YWCA: Pottstown's Teaching Women are Exceptional

Photos Courtesy of the Pottstown School District

Pottstown School District had many educators recognized at the YWCA Tri-County Area's Tribute to Exceptional Women.

Blogger's Note: The following was provided by the Pottstown School District.

Congratulations to Na'imah Rhodes, Laurie Kolka, Kim Petro, Jamie Fazekas, Denise Schleicher and Beth Berkhimer,who where honored at the YWCA Tribute to Exceptional Women Dinner.

Na'imah Rhodes is congratulated by her family.

Rhodes is the Early Childhood Education teacher at the high school. She has made it her daily affirmation to motivate, teach, and cultivate strong values in her student's lives each and every day. Self-love, respect, and acceptance of others is the theme of her classroom. 

Taking much pride in what she calls "teaching outside the box", in such a way that she makes herself relatable to her students. 

Her style of teaching has generated much needed conversations in and out of the around topics of injustice, racism, and equality. Rhodes was recognized with the Coretta Scott King Award.

Laurie Kolka

As a female leader who is school and community driven, Laurie Kolka brings a cheerful, can−do attitude to the schools. Laurie is the Director of Curriculum and Instruction/Professional Development at Pottstown School District. 

Her leadership has been transformational, including leading initiatives and driving funding sources to provide the students, staff, and families with new opportunities, experiences, and resources.

She work tirelessly to raise involvement through her work on community groups such as Pottstown Trauma Informed Community Connection (PTICC), Family Advisory Committee (FAC) and Peak Pre-K Counts. 

 Kolka was honored with the YWCA Shooting Star Award. 

Kim Petro, left, and Beth Burkhimer

As an educator at Pottstown Middle School, Kim Petro works to be kind and patient with all her students. Petro creates an environment that builds her students up and allows them to learn and grow at their own pace. 

Petro is very aware of all of the different types of learners that she has in her classroom each period, and because of this she accommodates and modifies her assignments and grading system to suit their every need.

She  received the YWCA Shooting Star Award.

Beth Burkhimer has long been an advocate for the students at Pottstown Middle School.

She works closely day in and day out with the most challenging students as the Dean of Students at PMS.

As a positive presence at PMS, Beth inspires students to work hard and believe in themselves every day.

Beth is a true servant to our children and a valuable member of our community.

Jamie Fazekas is congratulated by Rupert Principal Matt Moyer.

As a staff member at Rupert Elementary School Jamie Fazekas is an inspirational teacher to her students.

Fazekas’ passion for her students is incredible, and she is one of the many educators in the Pottstown School District impacting students’ lives every day.

Fazekas empowers her students by giving them a voice and ensuring that the students are in a safe place throughout the entire school day.

She was honored with the YWCA Education Award. 

Denise Schleicher, second from left, is congratulated. 

Denise Schleicher has dedicated over 15 years of educational service to the Pottstown School District as a 4th grade teacher.

As you enter Schleicher's classroom you will see students participating in Literature Circles, STEAM projects, Kahoot sessions, and building roller coasters.

Schleicher extended her career by writing a book called, ‘The Ugly Christmas Tree.’

The book implements lessons on empathy, promoting messages of kindness, beauty comes from within, and the importance of dreaming big. 

Falcons Near-Perfect Again in WordWright Contest

Blogger's Note: The following was provided by the Pottsgrove School District.

Three students representing Pottsgrove High School recently won high honors in the year’s WordWright Challenge, a national competition for American high school students requiring close reading and analysis of many different kinds of prose and poetry.

In this year’s third meet, held in February, freshman Keira McDevitt earned a near-perfect score and placed among the 32 highest-scoring ninth graders in the country. Junior Evan Croxton, who also earned a near-perfect score, was one of the 84 highest-scoring eleventh graders nationwide, while his classmate Hannah Waldt was one of the 179 highest-scorers at this grade level.

More than 70,000 high school students from 48 states entered the meet. The students were supervised by Todd Kelly.

The premise behind WordWright Challenge is that attentive reading and sensitivity to language are among the most important skills students acquire in school. The tests students must analyze for the Challenge can range from short fiction by Eudora Welty or John Updike to poetry as old as Shakespeare’s or as recent as Margaret Atwood’s, and to essays as classic as E.B. White’s or as current as James Parker’s cultural commentary in The Atlantic. 

 Though the texts vary widely in voice, tone, and length, they have one thing in common: style. All use language skillfully to convey layers and shades of meaning not always apparent to students on a first or casual reading. Like the questions on the verbal SAT I, the SAT II in English Literature, and the Advanced Placement exams in both English Language and English Literature, the questions posed by the WordWright Challenge ask students both the recognize the emotional and/or rational logic of a piece of writing and to notice the ways in which a writer’s style shapes and shades his meaning. 

Because the WordWright Challenge is a classroom activity and not a college-entrance exam, however, it can be a learning experience, not just a high hurdle. After completing a Challenge, classes are encouraged to talk about the tests and the answers to the multiple-choice questions, and are also given additional topics for open-ended discussion and/or written response.

The texts for the third WordWright meet this year were an essay by Natalie Kusz for 9th and 10th graders and a pair of essays by Francine Prose and Colin Harrison for the 11th and 12th graders. The students will participate in one more meet over the coming months, and medals and certificates will be awarded in June to those who achieve and/or improve the most in the course of the year.

Two Pottsgrove students who earned perfect scores earlier this year will be recognized by the Pottsgrove School Board this spring. Molly Neeson this fall and Michael Gillen in December.

Efforts Making Progress at Edgewood Cemetery

Edgewood Cemetery is currently being maintained by volunteers and a non-profit fundraising effort.

Blogger's Note: The following was provided by Cathy L. Skitko, senior Director of Institutional Public Relations and Hobart’s Run Communications

With the arrival of spring, it won’t be long until the grass at Edgewood Cemetery in the 900 block of East High Street in Pottstown again is growing and the historic cemetery’s 12 acres are in need of maintenance. 

Cemetery volunteers are looking for citizens to lend a hand at a community clean-up and beautification day on Saturday, April 13, beginning at 9 a.m. and lasting until about 1 p.m. Some tools and gloves will be available, but volunteers are encouraged to bring their own. 

As many know, the cemetery was abandoned around 2012 – and since then a nonprofit board has been working to raise funds and find volunteers to keep this resting place maintained. 

In October 2018, the first “Stop Complaining and Start Caring About Edgewood” community clean-up day was held, resulting in more than 100 volunteers coming out to mow, rake, plant flowers, and bag debris. As part of that heartwarming effort, an anonymous donor pledged $2,500 if his pledge could be matched.

Roadside fundraising for Edgewood Cemetery.

In fact, $3,800 was raised by early November, largely through small checks, raffle prize sales during the clean-up on Oct. 20, and change collected by philanthropic passers-by.

The Edgewood Cemetery board and Hobart’s Run are thrilled to formally announce that the pledge was happily paid by the previously anonymous donor, Harlan “Bud” Wendell, a resident of Menlo Park, Calif.

He is a Hill School graduate of the class of 1942 and father of two other Hill graduates, Harlan Wendell ’69 and David Wendell ’71; brother of two Hill graduates, James ’35 and John ’36; and uncle of three graduates, James ’73, Jonathan ’75, and John ’64, several of whom have contributed to the cemetery projects. 

Bud and his two brothers are the sons of former Hill Headmaster James I. Wendell, who led the School from 1928-1952, and whose wife, Marjorie (Potts) Wendell, was a member of the seventh generation descendant of the founder of Pottstown, John Potts. Mr. Bud Wendell’s father, mother, and brother James are buried at Edgewood.

Despite the distance from Pottstown to his California home, Bud wished to make an impact and spark additional commitment to the cemetery from our local community members – as clearly was accomplished through his pledge.

“The Edgewood Cemetery Board, Hobart’s Run, and The Hill School are providing strong leadership for community interests,” Wendell said. “There might be many people living in the Pottstown area who have family members resting at Edgewood Cemetery and would provide modest challenge contributions to the ongoing annual maintenance and refurbishing program now and in the future, making Edgewood a treasured and honored place in the community.”

Needless to say, the all-volunteer cemetery board and its supporters want to help inform the community of this shared vision.

Volunteers clean up around the Edgewood Cemetery flagpole.

“On behalf of the Edgewood Cemetery Board, I express our heartfelt appreciation to Mr. Wendell for his generosity, as well as our gratitude to him, Hobart’s Run, and Hill for helping re-energize the Pottstown community’s interest in both maintaining and beautifying this important and historic part of our town,” said Andrew Monastra, president of the Board. 

“We still have a lot of work to do, but, thanks to Mr. Wendell’s gift and the contributions of others, we have a great start toward building a fund to maintain the grounds this coming season, and we are making plans for additional events and fundraisers.

“Our goal is to ensure that Edgewood Cemetery is a self-sustaining entity, and a beautiful place where all citizens can spend time in reflection,” Monastra added. “We would like to not only ensure that the grass is always mowed, but also that we can enhance the grounds with plantings, benches, and so forth.”

To that end, gifts (as well as volunteers) are essential and encouraged at any time. 

Another volunteer cemetery effort is planned for April 13.

Friends can send a check made out to Edgewood Historic Cemetery, Inc. to 740 E. High St., Pottstown, PA 19464. Individuals seeking more information about the clean-up and future community-wide events supporting Edgewood can contact Andrew Monastra at amonastra@wolfbaldwin.com or 610-323-7436. 

Please note that the spring clean-up on April 13 will not feature food or raffles, although events similar to the big fall 2018 event likely will be planned again in the future. The Board always welcomes additional ideas for fundraisers and support!

The Edgewood clean-up will run in tandem with the Spring Pottstown CARES Day in which Hill School, Pottstown High School, and Montgomery County Community College students volunteer not only at the cemetery but with Habitat for Humanity at their local restoration sites; at a community garden at Barth Elementary School; and at ongoing home renovation projects in Hobart’s Run that will provide rental housing to local residents and use the proceeds to fund additional community improvements.

Pottsgrove OKs Adding French as Third Language

After years of discussion, the Pottsgrove School Board voted 5-2-1 Tuesday night to add a third world language to it's curriculum.

And just in case you're not up on your vexillology, which, as we all know, is the study of flags, and the above photo has left you flummoxed, the language Pottsgrove added is French.

Board members Bill Parker and Patricia Grimm voted against the measure, which was not on the meeting agenda and was brought to the floor at the request of Superintendent William Shirk. Board member Charles Nippert abstained from voting, but did not give a reason for his abstention.

Shirk indicated that the board has been nibbling around the edges of the question, and asked that the board "commit," so his administration could immediately begin looking for the best French teacher they can find.

"If we wait until August, that's not going to work," he said.

"If we're going to do it, we should really commit to it and do it right," agreed board member Scott Hutt.

Currently, 66 students have already signed up and the cost has been built into the preliminary budget.

(On that front, Business Manager David Nester had some good news -- the projected 2.1 percent tax hike now looks like it would be closer to 1.5 percent unless something changes.)

"It might cost us a couple of extra bucks to get someone who has experience," said Shirk. "But it might be worth it. We want someone who really knows how to build a program."

As of now, there has been little drop off in the other two languages offered in Pottsgrove -- German and "Spanish -- said Shirk, noting that feeder programs in the middle school "will fill those gaps."

Board member Jim Lapic also noted that some students intend on taking more than one language.

In other new program news, board member Ashley Custer, reporting on discussions in the board's Curriculum, Integration and Technology Committee, said the district may add an advanced science course at the middle school, most likely Biology.

And with that, here are the Tweets from the meeting:

French Press

Spring-Ford Board Resisting Sleep Study Push

With Phoenixville changing its school start times and Owen J. Roberts taking another look, Spring-Ford is being urged to take similar steps.

But it will be an up-hill climb if the reception activists have received lately is any indication.

As she has at previous meetings, Kate Doyle, an Upper Providence resident and Evans Elementary School parent, again appeared before the board to urge it to agree to have Spring-Ford cooperate with a teen sleep study arranged through the Montgomery County Board of Health.

School Board President Tom DiBello continued to voice his opposition to moving school start times.

He said to get the amount of sleep the studies suggest, school would have to start at 9 a.m., which none of the handful of districts in the state that have changed their start times have done.

"I'm not turning this district down for 15 minutes," DiBello said.

At the Feb. 19 meeting, DiBello addressed Doyle by saying "he did not feel that the district needed a lot of fancy studies as he could get studies that would say anything he wanted them to say. Mr. DiBello indicated that he is hearing that a lot of parents in the Phoenixville School District are not happy with the change in school start times," according to the meeting minutes.

However, the minutes also indicate DiBello said "that he does not really buy into most of this but his position is that if we have 8,000 students and the majority of the parents want to change the start time then he is fine with changing the start time," according to the minutes of the Feb. 19 meeting.
Board member Edward Dressler has expressed interest in the subject and pointed out that all that was being asked was participation in a sleep study.

"We just want to look at this, I mean how much time did we spend looking at intramural athletics?" asked Dressler in reference to a lengthy discussion about baseball initiated by DiBello.

"It's free data. Why are you opposed?" asked board member Kelly Spletzer.

But opposition came from several corners. Board member Clinton Jackson asked Doyle how many of

Kate Doyle

Pennsylvania's 500 school districts have moved to later start times, and she said about 15 but many more are in process.

Among them is Radnor School District, which has conducted the sleep study Doyle is advocating for and is expected to release the results this week. Also looking into is is Springfield School District, she said.

Parker Sheehan, a ninth grade student, honor roll student and member of the color guard, said "she loves Spring-Ford but she is exhausted and so are all of her friends," according to the Feb. 19 minutes. "Ms. Sheehan advised that she cannot fall asleep before 11 or 12 no matter what she does. She added that she does not have a phone or a television in her room. Ms. Sheehan stated that she wakes up at 6:00 a.m. and leaves for the bus stop at 6:45 a.m. She commented that even waking up one hour later for practices on Saturday makes a huge difference as she has so much more energy and feels so much more better."

But student board member Nandini Patel said at the same meeting that she and Julianna took the initiative to talk to some other high schoolers and middle schoolers. "She indicated that they found that although the students are tired in the morning the delayed start would push back the after-school activities which would impact homework time so either way they will be going to bed later. Nandini stated that the majority of the students she asked want to keep the start times where they are as it is not too early or too late," according to the minutes.

Solicitor Mark Fitzgerald said a long-established district policy does not allow surveys by outside agencies to be taken, but Doyle said the county would work with the district to ensure it is something the school board feels comfortable distributing.

DiBello said he is not sure the district should go to the trouble given "we don't even know its a problem."

But Doyle said the evidence is building.

When Phoenixville appointed a committee to look into the matter, it found lack of adequate REM sleep among teens produces several negative psychological affects including grogginess, increased aggression increased depression, anxiety, reduced ability to learn and decreased creativity.

Physical affects of sleep deprivation include weight gain, increased release of stress hormones, reduction of growth hormones and a weakened immune system.

Sleep deprivation also leads to decreased coordination, meaning more accidents and injuries on the athletic field, as well as, when combined with grogginess, more vehicle accidents involving student drivers, the Phoenixville study found.

New Computers, New Curriculum

The board adopted most of its agenda last night in a series of unanimous votes and within those votes was agreement to spend $740,000.

But while the vote to spend that money came quickly, the decision to spend it did not explained Erin Crew, Spring-Ford's Director of Communications, Marketing and Media.

The larger portion of the expenditure, $460,000, is for new math curriculum materials, and new health and physical education curriculum, all of which was only adopted after much study and consideration.

As for the other $280,000, that was for the purchase of 700 laptop computers that will be put into the hands of the incoming freshman class. And the following year, the next incoming class of freshman will receive laptops, as will the junior class.

Crew explained that unlike other districts, Spring-Ford took a slow approach to incorporating such technology into the classroom, taking five years to first get the computers into teachers hands, to ensure they were trained and had incorporated them into their work. 

Students could use the laptops in class, but not take them home, she said, at least until next year.

And with that, here are the Tweets from the meeting:

Spring-Ford Resists Sleep Study

Western Center Student Wins Spongebob Art Contest

The award-winning Sponge Bob Squarepants Fan Art T-shirt design by Pottsgrove High School senior and Western Center for Technical Studies student Alexi Neiffer

Blogger's Note: The following was provided by the Western Center for Technical Studies.

Pottsgrove High School senior Alexi Neiffer was selected as a Finalist for the Spongebob Squarepants T-Shirt Design Contest that was held in October 2018.

Alexi Neiffer

Alexi’s design was selected by judges: Marc Ceccarelli (Co-Executive Producer), Vincent Waller (Co-Executive Producer), and Ed Labay (VP, GMM of Hot Topic).

She was awarded $300 for her design, and it is in the process of being printed onto t-shirts and will be sold online and in Hot Topic stores. 

Alexi will also receive 1.5% commission on every t-shirt that is sold with her design.

“I grew up watching Spongebob, and as I got older I realized that I related more to Squidward Tentacles," Neiffer said. 

Look for Neiffer's shirts soon in Hot Topic stores.

"This inspired me to create a design based on Squidward, and his depressing but humorous life. Ironically, my ”hopes and dreams” came true when I found out my design will be sold at my favorite store,” she said.

Neiffer has been in David Batory’s Commercial Arts class since 2016, and was just accepted into the Art & Design program at Kutztown University, where she will study Communication Design. 

This is not the first contest Alexi has been apart of, and it won’t be the last. 

Make sure you keep an eye out for her design in Hot Topic stores across the nation.

Another Sign Local Journalism is on the Ropes

The Reading Eagle building

"The crisis in local news continues unabated," is what I wrote on my Facebook page when the news broke that The Reading Eagle has entered bankruptcy and is actively seeking a buyer.

Although I was less then pleased when the Eagle decided to try to expand their coverage into the Pottstown area a few years ago, just as company that owns The Mercury went through some contractions, in retrospect I think that in many ways it made me a better reporter.

Competition does sharpen one's skills and knowing that I was up against a better-resourced news operation hungry to "steal our lunch," as my former editor used to say, I felt more compelled to jump on stories and make sure we didn't get scooped.

Now that better-resourced competitor has run up against the same economic reality with which The Mercury has been struggling for many years. It does not make me happy.

First, the nation has already lost enough journalists and enough local newspapers and perhaps more than most, I know that Berks County relies heavily on The Eagle.

Secondly, I know a lot of people who work there and they are committed to the same mission I am, keeping their neighbors informed as clearly, accurately, fairly and quickly as they can.

The latest headline in that saga is that the CFO is trying to put together a group of local investors to buy the paper. I pray, for their sake and the sake of Eagle readers, that they are successful.

The alternative, as I know well, can be troubling.

There are not too many buyers out there for local newspapers, which have been weathering economic declines for decades thanks largely to ad revenue being scooped up by Internet giants whose real product is not news coverage but your personal data.

Years ago, as former Mercury photographer Kevin Hoffman used to say repeatedly, newspapers made a mistake by putting their content on websites for free.

Now, a generation of readers that has grown used to that model expects news to continue to be free, particularly if it is online.

And, although it is a little bit like closing the barn door after the horses have all escaped, many newspapers are once again charging for their work product, putting it behind paywalls in a scramble for any revenue they can find.

Whether or not that will work remains to be seen, but readers, ESPECIALLY those on Facebook, are not having it. Many are not only unwilling, but downright outraged that we are trying to get paid for our journalism.

Just last week, the "news deserts," created by the collapse of the local newspaper industry was discovered, a bit too late, by one of the things that helped destroy it.

Associated Press reported  that Facebook "said it has found that 40 percent of Americans live in places where there weren’t enough local news stories to support it."

So Facebook gloms up all the ad revenue that remained on the Internet while using others to provide your content and, susprise!, the content creators go out of business. Who woulda thought?

With revenues in doubt, those willing to buy local papers are often more interested in the assets than in continuing the mission of local journalism -- particularly the real estate.

That was the revelation made in an investigative article by The Washington Post last month headlined: "A hedge fund’s ‘mercenary’ strategy: Buy newspapers, slash jobs, sell the buildings," which looked at Alden Global Capital, the company that owns The Mercury.

The print edition of that story is posted here.

(Full disclosure: I was interviewed for that article and I am quoted within).

Spurring the interest of the Post which -- owned as it is by one of the world's richest men, does not suffer from the same revenue deficits as the rest of us -- was a bid to buy Gannett, one of the nation's largest newspaper chains and publisher of USA Today.

The hedge fund making that bid is Alden Global Capital, which owns The Mercury and has recently re-branded itself from Digital First Meda to MediaNews Group in the wake of a wave of negative press about its business practices.

In addition to The Mercury, Alden owns The Daily Local News in West Chester, The Times-Herald in Norristown, The Reporter in Lansdale, The Delaware County Daily Times, The Trentonian in Trenton, N.J., as well as papers in California, Ohio, Michigan, New York and Colorado, including The Denver Post.

The Denver Post's special editorial section focusing on staff
cuts under ownership by Alden Global Capital.

It was about a year ago that the editorial page at The Denver Post surprised the world by slamming its owners as "vultures" in its own pages for its staff-cutting practices.

Here in Colorado, Alden has embarked on a cynical strategy of constantly reducing the amount and quality of its offerings, while steadily increasing its subscription rates. In doing so, the hedge fund managers — often tellingly referred to as “vulture capitalists” — have hidden behind a narrative that adequately staffed newsrooms and newspapers can no longer survive in the digital marketplace. Try to square that with a recent lawsuit filed by one of Digital First Media’s minority shareholders that claims Alden has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars of its newspaper profits into shaky investments completely unrelated to the business of gathering news.

The News Guild, the national union of which I am a member and shop steward, is currently negotiating with Alden on a new contract after nearly 10 years without raises -- this despite earning what analyst Ken Doctor reported last year are profit margins of $159 million or 17 percent above expenses.

By way of local interest, Doctor's piece, titled "Alden Global Capital is making so much money wrecking local journalism it might not want to stop anytime soon," found that the $11 million Alden made on the Philadelphia-area papers it owns had a profit margin at 30 percent, the highest percentage in the company.

Yay us.

The Mercury building is now for sale.

Doctor's report came out one month before The Mercury closed the doors on its landmark building at High and King streets and put the property up for sale, as it has at dozens of other locations including The Daily Local News and The Times-Herald.

Julie Reynolds, an excellent investigative reporter who works for the News Guild and has uncovered many of Alden's financial legerdemain, wrote about that here.

Flash forward to the New Year and Alden's surprise bid to buy Gannett. Alden, which is a privately held company is a stockholder of 7.5 percent in Gannett which is a publicly held company.

Describing itself without apparent irony as a company "that saves newspapers," Alden argued that it could better manage the chain than the current management.

“Frankly, the team leading Gannett has not demonstrated that it’s capable of effectively running this enterprise as a public company,” said the letter, signed by MNG chairman Joseph Fuchs.

Gannett said the bid was too low, but the latest is that on Wednesday, "MNG Enterprises, also known as Digital First Media, issued a statement that Oaktree Capital Management said in a letter that it 'is highly confident' that the deal could be arranged using at least $1.725 billion in debt financing," USA Today reported.

Alden declined to provide copies of the full letter.

Last month, as the deal became public, the minority leader in the U.S. Senate spoke out about the potential damage to local news posed by Alden's bid.

Chuck Schumer, D-NY, said he is concerned that local newspapers in New York now owned by Gannett would suffer staff cuts if the chain is purchased by Alden Global Capital.

"An analysis of the newspapers owned by Alden reveals they cut newspapers’ staff at

U.S. Sen Chuck Schumer, D-NY

more than twice the rate of competitors, and in all likelihood when they sell the real estate, the vast majority of the money does not go to revitalizing newspapers as the newspaper itself would do when it sells real estate, but goes elsewhere," Schumer said.

"For Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund, the acquisition and streamlining of Gannett papers might increase its profits a couple of percentage points, but the loss of (local upstate New York papers) "would be incalculable," said Schumer.

"Let me ask the American people and every one of my colleagues here, what’s more important — having our newspapers, which are so important to local communities, go on, or having a hedge fund raise its market profits by five points if they are public or by a certain amount? What is more important? I would argue the newspapers. I would argue the newspapers."

On Wednesday, Schumer's colleague, Pennsylvania Democrat Bob Casey was in Pottstown and echoed similar concerns.

He told me he is "concerned about what is happening to local newspapers and how community newspapers are being undermined by corporate interests."

As he travels around the Commonwealth, Casey said he sees evidence everywhere that local papers

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-PA

he has known for years "are cutting staff, making it harder to do public-service journalism."

Tellingly, public service journalism spurred Casey to join his Republican colleague Pat Toomey earlier this month in a joint letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services seeking information about the agency’s “special focus facility” program for troubled nursing homes.

Their concerns were prompted, he confirmed, by an investigation into failing nursing homes titled "Still failing the frail."

The investigation was published by PennLive, which most of us grew up knowing as the Harrisburg Patriot-News, whose 24-year-old reporter Sara Gannim won the 2012 Pultizer Prize for Local Reporting for her coverage of the Joe Paterno scandal at Penn State.

Casey told me the kind of investigative reporting that spurred a bi-partisan effort to learn more about nursing home oversight is crucial to keeping government agencies and elected officials accountable.

"But I know that with the staff cuts and corporate mindset these owners have, it's virtually impossible for smaller papers to do this kind of investigative reporting and that is a real concern for all of us," Casey said.

And it's not just the Senate that's worried.

Friday, U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-6th Dist., issued a statement in the wake of the Reading Eagle's bankruptcy announcement.

U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-6th Dist.

“The free press is the bedrock of our democracy, entrusted with holding elected representatives accountable and shedding light on the news and stories concerning the public,” said Houlahan. “The Reading Eagle has served our community for over 150 years," she said. 

"We are facing a crisis in local journalism around the country. Transparency in government and public affairs is something I take seriously, and I understand just how important a local and free press is to that mission," Houlahan said. "Without experienced journalists investigating and searching for truth, our country’s ability to engage in productive debate and successfully progress into the future is hindered.”

Indeed it is.

And it should be a concern for you a well dear reader, because studies have shown that a lack of a local news source not only has an impact on democracy, but also on your wallet.

Without local news around to keep a watchful eye on things, public financing companies have found local governments become more wasteful. As a result, public financing agencies charge higher interest rates for government borrowings for schools, roads and other projects in communities without a local news outlet.

You know who pays for that increased cost. You do.

But the public interest aspect of this business is lost on many owners who fail to realize it is more than a business. It is a public trust.

There are two kinds of newspaper owners, a newspaper company and a company that owns newspapers.

We have too much of the latter and not enough of the former.

A newspaper company -- traditionally a locally owned, often by a family as was the case with the Eagle -- understands the business it is in and understands its responsibility to the community it serves.

Being sustainable, making a profit if possible, serves the purpose.

For a company that owns newspapers, like Alden Global Capital, it is just another product, like the PayLess Shoes chain it ran into bankruptcy, or the Fred's Pharmacy chain it bought and plundered.

Friday, LNP, Lancaster County's locally owned newspaper, made note of what the Eagle's troubles mean for dwindling local ownership.

"Under national media companies, regional newsrooms have been cut and services consolidated as the industry tries to adjust as readers and advertisers migrate online," wrote reporter Chad Umble.

Friday's story about local newspaper ownership in LNP.

Noting that few of the papers surrounding Lancaster enjoy local ownership, Umble wrote "MNG Enterprises, which does business as Digital First Media, offered to buy Gannett Co. for $1.36 billion in January.

Both companies have a record of buying media companies and slashing costs, but Colorado-based Digital First has a reputation for being especially ruthless, according to the Associated Press."

Bankruptcy, which has occurred twice during my time at The Mercury, can often put a paper in a better position, often to be sold, which the Eagle's owners have evidently been trying to do since January.
That is better than the alternative, but not a guarantee of continued publication.

I suppose I'm guilty here of doing what former Pottstown Schools Superintendent Reed Lindley used to call "worshiping the problem."

Newspeople are much better at discovering and outlining a problem than providing possible solutions. that's a characteristic now being turned on its head by a practice called literally "solutions journalism."

I don't know if that is the answer to saving local journalism, or if its more transparency, better use of social media, or crowd-source funding.

Lots of people smarter than me have been trying for years to figure out how to save the function of local journalism, whether it's printed on paper, shows up on your phone or gets beamed into your brain.

Either way, until we figure it out, it's dangerous to lose what we now know works, even if it works imperfectly.

Best of luck to The Eagle.

And to The Eagle's sometimes unappreciative readers, I'll leave you with the wisdom of Joni Mitchell: "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till its gone."