Daily Tribune (Mount Pleasant, Tex.), Vol. 142, No. 191, Ed. 1 Wednesday, August 10, 2016 Page: 4 of 12
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4 • Mount Pleasant Daily Tribune • www.dailytribune.net • Wednesday, August 10, 2016
Opinion
Please don’t marry me
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Hurray for John Oliver
MOUNT PLEASANT
DAILY TRIBUNE
We cannot rely on the criminal justice system for mental health care
The Dallas Morning News
Where To Write
Visitors Office: 202-456-2121
Copyright 2016 Mount Pleasant Daily Tribune,
P.O. Box 1177, Mount Pleasant, Texas 75456.
BY VALERIE REDDELL
valerie.reddell@ tribnow.com
he's no
MICHAEL
PHELPS,
Austin, TX 78701
Phone: 512-469-6034
By KATHLEEN PARKER
The Washington Post
Thanks to this week’s ep-
isode of Last Week Tonight,
newspapers are a hot topic.
Fortunately, community
newspapers like this one are
being spared much of the
grief that the larger metro
newspapers are experiencing.
I grew up in community
newspapers —My dad owns
eight of them that encircle
Lake Livingston. In commu-
nity papers, readers feel like
they know you. That feeling
is justified when your mother
writes a column that fre-
quently featured the exploits
of her three daughters. It also
leads to some hilarious expe-
riences when I’m standing in
line at the grocery store be-
hind someone who is telling
a story about me.
I was reminded that I prob-
ably have not done a great
job of introducing myself to
this community when some-
one gave me a husband.
I asked him to tell me all
about this remarkable man I
hadn’t met, but we couldn’t
determine exactly who that
was.
Surprisingly, even in the
21 st century, being a grown
up no-longer-married woman
still strikes many people as
unusual.
It’s not so bad from this
side of things. I learned that
I can almost always find
someone to open the stuck
pickle jar or carry something
heavy without having to
marry them.
My single status does frus-
trate friends and family who
like to look across the dinner
table and see everyone in
matching sets of two.
But every once in a while,
my songwriting significant
other does wander through
this part of Texas as he trav-
els between Austin and some
far flung stage — so there’s
really no danger I’ll turn into
the strange lady with too
many cats.
lights in newsrooms where gladiators,
scholars and characters once roamed.
Some still do, though most are be-
coming rather long-ish in the tooth.
(You can actually get that fixed, you
know.)
That any newspapers are surviving,
if not for much longer in any recog-
nizable form, can be attributed at least
in some part to the dedication of peo-
ple who really believe in the mission
of a free press and are willing to work
harder for less — tweeting, blogging,
filming and whatnot in addition to
trying to write worthy copy. Most of
the poor slobs who fell in love with
the printed word go unnoticed by any
but their peers.
An exception is Marty Baron, the
unassuming executive editor of The
Washington Post, recently featured in
the film, "Spotlight" about the Boston
Globe's stories under Baron's leader-
ship about sexual abuse in the Catho-
lic Church.
It's a good movie, not just because
of great casting and acting but be-
cause it's a great tale about a massive
investigative effort that led to church
reform and the beginning of healing
for victims. (Not to worry, my pay
comes as a percentage of the money
I make for the company. This won't
make a dime of difference.
My point — shared by Oliver — is
that only newspapers are the brick-
and-mortar of the Fourth Estate's ed-
ifice. Only they have the wherewithal
to do the kind of reporting that leads
to stories such as "Spotlight." What
happens to the "news" when there are
no newspapers left?
We seem doomed to find out as
people increasingly give up their
United States Senator
Ted Cruz (R)
Washington D.C. Office:
185 Dirksen Senate Office
Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Phone: 202-224-4922
Austin Office:
300 E. 8th Street, Suite 961
Austin, TX 78701
Phone: 512-916-5834
Email: scheduler@cruz.
senate.gov
Published five days a week except Monday and Saturday at
210 S. Van Buren, Mount Pleasant, Texas by Granite Publishing.
Periodical postage paid at Mount Pleasant, Texas under Act of
March 31,1916. POSTMASTER: Form 3579 should be sent
to MOUNT PLEASANT DAILY TRIBUNE, R O. Box 1177, Mount
Pleasant, Texas 75456-1177.
In-County Circulation Rates By Carrier: 12 months $132; 6
months $69; 3 months $35; 1 month $12. Golden Years Club
(62 & up): 12 months, $120; 6 months $64; 3 months $33.
Online: 12 month $70; 6 months $40. Military personnel
stationed state-side and college students will be charged
the in-county rate. Military personnel deployed overseas can
receive the paper free by mail or online.
President Barack Obama (D)
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, D.C. 20500
Please include your email
address.
Phone numbers:
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-228-2856
Comments: 202-456-6213
Texas State Board of Education
Marisa B. Perez (D)
P.O. Box 276406
San Antonio, TX 78227
Phone: 512-463-0682
United States Senator
John Cornyn (R)
Washington Office:
517 Hart Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, D.C. 20510
Phone: 202-224-2934
Fax: 202-228-2856
Texas Office:
212 W. Sixth St., Suite 1530
0
G
©2016 Mount Pleasant Daily Tribune
Phone:1-903-572-1705
Fax:1-903-572-6026;
Web Site: www.dailytribune.net
E-Mail: news@dailytribune.net
(USPS 365-540)
Office Hours:
Monday-Friday 8 a.m.-5 p.m.
MEMBERS OF:
r i % SOUTHERNNEWSPUER —
-“m I ONIRi ASSOCLATNON A h
T SNPA AP
ASSOCIATION mmmmmm
Consolidated with Mount Pleasant Times
and Times Review on July 31,1972.
BUSINESS OFFICE
Richard Fazzone: Publisher,
publisher@tribnow.com, ext. 210,
mobile: 863-303-7799
Tina Vincent: Business Manager, ext. 206
Kimberly Daffern: Classified/Receptionist,
kdaffern@tribnow.com, Ext. 201
NEWS/PRODUCTION
Valerie Reddell: Editor,
editor@tribnow.com, ext. 214,
mobile: 830-305-7080
Lydia Loftis: Photo/Design,
lloftis@tribnow.com, ext. 213
Mike Markovitch: Staff/Sports Writer
mike@tribnow.com, ext 209
Alexes Spencer: Reporter/Photographer
aspencer@tribnow.com, ext 215
ADVERTISING
Malu Beyonce: Account Executive,
mbeyonce@tribnow.com, ext. 205
James Zdonczyk: Account Executive,
james@tribnow.com, ext. 203
SIAH(ER,
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25(6
ously mentally ill individuals, largely
due to downsizing and closing state
psychiatric hospitals without pro-
viding necessary alternatives. Ac-
cording to the Center for American
Progress' report, federal and state
jails and prisons hold three times
as many people with mental health
conditions as state mental hospitals.
And one in five prison inmates has a
serious mental illness.
In Texas, the Dallas County Jail
is the second-largest mental health
institution, behind only the Harris
County Jail. At least 25 percent of
our jail's inmates suffer from mental
illness.
It's a serious problem — one our
jails and their staffs weren't designed
to handle. They often lack the prop-
er training or resources to adequate-
ly treat mental illness, Public Citizen
noted: "Almost half of the jails re-
ported that only 2 percent or less of
the initial training they provide to
their staff and sheriff's deputies was
allotted to issues specifically dealing
with seriously mentally ill inmates."
For annual training on such issues,
more than 60 percent of jails said
they spend two hours or less.
Recent reports from the Center
for American Progress and the
Public Citizen and the Treatment
Advocacy Center confirm what
many already understood: The U.S.
relies too heavily on our criminal
justice system to deal with the public
health problem of mental illness,
and our criminal justice system isn't
adequately prepared for this respon-
sibility.
Dallas is no exception. Just days
after the Dallas police ambush last
month, Police Chief David Brown
made national headlines in his
news conference on how "we're
asking cops to do too much in this
country." His first example? Mental
health issues. In June, The Dallas
Morning News' Naomi Martin re-
ported that Dallas police received
12,141 911 calls related to a mental
patient in 2015, an 18 percent in-
crease since 2012.
These two national studies pro-
vide more details to underpin local
concerns. The Public Citizen report
found that county jails are dealing
with an increasing number of seri-
newspaper subscriptions and seek in-
formation from free-content sources.
And though newspapers have an on-
line presence, it's hard to get readers
to pay for content.
As Oliver says, now is a very good
time to be a corrupt politician. Be-
tween buyouts, layoffs and news-hole
reductions, there's hardly anyone pay-
ing attention.
Except, perhaps, to kitties.
In a hilarious spinoff of "Spotlight"
called "Stoplight," Oliver shows a
short film of a news meeting where
the old-school reporter is pitching a
story about city hall corruption. The
rest of the staff, cheerful human topi-
aries to the reporter's kudzu-draped
mangrove— are more interested in a
cat that looks like a raccoon.
And then there's Sam Zell, erst-
while owner of the Tribune Company,
who summed up the sad trajectory
of the nation's interests and, perhaps,
our future while speaking to Orlando
Sentinel staffers in 2008. When he
said he wanted to increase revenues
by giving readers what they want, a
female voice objected, “What readers
want are puppy dogs.”
Zell exploded, calling her com-
ment the sort of “journalistic arro-
gance of deciding that puppies don’t
count. Hopefully we get to the point
where our revenue is so significant
that we can do puppies and Iraq, OK?
[Expletive] you.”
Yes, he said that.
Moral of the story: If you don't sub-
scribe to a newspaper, you don't get
to complain about the sorry state of
journalism — and puppies you shall
have.
It's unfair to law enforcement and
the public to primarily rely on the
criminal justice system to handle
mental illness. It's also unnecessarily
expensive.
Jailing a person with serious
mental illness costs nearly $50,000
per year on average, the Center for
American Progress report noted.
The price tag on even the most
expensive and intensive commu-
nity-based interventions, however,
is significantly less. For example,
providing Assertive Community
Treatment — a team-based treat-
ment model that provides round-
the-clock support — and supportive
housing, according to the report,
costs around $20,500 annually.
This newspaper has consistently
supported efforts to "erase the stig-
ma" around mental illness, since
stigmatization only exacerbates the
problems and pain. But that's only
one part of the equation. We also
need to better fund and improve
mental health care. These new re-
ports should strengthen our resolve
to invest in mental health care ser-
vices, so we can empower, not im-
prison, those who are struggling.
Every couple of years or so, I feel
the need to whine about the plight of
newspapers. It's August. I'm Trumped
out. So today's the day.
Except that HBO's John Oliver
beat me to it with the best defense
of newspapers — ever. His recent
"Last Week Tonight with John Oli-
ver" monologue about the suffering
newspaper industry has gone viral in
journalism circles but he deserves a
broader audience.
Besides, it's funny.
Leavening his important message
with enough levity to keep the do-
pamine flowing, Oliver points out
that most news outlets, faux, Fox and
otherwise, essentially rely on newspa-
pers for their material. This includes,
he says, pulsing with self-awareness,
Oliver himself. He's sort of part of the
problem, in other words, but at least
he knows it, which makes it OK, sort
of.
The problem: People want news but
they don't want to pay for it.
Consequently, newspapers are
failing while consumers get their in-
formation from comedy shows, talk
shows and websites that essentially lift
material for their own purposes.
But somewhere, somebody is actu-
ally sitting through a boring meeting,
poring over data or interviewing
someone who isn't nearly as import-
ant as he thinks he is in order to pro-
duce a story that will become news.
As Oliver points out, news is a food
chain, yet with rare exceptions, the
most important members of the chain
are at the bottom, turning off the
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Reddell, Valerie. Daily Tribune (Mount Pleasant, Tex.), Vol. 142, No. 191, Ed. 1 Wednesday, August 10, 2016, newspaper, August 10, 2016; Mount Pleasant, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1428924/m1/4/: accessed June 6, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Mount Pleasant Public Library.