PBS series inspires local stories of Vietnam
When it was announced that Ken Burns and Lynn Novick would produce a series on the Vietnam War, our friends at WOSU asked us whether we would collaborate on related local coverage.
As we are now 50 years removed from key events in the war and related events, we in The Dispatch newsroom had been seeking ways to look back at how the war affected individuals, families, our community and the country. The PBS series and the invitation to work with WOSU presented a perfect opportunity.
The first of The Dispatch portion of this collaboration appears in today's paper. Reporter Holly Zachariah writes about those who served in Vietnam who felt a personal calling to return to the country in peacetime. Some of them were able to make the trip, including retired Dispatch photographer Tim Revell, who traveled with the late Dispatch columnist Mike Harden.
Revell and others talk about making the trip "for all of those who couldn't," and why they felt it was important to return.
On Sept. 24, we'll tell the stories of those who have felt compelled to help the Vietnamese people recover and rebuild after the war — providing humanitarian aid, supporting orphanages or even adopting children.
The 18 hours of "The Vietnam War" will air on WOSU and other PBS stations starting today. WOSU will rebroadcast the series starting Oct. 3.
And WOSU plans its own local coverage related to the series on TV and WOSU (89.7 FM). On Oct. 5, the WOSU-TV program "Columbus Neighborhoods" will include an interview with a local resident who
served as an Army nurse, profiles of other veterans and a look back at local anti-war protests.
On Oct. 12, “Columbus Neighborhoods’’ will look at the history of Lockbourne Air Force Base, now Rickenbacker, and the many aviators who were trained and deployed to Vietnam from the base. The segment also will talk with African-American veterans about their service and explore late- onset posttraumatic stress disorder in Vietnam veterans.
At the same time, The Dispatch will take deep dives
into two of those topics — the anti-war protests on the Ohio State University campus and late-onset PTSD.
The protests at Ohio State were significant but ultimately overshadowed in headlines and Ohio history when National Guard troops shot protesters at Kent State University, killing four.
WBNS contract talks
Speaking of television, the ongoing contract negotiations between WBNS-TV (Channel 10) and some satellite signal providers has created some confusion in the marketplace. WBNS is owned by The Dispatch Printing Company, which no longer prints anything but
owns WBNS-TV and radio. The company owned this newspaper until it sold it two years ago.
The Columbus Dispatch and its current owner, GateHouse Media, have no ownership stake in WBNS or anything to do with the contract issues that resulted in WBNS not appearing on DirecTV or AT&T U-Verse. Like many of you, we’re on the sidelines hoping it is resolved soon — and, meanwhile, putting up rabbit- ear antennas for an old- fashioned, free broadcast signal.
Where’s the color?
A reader recently asked why one of her favorite features in the Sunday newspaper had been
appearing in black and white, rather than on a color page as in the past. She thought that perhaps we had taken away the color.
Actually, press configuration determines which pages are in color. The presses are complicated machines a block long and five stories tall with a thin web of paper stretching across rollers, drums and “angle bars” that require a map to follow. I’m not kidding about that. They create a map daily. And it changes day to day depending on the number of pages and sections being printed.
The presses physically cannot provide color on every page, so sometimes we end up with black-andwhite pages that we (and
you) wish were in color. Occasionally, we can move a spectacular color photo to a color page, but not always. To maintain some sense of packaging consistency within the various sections, we can’t and won’t move standing features willy- nilly just to get them on color pages. It would be jarring and confusing.
The bottom line is that we’d love to have color on every page, but we’re limited by what is available to us on the presses. My thanks to the reader who asked about this.