Thirty’s ‘Son’ Ohioana book finalist

Former BJ reporter Thrity Umrigar is among five finalists for the 2018 Ohioana Book Awards for fiction.

Thrity was chosen for “Everybody’s Son,” her latest novel.

Jeffrey Ford (“A Natural History of Hell: Stories”), Ruth Emmie Lang (“Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance”), Celesta Ng (“Little Fires Everywhere”) and Robert Olmstead (“Savage Country”) are the other finalists in the fiction category.

The winners will be announced in July and the 2018 Ohioana Book Awards will be presented October 18 at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus.

Thrity also teaches creative writing at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Thrity began her reporting career with The Lorain Journal. Two years later, in 1987, she came to the BJ.

She left the Beacon to attend Harvard on a Nieman Fellowship, wrote “Bombay Time” and her author career took off

Nancy Peacock with Sheila Benson (left) and Karen Holman (right)

Peacock really cooking!

Nancy Peacock was a winner in the Judge Mary Kovack Bake-off  at the Corkscrew Saloon garage in Medina.

I know Nancy once was a reporter on the BJ Metro desk but I don’t remember her succeeding Jane Snow as Ol’ Blue Walls’ food writer.

Nancy must be proud as, well I’ll say it, a peacock.

Nancy shared the spotlight with Chatham Bicentennial Committee member Sheila Benson and Karen Holman, Medina County prosecutor Dean Holman’s wife.

The judges were Pat Hanek of the Brunswick City Council, former Medina County prosecutor Dean Holman and York Township Trustee Bill Pavlick.

It was a fundraiser for Medina County Domestic Relations Judge Mary Kovach’s re-election campaign. 

After the BJ, Nancy became executive director of the Free Clinic of Medina County.

Before all that, Nancy was with the Medina Gazette, Summit Academy Management and Steel Academy.

Maybe Nancy and Jane Snow can have a steel cage match with souffles at 20 paces?

Paul Tople

Tople in hospice

BJ reporter Katie Byard reports that photographer Paul Tople, Kent State grad involved in three BJ Pulitzers, is in Cleveland Clinic’s Akron General Justin T. Rogers Hospice Care Center, 3358 Ridgewood Road, Akron.

He would like visitors, but call ahead first to be sure he's having a good day. 

Paul is married to Sally Tople.

Latshaw memorial Saturday on Manchester Road

The late BJ printer Dick Latshaw’s Celebration of Life will be 2-5 p.m. Saturday, May 12 at the Allenside Athletic Club, where Dick was a member, 2533 Manchester Road.

Dick Latshaw

Dicky, as the obit calls him, passed away March 1 on Pawleys Island, where he lived with wife of 57 years Pat for 15 years.

Dick’s obituary:

Richard Denny Latshaw “Dicky”

In Memory Of Richard Denny Latshaw, age 77, died Thursday, March 1, 2018 at his residence.

Born in Akron, Ohio, he was a son of the late Raymond Latshaw and Doris Latshaw Ronk. Mr. Latshaw was employed with the Akron Beacon Journal newspaper for 32 years. He was a member of the Pawleys Island Masonic Lodge #409 for 15 years; was also a member of Allenside Athletic Club in Akron, Ohio and enjoyed hunting and fishing.

He was preceded in death by a brother, Larry Latshaw. Survivors include his wife of 57 years, Patricia L. Latshaw; daughter, Shelley Cymbor and her husband, Gary; four grandchildren; four greatgrandchildren; a brother, Kenny Ronk; and many nieces, nephews and friends.

A Celebration of Life will be held Saturday, May 12, 2018 at Allenside Athletic Club, 2533 Manchester Rd., from 2 to 5 p.m.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the Pawleys Island Masonic Lodge, P.O. Box 1592, Pawleys Island, SC 29585. Sign an online guestbook at www.goldfin chfuneralhome.com   .

October 26 Memorial in Akron for Bill

Former BJ reporter Bill Canterbury passed away Tuesday, May 1 in Fort Myers, Florida.

Wife Paula Elick Canterbury wrote:

“John, I am sorry to tell you that Bill passed away May 1 after a battle with cancer. 

Bill Canterbury

“It was a sudden illness but a very aggressive form of cancer.

"We are having a memorial Mass Friday, October 26, 9 a.m., at St. Sebastian Church in Akron with a reception following at the O’Neill House. I hope all can make it. I appreciate you letting the retiree group know.

“Thanks, Paula Canterbury”

Paula explains the October choice:

“We are waiting for October as all our family will be gathering in Akron for a family wedding. We are currently living in Fort Myers where Bill was playing tennis and swimming in the Gulf (of Mexico) in February!"

Bill was the nicest, most unassuming person I have ever met.

Paula put it better:

“Thank you for the kind remembrances of Bill. He was a true country gentleman, like yourself, and we miss him terribly. Hope to see you in October."

I wouldn't miss paying respects to Bill for the world.

Former BJ Editor Dale Allen nailed it:

“If anyone defined the understated eloquence of the Beacon Journal newsroom, it was Bill Canterbury.

"I am sorry to hear of his death."

After so many Facebook posts from Bill's friends and former co-workers, Paula added:

"John, you don’t know how your kind words and the words of his friends and colleagues have helped our kids, Eddie and Lyn, and me through this first week without him. 

"I so appreciate that you reached out to us. You, too, are a country gentleman. There is just something about you West Virginia boys! 

"Thank you and God Bless. Hope to see you and your Paula in October. God Bless, Paula."

Bill could write a quiet story that was loud in your heart. In 1985 his story lede was:

"The dead still rest in peace in a hilltop cemetery in rural Holmes County. But to their survivors, the scenic, century-old burial ground has become a matter of unrest."

There’s a mountain of unrest in my heart as I type this because a fellow West Virginian who shared 44 E. Exchange Street with me is gone forever.

Bill grew up in Wayne County, West Virginia, which is adjacent to Mingo County, where I had my first job after my graduation from West Virginia University School of Journalism, as sports editor of the Williamson Daily News.

Bill and I shared a glittering array of BJ talent born in West Virginia: Scott Bosley, Tom Melody, Bonnie Bolden and some guy from Bluefield with the initials JSK.

George Davis, known as Bing among his family members, wrote:

“I've known of Bill since 1964 when I succeeded him at the Lynchburg (Virginia) Daily Advance and got his apartment, too."

I didn’t know that Bill once worked at the Lynchburg newspaper.

Bill left after 30 years at Ol’ Blue Walls in 2001 on the day that 510 years of BJ experience walked out the door. He’s in That Newsroom in the Sky now with Sandy Levenson, Joan Rice and Bill Bierman, who also ended their BJ careers on that sad, sad 2001 day.

In 2009 my Paula (Tucker) and I ran into Bill and Paula at the annual St. Sebastian Church Thanksgiving dinner on Mull Avenue in Akron. Bill was with Meals on Wheels. 

Both Paulas crossed paths in high school although Paula Stone Tucker is a St. Mary's grad and Paula Elick Canterbury is an Ellet grad.

Kathie Capriolo, a graduate of Akron Central and the University of Akron and a retired Akron Public Schools teacher, wrote:

“Ralph and I are so sorry to hear this. We got to know Bill and Paula through our West Akron Baseball League years.

“Paula and I both worked for Akron public schools. One year at Perkins baseball field, she helped me grade papers.

“Great couple. Bill will be missed.”

Indeed, Kathie.

After the BJ, Bill was public information officer for the Summit County Sheriff.

Bill had been attending the monthly BJ retirees gatherings at Papa Joe’s in the Merriman Valley for years by then, so I also saw and enjoyed his low-key presence there, too.

Paula Canterbury is a University of Akron and Ellet High graduate who was principal of Central Intermediate School in Wadsworth.

RIP, Bill. 

You proved that you can have a magnificent flair while being a quiet man.

USA 45^th in press freedom

Reporters Without Borders says that the United States has dropped to 45^th in the world based on press freedom.

Our Founding Fathers made free speech and a free press the First Amendment because they considered it so important. More important, Thomas Jefferson said, than elected officials.

Relaxing of rules to prevent fewer companies from controlling more and more of the media have resulted in 8 companies owning 1,100 newspapers in America.

Sinclair has all of its 170 local stations deliver verbatim the same "news" item on the same day with a pro-Trump slant.

President Trump makes "the enemy of the people" his regular target, particularly bastions of journalism like the New York Times and Washington Post.

France-based Reporters Without Borders has been inundated with awards for its work --  from Germany to Poland to Spain to Arab American Institute Foundation to Taiwan Foundation for Democracy and even got an international Emmy from the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

RWB’s list of the top countries when it comes to press freedom are:

1.Norway. 2. Sweden. 3. Netherlands. 4. Finland. 5. Switzerland. 6. Jamaica. 7. Belgium. 8. New Zealand. 9. Denmark. 10. Costa Rica.

North Korea is last on the list. Syria is 4^th, China 5^th and Cuban 9^th.

Sad Fort Worth and BJ news

McClatchy, which once owned the BJ for 87 seconds, has trimmed its Fort Worth Star-Telegram newsroom editors from 8 to 5. And labels Texas as part of the Midwest.

Editorial control has been ceded to McClatchy editors who don’t live in Fort Worth, much like Gatehouse is wiping out the Ol’ Blue Walls advertising department and turning the job over to folks in Austin, Texas.

Mike Fannin, editor of McClatchy’s Midwest region, slapped the “Midwest” label on Fort Worth. Mike apparently was absent during geography classes.

McClatchy reported a first quarter loss of $38.9 million.

With 95% of newspaper staff nationally gone since 1990, it can only get worse.

My sources tell me that, since Gatehouse took over the BJ’s assets, advertising vice president Vanessa Koper and ad rep Sue Lindeman are gone and the rest of the ad staff will disappear by September so that Gatehouse can handle all 150 of its newspapers’ advertising from Texas.

In the newsroom, I’m told, Kim Barth, Bob DeMay and Dave Helmick are gone.

Bob is a former BJ Guild president and a BJ photo assignment editor and head of the Ohio News Photographers Association.

Kim was Bob’s treasurer with the state photography group.

Which brings to mind these words of wisom from the late Harry Liggett, founder of this blog, in a 2009 article in the BJ Alums blog:

“Thanks be to God we still have guys like Bob DeMay struggling in the trenches.”

Not any more, Harry.

The silver lining is that, I’m told, those rehired by Gatehouse at the BJ still are getting the same weekly paychecks that they had before the assets sale. The only change is from a 37.5-hour to a 40-hour workweek. 

That’s easier to live with than the 10% pay cut forced upon the BJ staff in 2010 by Black Press, which owned the BJ after McClatchy and before Gatehouse, in case you lost track.

It seems like eons since John S. Knight walked into his corner office at 44 E. Exchange Street at the newspaper he rescued from the Great Depression and built into a 33-newspaper empire with far more staff members than there are today.

Wrong kind of stoned for Sandy Bee Lynn

Retired BJ librarian Sandy Bee Lynn had surgery at Akron General Hospital to remove two kidney stones. A larger one will be removed later.

 

Sandy Bee Lynn, husband Glenn Lynn

This must have been a piece of cake compared to the 2010 day when a drunk driver crossed a double yellow line and hit Sandy’s car head-on. 

The punk went to the Ohio Penitentiary. But Sandy had to deal with intestinal surgery, a plate with 6 screws in her busted left hand, 5 broken bones in her spine and a broken right foot.

It was BJ Alums founder Harry Liggett’s article about the collission in this blog that led her long-ago North Hill friend, Marsha Sue, to a reunion. Marsha saw the article and began her hunt for Sandy Bee. They reunited at the New Horizons Band in Cuyahoga Falls where Sandy Bee plays viola.

Sandy is married to Glenn Lynn. After the BJ, Sandy worked at Orrville and Wadsworth public libraries and lives in Doylestown. Sandy and Glenn both perform with the New Horizons Band in Cuyahoga Falls.

Uniform, medals and other items worn by her father, Henry Fuller, are on display at the Military Aviation Preservation Society (MAPS) Museum. 

Pop was a paratrooper with the 101^st Airborne Division (the famous Screaming Eagle) that jumped over Normandy on D-Day to defeat Nazi Germany. 

The uniform was on display in France for more than a year. The French haven’t forgotten how the Yanks came to their rescue in World War II.

The New Horizons Band, directed by Jim Adkins, performed patriotic music at the dedication ceremony for Sandy’s dad. Glenn was among the band performers.

Henry and Arline Mitchell Fuller had three children: Sandy, Ron and Timothy.

8 chains own 1,100 newspapers in America

Eight companies own about 1,100 newspapers, daily or weekly, in America.

There were only 1,331 daily newspapers in 2014, probably fewer now since there were 1,408 dailies in 2008.

If the owners of those eight companies sat in the same room and decided the identical wording of a story today, what would that do for informing America’s citizens?

Just like an octopus that controls America’s newspapers, the eight tenacles are:

GateHouse Media, the largest newspaper chain in the country with nearly 450 papers in the U.S. including the Akron Beacon Journal.

Gannet, the second largest newspaper chain with more than 220 newspapers

Digital First Media owns more than 170 papers nationwide

Kentucky-based Paxton Media Group owns nearly 60 papers nationwide

Ogden Newspapers has 50 newspapers

Newhouse’s Advance Publications owns newspapers in 25 cities and towns across America and is the country's largest privately-held newspaper chain.

Rupert Murdoch family controls 120 newspapers across five countries.

Warren Buffett, as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, owns about 70 dailies today.

And most of the newspapers that survive have skeleton staffs since newspaper employment went from 458,000 in 1990 to 25,000 today. That’s an astounding loss of 433,000 jobs . . . a 95% freefall.

Photos of John Olesky's trips to Cuba and Florida

To see photos of trips to Cuba and Florida by John Olesky, Class of 1950, copy the URL below and paste it into the www URL destination at the top of your screen.

When you click on a photo, the artlines will appear on the right side of your screen.


https://photos.app.goo.gl/EpGhORA30NcBuiSX2 

Latshaw memorial May 12 on Manchester Road

There will be a Celebration of Life service for former BJ printer Dick Latshaw at 2-5 p.m. Saturday, May 12 at the Allenside Athletic Club, 2533 Manchester Road.

Dick and Pat Latshaw

Dick passed away March 1 on Pawleys Island, South Carolina.

Dick and wife Pat, who asked me to post this information on the BJ Alums blog so that Dick's friends can share in the event, lived for two decades on Pawleys Island two blocks from Linda McElroy, widow of BJ business department retiree Harold McElroy.

Dick thought he had escaped snow when he left Ohio. But in 2010 Pawleys Island got snow for the first time since 1989 . . .  four inches worth.

CF Consolidated Freightways retiree Larry Ray Latshaw, Dick’s brother, predeceased him. Another brother, Ken Ronk, lives in Pennsylvania with wife Lucinda.

Their parents were Doris Denny Ronk and Ken Ronk. Dick returned to Ohio to help his mom celebrate her 97^th birthday shortly before Doris passed away in 2014. Ken predecreased Doris.

Retired printer Sid Sprague, who also lived near the Latshaws on Pawleys Island, moved to Loveland, Colorado with his new bride after his first wife died.

Sid was the first to move to Pawleys Island (from Cuyahoga Falls) around 1997 or 1998. Then Harold and Linda McElroy moved around 1999. Dick and Pat moved to Pawleys in 2000. They all lived on the same 3-blocks-long street. 

Bud Shaw exit 433,000th newspaper job lost in 28 years!

Among the eight veteran reporters, writers and editors who took voluntary buyout offers from Cleveland.com and the Plain Dealer this week were sports columnist Bud Shaw, Washington bureau chief Steve Koff and sports editor Mike Starkey.

Bud Shaw, #433,000

Bud Shaw covered more than a dozen Super Bowls and World Series, eight Masters golf tournaments, the PGA and U.S. Open golf championship, six Olympic Games, the Ryder Cup, the NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup Finals, the Daytona 500, the NCAA Final Four and the U.S. Open tennis tournament.

But that’s irrelevant in today’s crumbling newspapers era.

Indiana University of Pennsylvania graduate and Philadelphia native Shaw came to the PD in 1991 from The National Sports Daily where he worked in Chicago and Detroit. 

His career includes newspapers in Atlanta, San Diego, Philadelphia, New Jersey and western Pennsylvania.

It’s a sad time when a Bud Shaw walks out the door because newspaper owners didn’t get ahead of the infant Internet and, with all their reporting resources, own it. 

No one who toddled onto the Internet to write could have matched all that newspaper talent.

Newspaper employment went from 458,000 in 1990 to 25,000 today. That’s an astounding loss of 433,000 jobs . . . a 95% freefall!

During that same time frame, internet publishing and online broadcasting rose from 30,000 to more than 200,000. A 433,000 loss and a 170,000 gain means 260,000 more people out of work. 

Oh, many migrated to TV newsrooms, which have more reporters than newspapers for the first time in history.

Is this good for democracy? Hell, no! The Washington Post puts it bluntly and accurately. 

Go to

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-crisis-in-journalism-has-become-a-crisis-of-democracy/2018/04/11/a908d5fc-2d64-11e8-8688-e053ba58f1e4_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.dc902ab1fcfb  

to read it. 

There are too many Bud Shaws in this equation to benefit America. There are so few left to catch the politicians and businesses raping America.

Politicians and businesses will have a field day without newspapers being the guarddogs for democracy.