ROSES to Chuck Stone, retired professor in the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication, who was recently honored by the Society of Professional Journalists for his influential career as a journalist and educator.

The SPJ named Stone the winner of the Helen Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award, given for a lifetime of contribution and service to the journalism profession.

Stone was one of the Tuskegee airmen and he served as founding president of the National Association of Black Journalists. He was on the faculty at UNC from 1991 to 2005, where he received the Freedom Forum Free Spirit Award and UNC’s Thomas Jefferson Award. He’s one of those people who seems to have been everywhere and known everyone, and that’s probably not too far off the mark.

It’s safe to say that no one who took one of his classes has ever forgotten him. Colorful, enthusiastic and engaging, Stone has always been a natural draw for students. “Few mass communication professors in the country have had a more profound influence on a generation of journalists than Professor Stone,” read his nomination letter for the SPJ award.


ROSES to Scott Conary, co-owner of Open Eye Café and the Carrboro Coffee Company, who recently was chosen as a head judge representing the United States at the World Barista Competition in Tokyo.

He has trained and received certification as a judge for regional, national and world barista competitions. Last year he was a sensory and technical judge at the world competition

The World Barista Competition encourages and recognizes professional achievement in the art and skill of espresso preparation and service. The judges evaluated the entrants on station cleanliness, taste, beverage presentation, technical skills and total impression.

It’s an honor to be entrusted with the task of evaluating and judging the world’s best baristas. Everybody who enjoys Conary and company’s java here at home knows he knows his coffee.


RASPBERRIES to the UNC planners who threw the Chapel Hill Town Council a curveball that threatened to upset the delicate balance of trust and cooperation between town and university.

For some time now, the university has been planning to build something called the Innovation Center, a facility for turning faculty research into commerce. The project has been planned for a site on the south side of Estes Drive, near a complex of existing university buildings near Airport Drive.

Monday night the university asked the Town Council to speed up its review of the Innovation Center. But when the council members looked at the petition for expedited review, they were astonished to see that the proposed building was in an entirely new location — off Municipal Drive at the planned entrance to the future Carolina North satellite campus.

The problem with the new location is that it’s on the Carolina North site, and the master plan for Carolina North is not complete. The council, reasonably enough, wants to see the master plan before it starts approving individual buildings there. Council members also want to wait for the results of a mass transit master plan that might indicate that the Municipal Drive site is better suited for transportation facilities.

The university’s switch was, said council member Jim Ward, “a slap in the face” of the master plan processes.

Whatever the university intended, it gave the appearance of trying to leapfrog the process by starting to build on Carolina North before the master plans guiding development there have been approved. It was, as council member Bill Strom said, “a setback to the cooperative tone” that is going to be essential to the success of Carolina North.