November 3, 2005
RALEIGH – This fall, the John Locke Foundation announced plans to bring its trademark array of research programs, publications, and events to Wilmington and Southeastern North Carolina. Now area residents have two more ways to tap into the resources of the state’s largest think tank.
On Friday, the John Locke Foundation unveiled its latest website: wilmington.johnlocke.org. The site offers original reporting and research on local issues, links to news headlines, an events calendar, and a new blog, Squall Lines, devoted to politics and public policy in Wilmington and surrounding counties and municipalities.
On Monday, the John Locke Foundation will host the first of a regular series of luncheons and policy forums in the region. Fred Barnes, Fox News commentator and executive editor of The Weekly Standard, will speak at noon at Wilson’s Restaurant, 4925 New Center Drive in Wilmington. The luncheon is $20 per person and open to the general public.
“Southeastern North Carolina is one of our fastest-growing regions, with all of the exciting possibilities and challenges that entails,” said John Hood, president of the John Locke Foundation. “We are delighted to be able to devote a substantial share of our resources to studying local issues and promoting principled, spirited debate about the future of Wilmington, New Hanover County, and surrounding communities.”
The new Squall Lines blog is moderated by Wilmington-area writer Zeb Wright, and follows the path blazed by the John Locke Foundation’s other successful blogs: The Locker Room, a staff-written forum examining a range of issues, and The Meck Deck, a blog devoted to issues facing the Charlotte-Mecklenburg region.
The John Locke Foundation’s Southeastern initiative began earlier this fall with the release of a citizen’s guide to spending trends in Wilmington compared with nine other large cities in North Carolina. Its author, fiscal policy analyst Joseph Coletti, discovered that local government spending had grown faster in Wilmington over the past decade than in any other major city in the state.
The Foundation’s weekly syndicated newsmagazine, Carolina Journal Radio, is already broadcast on WAAV-AM in Wilmington each Saturday afternoon. A special Southeastern edition of Carolina Journal, the Foundation’s monthly newspaper, is scheduled to debut by the end of the year.
For more information about the John Locke Foundation’s new Southeastern NC web offerings and Monday’s Fred Barnes event in Wilmington, please contact John Hood at 919-828-3876 or [email protected].