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A couple weeks ago in an editorial we shared insight into some of the challenges and opportunities the upcoming year may hold for an ever-changing newspaper industry.

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It is that time of year when we all look to the future and promise ourselves to do better. It might be to lose some weight, spend a little less money or just try to be a bit happier in 2023.

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Many times, we can live our lives wondering if we’ve made a difference somewhere, somehow.

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Every year our newspaper readers are given the opportunity to vote either online or in print for their favorite businesses in Goldsboro and the surrounding areas.

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Thomas Jefferson famously declared, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Jefferson knew that local papers were vital to a thriving democracy, and that not…

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No doubt you all have heard that the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade Friday?

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I grew up in a family that had guns. We learned to hunt at a young age with the proper safety precautions.

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For decades North Carolina has ranked near the bottom of all states in the country when it comes to the public’s right to know what went wrong when a government employee is transferred, demoted or terminated for disciplinary reasons.

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When the 2021 session of the General Assembly began, passage of legislation to advance public access to records of disciplinary actions taken by those employed by taxpayers in state and local government seemed like a longshot. Long a priority of North Carolina newspapers on behalf of the sta…

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There are many days we will never forget: graduating, walking down the aisle, the birth of our children, maybe even the tragic loss of a loved one.

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Public employees work for you. Your taxes pay their salary. In fact you — every person reading this — have a right to find out what any public employee is paid.

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In late 2020, a veteran soldier was in a mental health crisis. Distraught, he left his home in the family RV, his wife convinced it would be the last time she saw him. A Charlotte-based veterans organization, The Independence Fund, who had provided suicide prevention training to him in the p…

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The current school year has been the challenge of a lifetime. Online/virtual learning became an unexpected necessity. Many parents, whether they were prepared or not, had to balance busy work and home lives with helping their children with virtual school.

This writing is coming to you from Asheville, where my sister Marie and I are participants in a literary conference titled “Blue Ridge, Biltmore, & Blooms with Professor Elliot Engel,” occurring at the Renaissance Hotel near Asheville’s downtown and neighboring Thomas Wolfe House and Museum.

One of the many pleasures of substitute teaching in an English as a Second Language class in a local elementary school is the opportunity to learn from students whose parents have come here from Yemen, Palestine, El Salvador, and Mexico.

In trying to cull our books, I came across a small paperback entitled, “The Phrase That Launched 1,000 Ships,” by Nigel Rees, a 1991 publication from Dell Publishing’s Intrepid Linguist Library. Other titles in this collection include “Anguished English,” “Demonic Mnemonics,” “Get Thee to a …

The Easter season for Christians promised more rejoicing than ever as we seem to be moving out of our entombment in our homes for this long period of darkness called the pandemic into the bright light of salvation.

March has been the month for various celebrations, including National Reading Month, so here is a review of my recent reading — Tom Hanks’ collection of short stories, “Uncommon Type: Some Stories,” published in 2017. British reviewers panned Hanks’ first attempt at creative writing, but Ame…

Earlier this month, the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York, announced the nine women to be inducted for 2021. Inductees include former first lady Michelle Obama, soccer icon Mia Hamm, NASA’s first African American female engineer Katherine Johnson and PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi.

It’s Sunshine Week across America, a time when the public’s right to see government records and attend government meetings — in order to hold government officials accountable to the people who employ them — is traditionally celebrated.

In case you missed it on Monday, March 8, Happy International Women’s Day! Celebration of women’s concerns — everyone’s concerns — appropriately occurs in March as women worldwide have had to march, strike, protest, and otherwise campaign publicly to free themselves from oppression and to ga…

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The state currently allows children to wed. It seems like an issue that is supposed to be nestled in the far corners of the world. That couldn’t possibly happen here, right?

When, why, and how did sentimentality get a bad rap? As a literature major, I soon learned that sentimental literature was judged to be manipulative and exploitative of our emotions: If a work of art moved people to tears, then it was somehow unworthy of cerebral or intellectual examination.…

Two playwrights, Arthur Miller and August Wilson, address tragic heroes in similar yet different ways in their plays, “Death of a Salesman” and “Fences,” both of which have been converted to film versions.

All you fellow lovers of the history and organization of English grammar: Prepare to lament if you don’t like the ways our language is changing and will continue to change. Herein lie predictions of the future, based on the ways people use grammar and on the ways we have been trained to teac…

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My last column written for the News Argus was published on Feb. 2, 2020. During the seven years prior, I had frequently written a February piece to coincide with Black History Month.

What a nice coincidence if you are reading this column on Valentine’s Day which inspires its subject of love, that many-splendored thing, or as some wags have it, that many-splintered thing! Whatever it is, it makes the world go ‘round, it’s blind, it’s the ambassador of loss, it’s a kind of…

Watching “The Long Song” on PBS Sunday night coincided with my reading the autobiography “Twelve Years a Slave,” by Solomon Northup. In addition, I am substitute teaching in an eighth-grade classroom where we are beginning a study of black leaders and Abraham Lincoln during Black History Month.

I have just read the latest novel by Marilynne Robinson, acclaimed novelist, intellectual and winner of important literary awards.

Amid the political turmoil of these past years, many word-lovers have deplored the misspellings on protesters’ signs as they demonstrate, giving rise to accusations and blame directed against the American educational system.

When do words matter? You might reply, “All the time,” and you would be right. On Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, our president’s words incited a riot, despite the declaration from a Cary woman in the crowd of protesters who said he didn’t urge the crowd toward the Capitol where he “would be with t…

You have to be a nerd like me to enjoy websites like the one from Merriam-Webster that posts “8 Ways for Being Quiet” and other language tidbits that fascinate — or not. The months that begin the new year seem to be the “quiet” ones except for noisy Valentine’s Day in February and noisier St…

Despite travel warnings, I needed to see our grandsons and daughter and sisters during the holidays, visits which entailed driving to Virginia during which I encountered a snow shower that in some areas created a Currier and Ives prettiness. Both my stay in Fairfax and in Gloucester involved…

The plan was to write a recap of 2020. But then I thought who wants to start a new year by looking back at one so terrible? Instead, I decided to look onto 2021 with what we learned from the previous year.

To paraphrase actor Al Pacino in his role of Michael Corleone in Godfather III, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”

This Sunday, churches of many denominations will be participating in a tradition called Lessons and Carols celebrated in 1918 at King’s College, Cambridge, England, but with origins at Truro Cathedral in Cornwall. All of us “Doc Martin” followers are familiar with Cornwall and Truro.

Already we are receiving Christmas cards from friends and family more organized than I am, and in this Year of the Pandemic, these greetings are more welcome than ever. Friends have sent photo cards that depict their ever-growing children whose faces have matured into young men and women; th…

Maybe it is the necklace with letters from the Ogham alphabet I received as a Christmas gift last year, or maybe it’s the Christmas tree my husband (whose usual attitude about the season ranges from Bah! to Humbug!) bought yesterday — the earliest we have ever bought a tree — that drew my at…

I’ve known and worked with Steve Herring for two years. When looking at a newspaper career, that’s not much time. It’s especially a short time compared to Steve spending more than 40 years of his life as a reporter and editor.

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This Sunday marks the beginning of Advent — a season we may need more than ever during these perilous months of Covid-19, as we await a vaccine, a new government, a new economy, and a journey to a new year.