Rush To Judgment

Publisher’s Note: Jim Rush is the general manager of The Westfield Republican and The Sentinel-News. His column is scheduled to appear weekly in The Quality Guide.

By JIM RUSH

One of the more common questions I have received over the years has to do with where do we get our story ideas and how do we determine where they are placed in the paper.

The answer to the first part is pretty simple — from you, the readers.

I bring this up because of a story we featured last week regarding Hollywood the Falcon, who flew the coop from Pennsylvania and ended up in the yard of Westfield resident Aaron Resnick.

If not for the help of one of our readers, we may not have been able to bring you the story of the falcon and the friendship that developed.

The photograph that ran along with the article enhanced the story. The pure enthusiasm of three-year-old Ryan Resnick was priceless. It isn’t everyday that a child gets an up-close look at an animal of this nature.

We welcome the chance to share story ideas from the general public. While we would never guarantee anything, many good stories have developed over the phone.

One of the more interesting stories I have ever written has a pretty simple beginning. I was taking results of a collegiate track meet over the phone and when the coach brought up a name, he made a pretty innocuous comment about not expecting much from him during the meet.

As part of the conversation, I just asked, “why?” He went on to explain what he meant and it turned into a front-page story one week later. Space doesn’t allow for the whole story but in a nutshell, the kid was pretty fortunate to be alive after having a major health scare.

We are always looking for that next interesting story to tell our readers.

And when “Hollywood came to Westfield,” we were all fortunate to read the story.

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We had a story in last week’s Westfield Republican regarding The Portage Inn and where things stood.

If you drove down Portage Street on Monday, you could see the activity around the building.

The dumpster next to the structure was being filled with the garbage from inside.

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Obviously, gas prices are affecting all of us. We haven’t seen these prices since Hurricane Katrina hit a few years ago. According to most reports I have read, these prices are not going down anytime soon, if ever.

And so it’s interesting to read about the political battles, both at the state and federal levels about suspending the gas tax.

I am not about to take sides in this debate.

I do want to make mention of how the political process works with something of this nature. On the state level, Republicans proposed suspending the gas tax. Naturally, Democrats, being the opposition party, didn’t embrace it, either because they thought it was the smart thing to do or they felt they had to go against it just because. With presidential politics, Hillary Clinton has called for the suspension of the gas tax while Barack Obama has called it a political stunt. Also, the Republican National Committee has decided to make Obama’s opinion political fodder in its’ e-mail updates.

In politics, obviously, if your opponent says one thing, you have to say the other thing, whether it’s right or wrong.

I will say that the suspension of the gas tax won’t necessarily lead to lower prices.

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While the middle of summer and the beginning of winter tend to be by favorite times of the year, I do enjoy seeing the colors of the flowering trees make a return at the beginning of spring.

While we all generally enjoy the brilliance of the winter months, it’s always nice to see the green grass and the buds growing off the trees in April and May. It’s nice to be able to clean up the lawn from the winter weather and to cut the grass and to do those projects outside.