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Weather: Sunny. Highs in the lower 80s. South winds around 5 mph, becoming east in the afternoon. Wednesday Night: Clear. Lows in the upper 50s. See the daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
Today at a Glance:
Separation Chat, Open Discussion: The Atlantic Chapter of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State hosts an open, freewheeling discussion on the topic here in our community, around Florida and throughout the United States, noon to 1 p.m. at its new location, Pine Lakes Golf Club Clubhouse Pub & Grillroom (no purchase is necessary), 400 Pine Lakes Pkwy, Palm Coast (0.7 miles from Belle Terre Parkway). Call (386) 445-0852 for best directions. All are welcome! Everyone’s voice is important. For further information email [email protected] or call Merrill at 804-914-4460.
The Circle of Light Course in Miracles study group meets at a private residence in Palm Coast every Wednesday at 1:20 PM. There is a $2 love donation that goes to the store for the use of their room. If you have your own book, please bring it. All students of the Course are welcome. There is also an introductory group at 1:00 PM. The group is facilitated by Aynne McAvoy, who can be reached at [email protected] for location and information.
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 9-18, at the Flagler County Public Library: Do you enjoy Chess, trying out new moves, or even like some friendly competition? Come visit the Flagler County Public Library at the Teen Spot every Wednesday from 4 to 5 p.m. for Chess Club. Everyone is welcome, for beginners who want to learn how to play all the way to advanced players. For more information contact the Youth Service department 386-446-6763 ext. 3714 or email us at [email protected]
In Coming Days: Oct. 16: Flagler Cares hosts its quarterly Help Night from 3 to 7 p.m. at the Flagler County Village Community Room, 160 Cypress Point Parkway, Suite B304, Palm Coast. Help Night is organized and hosted by Flagler Cares and other community partners as a one-stop help event. Representatives from Flagler County Human Services, Early Learning Coalition, EasterSeals, Family Life Center, Florida Legal Services, Lions Club, and many other organizations will be available to provide information and resources. The event is open to the public, free to attend, and will offer assistance with obtaining various services including autism screenings, tablets (low-income qualification), fair housing legal consultations, Marketplace Navigation, childcare services, SNAP and Medicaid application assistance, behavioral health services, and much more. Flagler Cares is a non-profit agency focused on creating a vital, expansive social safety net that addresses virtually all the health and social needs of our community. Flagler Cares works with clients to identify needs and create solutions that address those unique needs. Flagler Cares is proud to have a wide range of community partners who are committed to providing high quality services to those who need them most. Flagler Cares is also passionate about filling gaps and bringing needed services into the county where they did not previously exist. For more information about this event, please call 386-319-9483 ext. 0, or email [email protected]. |
Notebook: Speaking of liberal media, or any media: is there anything more dissonant than a reporter or a media company’s self-importance? Back in the distant days when reporters could write, they’d inevitably end their career with a memoir, thinking–wrongly, usually–that their own life was as fascinating as all the fascinating things they’d covered somehow. The Times’s Russell Baker is an example. Growing Up, his memoir of pre-journalism days, of growing up in the Depression and all that, is affecting and a very good read. The sequel, which begins with his first days at work (the Baltimore Sun, as I recall), numerous nuggets aside, can be dull. So is Mencken’s Newspaper Days, by the way, which is a feat in itself for someone who had trouble writing a dull line. But the memoirs have continued. The self-absorption seems to be getting worse. The New York Times is doing something that would have been unthinkable a generation or two ago. It’s running these insufferable pieces about itself on page 3, “In Times Past,” or items about how this or that page got made, or what this reporter had for breakfast before a prime minister’s assassination. Sunday was a double bill. “In Times Past” featured a whole article about the unveiling of a portrait of Pinch Sulzberger, the publisher from 1992 to 2017, making it something of a double-mirrored bit of narcissism: the Times admiring itself admiring itself. There’s a picture of the painting, by somebody or other, and a whole story about how it came to be, where it hangs, where similar portraits used to hang until Sulzberger’s son, the current publisher, decided to move them all “to a balcony overlooking the 14th floor cafeteria,” and how a committee decided the particulars of the portrait. Seriously? Above that item was another bit of navel-gazing you’d have never seen before: a map of the world showing four locations of four foreign correspondents and what they’re writing about. A generation or two ago you’d have needed two full pages to keep track of foreign desks. These days the Times needs to advertise its foreign correspondents to remind us that they’re still there. It gets worse: the Times has thankfully adopted the custom of providing some of its articles on audio. Problem is that it feels compelled to have its reporters narrate a whole bit of mini-biography about the article they’re about to read, telling us how it made them feel to report it, giving us bits of trivia, or showing off, about how many days they spent reporting, what they had for breakfast. Just get to the story. Let it speak for itself.
—P.T.
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The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Flagler County School Board Information Workshop
Flagler County Library Board of Trustees
Nar-Anon Family Group
Flagler County School Board Meeting
Bunnell City Commission Meeting
Palm Coast City Council Meeting
A Community Presentation on Sand Dunes By Florida Sea Grant and UF/IFAS Extension Flagler
Food Truck Tuesday
Flagler Beach Library Writers’ Club
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
For the full calendar, go here.
Until that night I had held religiously to the American faith in “objective journalism,” which forbade a reporter to go beyond what the great man said. No matter how dull, stupid, unfair, vicious, or mendacious they might be, the utterances of the great were to be reported deadpan, with nary a hint that the speaker might be a bore, a dunce, a brute, or a habitual liar. For a reporter from an important American newspaper to question the value of “objective journalism” was worse than unthinkable. It was subversive. It was revolutionary. Now I was not just questioning it; I was thrusting my own judgment into the story by calling the speech “long-winded” and by publishing one of Eden’s sillier statements, which tended to satirize him. Harry Boardman, a conservative elderly gentleman who wrote plain, quiet English and had no use for typewriters, had set me on the path to revolution. After that I began sneaking my judgments into stories where I thought they would broaden a reader’s understanding.
–From Russell Baker’s The Good Times (1989).
Ray W. says
Hello Mr. Tristam.
If I at least partially understand today’s message to FlaglerLive readers, are you arguing that the widely accepted journalistically ethical wall between reporting and editorializing in our national and local news outlets has softened over many decades, if not dissolved? That greater adherence to journalism in its purest or most idealistic sense is to be valued, desired, needed?
Pierre Tristam says
Greetings Ray… No, the reporting-editorializing matter is another discussion. I was only pointing out the breakdown of a different kind of wall, somewhat similar to the fourth wall in theater: do we really need reporters and editors and publishers preening about their work before us, rather than just presenting their work in as accomplished a form as possible? Do we need commentaries on the commentary? a preface to reporting? Features about the publisher? Those insider-baseball elements to journalism may have their place in corridors in newsrooms (to the extent that newsrooms still exist: the News-Journal’s and all local newspapers’ newsrooms are history) but I’m pretty sure the public is too busy to worry about that sort of vanity, and more to the point, a journalist’s vanity is as dull as it gets. Believe me, I lead one of the five dullest lives in Flagler County, outside of the reporting I am lucky enough to present to readers. The reporting is interesting. The people in the articles are interesting. I’m not. And the moment I try to act like I’m somehow as interesting as the reporting, I’ve crossed a line worthy of a stoning, or at least a pummeling with waste paper.
Ray W. says
Thank you.
Pogo says
@FWIW — FYI
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