Holiday PR in full swing

This week, I wrote a story about the things retailers are doing to get ready for Black Friday, and I was a bit surprised by how tough it was.

The first lady in the Queen City

When the official hashtag for the day is #FLOTUSsgf, you know it’s going to be a long day in the office.

I first “met” Michelle Obama when she introduced then presidential candidate Barack Obama before a crowd of more than 10,000 supporters at Parkview High School during his 2008 campaign stop.

Waiting on Wal-Mart

Mark your calendars for Feb. 11. This is the day a public hearing will be held on Bentonville, Ark-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s plans to bring a fifth Neighborhood Market to town.

Maybe there really is no such thing as a dumb question

Sometimes, I worry that my job has made me too suspicious of the world around me. As a journalist and an editor, not only do I find facts for reporting the news, but I also question the facts and scrutinize them carefully to make sure that they’re correct – and that they make sense in the bigger-picture scheme of a story. It’s difficult to accept many things at face value, because I want to know the who, what, where, when, why and how.  My newsroom colleagues and I have been accused at times of questioning everything – and that’s OK, because we do.

At other times, I’m also thankful for my questioning nature, because it comes in handy in terms of not being taken advantage of by unscrupulous people who, unfortunately, are a fact of life.

Making billions in video games

It’s rare that my passion for video games crosses over into the realm of my day-to-day business reporting, but a recent bit of news involving Gabe Newell, co-founder and managing director of Bellevue, Wash-based software firm Valve Corp., has allowed me to mix it up.

Why is Wal-Mart really bringing back layaway?

Not long before school started, my 8-year-old daughter reminded me, out of the blue, that Christmas is just a few months away. At the time, I thought, “We’ve got to get ready for back-to-school. Who’s thinking about Christmas?”