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Brenda J. Linert

Effect of GM cuts is harsh no matter the cause

Falling crude prices and gasoline costs at the pump that consumers so often hope for might be at least partially the reason for Americans’ shift towards larger, gas-guzzling vehicles and away from smaller, gas-sipping cars like the Lordstown-built Chevrolet Cruze sedan. Friday, we saw the effects of that shift in preferences when General Motors announced plans to slash some 1,500 jobs at its local assembly and stamping plants by summer. The announcement came just about 16 months after the company cut about 1,200 workers here in 2016. The plant’s workforce will number about ...

Why social media needs newspapers

I read an article last week that delved into the debate over whether newspapers should continue use of social media to share online news stories. I suspect the article came about after scrutiny developed when news broke last month that Cambridge Analytica, a data firm with ties to President Donald Trump’s campaign, had gained access to profile information about 50 million Facebook users. Reportedly, the data had been collected by a professor for academic purposes and in accordance with Facebook rules. But then it was transferred to Cambridge Analytica and others, which Facebook ...

‘Fake News’ chants are causing undue harm

Twitter loves lies, the Associated Press reported in a recent story about a new Massachusetts Institute of Technology study that found false information traveled via social media six times faster than the truth and reached far more people. Specifically, an average false story takes about 10 hours to reach 1,500 Twitter users, versus about 60 hours for the truth. And on average, false information reaches 35 percent more people than true news. As if that’s not bad enough, an ever-increasing chant of “fake news” — often coming from public officials about stories that aren’t ...

Two Warren women helped shape history

As I stood in the small office inside the 178-year-old former home of Harriet Taylor Upton last week, I had actual goosebumps — and not just figuratively. It wasn’t the home’s beautiful Victorian design, the enormously high ceiling, nor its elegant, yet sparce, furniture that left me bereft of speech. Rather, it was the pure reverence and simple realization that some 115 years ago the space where I stood was home to the National American Woman Suffrage Association. It was here that began the movement to achieve the right for all U.S. women — myself included — to vote. ...

Sunshine week ends but the fight must not

“A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” — James Madison Sunshine week, that time intended to showcase the importance of access to the meetings in which your elected and appointed officials discuss your business as well as your right to ask for and easily receive all sorts of public records, wrapped up Saturday. But that doesn’t ...

Steel, aluminum tariffs will put America first

People who know me personally probably have heard me gripe about ridiculous comments and tweets made by both President Trump and candidate Trump in the last couple years. I’m guessing Trump haters and Trump supporters have probably felt the same way at some point — depending on whatever his latest message or rant might have been at the time. But someone recently suggested that it might be more important to consider what Trump does rather than what he says. And as I read arguments on both sides of the latest debate over Trump’s new steel and aluminum import tariff plan, I agree, ...