Yesterday, reader Michael Bobbitt submitted an article regarding his recent visit to an Economic Development Commission meeting. According to his report, during the meeting Sam Watkins of the EDC board made a remark regarding our website, Home in Henderson in that we have a negative impact on growth in the area. Perhaps I have the responsibility of responding to that.
I checked our home page, and out of the 20 articles we have posted on the home page as I write this, I would consider 3 of those to be negative. The 1st, regarding the murder, 2nd regarding the search warrant for the murderer, and 3rd regarding the capture of the murderer, which I think is really good news. The rest is event happenings in the area, business growth, employment growth, opinion articles from readers and the open lines.
Some days we have more negative news. Some we have more good news. For instance, some days the police department sends us the ‘crimes of the week’ to post. Crime Stoppers sends me the crimes of the month, or we receive the rare announcement from the sheriffs department. I just post what I’m given.
One reader on our Facebook page posted “Maybe Mr. Watkins needs to understand not everyone shares the opinion of the local paper – which is why we read Home in Henderson instead. The “local paper” seems to have an agenda, HiH does not.”
I’m curious, what do our readers think? Why do you read HiH? Do you also read the local paper, or not, and why? Do you feel the local paper has an agenda? What agenda would that be? Do you feel HiH has any agenda?
I’d like to repeat Mr. Bobbitt’s call to action, and a call that I’ve made many times here before. Please send me your stuff. News, press releases, events, pictures, audio, video, I don’t care. That goes for our all of our readers, whether you are a student, teacher, unemployed, business owner, just as well as Mr. Watkins and crowd. If I don’t get it, I can’t post it. I’d really like for the ‘good news’ to outweigh the ‘bad news’ here. There are a lot of good things happening in our town, but you’ve got to spread the word about those good things. If on the off chance anyone has sent me something and I did not post it, I apologize, it may have gotten overlooked in my emails I get during the day, so if you dont see it in a day or 2 poke me.
But the EDC, and Mr. Watkins, has never sent us an article regarding anything. We did receive a copy of the ‘current’ Henderson/Vance County EDC Strategic Plan for 2010-2014 when we requested it last year. At that time they announced to me that Mr. Letvin would be leading the formation of a new plan since the existing one was done before his service here. But I have received no releases since then about the plan.
The Board of Commissioners, as a group or a single commissioner, have never sent me a press release, or contacted me at all regarding community input, even after their recent discussion of more community involvement by the leaders was needed.
The City Council, as a group or a single councilman, has never sent me a press release regarding anything as well.
We do get notices from each of the above regarding meetings they will be having, and they are all very good about doing that. And perhaps I am expecting too much, and it is our responsibility as ‘media’ to send a reporter to those meetings and we come up with our own articles. However, as a free website we do not have the funds for a reporter, and no one has volunteered to be a reporter for the community.
The Vance County Schools does send me articles to post to the community via the Public Information Officer. I regularly get articles from Mrs. Hedrick to which I post them all on our website under Education. Thank you Mrs. Hedrick for your contributions.
We also get regular articles from VGCC, including pictures, that we run as well. Thank you Mr. Beal for your consistent contributions.
We get multiple newsletters from local elected officials at the state and national level. However none at the city or county level.
My request to readers has been to always send us the news you’d like to see here. I know that our readers are involved in the community and are leaders in our area, how do I know? Mr. Watkins himself commented on our website at the meeting. I hear from people all the time that they read our site. Our contributors hear from readers as well not only on our site, but in ‘real life’ too.
I went to dinner in downtown Raleigh this past weekend for a friends birthday party, and met one of my friends friends wife, and turned out she used to live in Henderson. I asked if she had ever visited our site, she said she had on occasion, but her brother visits every day. Hi to whoever you are!
This past month, our readership hit a record level,with over 5,500 unique visitors to our website from February 15 to March 15th. People are reading. It would be great if those 5,500 people would participate in the discussions here as well. I don’t want this to be a one way flow of information.
Our readers are mostly people here in Henderson, but we also get in order of appearance Raleigh, Durham, Charlotte, Oxford, Fayetteville, Wake Forest, Greenville, Fuquay Varina… That’s just in North Carolina. We even get a measurable amount from, in order of appearance, Philippines, United Kingdom, Canada, Netherlands, Germany, India, Australia and South Korea.
And its not just average Joe Blow reading either. It’s also fellow business owners, community leaders, elected officials that read as well.
How about come out of hiding and submit your good news that we so need to hear? Show us some of that community involvement you’d like to see.
Afterwards, Mr. Bobbitt relayed to me Mr. Watkins did say that our site has been ‘cleaned up’ a lot since we took it over. I can only assume that he means comments by readers. This is exactly why I added the account requirement to comment, and the ‘dislike’ button on comments. If you don’t like the comment, dislike it. When enough people dislike it, it will automatically be hidden. You can see hidden comments by clicking on the hidden notification. Also, if you ‘like’ a comment, be sure you like it by clicking the appropriate button.
Perhaps the comments are what Mr. Watkins was referring to about negativity. There are negative comments posted here. There’s positive ones as well. I have been told by many many people that they did not go to our website because of the negativity. I ask them if they have visited recently, and they reply no. I tell them to go check it out and they all come back saying how drastic a difference it is. Forcing accounts to post comments helped a tremendous amount in this regard, just as I anticipated, even though some readers threw backlash at me for it.
But for readers who feel the comments here are too negative: post your own good comments. Sign up with a pseudonym and new email account if you are concerned about privacy. But participate in the discussion to showcase the good here. Respond to the people that post negative comments with positive views.
I’ll be honest though, I haven’t seen many negative comments here. I’ve seen people gripe about crime, education, economy, jobs, racism, etc etc.. These aren’t negative comments, these are legitimate concerns that our area has a serious problem with. The numbers and data show these things to be true, you don’t expect the people experiencing the problems to complain?
Have you checked Facebook’s Henderson and Vance County discussion groups? Same gripes. Really mean sounding stuff, much worse than I’ve seen here since I’ve had it. But you know what, if those people are experiencing those things enough to gripe about them, the problem is what needs addressing. Not the person making the gripe, or the method in which they did so.
I specifically created our ‘verified account’ system to enable our local leaders to communicate with the public on issues. No local leader has taken advantage of that feature. It’s easy, free and is available to anyone that wants it. Contact me if you’d like to start.
The readers are here, over 5,500 of them. If you want to tell some good news about Henderson, write it up into an article and send to me. If you’d like to remain anonymous, we can run it as anonymous. Mail in a typed letter to us with no return address for all I care.
If the issue is there’s no good news to report, then Henderson really does have a serious problem.
I don’t feel that I’m adding anything in my long dribble above to what I’ve said before. I hope that I’ve addressed recent concerns and questions about our site. If I missed anything please comment below. If you have suggestions how to make Home in Henderson better, please share as well. If you have ideas how your leaders could communicate with you better, be it on HiH or elsewhere, give them some ideas below.
More than three generations of Americans can recall the feeling of power when they placed several houses on Ventnor Avenue or the Boardwalk, forcing their unlucky friends to pay the high rent if they landed on your property. This, of course, is part of the enduring board game Monopoly, which went on sale this week in 1933, a time when very few real houses were being built. That year, only 93,000 new houses were started, at an average cost of just over $300. In spite of the huge drop in the housing market in recent years, 471,000 new homes were started in 2010, with an average value of $222,000. Profile America is produced by the U.S. Census Bureau: Measuring America—People, Places, and Our Economy.
Discuss and more on this weekends Open Lines!
We all interpret everything differently. I believe every article is worthwhile. I personally object to comments that are demeaning and resort to name-calling. In the past I’ve been the target of cruel comments and had to ‘consider the source’. Unhappy people seem to go out of their way to inflict their unhappiness on others. I just don’t buy into it. We all make the multiple daily choice to be positive or negative. Positive attitudes lead to healthier, longer lives. I buy into that.
I doubt very seriously that the blog HiH is the only problem for recruiting industry to Henderson.We have many ;Education,untrained workforce ,ability of potential workforce to pass drug screen etc.When we truely as a community look in a mirror what do we see.We have positives also ;plentiful water,good location ,Vance Granville Community College ,and some people that are willing to work very hard for this community to improve it. What must we do to move forward ??? HiH is a good place for forward looking proposals to come forth.
This blog has nothing to do at all with the problem of recruiting industry to Henderson — if anything the “bad attitudes” are the blueprint for correcting the problem. However, the so-called ‘positive’ people are not ‘positive thinkers,’ they are ‘cloudy’ thinkers, ‘ostrich syndrome’ thinkers, and otherwise totally unrealistic individuals. Henderson is a slum. Until the people here realize that for what it is — nothing positive will occur. Good, honest, hardworking people do not want to live in a slum and raise their children with such a huge population of thugs and otherwise criminal people — of whatever race. People who own businesses do not want to live in slums. They want nice houses with nice yards where their children can play safely and grow up in a safe environment. DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT. It needs to start with the courts — no more Mr. Nice Guy.. you need to start holding people accountable and only then will things improve. No more ‘positive’ thinking — it needs to start with REALISTIC thinking. Wake up!!!! Can you REALLY imagine Donald Trump living down the street from crack houses and thugs with their blaring, so-called “music,” and their pants around their knees, and where he wouldn’t be even able to run to Walmart to buy a quart of milk without endangering his life?????? REALLY??????? !!!!!!
I’ve seen blatant dope deals during the day in shopping mall parking areas so often lately.
What are the police doing about this? It’s just getting downright disgusting–we need more police and courts to run this element out of town.
I see the police doing their jobs — I don’t see the courts doing theirs. It’s a joke — a revolving door. There is very little to no repercussions for committing crimes.
I agree with you, Betterworld. Before the police and courts, however, there is a great need for each individual to stand up for what is right. When the ‘village’ quit correcting their children, the neighbor’s children and the slum makers, the door was opened for all the unacceptable behaviors we find ourselves facing today. Taking away our teacher’s rights to correct their students was a move in the lawless direction. It all starts at home. We will not change anything hiding behind our safe doors and fearing the consequences of standing up to that which is unacceptable. Fear is the foundation of all that destroys the community.
Absolutely Copper, absolutely.
Industry is not coming to Henderson, Too much drugs and crime, por school system, too much crime inhe schools. Every road you drive down looks like a garbage dump trash littter all over roads, yards look like land fill, trash junk cars in the yards, No comany wnts to come to tjis mess.
How about this thought… Henderson used to have a lot of industry. They left long before Home in Henderson. So what caused those industries to move away? And what lessons from those times can be applied to today?
The industries left for several reasons–NAFTA had a lot to do certain companies downfall. We had become complacent in many ways.
I truly do not remember there being so many collecting welfare–and being glad to keep on doing it and expecting a free ride. Part of this is back to Federal Programs–conversely, some of the landlords, in my opinion, have worked the Section 8 to their benefit, as well as Federal Grants for projects we really could do without.
No easy answers, but if I could I would leave–taxes here are too high for the look of the area.
It is amazing to me the difference in the Henderson from when I was a child and the Henderson that exists today. For some time now I have been begging for industry to come to Henderson and quite literally, set up shop. There is a way to make it work and once a company decides to move in and begin operation, they will see just how much they can rely on our workforce to make their company grow. Phil raises a VERY GOOD POINT. Why did our local industrial hub crumble in the first place???
I read Home in Henderson for the news and for the comments. Sure I sift thru the ridiculous posts but I love the interaction this place offers. At times my own opinions have been changed having read someone’s point of view but sometimes it has not. Since the site has updated the riff-raff has appeared to leave. Wish we could do the same thing with the large amount of government assisted housing we have in the area. I value you the fact that there is an active website that offers news about my hometown.
As much as I hate to say this, print is dying but it is not dead yet. I read The Dispatch. That publication also helps make this area unique and just like HiH, it has a lot to offer this place. Is it always squeaky clean? No way, but news never should be. As a person I want to know about both the good and bad of what is going on in the area I call home. Between the two mediums that were mentioned, I feel content that I am getting a good number of opinions and informative news options.
How many other areas like Henderson can say this and why is it considered a bad thing?
Mr. Mojo, I also read the DD and HiH and feel there is something very special having both publications available. Not many little towns like ours have either or both and I fully support both for their uniqueness.
Years ago I believed that encouraging (and giving tax breaks to) businesses moving off-shore was a terrible mistake. That was not at all a popular stance and I was deemed an ‘isolationist’. Facts speak for themselves in this matter and Henderson is just one of thousands of little towns that has suffered as a consequence. I remember when America quit processing cotton because companies did not want to invest in the safety measures to prevent respiratory damage. Shame! So our corporations set up operations where there were no health controls and labor was dirt cheap. Why should they care that foreign populations were being exploited? It suited their bottom line and consumers got used to the cheaper (and poorly made) products. It has been a case of the greedy leading the blind since then.
Of course there was less welfare when we had industry. When people are deprived of jobs, what can we expect? Few people are strong enough or educated enough to endure joblessness for long and too many lose heart and give up to what’s available. WE, the taxpayers, ARE the providers of this so called free money. Our elected officials long ago quit reflecting our true values and opinions and it is OUR fault.
What disturbs me as much as anything is the social welfare programs set up for our government officials. Once they leave office they are guaranteed income, insurance and privilege for life, without contributing like the taxpayers they represent. We are in deep dook as long as this continues.
Thank you Copper Rain.