I had a phone conversation yesterday with a concerned reader/news junkie, who was sure that local media are cutting back their news staffs. Much of her concern seemed to center on reports of layoffs at major metropolitan newspapers and a sense that local TV stations are not covering as much local news as they once did.

I can’t speak for local TV — although one staff member at a local affiliate told me he thought their staff was actually a bit larger than a few years ago. Not a lot larger, but a bit. My caller said one of her concerns was the number of national stories that show up on “local” TV newscasts. I agree with her — it always seems a bit odd and/or jarring to see a national story during the local news: “Rogue Valley news at 11: Family dies in house fire! (in Tennessee.)”

As for us, we have about the same size staff that we’ve had for years — approximately 40 people in the newsroom. We have expanded our reporting capabilities, because we are paying for more freelance reporting than ever before, while maintaining the number of staff reporters.

What that happy news doesn’t reflect is the fact that we are also doing a lot of new things — particularly on the Web — so we do feel stretched in trying the cover all the bases. For us, though, the Web has proven to be a way to add readers and to add them consistently month after month. So the extra effort does pay off with more eyes on our news reports.

Big city papers are having a tough time. Virtually every big city paper has reduced its staff in recent years or months. They’re still reaching hundreds of thousands of people in their circulation areas, but that number has been on a decline. As with us, though, most of them (all of them that are really trying) are seeing big gains on the Web.

Newspapers are not going to disappear anytime soon, but I suspect the newsrooms’ routines will continue to change a lot in the years to come.

Missing from the recent Jackson County Sportsmen’s and Outdoor Recreation Show was perhaps its most-watched, and most appreciated, presenter.

Stan Fagerstrom, the 83-year-old trick-caster, was not there. And for good reason.

The Bass Fishing Hall of Fame came calling for the former Florence bass fanatic. Fagerstrom was enshrined in the hall Saturday in Alabama during the Bassmaster Classic.

Fagerstrom has been preaching the bass-fishing mantra in the Northwest for 60 years, and he’s gotten his message into the noggin’s of more than a few of us in Salmon Nation.

Stan’s casting is just as legendary. With spinning or bait-casting rods, he chan chuck a hook-less plug into your pocket at 40 yards.

He even made a spectacle of your’s truly — the Fish Hack at the Fish Wrap — a few years ago, hitting my outstretched index finger while my little tax deductions watched and laughed in amazement.

After millions of casts and surgery on his right wrist, Fagerstrom can still fling it.

“I can still hit my targets as good as ever,” he told me. “And I’m going to keep doing it as long as I can. The last thing I want to do is nothing.”

A full feature on Fagerstrom appears in the March 1 Mail Tribune. Check it out.

Dan Miles has found South Medford High School graduates to his liking.

The Oregon Tech basketball coach, whose team is headed to the NAIA Division II Men’s Basketball Tournament next week with a 27-4 record, has four ex-Panthers on his roster.

And they all contribute.

In fact, it’s not uncommon for senior Alan Johnson, junior Ryan Fiegi and freshmen Brent Johnson and Myles Daley to be on the floor at the same time.

“They’re definitely four of our top eight players,” says Miles, now in his 36th season at Oregon Tech. “They’re fundamentally sound, they come from a winning program and they’ve played in big games. That’s always a bonus when you can recruit kids like that.”

The 6-foot-7 Fiegi was named to the Cascade Conference all-star team and all-defensive team. He’s averaging 17.4 points, 6.8 rebounds and 3.5 assists. Fiegi played point guard at South Medford but has found a home at small forward with the Owls. He’s expected to move back to the point next season after the Owls’ current point guard — Levell Hesia — graduates.

“(Fiegi) is probably our best post-up player, but he’s also an excellent ball-handler and we use him to take the ball upcourt if teams are focusing their pressure on Levell,” Miles said. “He’s a versatile player.”

The 6-4 Alan Johnson serves as the Owls’ sixth man and is one of the team captains. He averages only 3.5 points and 3.5 rebounds, but produces two assists per game and is often matched up against the opponent’s best offensive player.

Brent Johnson, Alan’s younger brother, and Daley are both producing about six points and a little over three rebounds per game off the bench. Brent Johnson and Daley, who both stand 6-7, were key contributors to South Medford’s state runner-up squad in 2006.

The Owls won the Cascade Conference title but were upset by Evergreen College in the semifinals of the conference tournament, possibly costing them a No. 1 seed at the national tournament.

Oregon Tech won a national title in 2004 and was the national runner-up in 1998.

Several people have asked what’s worth seeing among the four new plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
I answer: all of ‘em.

But for those who like the results of a horse race, here’s the way I see ‘em in brief, done up like quickie movie listings.

“As You Like It” — Lively, highly theatrical production of a middling Shakespeare comedy, but played so broadly the themes get lost.. Playing Rosalind as a silly schoolgirl and Touchstone as a lovable clown are not good choices. Rating: One-and-a-half stars out of four.

“The Cherry Orchard” — Beautifully nuanced, gently comic/ironic version of Chekhov’s masterpiece. Proves it can be soulful without having to be a dirge. A triumph for director Libby Appel and for Judith-Marie Bergan as Mme. Ravenskaya, but strong throughout. Three-and-a-half stars.

“On the Razzle” — Fun, slightly naughty farce that fractures the English language. You expect good stuff from Tony DeBruno, but where did Rex Young and Tasso Feldman come from? You’ll never look at plaid in the same way. Three stars.

“Rabbit Hole” — Director Jim Edmondson’s fine take on David Lindsay-Abaires domestic drama about a child’s death and parental grief. Includes gentle humor. No ground-breaking theater here, but good writing in a sensitive rendering by a strong cast. Two-and-a-half stars.

Who would have thought that a single, solitary rodent in New York City would cause such a stir.

But that’s what happened last week, with the discovery of the Big Apple’s first beaver in almost two centuries.

When wildlife biologists videotaped a beaver Wednesday swimming in the Bronx River, it was the first confirmed beaver there since they were eradicated in the eary 1800s, the Associated Press reported.

To date, the only beaver associated with NYC is the beaver on the city seal. That was before this 3-year-old male paddled around all the mob-tossed carcasses swimming with the fishes in one of the nation’s most polluted streams.

Other than the fact that 44 million NYC rats are jealous of the fame afforded their buck-toothed cousin, this story merits some dissection for other several reasons:

1. It’s weird.

2. Atlantic City casinos have already set the over-under betting line at 2 1/2 … for the number of eyes its offspring will have.

3. It’s proof-positive that people who live in America’s wildest concrete jungle have a difficult time grasping what we take for granted here in wildlife-rich Southern Oregon.

4. It’s really freakin’ weird.

5. Hopefully, NYC won’t look to the City of Medford for tips on dealing with their city beaver.

Remember Medford’s Beaver?

In early 2002, a beaver moved into Bear Creek in downtown Medford, and summarily started munching through $4,000 worth of non-native aspen freshly planted by the Medford Urban Renewal Agency near the old Jackson Street Dam site.

MURA’s Director at the time called the beaver “a vandal” and suggested that it use drowned shopping carts, not expensive trees, to build its dam.

City parks workers got the beaver trapped and released near Lost Creek Lake.

Our beaver, evicted for being, well, a beaver.

So, New Yorkers, learn from our city’s missteps and revel in your rodent. Give him some love on Letterman. Maybe throw a Bronx Beaver Day Festival on the Waterfront, with the top raffle prize a pair of cement galoshes.

Just don’t take Medford’s lead and turn the Welcome Wagon into a Paddy Wagon.

URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MEDFORD OR
207 PM PST MON FEB 26 2007

…WINTRY WEATHER TO CONTINUE THROUGH TUESDAY…WITH SNOW LEVELS DROPPING AGAIN TO MOST VALLEY FLOORS TONIGHT…. UP TO 1 TO 3 INCHES OF SNOW CAN BE EXPECTED TONIGHT THROUGH TOMORROW MORNING OVER LOWER VALLEY LOCATIONS……..

We get that sort of message from the weather service periodically during the winter months. The above arrived this afternoon and warned of snow on the valley floor for tomorrow. It’s big news around here, but if I have my way, you won’t read this in Tuesday morning’s Mail Tribune. No, not because I’m keeping secrets from our readers, but because the only thing worse than a wrong weather story is a weather story that you can tell is wrong by looking out the window.

An impending storm suggests news is on the way and that causes newsrooms to get jumpy. We don’t just want to get the news, we want to get it first. So our competitive impulse is to write a story with a lead something like this: “Weather forecasters say you should expect to be trudging through the snow on your way to work or play this morning.” The problem with the snow story is that by the time readers see it in the newspaper, “this morning” is now and if there’s no snow on the ground, the story — and the newspaper — seem pretty lame.

So we qualify our stories with words like “possible,” “likely” and “predicted.” But the bottom line is that we don’t want to say something is going to happen when we don’t know for sure — especially when our readers can tell in a glance if we were right or wrong.

One other weather-related pet peeve for me — Saturday’s paper on Page One said, and I quote: “A new storm system moving in today is unlikely to drop snow on the valley floor, forecasters say.” Saturday’s paper on Page 8A said, and I quote: More snow is expected in the Rogue Valley today and tonight, with as much as 1 inch accumulating … .”

I guess there is a way to predict a snow storm accurately — say it will snow and say it won’t snow, in the same paper! Sigh …….

I might have had the only dry eyes in the house. Plays like Rabbit Hole are not my usual cup of tea. There’s a sense in which writing about a dead kid and some sympathetic, grieving adults is setting the dramaturgical bar too low. But Rabbit Hole plays better than it describes. Some of the OSF’s best actors turn in fine performances, Jim Edmondson’s direction is razor sharp, and David Lindsay-Abaire’s script is so finely crafted it could be used in playwrighting classes. Nothing is maudlin or sentimental or over the top. The thing has an integrity about it you can feel.

David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Rabbit Hole” is a play very much about grief and coping with it. And for him, that’s different.

It is the last play of the weekend, and the only one in the New Theatre. The New is not the old Black Swan (yea! actors are saying), but it’s by far the most intimate space the OSF has. So bring the Kleenex.

It’s kitchen sink theater to the max (like the man said, recognize your prejudices and blind spots, dude): a middle-aged couple, a 4-year-old son dead for no reason (the very thing Hemingway came up with when he wanted an image of great sadness), an emotional jumble they can’t seem to find their way out of.

It sounds like one of those disease-of- the-week TV movies.

James Edmondson, who is a terrific director, directs, so it has that going. And the parents are Bill Geisslinger and Robin Nordli, who gets more plum roles at OSF than just about anybody but Kevin Kenerly, and who showed you why in the inspired if uneven “UP” last year.

This is a different stroke for Lindsay-Abaire. The OSF did a good production of his Fuddy Meers a few years back, and I’ve seen nice productions of his Kimberly Akimbo at Artattack in Ashland and Lord Leebrick in Eugene. But consider, in the former a woman wakes up every morning not remembering who she is. In the latter a 16-year-old girl has that disease in which you age at four times the normal rate. Ideas that work in a darkly humorous, quirky, contrived sort of way.

If you liked those plays (I did), you might wonder how Lindsay-Abaire came to write a Rabbit Hole. But if you found those plays kind of whimsical/gimmicky, as some did, you’ll probably applaud him for going for a heart-twanging realistic drama.

The combination of Tom Stoppard and Laird Williamson figured to be dazzling, and it is. “Whoopee!” Williamson writes in the program notes. “I like this play.” Led by Tony DeBruno, a terrfiic cast romps through the absurd situations, and yet we see ourselves in them. Michael Ganio’s scenes, Robert Blackman’s costumes, Larry Delinger’s madcap music and Kendall Smith’s lights.

Funny as it was, I didn’t think the timing was consistently razor-sharp, particularly in the second half, but that’s typical of opening nights for fast-paced farces with lots of wordplay and all those doors. This is the one you take company to.

Whoopee!

Half a century after falling in love with Chekhov, Libby Appel has given us a rich version of his masterpiece. Productions of “The Cherry Orchard” are often played too slowly and founder around in vague Russian atmospherics. This time it’s played with great precision. Judith-Marie Bergan gives us both Ranevska’s charm and her foolishness, Armando Duran is a fine Lopakhin, and Richard Elmore as Firs proves once again that there are no small parts.

A bat that somehow got into the Bowmer before it was opened stole the pre-show buzz darting about high above the audience. When the house lights came up later the flying mammal was gone. Rumor has it that bat checked out the show and said that in Chekhov, “nothing happens.”