Madison Taylor

My nephew Joey plays football at Cranford High School in New Jersey. He’s the quarterback. As a longtime sports fan and reformed sports reporter, I’m interested in how he’s doing. When I asked his dad how I could keep up with his games he didn’t send me to a newspaper Web site. Not at all. He sent me to something called patch.com.

When I landed there, frankly, I was appalled. The photos from the game were fuzzy beyond belief. In fact, it looked as if the photos were taken by someone with no working knowledge of a camera or flash — some boob like me. The writing was equally hard to read. I could follow what happened in the game, but just barely.

But I could tell it was popular. I also noted that this patch.com covered a wide area in New Jersey and Connecticut. The Web site was spare but it had lots of stuff, including loads of upcoming events and news. Not in-depth reporting. But lots of news nuggets.

Then I saw this story in Newsweek a couple of weeks ago. “Peytonplace.com: Hyperlocal blggers take over as newspapers fade.” It answered a lot of my questions about patch.com.

Can’t say I was happy about it, though.

That’s because patch.com is where online reporting for local news is going next. I firmly believe it. At first glance that’s OK. In many ways, TheTimesNews.com is already there. We post fresh news most of the day, cover local sports, have photo galleries and video. Our content is generally better written. Our photos are definitely far superior. They have little video to speak of.

But what patch.com does is take the term “hyper-local” to a higher degree. They have a handful of staffers and a large fleet of unpaid volunteers going to literally everything they can feasibly get to. Their bloggers not only listen to the scanner for news but follow every call no matter how small.  No awards dinner, fund-raiser or sporting event is too minor to staff in some way. It’s a consortium of unskilled reporters and photographers supplying the two-state market with reams of material navigable by town. They work anytime, anywhere and go to anything on a moment’s notice then post about it almost immediately.

And it’s not affiliated with any newspaper or TV or radio station at all.

The site itself has no bells and whistles to speak of. No money is spent in graphics or visual development. The content is plentiful — if not exactly competent. But readers are satisfied. As I said earlier, it’s the coverage I was sent to read.

Ultimately something like patch.com will wind up operating in communities across the nation. It’s where newspapers will fight the online battle to be seen as the local news provider in their areas. The truth is, patch.com and other news startups remind me of early newspapers. The writing is clunky and the design poor. But it was what customers who wanted news in this format had so they bought it. Eventually, though, better quality was demanded and newspapers stepped up.

We need to be ready.

My print column for Sunday.

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An e-mail arrived in my box last week alerting me to a story. The online news article began like this:

“WASHINGTON — Indoor smoking bans lower the risk of heart attack, even among nonsmokers, by reducing exposure to secondhand smoke, a panel of U.S. health experts confirmed in a report on Thursday. The report, produced by the Institute of Medicine for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, provides the most definitive evidence to date that laws that ban smoking from workplaces, restaurants and bars can reduce cardiovascular-related health problems where they are imposed.

“’Secondhand smoke kills. What this report shows is that smoke-free laws reduce heart attacks in nonsmokers,’ said CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden.”

The story was posted on Yahoo.com Oct. 15 and my courteous supplier noted that the North Carolina General Assembly approved a ban on smoking in most bars and restaurants earlier this year. He did not wish for his letter to be published in the Open Forum. His note to me ended this way.

“I’m asking that you consider writing an editorial that recognizes these studies and the wisdom of our legislators on this issue.  It doesn’t stop us from justifiably criticizing  them on many other issues — but this time, it’s OK to give them the “thumbs up.”

I certainly understand and applaud this reader’s point of view about the dangers of second-hand smoke and tobacco in general. There is no doubt in my mind that the new CDC study is accurate in its assessment. Secondhand smoke is a bad thing. It, quite frankly, stinks. And I’m certain that it can’t be good for you, me, children, animals or even space aliens. No one should smoke, ever. There’s probably no habit so deadly that’s more widely accepted.

So hopefully any lingering belief that I’m somehow an advocate for tobacco is now successfully dispensed. I’d like to stop that rumor, right here and now.

But, before going any further let me state in the interest of full disclosure that I am a reformed cigaholic. And when I was a smoker I was pretty doggone serious about it. Fact is, just the other day my doctor asked how long I smoked. When I totaled it up in my head I simply couldn’t believe the number so I did so again. Then I counted a third time. It sounded like a lot of years — 27 in fact — of two-pack a day consumption.

Yes, I liked my smokes, liked them a lot.

But in 2002 I couldn’t take it anymore. Cost was one thing, health another. And I didn’t particularly care for the smell anymore. Smokers, as a rule, are generally impervious to their own noxious emissions. At some point, I wasn’t anymore. In the final analysis, I couldn’t justify emptying my wallet for something that was emptying my body of oxygen and sending my life expectancy south.

Fast forward four years to Thanksgiving, 2006. That’s when my left lung collapsed all on its own. Normally that happens to people in a wreck or who get themselves shot or stabbed. Mine, however, just went “poof” and deflated. They called it a spontaneous pneumothorax. My surgeon told me smoking didn’t cause it — but it did damage my lung so badly medical science couldn’t simply reinflate it. I had to have a fairly complicated operation to patch a lot of holes before it was sealed up and refilled with air like a bicycle tire.

So yes, I am an advocate for not lighting up at all, ever — and I’m pretty doggone serious about it. It’s not a cause or anything, but I believe in it completely.

All of that said, however, I still can’t endorse the well-meaning action taken this year by the General Assembly. For one, our corporation isn’t for it. And even though I frequently disagree with Freedom Communications’ editorials, this isn’t one of those times.

To be clear, a smoking ban in public places like courthouses is something  I personally support because we all have to go there at one time or another and it shouldn’t be a health hazard to do so. But a privately owned restaurant or bar is something else entirely. Whether a private business allows smoking or not should be between the owner and the customers. In many respects this system is already working. Most restaurants don’t allow smoking these days. Bars are a little different. Restaurants attached to bars are a little more hit or miss. There’s one in town I don’t patronize anymore because of cigarette smoke.

That’s how I think it should work. If people stop going some place because of smoke, well, the owner will have to make a decision. The government would have no need to.

So we won’t give an editorial “thumbs up” to a government-imposed smoking ban in private places. But personally, I’ll give a “thumbs down” to smoking anytime — and be doggone serious about it.