We need news about Berks County, not Harrisburg, in Berks

The Reading Eagle is all about Harrisburg on Friday. The problem is we need more news about Reading, not state government. 

And as usual, the local paper misses the real story – Kathleen Kane is turning into Michael Jackson.

Many fine reporters are telling us what’s going on in Harrisburg. We need the Reading Eagle to release its many fine reporters on our city, where the stories are that affect Berks County. A few jump quickly to mind:

• How are the local political machines recruiting candidates for Reading mayor? So far I’m not impressed.
• What is going on with the buildings on Penn Street that the city bought last year? What’s Boscov going to do with them?
• How many houses did Boscov’s Our City Reading renovate in 2014? How many did he sell? How much did it all cost? Where did the money come from? Is that scatter-shot approach the best way to do community development?
• What is the new school superintendent doing to get parents more involved?
• What is going on with the district’s alternative school, which will produce criminals if not run properly?
• How is the I-LEAD charter school doing? How much does it cost the district?
• How do Reading schools teach Spanish speakers? Is it effective?
• What's up with the community health center planned for Oakbrook? Do any doctors in the city take Medicaid patients?

The clueless Eagle editors might wonder why cover the city. The people there don’t vote much, don’t buy much and certainly don’t read the Reading Eagle.

But it’s the most important news for all of us in Berks. While the rising national economy and new love for urban living are letting Allentown and Lancaster and many other cities take flight, Reading is the millstone dragging Berks down.

How to change that depends on knowledge and information and insight, but we’re not getting any from the Reading Eagle. We need better journalism to make things better here.

Fluffy Reading Eagle story about hospitals serves bigwigs, not public

By Steve Reinbrecht

Another non-story on the front page of our award-winning Reading Eagle newspaper adds to my wonder about the editors’ agenda. There is some meaning in the story, but you have to read between the lines.

It’s on a vitally important topic – how the absorption of our second hospital by the leviathan Penn State-Hershey medical conglomerate will affect health care in Berks County.

The sub-headline states: “Penn State, St. Joe officials discuss how merger can enhance patient care.”

If they did, the story doesn’t mention how patients will benefit. Or maybe one example – now you might be diagnosed online: “A new telestroke program has allowed neurologists at Penn State Hershey to evaluate stroke patients via computer and a webcam system and then coordinate care with St. Joseph emergency doctors. That program has kept more and more patients in Berks for care.”

“How patient care will change is part of an exciting brainstorming process, hospital officials said Wednesday,” we learn in the second paragraph. “They aim … to offer better care at lower cost.”

Doesn’t this sound like an advertisement?

“[The dean of Penn State’s college of medicine] said the ultimate focus will be to provide the best care for residents at the lowest possible price.”

Kind of like Wal-Mart.

Top executives “discussed the acquisition … Wednesday.” Where? Some secret location? Did the Eagle reporter join them?

If he did, did he ask any questions? Do you expect layoffs? Have there been layoffs in similar acquisitions? How will patient care change? [See subhead.] What changes will patients see? When will they see them? How will the merger affect local health-care problems described in the recent Berks County health assessment and vital-signs reports? 

“In the new model, often called the population health model, hospitals and health systems will be challenged to keep the communities they serve healthy over time.”

Most people outside Reading have pretty good health care, including insurance and access. Not so in the city. Why not ask about that?

One possibility is that someone really important told the newspaper editors they needed more stories about how wonderful this merger is, so the editors manufactured this story.

It’s too bad for all of us that the editors at our primary newsgathering institution are more worried about appearances than content. Don’t they know it’s their job to clear up official blather rather than spread it?

This story’s placement, lack of content, lack of purpose and lack of skepticism serves the establishment, not the community. Stories like this make it seem like the Eagle serves the powerful before it serves its readers. That would be anti-journalism!

Reading Eagle business stories are train wrecks

By Steve Reinbrecht

How silly are these stories in the Reading Eagle’s business weekly?

They give the ideas that business is great in Berks –“Reading might become an inland rail port!” 


Actually, the train story isn’t that bad, but the headline and presentation are ludicrous, and add evidence that the editors pitching and picking stories at our watchdog institution are clueless, or are following some strange agenda other than doing journalism about Berks County, but they have to pretend to do journalism. It’s that hypocrisy that irks me so.

Like this train story. The section cover has a magnificent picture of train cars in Reading and the top headline: “Reading: An inland port designation?”

And over the story: “Reading: a future inland port?”

But the news, such as it is, is all about Bethlehem, 40 miles east, in Northampton County, which possibly, someday, maybe will become an inland rail port, and then vaguely how it’s better for everybody to ship stuff on trains not trucks. [The Eagle loves to write about what MIGHT happen, because then it doesn't have to nail down facts, which is hard work, facts such as, what did Mayor Spencer actually do in 2014, or harder yet, say he was going to do but didn’t?] 

The first mention of Reading is in the story's 19th paragraph: