Samuel Johnson and Llyn Walker at the Radio Hour
The February River City Radio Hour will feature Samuel Johnson and Llyn Walker as guest vocalist along with the Boogie Kings and Marsha Howard. Also on the bill is the Chapter Two of Judge Not, the new mystery serial by Chris Graham.
The River City Radio Hour is at 6:30 and 8 p.m. at WTA’s Gateway in Downtown Waynesboro on Feb. 17. Read more
Radio serial by AFP editor to premiere Jan. 20
The January River City Radio Hour will feature the opening chapter of Judge Not, a new mystery serial by AugustaFreePress.com editor Chris Graham. The Jan. 20 Radio Hour is at 6:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. at WTA’s Gateway in Downtown Waynesboro.
Judge Not is the tale of a misplaced newspaper reporter who finds himself in a small Southern town. When he is sent to cover a possible terrorist attack, he finds himself mired in the undercurrents of local politics.
Graham is an award-winning writer and the author of three books – Stop the Presses, a collection of humorous short stories; Mad About U: Four Decades of Basketball at University Hall, a book chronicling the history of the former home to UVa. basketball; and Judge Not, a novel from which the River City Radio Hour serial was adapted. Read more
Chris Graham: So much smoke and mirrors
Not a lot makes sense with the politicians these days. And no, I’m not ranting about how Congress is talking about raising taxes on working-class and middle-class families at the risk of pushing the economy back into another recession.
Looking here at my hometown of Waynesboro, where the City Council suddenly wants accountability from its School Board when it comes to budgeting. I’m all for enhancing accountability from any and all in government, so at first glance, I want to say, Good for you guys. Except that it’s not really about accountability. What we’re seeing here is yet another power grab from a City Council that has done pretty well for itself in that department.
Consider the politics that led to the current makeup of the City Council. All five can attribute their seats to campaigns that made early and often reference to votes by previous City Councils in favor of $700,000 in city funding for the $7 million Wayne Theatre redevelopment. We can now see that the repeated claims that those City Councils were engaging in the diversion of public money for a special-interest group were nothing more than a smokescreen considering the boondoggle that is the $3.4 million purchase of scrub land from key campaign donors ostensibly to go toward a 20-year plan to develop a city commerce park. Read more
Chris Graham: This song is about you
“I hate hearing myself talk.” “I don’t like to talk about myself.” “I don’t want people thinking I’m too vain.”
Got it. Just because you own your own small business, you don’t want people thinking that you think the world revolves around you.
Or maybe you’re just, well, shy.
Whatever it is, you need to get over it.
Me personally, I’m painfully shy. (Those who know me but don’t know this about me can stop snickering … eventually.)
And when I say painfully shy, I mean that I make my wife call in pizza orders and meet the driver at the door – yeah, that kind of shy.
I overcome being shy in a very public job by tricking myself into doing what I need to do to be successful.
1. I hate hearing myself talk. My voice is too nasal for my liking when I hear it on a recording. I also sound a lot more Southern than I think I do in the course of a normal conversation. So yeah, I hate the sound of my voice, too. Funny thing – nobody likes hearing their own voice played back to them. That’s normal.
2. I don’t like to talk about myself. Great, but if I don’t talk about myself in a business context, why should I expect anybody else to talk about me?
3. I don’t want people thinking I’m too vain. You probably think this song is about you, right? I love that song. (It’s not about me.) Talking about yourself, touting your skills, selling your business to potential customers and clients, is not vanity. Consider it a necessary evil.
It’s not enough to be good, damn good, the best at what you do. If you believe in yourself, your confidence will show through in conversations with people, in your business website and in your direct-mail, newspaper, radio and TV marketing.
One other way that I trick myself into being able to do this is by convincing myself that I need to play the role of Confident Chris. For years, Confident Chris was the one able to interview U.S. senators and governors and Division I college coaches when the other Chris had a hard time buying stamps at the post office.
It’s Confident Chris telling you now that if you’re not comfortable selling yourself to the world, nobody else will.
The other Chris says a little more quietly that if I can do, most certainly you can.
Chris Graham is the president of Augusta Free Press LLC, a full-service web-design, marketing and public-relations firm based in Waynesboro, Va. He is the editor of AugustaFreePress.com, The New Dominion Magazine and a former radio and television host. More on Augusta Free Press LLC at www.AFPBusiness.com.
Chris Graham: Another reason to go flat
I’m still not sold on the flat-tax proposals that I’ve been hearing from the candidates on the 2012 campaign trail, but as to the general concept, yeah, I’m long since past being there.
I need to qualify myself here before I get too far. The flat tax, the idea that we’d assess the same tax rate to Warren Buffett that we do to the average part-time Walmart employee, no. I’m more in favor of what I hear called a fair-tax system that would set one higher rate for higher-income Americans, another for middle-income wage-earners and then a third rate for lower-income folks, with the other key defining feature to the system being the elimination of deductions.
Before you get too riled up about the loss of tax deductions, consider how much we pay in compliance costs. Small businesses (under $1 million in assets) pay close to $4 in compliance costs for every dollar of actual taxes paid. (Yikes!) Throw in the regressivity for low-wage individual taxpayers, who pay a much higher percentage of their income to comply with the tax code as higher wage-earners, and you see the pattern that disturbs me: Working- and middle-class families and small-business owners are spending too much on tax compliance for our economy’s good.
It does bother me that those who wage class warfare on behalf of the superwealthy have hijacked the flat-tax/fair-tax issue to be about reducing their already diminished contibutions to the public welfare. That should bother any of us who consider ourselves to be among the so-called 99 percent. Flat tax, fair tax, tax simplification, whatever you want to call it, only makes sense by reducing the burden on the classes that drive our economy – working- and middle-class families and small-business owners.
An added bonus: We all benefit by redirecting the money and brain power currently dedicated to tax compliance to other parts of our social and economic life.
Column by Chris Graham
Chris Graham: Get your business in the paper
“My husband,” the caller was telling me, or I should say, selling me, “is an expert at finding financing options for people who think they have credit issues.”
“OK.”
“I think that’s a good news story.”
I didn’t. Actually, what this clearly was to me was an attempt by a small-business owner to get a free ad, which as the editor of a mom-and-pop news publication I wasn’t all that interested in.
You know, considering that whatever money I was making off the publication came in the form of paid ads.
Maybe if she’d made it easier for me, I wouldn’t have minded so much.
Write your own press release. If your business is used cars, as in the example above, and your trick is financing options, spell that out. I as the editor may still feel like you need to pay for an ad to deliver the message, but at least you’re not asking me to come out to your business to do an interview then return to my office to transcribe and write the story from scratch.
You’re better off if you don’t try to be so overt about what your aims are. The end goal of any good business press release, of course, is to get attention to your business and ultimately more customers for your business. You’re free to straddle the line of pushing your products and services and hoping for the best, but you’re more likely to have more success in getting your name in the paper by setting the target a bit lower. Sharing news about a new client or a new employee – or your employee of the year – is a much safer bet. Or mining the current-events headlines to see where you might be able to offer your expertise.
You’re also better off if you’re able to give the paper something that an editor can use almost verbatim in a news-brief column. Small- and medium-circulation papers have cut their newsrooms to the bone in recent years, and even with shrinking news holes still have a great demand for finished news products. If you can satisfy that need for news with a couple of paragraphs about your employee of the month or latest business venture, advantage you!
There’s no guarantee, of course, that your local paper will run every item that you send, and at times it may seem like they’re not interested in anything that you send. My advice as an editor is to not let that bother you. If you send out five press releases, 10 press releases, 20 press releases, and get one bite – that’s one bite of essentially free advertising that you’ve created for yourself.
At the same time, you’re creating fodder for your business website, email newsletter and your Facebook page.
You do have all of those working for you 24-7, right? If not, it’s time – double time! – to catch up.
Chris Graham is the editor of www.AugustaFreePress.com and owner of Augusta Free Press LLC, a full-service web design, marketing and PR firm based in Waynesboro, Va. Direct questions to him at augustafreepress2@gmail.com.
Chris Graham: He’s right
He’s loud, no question, but he’s right. He is David O’Brien, and he’s been known to those who watch Waynesboro City Council meetings on the city public-access channel over the years as the guy who makes a lot of noise about a lot of things.
He’s making noise these days about the deal approved recently by City Council to borrow more than $3.4 million to buy some scrub land at the foot of the Blue Ridge so that we can then invest another $7 million or so into it with the hopes that in 20 years we can maybe generate some economic activity out of all that.
David and I agree on a major point and then disagree on a major point. Where we agree is that the city has allowed itself to be taken. It should not have paid anywhere near what it has agreed to for the property, and we both think, and I think time will prove us correct, that the reason that the city overpaid is that the individual City Council members wanted to repay political allies for their support.
Where we disagree is on the value of the long-term investment. I ran for City Council three years ago on a platform that included plans for a public-private project on that exact piece of property that I envisioned would generate high-tech jobs for Waynesboro. I still think it will, and if it takes 20 years for the plans to come to fruition, well, that’s the way the world works.
I’m still all for the city committing resources to this effort. I think it will pay dividends manifold in the end.
Did the city need to spend $3.4 million on the property? I don’t think we needed to spend a dime. Let the private sector hold the cards and the risk. We as a city should be willing to partner with private interests on these types of projects, but the art of job creation and economic development is ultimately one best left to the private sector.
(Funny how this kind of thinking got me labelled a liberal tax-and-spender three years ago by the very supposedly arch-conservative people responsible for this boondoggle today, ain’t it? Whatever.)
More columns at TheWorldAccordingToChrisGraham.com.
AFP editor to serve as moderator for Tea Party-sponsored candidates forum
The Shenandoah Valley Tea Party Patriots are sponsoring a forum for candidates running for seats on the Augusta County Board of Supervisors and Augusta County constitutional offices.
The forum, moderated by AugustaFreePress.com editor Chris Graham, is set for Thursday, Sept. 15, from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Augusta County Government Center in Verona.
Candidates for the Board of Supervisors, Commissioner of Revenue, Commonwealth’s Attorney, Sheriff and Treasurer offices will answer questions in the forum.
The forum is open to the public.
Chris Graham: Willingly spending too much
That’s what Waynesboro City Council is about to do. Again.
Monday night, City Council is set to vote on a proposed $50,000 appropriation ordinance related to the development of a city economic-development website and associated marketing materials.
I know personally that the city could save at least $14,000 on the project. I know because my company, Augusta Free Press LLC, submitted a bid to do the work that was $14,000 below the bid approved by the city.
Atlas Advertising, based in Denver, Colo., was awarded the project after submitting a $30,750 bid to do the work, which encompasses the development of a city economic-development website, a mobile version of that website, an eight-page brochure and four information sheets.
If that sounds like a lot of money for that kind of work, it is. Augusta Free Press LLC bid $16,100 to do the project.
Breaking down the winning bid and the unsuccessful AFP bid:
- Atlas is charging the city $5,000 to develop advertising concepts related to the project. AFP estimated $375 for this work.
- Overall, Atlas is charging the city $17,750 for the ad concepts, three four-color ads based on those concepts, the eight-page brochure, four information sheets. AFP bid $4,275 to do this work.
- Atlas is charging the city $12,500 to develop the website and the mobile version of the website. AFP bid $5,250 to do this part of the project.
- Atlas has suggested a $5,000, two-day “immersion trip” to Waynesboro to acclimate its staff in advance of the work. AFP did not include travel in its bid; we live here!
I exchanged several e-mails with a city administrator in the process of trying to obtain a copy of the Atlas bid, and in the process was told that local governments are by and large bound to go with the low bidder on projects involving the delivery of run-of-the-mill goods and services, but in the area of professional and creative services, there is a “complicated matrix” guiding decisions in which cost is just one factor.
The implication there: Sorry, AFP, you’re just not good enough.
I’m prepared to hear our mayor, the rest of City Council, the folks in the city manager’s and ED offices and others talk me down in that respect as they are asked to defend the move to overspend on this project.
I’m a big boy. I can take it.
I don’t bring this to folks’ attention because I feel bad that I lost out on the chance to make another $16,000. Like everybody else, I like making more money, but AFP has been blessed of late with more than enough business to keep us busy for at least the next few months.
My issue here is that I absolutely know that city taxpayers are getting royally screwed on this deal. For starters, I’m not aware of what other bids were submitted for this work, and that mine was even the lowest bid. It may very well be that taxpayers could have gotten an even better deal from another bidder.
I do know this: AFP didn’t even make the cut for interviews for finalists out of the original set of bids.
Which is to say, a local company that has developed more than 100 websites, with clients including an entertainment company that puts on international live-TV events to the local YMCA and the Valley Program for Aging Services and local businesses and industries small-, medium- and large-sized all, couldn’t even get a sniff on a project in its hometown by submitting a bid that was almost half of what the ultimate winning bid ended up being.
The city administrator with whom I traded e-mails on this topic told me that procurement laws prevent local governments from showing bias toward hometown businesses in awarding goverment contracts. Apparently the City of Waynesboro takes that to also mean that our local government should show bias against hometown businesses in awarding contracts.
I do have a suggestion for how we can change this backwards way of thinking pervading city government – fire everybody that works in City Hall and 301 W. Main St. and start over with people who have the common sense to take the low bid from qualifed local companies.
In the meantime, I wish Atlas the best of luck with that $5,000 immersion trip. It won’t take two minutes to learn how bass-ackwards we do things around here.
Chris Graham: Week One
So Tiki Barber’s agent is “flabbergasted” that the former UVa. star didn’t get a sniff from the NFL after his five-year absence from the game.
I don’t know about “flabbergasted,” but yeah, I was surprised, if only because I don’t think you look at Barber as a 36-year-old running back given the time he spent away from the game. By all accounts, Barber had worked himself back into football shape, and given the way most teams handle backs these days, preferring to go not with one featured back but rotations of two or more, I guess I just assumed that Barber would pick up somewhere.
And I think he probably still will. Running backs are a precious commodity, and their expiration dates come with a carry-to-carry date. …
It’s hard to get too excited about a butt-whupping of William and Mary, but then UVa. had lost its last matchup with the Tribe in 2009, so the 40-3 smackdown that the ‘Hoos handed to W&M on Saturday might mean more than meets the eye.
Quarterback Michael Rocco, in his first career start, looked solid, hitting on 21-of-29 passes and doing well in the proverbial manage-the-game role that he was asked to play.
The defense was what impressed me the most, harassing Michael Paulus into a 5-for-22 passing performance and keeping the Tribe off the scoreboard into garbage time.
Again, it’s too early to get too excited, but maybe this team is poised to take a step up in the ACC this year.
I think the Washington Redskins did the right thing in going with Rex Grossman as its opening-day starter over the untested John Beck. Both looked good in the preseason, but all things being equal, tie should go to the guy who has a conference championship under his belt. Sure, Grossman has his faults, but at least he knows what they are. Beck will still get his chance one day.
Chris Graham: Need to stand for something
Republicans do. Might not be what the country needs now. Focusing on balancing the budget in a time when we’re worried about another economic slowdown makes no sense. But hey, give them credit, that’s where we are right now.
Why? Because the GOP is on message, and Democrats … are rudderless.
I’ll give President Obama credit, before then lobbing a critique. The credit: He’s tried to work with the other side of the aisle. The health-care reform that Republicans hate so much is a Republican health-care reform. The insurance mandate is a Republican idea dating back to the early 1990s and the conservative Heritage Foundation and the mid-2000s and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Obama embraced it early in his administration because he thought Republicans would have to support their own idea.
Same as he’s jumped on board the race to the bottom that is the Republicans’ plan for addressing the jobless recovery from the recession that was the doing of six years of spending recklessness on the part of Republican majority rule in the Bush years. Wait, you say, maintaining tax breaks for the wealthy while opposing the continuation of payroll deductions that put more money in the pockets of the working and middle class isn’t a plan for addressing the economic troubles we continue to face? Whatever.
To the critique: It was plainly obvious early into the Obama presidential term that Republicans weren’t going to be willing to do anything to work with him on … anything. His repeated overtures to find common ground, thus, have only served to move the country back to the right at a time when economic policy needs anything but a rightward lurch.
It’s easy to point the finger at Republicans – hell, they were willing to drive the country to the brink of bankruptcy to score political points, which is beyond reprehensible. I don’t see too many pointing at the person we could start calling the Enabler-in-Chief, because it takes two to tango.
Here’s to Obama developing a spine, and fast, at the risk of the total collapse of the U.S. economy.
More columns at TheWorldAccordingToChrisGraham.com.
Chris Graham: Time to move forward
Posted by afp on December 28, 2011 · 2 Comments
Your first instinct might be to say that it still is. Look at the West End. Every chain retail store and restaurant known to American man has set up shop out there.
Which is great – really, it is. It’s just that the jobs that they provide aren’t the backbone of a local economy, one, and two, even with the influx of low-wage jobs, we still have the highest unemployment rate in the region, by far. Read more
Filed under Blogs · Tagged with chris graham, economic development, moving waynesboro forward, shenandoah valley, waynesboro va