Report to Readers by Susan LoTempio

Web shopping for charity

   Monks in Wisconsin are helping the poor with the profits from their online labors.

   Operating out of the Cistercian Abbey in Sparta, Wis., the monks sell computer-printer
cartridges, coffee and gift baskets with monastery products, including Monks' Bread from The
Abbey of the Genesee near Geneseo, N.Y.

   LaserMonks' Web site revenue has rocketed from $180,000 in 2003 to about $5 million to $6
million this year, with a projected $8 million to $10 million in 2008.

   What are some of your favorite Web stores that do good works?

-- James E. Brennan

Buffalo, the college town

We may not be Boston, but this time of year thousands of college students flock to Buffalo to attend one of our local colleges or universities. And for at least nine months of the year, Buffalo is a thriving college town.

Many of these students come from downstate; others from around the country, Canada and beyond. And though they quickly learn about life on campus, they know little about Buffalo, other than jokes about snowfall.

To help orient them to their new "hometown," The News has published a guide called Buffalo 101, which is being distributed on campuses, in book stores and coffee shops around the area.

The guide was written, designed and photographed by the Editorial Department's summer interns. This year's group was a talented bunch that knew instinctively what information college students new to Buffalo would want to know.

To read their reports, go to this link.

Help and hate

There was an unusual juxtaposition of stories in the City & Region section Thursday that illustrate quality of life issues experienced by people with disabilities in our community.

  One of the stories was about 18-year-old Joey Gentile-Gioviano of Cheektowaga, who, because of his disability, benefits from water therapy. His family saved enough money to buy a backyard pool, but turned to the insurance company for help getting the special equipment necessary to get him safely into the pool.

The insurance company turned them down. But the Make-A-Wish Foundation did not. And now that he can get into the pool with the assistance of a lift, "He loves being in there," his mother, Marilyn Gentile told reporter Emma Sapong. "If it was up to him, he would just stay in the water."

The other story described the terrifying experience of several young people who are developmentally disabled, who were taunted and chased in their car by teens who seemed hell-bent on causing them harm. The teens were so aggressive they forced the victims to crash as they attempted to get on the Thruway.

But thanks to the outrage of the public, which gave the police eye-witness accounts and tips, three teens were arrested and are facing hate crime charges.

Those stories certainly show the best and the worst of the people who live here. But I also suspect they illustrate some of the problems many residents with disabilities experience on a daily basis in this community. We don't often hear about their problems, but being denied services they need, or being harassed or taunted when they just want to eat a burger, may surprise you, but they are in no way unusual.

You can't make that stuff up

   Apparently, we hit some nerves with two recent stories.  One was written by our religion reporter, Jay Tokasz, about a lawsuit filed in California that claimed the Buffalo Diocese sent a pedophile priest to San Diego in the late 1970s.

   The other was a two-part series, written by reporter Stephen T. Watson, which explained how prostitution has been changed by the Web and other high-tech advancements. Sunday's Part 1 can be found at this link. And Part 2, which was published Monday, can be found at this link.

If there is a theme to the reader complaints, it would be this: Don't write about such unpleasant things, and they won't exist.

Huh?

Seriously, one person who knew the priest that was the focus of Tokasz's story didn't believe a word of it. She felt he was a fine priest, so we must have made the story up. Maybe the National Enquirer makes things up, but real newspapers don't. Tokasz's report was thoroughly researched, reported and carefully written. And it was based in reality.

As for the prostitution stories, readers complained that by publishing such stories, "we [The News] are part of the problem." And, "the paper has sunk to a new low." And, the stories were just "free advertising" for prostitutes. And, how could we publish "such disgusting stories."

Well, our job is to report what's happening in our community, no matter how upsetting or unpleasant the topic. We write such stories carefully, knowing some readers may be disturbed by the subject matter.

Still, it is our obligation to inform the public of such things. Certainly, ignoring them won't make them go away. It would only make matters worse.

Blog update

You're right, Libby56, staff writers (including myself) should blog more often, if not every day. And if writing blogs was all we did here in the newsroom, the blogs would be a lot fresher. That's not an excuse, just a reality.

   Which leads me to the point of this blog posting, and that is to let you know that we are in the middle of revising, retooling, reordering the blogs on Buffalonews.com.

  Some blogs are going bye-bye. Others will stay where they are. Some are being absorbed into another blog. But the best news is that we have a whole list of new blog topics and bloggers that will debut in September.

Of course, the irony is that because I've been working on that project, and posting other writers' blog entries, I haven't had much time to update this blog.

Just before the new blogs debut, we'll let you know what to expect. Not to worry, though, you'll still be hearing from Anne Neville, though on a new blog that will include "American Idol" plus other pop-culture topics. And the Connors will still guide you through the maze of parenting in the Parent Company blog.

There will be new voices, new topics and new controversies to comment on.

And as for a blog on Niagara County, thanks for the great idea jen14221. I'll add it immediately to the blog wish list.

Great place for our kids?

I moved back to Buffalo two decades ago because I wanted to raise my family here. The reasons to return home (in our case from California), were the same in the mid-1980s as they are now: being close to family, plentiful day care, affordable cost of living, good schools (at least in the suburbs), and a family-friendly quality of life.

Western New York has always had the reputation of being a great place to raise a family, but does the hype live up to reality?

That's what writer Nicole Peradotto wanted to find out for her story that appears in First Sunday magazine. As you might suspect, there's good news and bad news in her report. Not only did she do extensive research and reporting, but her piece also reflects her personal experiences as the mother of two young children.

What Peradotto writes about mirrors exactly what I experienced 22 years ago when I moved home with an 11-month-old in tow:

Family connections are strong; day care offerings iffy. Public schools disappoint; activities for children - beyond sports - are wanting.

Overall, WNY is no better or worse than most other places to raise a family, despite what the marketing folks would have you believe.

To find out why, read her piece  and join the conversation on the Inside the News blog.

Back where they belong

  I am so glad the likes of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Anna Nicole Smith and Nicole Richie have disappeared from the news sections and returned to where they belong - the gossip column, or specifically, our Daily dish column.

Their spoiled antics are hardly the stuff of news, even on really, really slow news days. And after such a steady dose of DUI's, jail sentences, drug-related arrests and public breakdowns, maybe legitimate media outlets have had enough.

From now on, let's leave the misdeeds of these non-celebs to the Liz Smith column or the tabloids. 

That collapsed bridge story

To the thousands and thousands of print edition readers who wondered why the tragic story of the Minneapolis bridge collapse wasn't on our front page this morning, I say this:

     In my humble opinion, we goofed. Big time.

   I'm not offering reasons or excuses for it. It was apparently an error in judgment and errors in judgment can hardly be hidden when they take place in a newspaper.

  Lucky for us that our online edition has  up-to-the-minute news as it unfolds today in Minneapolis.

  And Friday's print edition will also have much more on the story.

   It's also lucky for us that there will be a paper tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that  .... That allows us the chance to work hard to get it right.

Guv's own words

We're pushing ahead with extra Web features on Buffalonews.com so we can supplement the stories you're reading in the print or the online editions.

There's no better way to stay on top of politics than to read the exact words of those we've elected to office, so when Gov. Spitzer stopped by The News this week for a meeting with editors and reporters, we recorded his answers to our questions and posted the transcript online.

Let me know if you would like to see more transcripts like this one.

Also, in a less serious mode, that old landmark - Foit's restaurant on the shores of Lake Erie in Hamburg - was finally torn down this week, and we captured the event on video. Check that out at this link.

 

Class of 1987

Our news stories and blogs pay a great deal of attention to WNY's brain drain.

  We all know that people are leaving this region in droves, but it really hits home when our own children decide to live and work somewhere else.

Two of our reporters took the personal approach to the brain drain issue and developed a three-part series that kicks off in Sunday's News called Best & Brightest. It focuses on some members of the Class of 1987 from 25 high schools in Erie and Niagara counties.

Ten years Twenty years (thanks Mark) after graduation, these young people tell us about their lives now, and why they stayed in the area, or why they left.

News Staff reporters Mary Pasciak and Deidre Williams have been working for months tracking down the far-flung class of '87 through intensive research, interviews, Web work, phone calls and e-mails. News photographer Derek Gee has devoted much of his working time to the project, photographing the 48 members of the Class of '87 who are participating.

Their work, under the guidance of suburban editor Bruce Andriatch, will come to fruition when you read the stories and see the Web extras, such as yearbook pictures, biographies and two audio slideshows.

Members of the Class of '87, and anyone else who wants to chime in about the series, can go to our Buffalo Nation blog, which on Sunday will turn its attention to these special stories.

It some ways, reading Best & Brightest feels like attending a 20-year 10-year high school reunion - only with deeper implications for this struggling community.