'Good night, neighbor'

Veteran Houston newsman, Ron Stone, passed away Tuesday after a bout with cancer. Ron Stone was on the air on Channel 2, KPRC when my family moved to Houston in the late 70's. The team of Stone, weatherman Doug Johnson and sportscaster Ron Franklin were the best, most relaxed, funniest and down to earth news team I've ever seen.

Stone and company were the genuine article. He signed off each night with, "Good night, neighbors." And one felt that he truly meant it and I know he did. He came into our homes each night and gave us the news as a neighbor. When he presented the news it was like you could go outside, walk over to the fence and continue the conversation with him.

For so many years he was a part our Houston life, first on Channel 2 then picking up for Ray Miller on 'The Eyes of Texas' and later with his production company, Stonefilms of Texas.

I also remember staying up as late as I could manage and watching Ron and the rest on the local broadcast of the Jerry Lewis MDA telethon.

I haven't thought about Ron Stone in a while, things change and you move on. But now that he has passed it's hard to forget him. Thanks for years and good night, neighbor.

KPRC report.

Houston Chronicle article.

Channel 11, KHOU report

Channel 13m KTRK report

Hemophilia fact-checking

I saw this article a couple of days ago. It’s about a laid-off employee of Aloha Airlines with hemophilia and his struggles to maintain health insurance coverage. What caught my eye was a glaring mis-statement about hemophilia.

Chun has hemophilia; a bleeding disorder that means his blood does not clot. So he could bleed to death from even the smallest cut. (emphasis mine)

No, he couldn’t bleed to death from the smallest cut.

Part of any advocacy work is providing education about the particular issue of interest. It’s frustrating that loads and loads of work that goes into educating the public about hemophilia can be nullified by one sentence in one article where the research and fact-checking wasn’t done.

Because the bleeding disorders community is (thankfully) small getting free publicity in the form of news articles is extremely valuable. But misinformation like this does nothing to serve our greater goals.