Uncle Charlie

At first I thought maybe old friend Tim Kelly was writing about William Demarest, the guy who played Uncle Charley in "My Three Sons."

But Tim writes instead more importantly about the death of his own uncle, a World War II vet who sounds like he was one heck of a guy to be around. RIP, Uncle Charlie. Despite your introduction of the humbling game of golf to your newphew, your nation still says thank you for your service to your country and your family.

Postscript: Uncle Charlie died in a veteran's nursing home named for Richard Campbell, the brother of the late Gov. Carroll Campbell, who died as a young man serving his country in Vietnam. I remember tears coming to Gov. Campbell's eyes when he was asked one time about his brother.

Public (Taxpayer-Paid) Radio

I share Doug Fisher's lament about the death of radio news, but I'm not inclined to agree with him that a government-run radio network should pick up the slack. I feel badly for Adam Hochberg that he has to try and cover big news in South Carolina from the state to the north, but not badly enough to say more tax money should go to SCETV. In the end, are there any news consumers in South Carolina who didn't get plenty of coverage of the tragedy in Charleston?

Doug notes that SCETV's radio folks once got in a dustup with the Legislature, which turned around and gutted the radio staff's budget. Doesn't that prove my point? If you have a government-run radio station doing news, at some point it is in danger of being beholden to the political interests of the day. And don't get me started on the "we're-going-to-take-Big-Bird-off the-air-if-you-cut-our-budget" ploys that public television agencies are known to execute.

Doug's a top-notch editor and more journalism big-wigs should listen to what he has to say about the evolving newsroom. And he's a radio guy at heart, I think, so that's the spirit in which I take his lament. And my guess is SCETV disagrees with me more than they disagree with him!