Lehigh Valley News Briefs

This blog is about Lehigh Valley business news, general news and some travel items. There will be no AI garbage and no gofundme stories.

I work mainly from public documents. These may be boring but they can be important.

There are two undeniably great things about this blog:

1-It is free.

2-It is not compulsory.

So if you don’t like it, don’t read it. Problem solved!

About the ads: they are placed by the blog host, not by me. I have not solicited ads or run an ad for direct payment. If I do, it will be noted as such.

My comment policy: I do not run personal insults. I have received several comments that insulted people affiliated with organizations I have written about, and the comments may have been true, but I’m not running them.

I have received some nasty comments directed at me, and truth be told, so far they’re pretty much on the mark. Yeah, really.

I am a semi-retired journalist. There are professional rules for journalism — they are more like the “guidelines” noted in the film Pirates of the Carribean — but as a blogger I make my own rules. Again, if you don’t like it, don’t read it.

Recommended local blogs:

Lehigh Valley Ramblings, by Bernie O’Hare. Bernie is “the blogfather.” Anybody who wants to know what’s going on in Northampton County government and courts reads LVR. Many like it, some hate it, but everybody reads it.

Upper Nazareth Meetings by Becky Bartlett keeps tabs on what’s going on in the seven square miles of the township. Many townships get no coverage. The sun shines on Upper Nazareth.

My site is not for those who want long boring stories with pseudo-anecdotal leads — “John Doe has lived on Main Street for 40 years” for example. If you really wondered how long John Doe has lived on Main Street, that really hit the spot. Most people don’t care.

You can find plenty of that nonsense elsewhere, and you can find stories that spend six or eight paragraphs getting to the point elsewhere too.

I avoid jargon and find people who use it a lot to be untrustworthy or just not worth quoting. Words such as “ongoing” and “upcoming” and “incentivize” and “recidivate” will not appear here unless I absolutely have to use them in a quotation.

I also avoid journalism-ese such as “negatively impact.”

Stories here will be brief and get to the #$%#$ point. Usually.

Jeff Ward, Editor, Lehigh Valley News Briefs.

My background: Graduate of Lafayette College, Muhlenberg College and Moravian University. Degrees in International Affairs, accounting and an MBA.

Experience: 1984-96: Bethlehem Globe-Times and successor, Easton Express-Times.

1996-2019: Bloomberg LP. My first 12 years were in news as an editor, and my final 11 were in news-related data.

I retired in 2019 and held a couple part-time jobs to keep busy, then I came back to work for a regional television station until retiring again in July 2024. I might come out of retirement a second time but right now, I’m busy with contract work, travel, walking and various old-man activities.

I will devote some time to this blog on most days. I will take off a lot of Fridays and weekends.

There is a huge gap in local media. I am not going to fill it, but I have brought out stories recently — PBS 39’s financial follies, some development issues and the Bethlehem Area School District’s dabbling in swaps — that are not being covered elsewhere.

Let the sun shine.