Hello. A combination of general holiday downtime (we ARE in the vicinity of America's Christmas City, after all), my own technological ineptitude, and my need for personal downtime, all have contributed to scant postings lately. My apologies. I intend to pick it up now, all things being equal; and I also intend to start another blog, this one having to do with health and wellness. In this new one I hope to share what useful things I have learned in my battle with diabetes and other health problems. Also, I hope to learn from readers--and to pass on to other readers--things they have discovered to be useful in keeping or regaining health.
So stay tuned for that; and meanwhile, let us contnue our delayed consideration of what will become of Bethlehem. Which way to the future?
Can the place survive with a casino? Can it survive without one? Who will replace the powerful State Representative T.J. Rooney, and what difference will that make?
We'll talk about these things beginning tomorrow.

My views on how Bethlehem can survive--if it is going to survive at all--may seem hardboiled. Seeing no alternative, I am an unabashed advocate of casino gambling.
But I am also an advocate of using the city's heritage to best advantage, far better than it has ever been used before, to draw visitors here and educate and entertain them. This also will strengthen the economy--rather significantly, if it is done well.
This means doing much better than has ever been done before with the city's name, its three-plus-century-old story, its multiethnic background (NOT multicultural, since there can only be room for one culture in a country). Take all the riches that are already here, add some serious thought on how to present it well; and then--Make it so.
Somebody has said Bethlehem will always be a place of great potential. This ironic statement suggests that Bethlehemites will never work together for the common interest. And certainly that has seemed true up until now. I have seen good iniatives go down, time and again, as a result of personal and intergroup conflicts. For once, let us get it right. We are not a world capital. We certainly have seen better days. But we are a wonderful place. If we work together we can be better yet. If not, the consequences could be dire.
More coming up on working together. Plus a personal vision of that better future.

I have not been posting because I often find it impossible to log in; why this should be I do not know.

With world and national and even state news available 24/7 on a wide variety of media--NPR, CNN, the three original television networks and the internet, to name the most obvious--print newspapers cannot expect to survive by presenting the "big" news stories. Their hope is to be relentlessly local; and that is an idea that seems to come hard to their owners and managers. They need to be the place to go to read about the town council, the school board, the churches, the Little League, the Girl Scouts, and so on.
This should not be demeaning, although editors and publishers seem to think it is. Life is lived first of all in localities, whether the locality is Manhattan, St. Petersburg, Washington, DC, or Bethlehem, PA.
When the Globe-Times was in its fatal decline, its consultants did not think of this aspect of human life. The paper was advised to cut back on its local coverage, except for sports. The advice was followed; and this gave its readers one more reason for ending their subscriptions.
Now the Morning Call is making the very same mistake. It has cut off its 11 weekly shoppers, one for each of the communities it included in its cireculation area. This is where you would see news of your town's businesses, of your grandson's Little League no-hitter--in short, the news that most directly touched your life. The paper has cut its distinguished historical columnist, cut back on its society coverage, and no doubt--I have not yet had time to check this--on its local arts coverage.
Question: Who, then, is left to serve, if not the people who want to know what is happening around them?
The paper has done all this, too, in what has become the American corporate tradition. Some 102 employees and contributors have been let go just before the major holidays of the year. (Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwaanza, Winter Solstice? I refuse to go there, although I myself celebrate Christmas. All I can say to these exiles from the Morning Call is, "Happy Holidays, guys.Whatever you celebrate. Lots of luck.")

Professor Walter Brasch is a distinguished professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University, Bloomsburg, PA. Brasch wrote a not-QUITE published book about the demise of the Globe-Times of Bethlehem. In "Death of a Newspaper," he postulates that one of the things the Bethlehem paper might have done to save itself would have been to "make itself small," and concentrate on holding its natural circulation base--Bethlehem. Instead, on the advice of consultants, the paper attempted to expand its markets. Its logo was seen everywhere, for miles around. Unfortunately, it may as well have been painted on water.
So. The Globe-Times was small; and, arguably, one of the reasons for its demise was that it tried to be big. (I am not saying that this summarizes all of Professor Brasch's argument; and I hope his book may someday be generally available.)
The Morning Call would appear to have stumbled into the ditch opposite the one that swallowed its late competitor. The Allentown paper put its trust in bigness. It is part of a giant corporation, the Chicago Tribune, and has been a corporate holding of one corporation or another since it was sold years ago by its founding Lehigh Valley family, the Millers.
The problem is that the Allentown paper has always been just a small cog in the machine of whatever corporation it belongs to. It is, after all, in the mix with papers from Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and other big cities. It stands to reason that, as a small cog, it will be among the first to be cut to the bone. Being a small piece of something larger is no defense, either; especially if the parent organization is in trouble. And, like all newspaper organizations, the corporate owner of the Morning Call, the Chicago Tribune, is in trouble, saddled with revenue losses from declining advertising and readership.
MoveOn.com fails to see that the Allentown paper's troubles must be viewed in a wider context, a nationwide one. Also, that the problems of newspapers can hardly be solved by the signing of petitions.
What CAN solve the problem of print newspapers? Stay tuned...