Our town

Mitch Harper has kicked off what could be a hot topic of discussion -- corporate ownership of newspapers. I have no particular interest in defending the corporation except for the comment I left on Mitch's post and for this observation: As Harper and one of the commenters pointed out, this is still a two-newspaper town, a rarity these days.

I just got an e-mail alert that the mastodons are leaving downtown, so you'd better seem 'em soon if you haven't already. But the online auction for those who want to bid on a mastodon is ready and will continue until Oct. 20:

Place your highest, most comfortable bid now. The mastodons are going to be auctioned October 21, 2005, at the Grand Wayne Center. If you are without a ticket, a special web address will be made available for you to bid LIVE while the auction is occurring on 16 mastodons of the heard.

We have an interesting conversation going on in the Fort Wayne blogosphere about what news is and who "real" journalists are. It started when Nathan Gotsch wrote on his Fort Wayne Observed blog about a swinger's club in Fort Wayne. I did a post remarking that this was evidence of the evolution of blogs, from mostly expressing opinions and engaging in media criticism, to doing more original reporting. Things took off from there. (Wrapup here.)

Fort Wayne has a swinger's club. It has its own Web site, which includes rules for swingers and photos of the inside of the place.

People can put just about anything they want to in an obit. Once in a while, you come across a real gem of a line that says volumes about a person and how he lived his life: "Harold wants to wave goodbye to everyone who waved at him on his porch every day on Goshen Ave."

The latest dispatch from the field by libertarian correspondent Mike Sylvester:

Last year I decided to research the annual average cost per student for K-12 education in Indiana.  I used two sources for all of my statistics -- Stats Indiana and The National Teachers Association.  Below is a summary of the average cost for 2004:

Expenses per student (not counting capital outlays or debt service) = $8,592 per year.

The great news of Sweetwater Sound moving to a bigger building and adding 120 employees to the 200 it already has was almost overshadowed by the fact that the sheriff's department also wanted the building. I know what County Commissioner Nelson Peters meant, but he'll probably regret saying, "It's very disappointing." So, Nelson, he's going to hear, what would you have called it if they were adding 200 jobs, a tragedy?

There's something about the choice program for Fort Wayne Community Schools I'm not quite getting.

If you haven't check out Fort Wayne Observed, Nathan Gotsch's blog, you should give it a try. It began as a media-criticism site but has expanded to include comments about a variety of Fort Wayne-related subjects. He also has links to a lot of other local blogs. You can find a permanent link to the site at the top of my blog roll on the left.

Ryan Lengerich, The News-Sentinel's economic-development reporter, has a good column in tonight's Busniess Monday about his recent trip to Greenville, S.C., which has done such a good job of bringing back its downtown that Fort Wayne is looking there for ideas. Ryan is new to Fort Wayne, so his take on the two downtowns is especially interesting.