One Week before the Summer Season . . .

Telephoto of a dune rose from a protective walkway, Cape May Point

. . . . officially opened on Memorial Day, Pris and I drove down to Cape May for some R&R.  The weather decided to cooperate, with most of the days very comfortably conducive to outdoor activities.    

The only exception was a heavy rainfall that did not interrupt our plans, as it came down late one evening long after dinner, when we had already returned to our bed and breakfast inn in West Cape May.

Typically while on vacation, I’ve always packed my PC, using it to write posts to this blog and to do some surfing on the Internet.  Not this time.  Both of us decided not to bring any electronic devices except cell phones and a camera.  My phone remained shut down most of the time; while Pris left hers on to receive any potentially urgent call:  that was it – detox time.

The Changing Face of Local Journalism

In his latest regular column in the Courier News, managing editor Paul C. Grzella, commented on some of the feedback at the community outreach meeting from last week, one that I witnessed. He wrote that “one of the community members who attended talked about how an opinion piece she wrote and that we published in the paper generated some unkind words on our Web site.”

Before newspapers adopted the Internet, letters-to-the-editor were submitted for publishing either by email or ‘snail mail.’ Original letter writers and those wishing to respond were bound by the same crisp rule designed to keep at least a moderate level of sanity in the process:

As I remember it, the policy of the Courier News was that it would print only letters and responses signed and submitted with a name and legitimate telephone number for confirmation of the author’s identity. I think the author’s address also was required. Anonymous contributions were simply not published.

This process maintained a reasonable level of social consciousness and integrity. But Internet practice has flushed at least part of those rules down the tubes. Today, anyone with a fictitious handle can respond to just about anything on the ‘net.

A person can be as careful, thoughtful, and as intelligent as can be with his or her response to a known author. Conversely, a person’s Internet response can be …… well …… as inconsiderate, uninformed, and as dim-witted as one can imagine. But that’s the way it is. Most professional journalists that I read and the few that I know will tell you that they don’t like it.

But the newspaper business is in an economic crunch. The anything-goes rules for online reader responses have been cast in stone for a long time, and newspapers have little influence on those rules. There is a need to carry on and to keep getting those ‘clicks’ on Web pages and the accompanying ads that may help them to survive and to prosper.

Freedom of speech is a powerful instrument of liberty. But it doesn’t inoculate anyone from the written thoughts of aspiring dolts.

Verizon’s Dreaded ‘Service Teams’

It happened quite suddenly and unexpectedly: One moment last week, I was enjoying an upgrade to my Verizon high speed Internet service; the next moment, kaput: nothing but digital silence. About an hour before the line disappeared, I received a call from a Verizon service person in Silver Springs, Maryland, advising me that my line was about to be cut.

She went on to explain that while implementing the upgrade, a technician had “accidentally pushed the wrong button in the central office” and that my line was about to crash. There was nothing she could do about it right then and there, she explained, because Verizon’s erroneous disconnect order had to go through before a second order to restore service could be processed. Not to worry, the Verizon lady assured me, the Internet service would be up and running again before the close of business on Friday.

The day before that conversation, another Verizon person in Westfield advised me that my upgraded service would be available the following day: Two separate assurances of service on two separate days, and I still have an “accidentally disconnected” Verizon Internet line.

But that’s not all! About a week before those episodes, I found myself in an endless loop of international 800 telephone service calls to Verizon because the Internet line was acting funky. It was erratically dropping its connection: The modem’s LED Internet light was toggling from a pulsating green to solid red or no light at all. Not good! That means constant line interruptions.

The latter is what prompted my initial calls to Verizon and what led to a decision to upgrade to higher speeds. Ugh! The take-away behind all this is: May the gods have mercy on you if you ever have to deal with Verizon service people.

ASSESSMENT: Verizon is plagued by an inability to coordinate its disparate service units. The people who control service in the central offices where the rubber meets the road have no effective tie-in with the service people who man the 800 lines. The latter are located worldwide: On this single service issue, I spoke with at least two persons in the Philippines, as well as others located there or elsewhere. The total number of calls which I made (I have profuse notes) is beyond the threshold of what is required to fix a still unresolved, mundane technical issue.

EXAMPLE: Sensing customer frustration, one service person at the end of an 800 line tried to reassure me: She “promised” that my Internet service would be up and running “within 12 hours.” That’s when I heard the rooster crow in the background, with the sinking feeling that I was being betrayed for the third time by a company whose representatives like to end calls by telling us how much Verizon values our business.

Saturday afternoon, the wisest Verizon person was the one who admitted, “I can’t tell you when your Internet service will be restored.” Around 1:30 pm, Monday, when I left my home office for the Bridgewater Library to post this entry, the Internet line was still buried somewhere in a technical graveyard.