A nationally known economist said that a proposed grocery co-op set to locate in downtown Burlington could be an attraction the area has sought for nearly three decades.
Michael Shuman, author of “The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses are Beating the Global Competition” stopped by the Company Shops Market site during a tour of Alamance County on Friday.
Sharon Dent, Michael Shuman and Eric Henry discuss the plans for the Company Shops Market on Friday in Burlington. Photo by Angie Lovelace
While looking over the market site on Front Street, he met with Anne Morris, executive director of the Burlington Downtown Corporation and Company Shops board member Sharon Dent. He looked over the proposed co-op’s floor plan and discussed ideas for how to proceed.
Shuman said the idea should be a boost for Burlington’s downtown.
“When it happens, it will be a great gravitational pull to the downtown area and will enliven and be the beginning of a chain reaction to bring folks downtown,” he said.
Company Shops Market is community owned with a list of more than 1,430 owners so far.
The organization has raised more than $265,000 towards renovating the former A&P grocery building through a community investment program.
Shuman was in the area to moderate the annual Central Park, N.C., workshop on themed “Local Works” in Star. It focused on creating a regional community where local businesses can thrive.
Shuman’s trip to Alamance County included a visit to Elon University’s Environmental Forum.
He also took a tour of TS Designs, an eco-friendly T-shirt company in Burlington, and dropped in at the Saxapahaw General Store.
Eric Henry, president of TS Designs and member of the Company Shops board of directors, acted as tour guide for Shuman.
“Michael is on the forefront of why local is so important for our future — he has been talking for years on why we need to invest locally,” Henry said.
The Arab-Israeli conflict has persisted for 61 years since the state of Israel was created in 1948. Today, President Barack Obama will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to talk peace.
Obama will also meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on May 26 and Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on May 28.
According to Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs, “Obama will speak to these leaders about strengthening U.S. relations with their respective countries and what steps all parties should take to achieve peace.
Colin Donohue, coordinator of student media and instructor in communications at Elon University
“I think he has proven that he is able to bring parties together at a table, he himself has proven that he can talk to the leader of a nation that maybe the United States isn’t an ally with and at least broker some kind of cooperation,” Colin Donohue, coordinator of student media and instructor in communications at Elon University, said.
Senior political science major at Elon University, Olivia Hubert-Allen was weary of the peace talks. “I think that it’s going to be something that will be hard to walk into with the goal of peace in mind,” Hubert-Allen said.
Olivia Hubert-Allen, Elon University political science major
“I think that’s defiantly an advantageous goal, but I do think if anybody can do it, it would probably be Obama because he is someone that they think of highly over there and maybe that is something that will get them talking more than they have in the past,” Hubert-Allen said.
Other issues for the president
However, some Americans are concerned that Obama’s time could be better spent addressing other issues.
“The global economic meltdown and getting our troops out of Iraq should be the president’s priorities. I would say that Arab-Israeli peace talks would be pretty low on the list. This is a problem that will take years, if not decades to solve,” said Gary Greenberger, VP of Sales for Vela Systems and an American Jew who traveled to Jerusalem at age 13.
“It is good to talk and to have open communication, but I don’t think Obama’s intervention will not amount to anything,” Greenberger said.
“If any results are to be gained, I don’t know if it’s because an American president is going over there,” Donohue said.
“It’s going to have to come from within in the Middle East and that’s always the difficult challenge. You can send someone over there like President Obama and he might be able to mediate a little bit, and maybe get some of them talking, but whether they achieve any real results is going to depend on them.” Donohue said.
Morgan Little, The Pendulum's opinions editor
Morgan Little, Elon junior and The Pendulum’s opinions editor, also agrees that the peace talks will not accomplish anything. “Israel’s going to do what they’re going to want to do and Obama’s trying to distance himself from Israel so there’s really nothing constructive that Obama can do in the Middle East until he at least build’s some credibility that isn’t based on his public persona.”
Obama’s attention to the economy
Little said that the president’s most pressing issue is the economy, but that there is not much else the president can do right now on that issue.
“Stimulus packages take six to nine months to take hold, so it’s going to be some time until you actually see the effect of his policy changes there, and there’s not much else he can do on the home front, so to kind of mitigate that lack of ability to do anything, he’s not just sitting in office, he’s trying to use this time to bolster his support abroad.”
A president who multi-tasks
“The president should be able to multi-task,” Jarrett Bellini, CNN.com Digital Content producer, said. “Everything is connected. Middle East relations are just as important as any other major policy topic.”
Ashley Barnas, Elon University junior and leadership fellow
Elon junior Ashley Barnas agreed that multi-tasking is important for the president.
“I think he’s giving a good balance to the issues at home and abroad. I think, if anything, this is probably the most crucial thing that he should focus on overseas,” Barnas said.
Donohue agreed, “I certainly think this is something he should be focusing on right now, if you are talking about national security issues, religious tolerance, those kinds of things are important, they’ll always be at the forefront, so this is something he should be working on early and often.”
Little’s hope for Obama and the Middle East
“Maybe he’ll go neutral. Maybe he’ll have like a net zero effect, which is fine. If he wins in Iran and kind of flounders a little bit in Pakistan and Israel just kind of does its own thing, he’ll have done better than most presidents have done in the past 30 years,” Little said, summing up his hope’s for President Obama’s intervention on Middle Easter peace.
Morgan Little shares his take on President Obama’s peace talks with Middle Eastern leaders.
Polls can be very useful resources for journalists who are analyzing a particular issue, a political election or many other debated questions.
However, journalists should be weary of polls and ask questions about the poll before incorporating the data into their story. For example, the journalist should research who paid for the poll, how and when the poll was conducted, the wording of the questions asked and the size sample, among other things.
Polls also have margins of error which is based on the sample size and is represented as a percent.
Numbers in business stories
When it comes to numbers in journalism, business stories by far will be the most cumbersome in terms of math.
Here are some formulas that will be beneficial for business stories.
Gross margin = Selling price – cost of goods
Gross profit = Gross margin x number of items sold
Net profit = gross margin – overhead
Assets = Liabilities + Equity
Current ration = current assets / current liabilities
Stocks and bonds are two ways that business uses to make money, so it is important that journalists understand them.
A bond’s current yield is the return on the investment. The formal for current yield is Current Yield = (interest rate x face value) / price
Property Taxes
Property taxes are of high importance to a local community, but can be hard for the local homeowner to understand. Therefore, it is important that journalists can use math to illustrate to their users how a story on property taxes will affect individuals.
Here are some useful formulas for calculating property tax.
Mill Levy = Taxes to be collected by the government body / assessed value of all property in the taxing district
Assessed value = appraisal value x rate
Tax owed = Tax rate x (assessed value of the property / $100)
Sample Problems
1. According to the U.S. Census, what is the population of Burlington, N.C.? Did the population increase or decrease and by what percent?
The 2007 population was 49,572, which has increase 10.4% since the year 2000.
(49,572-44,917) / 44,917 = .1036
2. The price of making a pair of shoes is $7. The shoe company sells their shoes for $38 a pair. What is the shoe company’s gross margin?
Gross margin = $38 – $7 = $31 per pair of shoes
3. An investor bought a $20,000 bond for $ 19,000 with an interest rate of 6%. What is the bond’s current yield?
Current yield = (.06 x 20,000) / 19,000 = 6.3%
4. If Appletown has a tax rate of 70 percent of true value, and a house is appraised for $300,000, what is the assessed value of the house?
In the spring 2009 semester, Elon University’s Alumni Gym has hosted a wide variety of guests, from Southern Conference basketball competition, to former Secretary of State, Madeline Albright who spoke at the honors convocation ceremony, to Anderson Cooper, CNN’s celebrity journalist.
Tonight, the lights were turned off, students and the public flooded in and sang along with rap artist Lupe Fiasco with mash-up remix specialist, Girl Talk.
Tickets for the concert were $20 for students and $25 for the public. In the presale, 2,088 tickets were sold, exceeding the 2,000 ticket goal. All tickets at the door were sold for $27.
Girl Talk
In years past, the Student Union Board has brought artists like Gavin DeGraw, Jack’s Mannequin and Sister Hazel for the annual Spring Show. Rap artist Fiasco is a far stretch from their typical model.
“The main reason is because when we surveyed our students at the beginning of the year, our top three choices were hip hop or rap artists,” said Anna Davis, SUBlive Co-Chair. “We thought that we should recognize that this is the sound they want so that’s what we went after.”
There were approximately 30 student volunteers helping throughout the day and night, helping with the hospitality, will call, security and all other aspects of the show.
SUB Music Chair Billy Koehn delegate duties to Anna Davis. Koehn is not as mobile as he would like on the day of the show due to his ruptured Achilles tendon.
Billy Koehn, the SUB Music Chair is in charge of the Spring Show, but has not been able to be as involved as he would have liked. Koehn recently ruptured his Achilles tendon and has been forced to roll around on a turning leg caddy.
“Sitting on the sidelines isn’t my style, but I’ve learned to like it a little bit because it gives me an excuse to delegate,” Koehn said.
Anna Davis speaks about why SUB chose a rap artist for the Spring Show.
Numbers can scare some people, especially journalists who can feel like they are better with words because they don’t understand numbers.However, journalists are responsible for accurately reporting numbers to their readers and presenting them in a way that is easy to understand.
When writing numbers, write them out for single digits and use numerals for numbers with multiple digits.Spell out fractions that are less than one and any numbers that begin a sentence.
It is also important to limit a paragraph to only a two or three numbers for clarity and only use one number for the lead.
Reporters should also do the math for their readers, don’t expect the reader to figure out the math.
Percentages
Percentages are useful tools to help readers understand a number in terms of a whole.Percentages are often used for percentage increase/decrease, percentage of a whole, sports stats, interest rates and loan payments.
To calculate percentage increase or decrease, use the following formula.
Percentage increase/ decrease = (new figure – old figure) / old figure
Then convert to a percentage by moving the decimal two places to the right.
To calculate percentage of a whole, use the following formula.
Percentage of a whole = subgroup / whole group
Move the decimal place two points to the right.
Calculating baseball statistics:
Batting Average
Total hits / (Total at-bats – walks, sacrifices and times hit by a pitch)
To calculate simple interest, follow the following formula.
Interest = principle x rate (as a decimal) x time (in years)
Statistics
Journalists oftentimes use statistics to interpret and present data to their readers.Mean, median and mode are ways to report averages, but they are each a little bit different.
Mean, most commonly called “average,” is the sum of all figures divided by the total number of figures.Median is the midpoint of a group of numbers.Mode is the number appearing most frequently.
Probability is a way to represent a ratio.A common example of using probability is to represent the odds of something happening.For example, there is a one in 112,000 chance of dying from cardiovascular disease.
Federal Statistics
The federal government provides a large amount of information in the form of statistics, including unemployment rate, inflation, gross domestic product and the international trade balance.
Unemployment rate = (unemployed / labor force) x 100
Gross Domestic Product = consumer spending + investment spending+ government spending + net exports
Trade Balance = Exports – Imports
Examples:
The current U.S. national debt is $11.2 trillion.That number is so large that it is hard for people to imagine so, compare it to the world’s most wealthiest man, Bill Gates.Gates is currently worth $40 billion according to Forbes Magazine.
$40 billion X = $11.2 trillion
X = 28
The U.S. national debt is 28 times that of the wealth of the world’s wealthiest man.
What is Chipper Jones of the Atlanta Braves’ current batting average?
At Elon University, students are concerned about the environment. In an informal poll of 131 students, 90 percent of students questioned said they considered themselves environmentally aware.
Earth Day, which marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970, occurs every year on April 22.
Student Chris Antal said, “Elon seems to be a pretty green place.” However, only 64 percent of students said their Elon education has made a big difference in their environmental awareness.
Elon will commemorate Earth Day this year with a full “Earth Week” of environmental awareness events.
Earth Week will kick off on Monday, April 20 with an Elon Township stream cleanup and a potluck in the Elon community garden.
When polled, 62 percent of students questioned responded that they recycle to take action against global warming. On Wednesday, students will participate in a mock landfill, sifting through trash and sorting out recyclables on the West Lawn outside of Moseley.
Junior Julia Roberts considers herself very environmentally aware and said she showers in spurts and rarely washes her clothes to save water. Roberts and 13 other students that were polled mentioned that they were willing to take action to conserve water.
In the informal poll, 37 percent of students said they are willing to walk more, take fewer trips and carpool to use less gas.
Prior to Earth Day, 33 percent of students were not willing to take actions to live more sustainably. The Earth Week events on Elon’s campus sponsored by the Green Team and Sierra Club will strive to spread awareness about the green movement and encourage students to take more actions to help the environment.
Journalists report on poverty around the world to expose people to the detriments that a lack of money can have on a country, community or family.Poverty is prevalent around the world, but it is also an issue that can go unnoticed in the United States.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2005, 13 percent of Americans lived below the poverty line.People are suffering because of poverty, and journalists have the capabilities to expose that issue.
Studying statistics and documents can help uncover impoverished areas and problems that are caused by poverty, but only people can tell the stories.There are many ways to locate people in impoverished areas, including going through community organizations, legal aid groups, churches and other charities.
In an audio photo story, “The Ninth Floor,” by Jessica Dimmock, the importance of using people to tell a story is very evident.In the story, Dimmock followed three New York City squatters after they were evicted.
It examined how living in squalor and the added addictions to drugs can influence someone’s life.Dimmock was able to gain the trust of the three subjects she followed and take photos of them using drugs as well as other hidden aspects of their lives.
Her in depth reporting was able to expose unaware people to what someone goes through when they have no money, no place to live and are facing addictions that they cannot fight alone.
Cotton of the Carolinas produces conventional cotton T-shirts that are grown, made and sold in North Carolina. Photos submitted
By Angie Lovelace
April 8, 2009
Take a look at the label of your T-shirt. Does it say “Made in China” or “Made in Bangladesh?” Well Eric Henry of TS Designs in Burlington, N.C., has launched a T-shirt project that will sell shirts made entirely in North Carolina.
Cotton of the Carolinas is designed as a collaboration between farmers and manufactures, producing T-shirts that support the local economy and have a low transportation footprint.
Locally produced goods offer additional advantages of societal independence.
“Food and fiber to me is a national defense issue,” said Wes Morgan of the Rolling Hills Gin in New London, N.C.
“If something does happen and we can’t get stuff around the world, we need to be able to feed and clothe our population, that’s a very basic necessity of life,” Morgan said.
According to the Berry Amendment, the Department of Defense (DOD) is required to give preference in procurement to domestically produced, manufactured or home grown products, including “cotton and other natural fiber products, clothing and the materials and components thereof and food.” These products are required to be of 100 percent domestic origin.
“I think that’s important that we keep our infrastructure so we can do that if we need to and on a normal basis. Everyone can’t have office high-rise jobs in New York City shuffling paper, we need to keep everything else going too,” Morgan said, emphasizing the importance of maintaining agricultural and manufacturing infrastructure in the United States.
Local cotton production
Ronnie Burleson is the cotton farmer for the Cotton of the Carolinas cooperative.
Ronnie Burleson, a third generation farmer has been farming in Stanley County, N.C., his whole life. His family was the first to bring cotton farming back to the Piedmont region in 1991 after it disappeared due to the boll weevil forty years ago.
Burleson’s farm, Thurman Burleson & Sons Farm, is the first step in the Cotton of the Carolinas project that TS Designs of Burlington launched to reconnect locally, producing conventional cotton T-shirts that are grown, made and sold in the Carolinas.
When the cotton is ready, it travels less than a mile down a street barely wide enough for a truck to Morgan at the Rolling Hills Gin.
One of the goals of Cotton of the Carolinas is to leave a small transportation footprint.
A typical T-shirt can travel 17,000 miles, while a Cotton of the Carolinas T-shirt only travels 700 miles, according to Eric Henry, president of TS Designs.
“It’s just wasteful in my opinion,” Morgan said. “You’re wasting resources to haul cotton all the way around the world and back to make a T-shirt.”
In 2007, there were 565,060 acres of cotton harvested in North Carolina, making North Carolina the sixth highest state cotton and cotton seed producing state in the U.S., according to the agricultural census.
“Keeping it closer in, you don’t waste all of that transportation fuel, energy, natural resources, you’re also keeping people employed here,” Morgan said.
Helping your neighbor
According to Morgan, in the last six months it has been more important to keep people employed in the local community. “You hear, more friends and neighbors getting laid off, things are downsizing.”
“It’s a world economy, we all know that now, but I think people are realizing that our money going overseas it not necessarily a good thing, and they don’t mind supporting their neighbor,” Burleson said.
Burleson said he thinks people will want to help their neighbors stay in business, even though it might cost them a few cents more.
“In the long term, you may expect your neighbor to help you one day,” Burleson said.
He is optimistic that Cotton of the Carolinas could “help hold, produce and develop more job opportunities here in the Carolinas.”
Henry said, Cotton of the Carolinas has reconnected 700 people who are involved with the finished product, many who were previously excluded from production when the product went overseas.
According to the U.S. Agricultural Census, there were 77,400 hired farm workers in North Carolina in 2007.
Henry believes that if he wants people in the local community to be his customers, then he also needs to support them with jobs.
Reconnecting locally
“The most important thing you can do for the economic stimulus is to reconnect locally,” Henry said. “Ultimately creating a product that is grown domestically, made domestically and sold domestically, will be our best long-term impact for jobs and economic development.”
The Rolling Hills Gin separates the cotton fibers from the cotton seeds.
Once the cotton is grown by Burleson, it goes down the street to the Rolling Hills Gin to separate the cotton from the seed. From there the cotton is spun, knitted, finished, cut and sewn all in the state of North Carolina before it gets to TS Designs in Burlington where it is printed and dyed.
“Fifty years ago, we could have done this in Stanley County, we could have grown it, ginned it, produced T-shirts, the whole nine yards. Now, no shirt is done like that in the U.S., period,” Morgan said.
The “Harvest ’08” product was entirely produced in North Carolina, but Henry said they plan on expanding to South Carolina in the future.
The first two batches will also be sold entirely in North and South Carolina through retail and wholesale channels.
TS Designs now makes two different kinds of T-shirts. Its original product is called Clothing Facts and is made from organic cotton, free from pesticides and all other chemicals. Cotton of the Carolinas is made with conventional cotton from North Carolina.
The Cotton of the Carolina T-shirts cost $8 to $12 depending on the dye and printing of the shirt.
Brian Morrell of Mortex Apparral, who is responsible for the knit, cut and sew steps of the T-shirts, works with Eric Henry and Eric Michel of TS Designs.
“The biggest challenge is definitely education,” Eric Michel of TS Designs said. “You say organic and automatically people get it. They might not know what it means, but they get that it’s going to be more expensive. But when they think of a conventional cotton shirt that’s made with a very small transportation footprint, they’ll probably think cheaper so it’s just about the education on why it’s more expensive.”
Elon student Sarah Babcock, who owns three TS Designs shirts said, “More companies need to start running their businesses like TS Designs. While it may be hard to pay higher prices for shirts as college students I believe that it is an investment in our future.”
Local, organic and sustainably produced food will be available in Burlington when Company Shops Market, a cooperative grocery store and café, opens for business. The market will be opening in downtown Burlington at 268 E. Front St.
On April 4, more than 700 people attended the afternoon open house at the new location and approximately 160 new members signed up, bringing the membership total to 1,105 as of Monday, April 6.
But the market needs 1,500 members to begin renovation and 2,000 to officially open the doors.
Buying a membership to the co-op provides people with various benefits and perks but, most importantly, it buys ownership in the cooperative. Owners get to contribute to and vote for decisions. An individual membership costs $100 and a family membership is $150. Customers will not be required to buy a membership to shop at the co-op.
“I think everyone has in their mind that it’s going to be a farmer’s market, and that’s not really what it is,” project coordinator Jill Durban said. “It’s going to be a full-service grocery store. Our goal is to keep things within a 250-mile radius, what we call ‘locally grown,’ to ensure freshness and to support that local idea.”
Keeping it local
In North Carolina, the market value of crops produced in 2007 was more than $2.6 billion, according to the agricultural census. But most of the food produced in the region is exported and the food consumers are buying has been imported from abroad.
According to Andy Angyal, professor of environmental science at Elon and a member of Company Shops Market, “local food is fresher, is seasonal and it is grown more sustainably.
“Buying local, first of all, supports the local economy, it supports local farmers and it keeps them in business and prevents them from having to sell their farms to developers,” Angyal said. “There is a more direct relationship between the grower and the buyer. You can ask the grower directly how they’re growing and what they’re using on their crops and fields. And you can buy with more confidence and buy with less danger of food illness.”
Durban said she thinks people who have been in this community for a long time will want to support local farmers, and that people can make a conscious choice. If they want to eat healthier, the Company Shops Market will give them that opportunity she said.
Angyal owns a small farm in Gibsonville, N.C., and he currently sells his produce to local restaurants and the Deep Roots Cooperative in Greensboro.
“I don’t think people yet realize the value of local, sustainable food production,” Angyal said. “Most people just buy from Harris Teeter or Food Lion, if they cook at home at all, and I think that many, many people simply eat out all the time.”
For Company Shops Market to be successful, Angyal said, “I think there’s enough suppliers, the question is whether there are enough buyers.”
By Angie Lovelace
When polled, 62 percent of students questioned responded that they recycle to take action against global warming. On Wednesday, students will participate in a mock landfill, sifting through trash and sorting out recyclables on the West Lawn outside of Moseley.
In the informal poll, 37 percent of students said they are willing to walk more, take fewer trips and carpool to use less gas.
By Angie Lovelace
