Staff cuts show the pressures of covering local news
For many local residents, broadcasts of the “Morning Edition” radio show will not seem the same following staff cuts at Lehigh Valley Public Media.
WLVR-FM host Brad Klein, always upbeat, regularly would celebrate the station’s newsroom of professional journalists, referencing a link with reporters at Lehigh Valley News.
Now Klein is gone, as well as near half the Lehigh Valley News staff.
Federal funding cutbacks account for only part of the distress. Too many public radio listeners ride free on the backs of too few subscribers. Internet paywalls seldom generate sufficient revenue for newsroom survival.
Local news, if essential, increasingly is uneconomical.
The layoffs here came less than one week after Klein hosted a preview telecast of BBC’s “All Creatures Great and Small” at the Univest Public Media Center in Bethlehem. Admission was free with food donations for needy pets.
Dan Church
Bethlehem
Police officers face tough decisions, support them
Given the current atmosphere in our great nation, now is perhaps the toughest time in history for working in law enforcement.
When police are faced with making a lethal decision to protect themselves or civilians, having to think “will I be fired or jailed” places doubt, and diverts officers’ attention from addressing the threats at hand. Fearing public outrage if they shoot is enough to get cops, and the civilians they were trying to protect, killed. With all the public watch groups ready to pounce, First Amendment auditors entering police zones and political backlash, police departments are enacting policies for their officers of when and when not to shoot that are a burden to those officers.
Police are trained and have graduated responses. They can go to less-than-lethal options but when an actor has a knife, gun or strikes a fighting stance, the decisions to make in an instant could be delayed long enough to end badly. Police need to feel their mayors, district attorneys and communities have their backs. Support law enforcement officers and thank them when you see them. We take it for granted that police will be there when needed. Without them we have anarchy.
Lou Van Hauter
Allentown
Trump doesn’t deserve Nobel Prize gift
I find it hard to keep up with Donald Trump. This morning I saw a photo of him holding up a plaque with his name on it as a Nobel Prize winner for the past year. It seems that Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who was awarded the prize, has willingly gifted it to Trump. She wants to have more of a say in her country, so she did what she had to. She will be able to do much for her people and Trump has what he wants. Too bad that everyone else knows that the award is not transferable.
Paul Jayson
Palmer Township
Stop paying Congress during shutdowns
Rep. Mackenzie is supporting a bipartisan effort in Congress to ensure that federal workers continue to receive pay during government shutdowns. So, what would this mean? Would workers continue to do their jobs in federal offices, or would they be home and be paid for an extended vacation? What would change since everybody will be paid? This effort would only extend a government shutdown. This is not a good solution. The simple and proper solution to this problem is to stop paying all members of Congress and staff for the shutdown period. This should be called a Congress Shutdown. This would put pressure on the organization and people who are responsible for the shutdown, not the federal workers. Federal workers should continue their jobs and keep the government running to the extent possible without the Congress. It might run better.
Richard Brand
Bethlehem
Congress must take action on climate change
The Associated Press recently reported on a study showing the amount of greenhouse gases emitted in the United States in 2025 rose by 2.4% over 2024. That doesn’t yet include effects of the Trump administration’s embrace of fossil fuels and rollbacks of Environmental Protection Agency rules. Similar studies for future years will probably show even greater increases.
Yet, market forces should be pushing emissions downward. Renewable sources are still the most cost-effective sources for new energy. The free market is picking different “winners and losers” than the U.S. government is. The rest of the world has figured it out. The world is rapidly reaching the tipping point where consequences of atmospheric carbon pollution raising global temperatures will cause irreparable damage.
Congress can still reverse this course through passing permitting reforms to allow quicker approvals of clean energy projects and grid improvements; creating a tariff on foreign goods that have a higher carbon footprint than those made here and restoring the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act.
The health and economic benefits of reversing this trend are many times greater than the short-term costs. Congress needs to get a backbone and get moving.
John Gallagher
Bethlehem Township
Ken Burns’ documentary very well done
Friends, this is an unabashed plug for Ken Burns’ new documentary on the American Revolution, available on PBS. With the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence arriving this summer, now is a great time to get up to speed on our ancestors’ momentous and virtually impossible successful revolution against the 18th-century British crown.
How could a group of ordinary men and women, settled in 13 British colonies on the east coast of North America, initially described as a “rabble in arms,” become a military force that defeated the most powerful nation on earth at the time?
Fighting went on from April 1775 to October 1781 throughout the colonies. Heroes arose as needed. France’s highly decisive aid toward the end of the war clinched the ultimate victory at Yorktown, following numerous incredibly poor British decisions throughout their campaigns.
Burns’ team brings all this to life as only Ken Burns can. Several noted historians comment throughout the documentary, headed by Pulitzer Prize-winning Rick Atkinson, well-known for his three-volume account of the Allied armies on the western front in World War II.
James Largay
Upper Saucon Township
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