The Ohio Department of Education says it is “making life easier” for radio stations and news websites.
ODE will be “providing informative educational programming that is easy to access and user friendly, [including] a 60-second message ... that will update listeners about the many reforms in education, as well as the successes that districts, schools and students are experiencing. ...
“The pre-recorded message can be used as part of a newscast, as a stand-alone message, or be uploaded as a podcast on a website.
“In addition, [we are] distributing made-for-broadcast press releases that will include links to sound bites from department personnel. These ‘rip-and-read’ releases also will be available on our website for quick access to a news story.”
In other words, the state will be writing copy for radio newsrooms. I’m certain those reports will be extremely objective.
Just like the ones in China.
Next thing you know, lobbyists will be writing laws for our legislators.
Oh, wait a minute ...
The Fran file
The Beacon Journal’s Mark J. Price, who writes the stellar This Place, This Time history column each Monday, spends hours and hours reading old stuff. The other day he was perusing a copy of LIFE magazine from April 21, 1952, when the signature line on a letter to the editor jumped out at him.
Sirs:
The LIFE writer who described Humphrey Bogart in “The African Queen” as “an unshaven borborygmic bum” should get a special prize for literary achievement.
Faced by the unfamiliar word “borborygmic,” I turned to Webster’s to find out what kind of a bum your writer thought Bogart was.
To my surprise, the word was not listed. I phoned the public library and fortunately was connected with a reference librarian of Greek ancestry who told me that borborygmus is Greek [and] can be translated as “intestinal rumbling.”
This is a perfect description for the steamboat captain who had stomach trouble at a tea table. But don’t you think a footnote was needed for the readers who can’t translate Greek or aren’t lucky enough to find a gracious Greek librarian?
Frances B. Murphey
Akron, Ohio
The legendary Beacon Journal columnist, who died in 1998, apparently was using only a standard Webster’s dictionary, because the editor’s response beneath the letter read: “Boborygmic appears at bottom of p. 311 of the Second Edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary (Unabridged, 1951).”
If you ask me, the whole thing sounds a bit boborygmic.
Facing the truth
To the 187 people who have asked to be my friend on Facebook: SORRY!
Please don’t take it personally. I have no friends. At least not on FB.
I simply don’t use the site. I opened an account ages ago so I could get access to stuff I might be writing about, but until last week I hadn’t been on it for about six months.
I’m not a Luddite, and I’m not antisocial. But I already type and text so much that my fingers are falling off. Besides, I figure I’m easy enough to get ahold of if anyone wants me: My phone number and email address appear at the end of every column.
I still might cave in at some point, but thus far I have been able to withstand intense peer-group pressure. Aren’t you impressed?
Thank you.
Faulty ending
Why does everybody insist on calling the place “Tangiers”?
There’s no “S.” Never has been.
The dining/entertainment facility on West Market Street in Akron has been around for 65 years. You’d think by now the public would have figured out its name.
Criminal background?
Readers are still asking about a photo that ran in the Sunday business section March 3.
In the foreground was the president of Summa Barberton Hospital, Tom DeBord, talking about an ER renovation that will triple his space. If you lingered on the photo for a few seconds, you also saw two figures in the background caught in odd positions. It looked for all the world as if one guy was kneeling down and the other guy was shooting him in the head.
Here’s the best of the reader responses.
Bob: Perhaps it is simply a quirky attention to visual detail, but my guess is Tom DeBord will DEFINITELY need an expanded ER, especially if the one guy in the background shoots the other guy in the background.
Come to think about it, maybe that’s how they keep the project on-time and on-budget.
Tom Shaw
Tom: Not to worry. I think the one guy was only using a drill on the other guy’s head.
Bob Dyer can be reached at 330-996-3580 or bdyer@thebeaconjournal.com.
