Since when is an accusation by a discharged, disgruntled employee front page news? For that matter, how many businesses and public agencies have their managers personalities picked apart by the local paper? The World’s ongoing assault against ORCCA (Oregon Coast Community Action) responsible for running the local food bank is looking more and more like a personal vendetta than news. According to Food Bank staff, Chuck Krause who was terminated with cause by the agency, had created a hostile work environment and will not be missed but how is any of this news?

The real news should be how many people ORCCA serves every year and the thousands of clients to whom they provide energy assistance and weatherization and help feed. ORCCA has created more jobs than either of the local economic development agencies, The Port of Coos Bay or SCDC, and it has done so on a fraction of the money spent by either of them. That should be the news story, how community action operating on a shoestring outperforms state sanctioned economic development agencies. What is the paper’s real goal here? Does it hope to discourage contributions by painting the organization as evil or does it just want to get a couple of managers fired? Either way, it is just plain ugly.

Yeah, I am especially cranky and recovering from a serious bout of the flu but sometimes I just hate that paper.