you are off-cycle (morning papers have first shot at a
news story about an event in the afternoon or evening after an afternoon
paper has gone to press). The afternoon Daily News could have reported on
what leaders of each side -- breach the dams and save the salmon and vice
versa -- had to say after the hearing took place. That should have been
interesting, because more people than expected supported dam breaching at
the hearing.

But the Daily News didn't. It ran a namby pamby story about the hearing.

The staff writer who covered the story for the Daily News, however, took a
great picture which deserved a lot more than postage-stamp size in the
paper.

And oh yes: Before the Daily News publishes an editorial about dam
removal, both reporters and editors should note that one paragraph in
Friday's story documented the problem with bringing in new reporters every
six weeks and editors every eight. It said that in order to spare the
salmon, a wrecking ball must first destroy sections of four lower Snake
River dams.

In each case, half the width of the river is taken up with concrete dam,
the other half with earthen embankment. Even the Army Corps of Engineers
has figured out that it would be easier to grade out the earthen
embankment than to remove the concrete. The concrete would just stay
there, as a monument to something or other.

Don H. Coombs