National spotlight shines on city’s comeback

[me]

Published April 17, 2009 11:36 pm

National spotlight shines on city's comeback


By Aleasha Sandley, Herald Bulletin Staff Writer

ANDERSON — The city's attempt to avoid becoming a General Motors ghost town has earned it national and international attention in recent weeks, this time for the strides it has made instead of previous reports that GM's departure had doomed it.

The city will be featured on the "CBS Evening News with Katie Couric," in a second New York Times article in the last month and on a Swiss television station, city spokeswoman Tammy Bowman said.

Much of the hype surrounds the city's new Nestlé plant, which celebrated its grand opening in March.

"It's a bit of a statement of where we are economically as a country when the creation of 400-500 jobs is national news," said CBS News Correspondent Seth Doane, who pitched the idea of featuring Anderson to the network. "For the town overall to feel as though a major company is coming in and making an investment is a good sign."

Anderson will be featured on the program's new "Bright Spots" segment, which airs periodically and highlights success despite the sagging economy.

"We've chronicled the downturn and all of us in the news business and all of us as Americans are looking for glimmers of hope," Doane said.

The CBS story will take a two-pronged approach in its study of Anderson, Doane said, the first the story of the city and its successful attempt to lure Nestlé after GM left and the second a closer look at local resident Cortni McCorkle, who got a job at Nestlé after being laid off from a GM supplier and putting herself through school.

"It's the story of this town that, when things were really bad, they said, 'We have no choice but to look forward and rebrand ourselves,'" Doane said. "It's looking at this town that needed to reinvent itself and this woman who also kind of retooled her skills and landed a job, which she says means security for her and her kids."

Doane and a producer were in Anderson this week, conducting interviews and gathering pictures of the city's past and future. The correspondent said he hoped the story would air next week on the evening program.

A New York Times reporter also was in town this week working on a story about receiving federal stimulus funds on a local level. The story will focus on President Barack Obama's first 100 days in office and use interviews with city officials as well as U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, Bowman said.

A Swiss television station filmed a program about Nestlé as well, coming to town earlier in the week. The company will give the city copies of the program in German, Italian and French, which city officials hope to use as an international economic development tool on their Web site, Bowman said.

She said the recent media attention has been a welcome change to the national coverage the city had received in the past, which generally focused on its downturn after the GM era.

"National media has visited Anderson a lot over the years, and a lot of times in the old visits it seems like the media was kind of fascinated with the dark story of the GM departure and job loss," she said. "We're far enough out from that dark story, they're becoming fascinated with the light at the end of the tunnel."

Bowman said Anderson could be used as an example for communities just now going through the pain of losing GM.

"We're a little bit ahead of the curve because of our history with GM, and other communities might just now be hitting the point where we hit 25 years ago," she said.
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Let's hope all this publicity will help us out here.   

[Gardengirl]

Did this Katie Couric show air? I tried watching for a week but didn't see it. A great sacrifice for me to watch Couric.

[me]

I don't watch it so I have no clue.

[BDBlaque]

The city's attempt to avoid becoming a General Motors ghost town

I do believe the last horse left that barn about ten years ago.

I remember that the first house I bought - in 1993 - had a five-year tax abatement, in an effort to lure NE Indy commuters.  Even that strategy seems to have failed in the longer run.

[me]

When I was a Realtor the biggest excuse I heard for people not wanting in Anderson or wanting out was the school system. 

[BDBlaque]

the school system.

Quite so.  My wife and I are products of the ACS, but today's ACS ain't the same ACS we knew.

[Ma and Pa]

That may be the understatement of the week.

Ain't you forgotten that your ACS teachers told you not to say "ain't"?

[Gardengirl]

I know our education in the 1960s was very high quality, and even our sports teams were winning everything, even in gymnastics (mulitple state titles) and tennis and golf. We won the sectional in 1966 or 67 (??) and had 64 windows of MHHS busted out and we missed I think 3 days of school because of that. I think there must have been many more professionals in town that insisted their kids be well educated, and they were listened to because they had money and influence.

[BDBlaque]

I think there must have been many more professionals in town that insisted their kids be well educated, and they were listened to because they had money and influence.

I don't think that the ability of the system to provide an education is necessarily worse now, with respect to staff capabilities, curriculum, facilities, etc.

The Anderson of forty years ago was a different place, in a socioeconomic sense.  The dynamic range between high and low was smaller, and the centerline itself was higher.

A very large number of families had one or both parents working for GM, and a relatively stable home life.  Relatively few were commuting out of Anderson for work.

There was a lot less integration, and by integration I don't necessarily mean racial.  Districts were simple geographic boundaries that spread far enough out from the school to balance enrollment and didn't take any other factors into account.

Special needs kids weren't in the regular system.  There wasn't nearly the effort then to keep problem kids in school.

The result back then was, if you were fortunate enough to live in a district that didn't include much by the way of 'bad neighborhoods', or whatever our parents would have called them, you went to a school that was relatively homogeneous from a social and economic perspective - probably a 'good' school.  If you didn't, well, sorry about your luck.

An awful lot has changed since then.  I believe that Anderson is a lot less 'steady', socioeconomically, and the trend is downward.  Many of the parents of the upper end of that graph commute out of the city, and as a result aren't able to directly participate in the system in the way our parents were.

Districting is now done differently.  The schools themselves are a lot more inclusive.  We try harder to keep troubled kids in school.  These can be good things, especially for the kids just described.  But these actions come at some expense, and I don't mean financially.

Beyond all that, American society in general just isn't the same as it was when we were kids.  We're less polite, lazier, and have a sense of entitlement.  And I don't think we, as a country, really value education all that much.