What if you owned your house and you thought you owned the land it sits on -- only to find out somebody else owns it and you owe them rent? If you don't pay -- zap -- they sue and can even foreclose.
That is exactly what The (Baltimore) Sun found in an investigative project. Since 2000, more than 4,000 lawsuits have been filed in so-called "ground rent" cases in Baltimore alone. The paper even mapped the lawsuits to show which parts of town were the hottest zones for these claims.
The newspaper's Web site includes video of a ground-rent ejectment, which is similar to an eviction notice. Only Maryland and Pennsylvania use ground rent for residences to a great extent, although it is not all that uncommon for hotels and office buildings to be built on ground-rent plans.
A first cousin to ground rent is a lot more common around the country: the buying and selling of mineral rights. As a reporter, I have covered several cases of people who thought they owned the mineral rights to their farms, only to learn that they didn't and that a mining or drilling company was about to move in and start digging.
Recently, in Tennessee, some mountain residents discovered they did not own their mineral rights but weren't concerned. Coal mining had played out long ago. But the mineral-rights holders didn't want coal. They wanted the plain, ordinary rock the mountains contain. It is used to build houses, chimneys, fences and such. It is a hot item. By some estimates, half of the landowners in Tennessee (and presumably elsewhere) do not own their land's mineral rights. The legal question that will have to be answered is whether a rock is a mineral, like oil, coal or phosphates.
Last month, WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh reported on companies buying up coal rights -- not for coal, but for methane gas. The story told how landowners watched helplessly while bulldozers knocked down trees and built roads to get to the gas fields. How did this happen? Landowners didn't know that they should have been paying taxes on the "coal rights" below the ground. The county sold the coal rights to recover the taxes without the landowners even knowing. Then, in come the drilling rigs, and there is not a blessed thing the landowner can do to stop them. What's more, the price of gas is high, so there is every reason to believe that drilling companies will aggressively purchase and exercise their drilling rights.
For many of you, this is a great consumer story. Educate the public about the hidden dangers of such things as not owning mineral rights, timber rights, water rights and other restrictions that might allow somebody else to take what you think is yours.
Covering Suicide
I was struck by the coverage of the Pennsylvania teenager who took his own life at school this week. The stories that ran in newspapers around the country described him as an Eagle Scout who was distraught over his grades and his parents' restrictions on his school activities.
Look at this headline: "Student commits suicide due to stress."
I saw this passage, and others like it, in several papers:
An 11th-grader despondent that his parents might curtail his after-school activities because of poor grades took a rifle to school in Erdenheim and killed himself between classes in a hallway, authorities said.
My warning to journalists is to not believe or lead the public to believe that suicide is so simple. Rarely, experts say, is suicide a reaction to a single issue. Rather, it is an irrational action caused by overwhelming problems for which there appears to be no way out. Usually, the final act is preceded by many warnings.
My Poynter colleague, Kelly McBride, who heads our ethics faculty, told me: "The one thing that mental-health experts will always tell you is when someone commits suicide there was a serious mental illness present. So as journalists, if we fail to mention that fact and instead oversimplify the events of a person's life, we perpetuate a falsehood, and we misinform the public, and we fail in our mission to educate the community on an important issue."
Here are some Poynter resources to help you cover the issue of suicide.
Here are the American Association of Suicidology's media guidelines.
Meteor Shower Peaks This Week
The "best meteor shower of the year" is at its peak Wednesday night and Thursday morning this week, NASA says. People in dark, rural areas should see at least one meteor every minute by the morning. The show is part of the Geminid meteor shower. (Thanks to Al's Morning Meeting reader Theresa Moore at Tampa Bay's 10 News for reminding me.)
Hiking Tuition to Attract Students
Here is an interesting twist. The New York Times reports that an increasing number of colleges and universities are hiking their tuition, then kicking in more scholarship money to offset the increases. The reason? Parents figure if the schools are that expensive, they must be good.
Christmas-Tree Poaching
Yes, thieves steal Christmas trees, and it is a big problem for tree farmers.
To discourage poachers, tree growers spray animal urine on the trees. Sort of marking their territory, I guess.
Bethlehem at Christmas
Read this heartbreaking USA Today story of what life is like in Bethlehem this Christmas.
How to Survive the Office Party
When should you bring a guest, how much and about what should you small talk, and what should you wear? All answers revealed here.
Record Cruise Ships in New Orleans
I am not sure what this means in the overall recovery of New Orleans,
but this month is projected to be the busiest the cruise ship business has ever seen.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected. The suicide story is an example of how MANY stories...
