Woeful views for a dreary Sunday

When Beacon Journal managing editor Mike Burbach puts a piece on A1 with the salutation “Dear Readers” you know it’s going to be a “Dear John” letter.

Ah, yes, it is the severing of our relationship with the funky Community Extra. It is now gone. Public Editor Mike Needs ducked his responsibility of explaining to readers because he did not have his regular Sunday column. It will catch up with him though, I am sure.

The TV listings will remain untouched (can’t mess with that), but the old Crime Watch which readers seemed to relish is now just a full page inside on Page B6 and weddings, anniversaries and engagements filled a half page of E-7. Let’s not forget, however, that the weddings, etc., is paid advertising. Crime Watch, if I remember correctly, was born about the time that the BJ quit wasting a reporter to work full time at the cop shop. Why keep someone there full time covering crime on a daily basis when you could send someone down once a week to pick up a stack of reports to list graphs and graphs of unimportant crimes such as domestic disturbances, loitering and stealing from Walmart?

The photo feature that appeared in Community Extra will now be printed on a slow news day in the local section–filling a space where news might have fit.

Do you remember other things that have gone by the wayside like Beacon magazine? The fancy new clock tower might have made the cover of the mag. And do you remember Tower Topics, the employee publication which was even mailed to retirees? We thought it was a bunch of company drivel back then, but today a few old copies pulled from dusty storage spaces are providing a lot of fodder for the BJ Retirees blog.

Ah, well. Those of us on Social Security will get a nice little pay increase next year even though a part of the chunk will go to payment of an increase in the Medicare insurance premium. But starting Monday the new bankruptcy law will require “pay back.”

There seems to be a lot of “pay back.” Let’s hope the two Mikeys don’t have to fend off too much of it from readers.