Charlottesville to get Fox Afflliate

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 5, 2004 in Politics. 13 Comments

22blitz writes: This is not a dupicate story. Gray Television, who owns WCAV CBS19 and WVAW, will bring a Fox station to the area. Gray will be taking over WADA, the PAX station here in Charlottesville. I found this out by visiting VARTV.com

I’m sure we’ll all somehow make do without a local PAX affiliate. Note that both WADA and WVAW are low-power stations, so they’re under the FCC’s radar, which is how Gray is even allowed to have so many stations in one place. If I may return to the theme of the Great Hook/C-Ville Wars of 2002, is there room enough in this market for four local TV stations and news broadcasts?

Local Results of Federal Election

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 3, 2004 in General News. 15 Comments

President George Bush has eked out a 51/48 victory over Senator John Kerry nationally, while Rep. Virgil Goode trounced challenger Al Weed, of Nelson County, in Virginia’s 5th District. Locally, however, the results weren’t always so strong. In Albemarle, Kerry beat Bush with 50.5% of the vote, and predictably dominated in Charlottesville with 71.66% (not including the to-be-counted absentee ballots). Weed didn’t fare so well. In Albemarle, he lost to Goode with 49.7%, and while the Charlottesville results aren’t yet being reported to the State Board of Elections, oddly, but Bob Gibson reports that he won the city by 5,638 votes. Charlottesville was the only district won by Weed, including his home of Nelson County. That leaves Weed with a hair over 36% of the vote, a little less than former Charlottesville City Councilor Meredith Richards got two years ago.

Progress Endorses Bush: Why?

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 1, 2004 in Politics. 21 Comments

In 2000, the Daily Progress endorsed George Bush for president. Four years later, Bush has failed to live up to a single one of the promises on which they based their endorsement. Yet the Progress endorsed him again yesterday, in their biggest stretch of an endorsement since their endorsement of Ann Reineke and Kenneth Jackson for Council earlier this year. Why did they do this? And what does it say for the Progress’ editorial staff and our ability, as readers, to divine meaning or guidance from their positions on matters local and national?
Continue reading ‘Progress Endorses Bush: Why?’

City Schools and Cries of Racism

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 22, 2004 in Education. 11 Comments

Recent concerns about the Charlottesville School Board and new superintendent Scottie Griffin have taken on an oddly racist tone in the last couple of months. Parents and teachers testify that schools are suffering under the current board and the new superintendent, and an interesting trio has sprung up to defend the black, female superintendent: Reverend Alvin Edwards, Dean Rick Turner, and Councilor Kendra Hamilton, all of whom are high-profile black members of the community. Said Turner, at a September school board meeting, “People say they can’t accept her style, but they can’t accept the color of her skin.” At that meeting, community activist Joy pointedly remarked on the correlation between who applauded for speakers and the color of the speaker’s skin. Then, at last night’s meeting, only black parents and community leaders spoke in favor of Griffin, while only whites spoke in favor of change at Monday’s City Council meeting, WINA reports. Is this a problem of racism disguised as a practical problem, or is this a practical problem that some are trying to disguise as a racial problem?

WINA, Progress RSS Newsfeeds

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 20, 2004 in Politics. 3 Comments

I’ve gotten tired of loading WINA and the Daily Progress’ website repeatedly each day, so I’ve hacked together a screen-scraper to extract the news from each site to make it available as an RSS newsfeed. The website management tool used by the Daily Progress hasn’t been updated since ninteen-freaking-ninety-seven, complete with security holes, while WINA just hasn’t added a feed, so I thought I’d write something. Point your newsreader of choice at http://www.cvillenews.com/feeds/progress/ or http://www.cvillenews.com/feeds/wina/. On my end, the headlines are cached for an hour, so that I don’t place any undue stress on WINA or the Daily Progress’ servers, and I’d appreciate it if y’all didn’t set your newsreaders to query these feeds more than a few times each day. Note that the Progress feed is complete — headlines and descriptions, whereas WINA’s is headlines-only for the time being on stories where abstracts aren’t provided. Bug reports appreciated. Update: I’m avoiding schoolwork, so I made a Cavailer Daily feed, too.

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