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The Rapid: A Bright Future?

Submitted 05-03-2011 under OPINION

Six o’clock in the morning. The alarm clock goes off and you hit the snooze button. The alarm goes off a second time and you sluggishly roll out of bed, not exactly ready to start the day. You make breakfast, get the kids ready for school, and...

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Picturesque: In plain sight

Submitted 05-02-2011 under OPINION

On a drab day, I walked down the path from my house to the sidewalk. At the foot of the path, crocus blooms poked barely above the mottled grass. The dabs of violet were hardly noticeable. A smile was coming on. Who else today had spotted this shy...

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[HISTORY DETECTIVES] Historical transit decision comes full circle with May 3 millage

Submitted 04-29-2011 under OPINION

A portion of the vintage footage featured in the video is from a film made in the 1920s. That promotional film was made by the Grand Rapids Railway Company, the private corporation that controlled the transit in the city. In the beginning of the...

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Entrepreneurs are Rapidians, too.

Submitted 04-27-2011 under OPINION

Since the early months of the Rapidian, the question has been asked: "How can the local business community can be involved with the Rapidian?" Now that traffic has increased and participants multiplied, the near whisper has turned into...

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Bull's Head offers bargain burgers, crushing crowds

Submitted 04-26-2011 under OPINION

When I first came to Grand Rapids from my small home town in the Upper Peninsula, I couldn't believe how many restaurants there were. As I have grown to know the city, I've done my best to dine at as many of the great local restaurants as...

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Rethinking how we describe news categories

Submitted 04-20-2011 under OPINION

The Rapidian is chock full of arts and entertainment content. Is it fluff or does it signal a new way of thinking about news, community and dialogue? In the last six years, I've had numerous conversations with journalists, bloggers, web developers...

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Building our skills and building community: public hours get special

Submitted 04-12-2011 under OPINION

What are public hours? Every week, The Rapidian staff is available to you in person in our offices for specific hours. We call them "public hours," and they're a great chance to stop by to visit, brainstorm article ideas, ask general...

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Share the credit: Collaborators and Translators get some Rapidian love too

Submitted 04-06-2011 under OPINION

Like our mothership, Grand Rapids Community Media Center, The Rapidian has always been about building community through media. With this project, that manifests is in a variety of ways, but today I’d like to focus on story collaborations and...

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Friday Burger Blogging: O'Tooles Edition

Submitted 04-01-2011 under OPINION

This morning I was having coffee with The Rapidian's Citizen Journalism Coordinator Denise Cheng.  She casually asked me what I would be doing the rest of the day.  I told her that my friends Ryan Van and Jef McClimans and I typically meet...

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Greenspace: Should We Grow?

Submitted 03-29-2011 under OPINION

We often think about infrastructure in modern cities as a those hardscaped things - roads, bridges, and so on -- that foster productivity and efficiency.  But we should also think about a "green" infrastructure that...

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