DHL

DHL’s last sorting shift

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Between 4 and 6 this morning, the DHL air park held its last shift of package-sorting in Wilmington, Ohio. It represents the conclusion of the largest single layoff in Ohio history. I covered it with two colleagues from the News Journal, as well as reporters from 60 Minutes, Dayton Daily News, and channels 7 and 9 out of Dayton and Cincinnati, respectively.

Our coverage is in breaking-news form right now, which doesn’t include my photos and video. But I’ll link to my coverage once it appears. For now, you can read the story I co-reported with my new Assistant Editor, Brandy Chandler. I wrote about the first two people, Lisa Kanzius and Terri Elan. Brandy wrote about Dave Sanderson and Kent Schilling.

I have to go, or else I’d post some photos. I’ll get to that soon.

Local orgs pay for laid-off worker health care

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The quasi-public hospital in Wilmington is picking up the brunt of the cost to care for the health of laid-off air park workers — soon to be, possibly, all 8-10,000 of them.

The other part of the funding came from DHL itself via the Clinton County Foundation, itself a 501c3 staffed by prominent public figures.

I wrote the story about this tonight.

I spent several hours scouring a grant application and crunching the numbers within. I found something mildly fishy with the application — that the local hospital minimized the cost it was actually going to incur with the plan it proposed. Not my place to decide whether or not it was intentional. But I certainly reported it.