| COURTHOUSE BEAT: |
| There's often a hardy band of courthouse regulars who never miss an important trial. They are retired persons, or other similar types, who come down to the courthouse very day to watch trials because they find the courtroom more entertaining than TV or the movies. |
| Do a feature about these regulars at your local courthouse, interviewing them for quotes on some of the fascinating trials they have viewed. |
| HANDWRITING SKILLS: |
| These days, with computers and mobile phones at the ready, kids spend more time typing than putting pen or pencil to paper — are your schools spending enough time teaching kids good handwriting skills? Penmanship was an important part of every third-grader's curriculum at this City Desk editor's school. Has your school district paid for special teacher training to help educators instruct children in penmanship? In what class and grade do children learn handwriting, and do parents see their children struggling to master the skill? |
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| DOING TIME: |
| Prison inmates are inveterate readers, and their reading habits should make for a good feature. In most areas, the public library arranges for books to be brought to prisons or jails on a regular basis, or the jails themselves sometimes host libraries. |
| Talk to person in charge of libraries at local jails for the lowdown on inmate reading habits. Do they like fiction, history, adventure, technical books, or, perhaps, poetry? |
| HOSPITALISTS: |
| Who's doing the doctoring in your local hospitals? A shortage of primary-care practitioners means that doctors are too overworked to be visiting patients in the hospital — hence, the birth of a new kind of doctor, the hospitalist, who works solely in the hospital environment and, ideally, maintains close communication with patients' other doctors. By 2010, the number of hospitalists should double from 20,000 to 40,000, according to Consumer Reports on Health. Are any representatives of this new breed of medical specialist employed at your local medical centers? |
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| SOCIAL NETWORKING: |
| If the economy's in a rut, social networkers, bloggers, vloggers, etc. will know to remove all sensitive posts from their pages, or at least limit who can view "those" posts so potential or present employers won't stumble upon them … right? In a perfect world, yes — but not in ours. |
| Have reporters check the Internet to see what questionable items locals have posted on social-network sites like Facebook and MySpace, blogs, YouTube, and other Internet spaces, and list some of these lapses of judgement (without identifying the posters) to help educate users of these sites on what NOT to put up on the Web. (One sample: Just working here until a good fast-food job opens up.") |
| COLLEGE CHOICES: |
| How many local high-school grads have decided to skip the traditional four-year college experience and go directly into the workforce, into vocational programs at local community colleges or into "apprentice" programs? Whether it's the curriculum, the cost, or the amount of time spent in school, some people feel college just isn't for them. Speak with some of these new high-school grads about their reasons for not choosing college. Are they already earning a decent living? Also speak to older non-degreed workers, white- and blue-collar, to see how well they have fared in terms of pay and satisfaction with their career paths. What options do local community colleges and employers offer these students? |
| One link to apprenticeship programs: www.khake.com/page58. |
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| Web Site of the Week |
| WWW.BEERFESTIVALS.ORG |
 A labor of love by beer enthusiast Paul Ruschmann, BeerFestivals.org calls itself the Internet's most comprehensive source of information about beer festivals, period. It provides Web links to info about beer-centric events categorized by location and date, and also features links to the Web's best beer sites and reviews of great books about beer. |
| http://beerfestivals.org/ |
| The Date Book |
| Sept. 11, 2001 |
| (seven years ago), Al Qaeda terrorists attack World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing more than 3,000 persons; |
| Sept. 13, 1814 |
| (194 years ago), Francis Scott Key wrote the "Star Spangled Banner;" |
| Sept. 14, 1879 |
| (129 years ago), birth-control pioneer Margaret Sanger was born; |
| Sept. 15-Oct. 15, |
| National Hispanic Heritage Month; |
| Sept. 15, 1982 |
| (26 years ago), first issue of USA Today was published; |
| Sept. 18, 1851 |
| (157 years ago), First issue of The New York Times was published. |
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