About The Sylvania times. (Sylvania, Ga.) 2022-current | View Entire Issue (July 20, 2022)
thesy lvaniatimes. com The Sylvania Times Wednesday, July 20, 2022 - Page 3 From the Editor’s Desk Joe Brady Editor This past week I was reminded of a trip I took several years ago. I say several years ago because it’s been about that long since I have had a vacation. Not to mention this was pre- garmin, tomtom or whatever that navigation thing is in new cars. But that’s another story. Anyway, the last vacation I was on was a trip to Chattanooga. These days we travel by interstate everywhere we go. Whereas interstates save time they aren’t big on scenery and when I am going on vacation, I want to take my time and see the sights in small towns. So, searching the internet looking for an alternative route was a chore, let me tell you. Did we pull up the old country back roads because you can’t get to Chattanooga without going through Atlanta! Then it dawned on me, a road atlas. Now ask a kid today what a road atlas is and they’ll probably stare at you with a blank look clouding their eyes. Kind of like when you hand them a rotary phone. But I’m from the old school, I took geography in school. I even had a friend who was a cartographer. The only place I could find a road atlas was my insurance agent and Lenny had to reach way back in the dark recesses of a storage closet to get a State Farm Road Atlas. Geesh, people really don’t use maps any longer. But with the map in hand, I painstakingly mapped out my route to Chattanooga. It would take me like three days to get there but at least I was avoiding Atlanta and seeing small town America as well. As we headed for the open road, the atlas highlighting our route, I thought I had mastered my navigation abilities. I began predicting the twists and turns we had to make. Gosh, this map reading was fun! But after two hours of navigating, I began suffering from mass confusion and suddenly we were hopelessly lost somewhere between Greenville and Chattanooga. Every turn we made was a wrong one and exasperated I threw up my hands in despair. Suddenly I was asked the question, “How far are we from Chattanooga?” Now, why would anybody pose a question like that to me when I was obviously having a meltdown. My response, as I looked anxiously for the mileage on the small lines dotting the map, was simply this as I looked up, took off my reading glasses and spread my thumb and index fingers two inches apart, “about that far.” Needless to say, I didn’t navigate on the trip home. Not all technology is good, navigation in the car is. Happy Fourth of July! That’s all for now, take care! Letters to the editor of The Sylvania Times are wet- corned and encouraged. These are pages of opinion, yours and ours.Letters to the editor voice the opinions of the newspaper’s readers. The Sylvania Times re serves the right to edit any and all portions of a letter. Unsigned letters will not be published. Letters mwust include the signature, address and phone number of the writer to allow our staff to authenticate its origin. Letters should be limited to 400 words and should be typewritten and double-spaced or neatly printed by hand. Deadline for letters to the editor is noon on Wednesday. Email Letters to the Editor to: thesy lva- niatimes@gmail.com Need Lawn Maintenance? Caff Lane Today! - Grjst Cutting - Yard \X^rk - F'ii’to Straw - SHrub Tfmipi«ng - & jW-re Little Pink Houses Lam C<ve Services 9 tu LM1# C44, (912)425-0277 As the weeks rolled on into November, the time sink was taking its toll on the internees at Lawton. Fixed dates aren’t used at this point by most of the POW diaries, with a few exceptions, making tracking the day-to-day occurrences and events from the historical record slightly difficult. Sometimes, the events described are close enough to indicate clearly that POWs are talking about the same day: most of the diaries that were not published after the war, the bone and meat of the historian’s diet, are banal and regular. They record the weather, the rations, and occasionally hopes for home. Thoughts are fragmented, short, and Unearthing Camp Lawton Dr. Ryan McNutt, Ph.D, FSAScot, R.P.A. “Tunnelling for survival, marching to the sea” only a sentence or two in length, sometimes with no context for intrusive thoughts. ‘Cold morning, and colder night. Wood running low for fires. Commeal damp, and portions moldy.’ Or ‘Leaves will have turned at home. Wonder if she’s married by now?’ We know where home was in this case, but not who ‘she’ was, or if she was married. Internal reflection headed towards the cliff of nostalgia, and the rocks of depression and hopelessness spiked the ground at its base. Other POWs, however, were still engaged in action—men were still entering the camp from Sherman’s amiy, caught up in the pursuit of Hood’s mad drive into Tennessee, and battles and skirmishes along Sherman’s supply lines into Atlanta. On November 8th, Robert Knox Sneden details some this action still taking place: a consortium of 20 POWs decided to try again to tunnel to their freedom. According to Sneden, they’d covered at least thirty or more feet in one night, striking the foundations of the stockade at daylight. However, this success was short lived. By November the 10th, the tunnel location had been betrayed to the guards. . . or the tunnellers just weren’t as covert as they’d thought. Confederate sergeants were inside the stockade, sounding the gap between stockade and deadline with prybars for a hollow. The entrance meanwhile was hidden, the shebang it had been under broken down and moved, and no one knew anything about who lived there, or a tunnel, or even that there had been a shelter there when the guards began asking questions. While almost none of the escape attempts were ever successful— out of 45,000 POWs who passed through Andersonville, for example, only about 25 POWs escaped to safety—the success of the venture was less important than the act of trying. The depression from ‘hope deferred’, disease, and SEE LAWTON page 6 Local news is being threatened The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act can save it Dean Ridings. CEO, America’s Newspapers 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 notion is as true today as it was at our nation’s beginning. Americans know it, too. They trust their local news outlets, even in this highly fractured and partisan time. Compared to national news, six in 10 Americans have more trust in local news to report on stories that affect their daily lives, and they are about twice as likely to trust local news to report on the information they need to vote. Despite our trust in local news, too many communities today are hurtling towards Jefferson’s worst fear, but in a way he never could have imagined. About two newspapers have been closing every week since 2005. Instead of the government stifling journalism, local papers are steadily being shuttered due to the unchecked influence of two private entities: Google and Facebook. The main challenge for small news publishers is that Google and Facebook have hindered local outlets’ ability to be fairly compensated for the significant value their content generates for these platforms. Big Tech has commoditized and disconnected news content from its sources, undermining the advertising business that served as a bedrock of the newspaper industry. Big Tech platforms control virtually every aspect of the online advertising business and use clever tactics to keep users on their sites and deprive publishers of the ability to monetize their content. Faced with this anticompetitive behavior, it should be no surprise that local papers are struggling. In 2022, more than a fifth of Americans live in news deserts. And, 1,625 counties have only one newspaper, while more than 200 have no local newspaper at all. Social media is increasingly filling the void with untrustworthy sources and misinformation and becoming America’s de facto local news source. Big Tech’s threat to local journalism will not go away on its own, and the cost of inaction is too great to ignore. Congress must act. Among the antitrust bills Congress is considering this year, the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) is the only one that provides a direct check against Google and Facebook’s anticompetitive tactics that put local papers at risk. Ironically, Big Tech is protected by U.S. antitrust laws, which prevent local papers from negotiating as a group. The JCPA would provide a temporary, limited antitrust safe harbor for small, local news publishers to collectively negotiate with Facebook and Google for fair compensation for the use of their content. It’s narrowly tailored to ensure that coordination by news publishers is only in the interest of protecting trustworthy, quality journalism. Critics of the JCPA have parroted Big Tech’s argument that the bill would predominantly help large national publications. However, the JCPA is specifically designed to help small- and medium-sized papers and would help flow subscription and advertising dollars back to their newsrooms. Large national publications like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times won’t qualify. The bill also incentivizes publishers to invest in hiring new journalists and newsroom personnel. In fact, publishers that demonstrate their investment will receive a higher portion of the negotiated funds. As Big Tech devalues high-quality journalism in favor of provocative, divisive clickbait, the prospect of layoffs, pay cuts and furloughs has become an everyday reality for local journalists. While critics of the JCPA squabble about utopian solutions, local publishers, who recognize the urgency to revive local news, are firmly supporting the JCPA. They acknowledge the JCPA is the only bill that will put them on a more level playing field with the tech giants. Join me in asking your representatives in Congress to prioritize passing the JCPA to protect their constituents’ access to objective, quality local reporting - and to ensure that Thomas Jefferson’s fear of a democracy without robust journalism never comes to pass. America’s W Newspapers NLA-tMPfltE.OHG Sylvania Times Proudly covering Screven County’s news, sports, and community events SamEades Publisher Joe Brady Editor Sam Eades Advertising Sales Debbie Hearn Layout and Design Executive Sarah Saxon Admin/Legals/AP Correspondent Burton Kemp Sports Editor Jake Gay Staff Writer THE SYLVANIA TIMES issue 28 July 2022 is published weekly by on Wednesday for $30 per year by THE SYLVANIA TIMES, 117 N. Main • Sylvania, Ga. 30467 Phone: (912) 451-NEWS (6397). Periodical postage pending at Sylvania, GA and additional mailing offices. 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