Remember back in the 1990s when your 401(k) statement came in the mail
and you couldn't wait to tear the envelope open?

The way your money was growing would leave you giddy. Fifteen percent.
Eighteen percent. Twenty-one percent.

I always tried to remember it was just a paper gain.

It's not real money, I'd tell myself. It's not real money.

Brenda Simpson knows what it's like to deal with the media.

Flint Journal Editor
Tony Dearing
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She's been at the center of a story that has unfolded over 23 years, and it culminated two weeks ago in the sentencing of the people responsible for the death of her son, Christopher Alan Brown.

If you picked up The Journal on Sept. 23, you would have seen our front page dominated by a powerful courtroom photo of Simpson with her head buried in the shoulder of her husband, Willie.

Was the photo exploitive? Too raw?

I asked Simpson what her reaction was to seeing herself displayed on the front page in a picture capturing such a personal, emotional moment between her and her husband.

Flint Journal Editor
Tony Dearing
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I don't think setting up a drag strip on street in Flint is a great idea.

I'm not a big fan of putting advertisements in school buses either.

But those are just my opinions, and there are hundreds of readers of The Flint Journal who disagree with me.

Flint Journal extras: Read Rickey Hampton's column

A familiar face has returned to our lineup of local columnists.

For nearly 20 years, Rickey Hampton wrote sports stories and columns for The Flint Journal. He left us this summer after accepting a buyout, but I am glad to say that his absence from our pages has been a brief one.

Beginning this week, Hampton will resume writing a regular opinion column on this page. In his return column today, he addresses the value of education, a topic that always has been important to him, and now occupies much of his energy.

Flint Journal Editor
Tony Dearing
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One of the nice things about working at The Flint Journal is that I can walk right across the street to the YMCA and get in a swim during my lunch hour.

Normally, the pool isn't very crowded. It's just a few of us regulars, and there's always a lane open.

But when I showed up last week, the pool was packed.

One of the other regular swimmers looked at me, shrugged, and said, "The Olympics."

I understood exactly what he meant. There is something about watching the world's best athletes run and jump and swim that inspires that dormant jock in all of us to get off the couch and do something physical.

If you've ever been to a costume party, you know that people act differently when they're wearing a mask.

There's something about anonymity that changes behavior, and not always for the better.

So I understand why many of our readers continue to object to us publishing things like Talk Back, and Words from the Web, a new feature that offers in print some of the comments that readers post on our Web site.

Flint Journal Editor
Tony Dearing
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A newspaper serves many roles in society, and one of the most fundamental is to provide citizens with the information they need to make intelligent decisions.

We feel that responsibility all the time, but particularly during election season, when voters turn to us to tell them about the candidates running for office.

Over the past few weeks, The Flint Journal has offered candidate profiles on a variety of contested races, be it for the state House or county board or township office.

Our readers watch for those candidate profiles, and I trust that they've found them helpful as they try to decide how they will cast their ballot.

But this election season, thanks to the power of the Internet, we've taken our coverage of elections to a whole new level of depth and ease of access.

I know it's a mistake to believe that your own childhood is the only perfect childhood, and that anyone who didn't experience it was robbed of something important.

Flint Journal Editor
Tony Dearing
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Because in these lazy, hazy days of summer, I find myself reflecting back on the days of my youth -- particularly after reading a recent story in our Sports section bemoaning the death of sandlot baseball.

You probably have to be my age or older to remember when playing baseball meant slipping your mitt onto the handlebar of your Sting-Ray bike and riding over to the schoolyard to see who was already there. When enough guys showed up, you picked teams and played.

Flint Journal Editor
Tony Dearing
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But they do give you a feel for what people have on their minds, and based on the letters we're getting this election season, I'd summarize the public sentiment like this.

Vote 'em out. Vote 'em all out.

When it comes to public approval ratings, politicians are always near the bottom, right down there with journalists.

But the level of dissatisfaction seems unusually high this election year.

In fact, the Gallup organization reported in May that public approval of Congress is at the lowest level since it began asking that question in 1974.

Flint Journal Editor
Tony Dearing
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But the hours aren't bad, and neither are the benefits -- which revolve around the satisfaction of getting to discuss important issues and help shape the editorial opinion of The Flint Journal.

The job is "reader representative,'' and we've just brought a new one on board.

Her name is Kristen Skivington. She's vice chancellor for institutional advancement at the University of Michigan-Flint.

But for the next six months or so, she's got a secondary gig, helping us weigh in on the pressing issues of the day.

Lynda Gibson Johnson was sorting through some old "stuff'' recently, and found a scrapbook filled with special meaning.

In it were clippings of the many poems, pictures and stories that she submitted to the Wide Awake Club during 1953 and 1954.

"One of my greatest memories is coming down to The Flint Journal office and being able to pick out a book when I won the category of a particular week,'' she told me in an e-mail.

Ask one reader, and he'll tell you that our coverage favored Barack
Obama over Hillary Clinton.

Flint Journal Editor
Tony Dearing
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Ask others, and they'll tell you just the opposite.

I heard it from both sides last week as we managed to leave supporters of both candidates unhappy with our choices of front-page stories.
On Monday, a caller wanted to know where the coverage was of Clinton's win in the Puerto Rico primary of the day before. On our front page that day was a story about Obama visiting Michigan.

But we heard far more later in the week from supporters of Obama, who felt we missed the historic significance of him clinching the nomination, choosing for the front page instead a story that explored whether he would pick Clinton as his running mate.

One caller, in particular, didn't mince words. "You've always been racist, and that's why I don't take your paper,'' she said.

Flint Journal Editor
Tony Dearing
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You just saved yourself 50 cents.

But what if that particular product, at a cost of $6.50, is made here in Michigan, and sold by a company headquartered in Michigan?

What value do you put on supporting a business that's based right here in our own state?

It's not as easy to put a dollar value on that.

But people must see some merit in it, based on the growing number of Web sites that promote Michigan companies and products, and the number of businesses that are eager to be featured on them.

Flint Journal Editor
Tony Dearing
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''Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.''

Were he alive today, Will Rogers might say the same about the price of gasoline.

Now that gas is hovering around $4 a gallon, it seems to be the thing everyone is talking about.

But doing something about it? That's a different story. Rising gas prices have done surprisingly little to change the behavior of Americans. That's remained true even as the cost of gas has more than doubled over the past three years.

Back in early 2003, The Journal ran a Talk Back item from a reader in Flint who said he "sure gets sick'' of hearing people whine about the cost of gas.