Progress Report
But first a question:
Good that the University of Vermont mens basketball team whipped Rutgers Sunday afternoon, but did the Catamounts really have to stay in the super-luxury Heldrich Hotel in downtown New Brunswick, N.J, where the single room rate starts at just a smidge under $200 a night?
No doubt they got a group rate, and one assumes that the players, at least, doubled up. But that would have been true at the Hyatt Regency just a few blocks away, which is cheaper, if not cheap. Or at any one of three or four perfectly decent (and even less expensive) hotels closer to the arena in suburban Piscataway.
Granted, we’re not talking big bucks here. And maybe there is a good reason for staying at the Heldrich. Still, if all 13 players and all nine coaches made the trip, that’s at least 11 rooms which could easily have cost $50 apiece less at a nearby respectable hostlery. A few hundred bucks here, a few hundred there, it adds up.
Now an announcement:
Like much of America, the News Guy is taking the rest of the week off to participate in the annual rite of gluttony, one of his great talents. In fact, he is taking the rest of this week and the start of next week off. The next post will be on Wednesday, December 2.
After that, expect the regular Monday-Wednesday-Friday postings for the rest of the year except that – on the assumption that effectively nobody will be reading the news those two days – there will be no entries on the last two Fridays, December 25 and December 31.
And after that?
The jury, as they say, remains out. The pace of donations has ebbed and flowed, but in the aggregate it is not quite sufficient to add up to 200 by the end of the year.
That was the goal – one might even say the demand – which will determine whether the News Guy stays in business, as announced in the post of November 4.
To reiterate one of the points made there, the 200 donations are needed less for the money than for the assurance that at least 200 Vermonters think this site is worth something.
What matters, then, is not the amount, but the indication of interest. Though the suggested donation is $24, the Pay Pal click on the site provides a $10 option, and a check can be for less. It will still count as one of the 200.
One $10 check came last week from a woman who said she earns $10 an hour. She had decided to contribute one (pre-tax) hour of her labor because, she said, she depends on the news and analysis in the posts.
It’s for her, and other like her, that I hope to continue.
