my turn

I think I’ll save most of my comments for the letter to the editor in Sharp today for next week’s edition. However, I will say a few things that irked me.

For those of you who do not know, Lamar Thomas Sr., who works at Pocono Mountain School District, is not happy with the new Sharp product. He wants to see “the Weekender” return. That’s the basic idea. We ran the letter to the editor in Sharp today after it’s ran last Sunday in the editorial pages of the paper. It elicited some mail all in support of Mr. Thomas’s notion that, at its very nicest, Sharp should not be included in the Pocono Record. At worst, it’s should be burned at the stake. He likened it to Coke introducing Cherry Coke. Even though he meant new Coke.

I made the decision to run this in Sharp for one main reason: Having it in the “Your Turn” section of the paper severely stacked the deck against Sharp. There’s a reason we started Sharp — young people just don’t read the paper anymore. The audience that we are developing for Sharp — the audience we are seeing grow — just plain won’t read Your Turn, and probably wouldn’t even know it’s existed if I hadn’t mentioned it’s now. So of course the mail that we received supported Thomas. I have spoken personally to many of the people who wrote in supporting Thomas, and frankly, none of them are who Sharp is intended for.

But that’s another story. I’ll get to that in next week’s Sharp.

But I did want to address some things in Thomas’s letter very quickly.

–What Thomas — and others — still don’t seem to realize is that everything that appeared in Weekend was done out of convenience. The “articles” that appeared were press releases that for the most part, we copied and pasted in their full version and stuck them in the paper. There was one true article every week, the center spread. The other “articles” were sent to us unsolicited. No one ever called anyone and said “Hey, do you have anything going on this week?” That left dozens of venues, events and cool things going on without a home basically because they thought they didn’t belong in Weekend. They were probably right.

–Also, I’ve told about 100 people this in the past three months since Sharp started, and I guess I’ll say it’s again. Everything that was in Weekend can still be found in the place we moved Weekend to, the B section of the Record. It might not look as long, because those 600-word press releases that included every possible fact you could want to know about that person has been whittled down to what it’s should be, about 50 words. Just the facts, ma’am. That’s what journalism is all about, and the direction the industry is heading. What’s going on, when, where, how much. Everything else that used to be put in Weekend was filler. It was there to take up space and nothing else. That includes pictures of high school plays and productions.

–Thomas basically said that Weekend was culture, and Sharp is about partying. That partying is apparently ruining the culture of the Poconos. I say having something like Sharp benefits the region because it’s makes kids want to stay. This area loses its high school and college graduates in droves, for two reasons. 1. There are no high-paying jobs around here. 2. There is a perception that there is nothing fun to do. We at Sharp can’t do much about the first one. But we can make sure they know there is fun stuff to do around here. That’s what Sharp is all about, making people aware of the good, fun things happening around here. Believe it’s or not, not all of them have to do with beer and partying, as Thomas insinuated. Just this week, Sharp highlighted a musical revue at ESU, a non-alcoholic ESU concert and a concert at the Sherman Theater, where you can drink or not drink. It’s not all about alcohol.

–To Thomas and all who write in concerning this: The former insert in the Pocono Record that is still found in our Friday Arts section is called “Weekend,” not “Weekender.” “Weekender” is the alt-weekly in Wilkes-Barre put out by the Times-Leader. I can’t tell you how annoying it is to read people try and defend something they don’t even know the name of. It makes me want to tear my eyelids out and feed them to ravenous birds, seriously. 

–I agree with one thing Thomas said. He said I had “nerve” putting in my own picture with stories. Hey, I don’t want to see my mug either, and I apologize to anyone who has to. If I could avoid it, I would. But that’s what newspapers do with columns. They put the writers’ pictures with them. Where have you been? Do people write to our sports guys and complain about their column pictures? I’ve had my column picture in different papers for more than 10 years now, and this is the first time anyone has complained. What took so long?

OK, this is too long already. Sorry, I’ve been stewing. 

Some more pleasant links, and it’s only local stuff today:

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet, but the Sherman Theater in Stroudsburg is having its first annual Spotlight Awards on May 30. It honors the best in youth productions throughout the Poconos. Should be interesting.

The first acts of Bethlehem’s Muskifest have been announced. Still waiting for a major announcement, but it’s’’s always a good time to see if Bret and CeCe start fighting on stage.

More Lehigh Valley: Toby Keith is the first announced show at the Allentown Fair on Aug. 29. But the important date is tomorrow: Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Now, I don’t want to sounds unpatriotic or pro-Dixie Chicks or anything like that. But I was driving my wife’s car a few weeks ago and was stuck without my Sirius and her country music presets. So I got stuck listening to Froggy 101 at one point and that “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue” song came on. Talk about outdated! Go back and listen to it. TK was off more on this whole War on Terror thing more than Bush!

I didn’t have room for this in Sharp, but the Shawnee Inn’s free Tuesday concert is comedian Mike Cabot. Enjoy.

Madd Anthony’s, a new club in Blakeslee at the former site of Club Zodiac, is starting a comedy night on the first Friday of every month. On March 7,  the show will be head lined by Chris McDevitt of Sirius Radio and WYSP in Philadelphia’s Kidd Chris Show. New York comedian Rich Shultis and local comic C.J. Hood will be on the bill and the hosts is “Soul” Joel Richardson of MSG TV. Also, it’s’s the site of a future Sharp party on April 25. Just thought I’d throw that in there.