Shining a light

March 08, 2009 12:30 am

— David Gair, of Milton, was beside himself with stress when his unemployment support suddenly came to a halt. "I've got bills to pay," he said. "I've got to buy food and oil and pay my electric bill."
Gair, 47, was caught in a bureaucratic trap after being laid off when his company was downsized due to overseas competition -- unable to get unemployment compensation while he tried to retrain for a new job.
Lisa Gaugler, of Port Trevorton, was upset last week because her 12-year-old son was unnecessarily humiliated by the cafeteria staff at the Selinsgrove Middle School when his lunch money account ran out.
The youngster had gone through the line and was at the cashier with a tray of food when he was told his account was low and he needed $1.54 to have lunch that day. The boy reported that the cashier took his meal and threw it away. The student sat out the lunch period at a table with his friends, but without food.
Lisa Gaugler and David Gair were just two of the many people who turn to their newspaper for help when they feel they are being ignored or abused. They turn to their newspaper because the newspaper will listen to their stories, because the newspaper can amplify their voices and because the newspaper is a link to an inherently American sense of fair play and justice for every individual, whether that person be a 12-year-old kid trying to get a school lunch or a mid-life breadwinner trying to fight his way back into the workforce.
The theme of the story -- "man fights city hall" -- is as old as the newspaper business. Sure, sometimes the "man" is a mom worried about her child's feelings and sometimes city hall is a state bureaucracy or a cafeteria services manager.
As it turned out, The Daily Item was able to make some inquiries for David Gair, and Gair got the support he needed from Sen. John Gordner's. Kudos to Sen. Gordner and his staff for terrific constituent service.
Lisa Gaugler's story concluded on a positive note also with School Superintendent Fred Johnson announcing a reversal of the lunch policy citing "a great mistake in administrative judgment. ... There are no explanations or excuses for not providing a child with a lunch," according to an announcement on the school district's Web page.
True, not all causes are righteous. Some people just want the newspaper to spank their enemies. That is not what we do. We check out the story. We make an honest attempt to discover and present all viewpoints. We start from the perspective that nobody would be so callous as to humiliate a child or cutoff a struggling displaced worker. Maybe the lunch service was being burned by irresponsible parents. Maybe the unemployment fund workers were being overwhelmed. Many situations won't fit neatly into a heroes-and-villains morality play. Any number of times, just a few calls will clear up a misunderstanding and no story appears in the paper.
But there are times when ordinary folks are up against it -- when they are getting the runaround (or are getting run over) by people on the public payroll who ought to know better and ought to behave better.
That's when there is a story. Newspapers don't do much more really than shine a light on those instances. We have faith in the readers. We know that if we share the information and back it up, some good will come of it.
It almost always does.