What's new with the Columbus Dispatch?

The news is old at the former "Ohio's Greatest Home Newspaper." The late afternoon deadline imposed to accommodate the closing of the Columbus printing plant and its shift to Indianapolis means that much that happens on Tuesday gets in Thursday's paper.

The content of the print product is becoming more feature stories and

and less news coverage. We journalism professors define "news" as matters that readers need to know and that affect their lives and "features" as stuff to entertain and amuse.

The Dispatch is publishing more articles from its sister newspaper USA Today and labels them and locally generated content as from the "USA Today Network." If the paper is trying to cut its print circulation and push people to its digital product, it is succeeding in the former. An Oct. 1 legal advertisement showed print copies sold had dropped nearly one third in a year, from about 78,000 daily to about 504,000.

Wednesday, December 2, 2020, 7:00 - 8:00 PM 
https://www.meetup.com/Simply-Living-Central-Ohio-Meetup/events/274665091/

Do you like to believe that scientists are studying the evidence – whether in relation to Covid-19 or anything else – and delivering high quality knowledge that can be used to guide public policymaking so that it might better serve the interests of ordinary people?

It is certainly a comforting idea, isn’t it?

After all, we have long been told that science is an ‘evidence-based approach’ to understanding particular phenomena and thus providing accurate guidance on how to proceed to achieve productive outcomes.

Unfortunately, this claim is just propaganda for the unwary.

In his 2005 study of the validity of published medical research, John P. A. Ioannidis, a professor of medicine who also studies scientific research itself, explained why ‘It can be proven that most claimed research findings are false.’ Most? False? Here is what Professor Ioannidis concluded but you can read his entire article, cited below.

Tuesday, December 1 - Giving Tuesday
1DivineLine2Health provides care to the sick who have no access to healthcare via a line of compassionate messengers who deliver healing to victims of human & drug trafficking and injustices locally and globally.

Please support our mission to end human trafficking and spread love to our community.

HBO is starting to air a subtly powerful film that’s even more relevant now than when it was first released earlier this year. 

Never Rarely Sometimes Always is the story of Autumn (Sidney Flanigan), a 17-year-old Pennsylvania girl with a nightmarish problem. She’s pregnant, but she can’t tell either her mom or the baby’s father for reasons that are suggested but never spelled out. 

Enter her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder), who is maternally protective toward Autumn even though they’re about the same age. Uncovering Autumn’s dilemma despite her stubborn silence, Skylar volunteers to help her solve it the only way they know how: by sneaking away to New York, a state that, unlike Pennsylvania, will allow her to obtain an abortion without parental consent. 

That, in a nutshell, is the plot. The bulk of the film’s 101 minutes are spent simply following the girls as they catch a bus to NYC, learn to navigate the unfamiliar city and, in general, attempt to complete their somber mission despite unexpected complications and severely limited funds.