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I'm right now riding in a heavily air conditioned bus on the way to the Everglades Agricultural Area.

I've been traveling around southern Florida to study various ecosystems and participating in seminars lead by environmental experts all week as part of the Scripps Howard Institute on the Environment fellowship. This has been a wonderful week, both fun and educational, but the stats on drought and climate change are disturbing.

That's what one of our readers called the Sun-Star, following a wire story the paper ran on the California Supreme Court's decision to overturn the ban on gay marriage. The story showed a photograph of two men kissing.

As a reporter, it's a given that stories that involve either homosexuality or abortion will attract some sort of response from readers -- both negative and positive.

Two weeks ago, I wrote a story about how more gay Mercedians are "coming out" than ever before. The next day, someone dropped a copy of the newspaper in the mail slot, with all of the faces of gay couples in the photographs scribbled out in black marker. Written across the top of the paper were the words "DO GAYS AND LESBIANS WORK AT YOUR NEWSPAPER?"

When it comes to growth in Merced, which factors influence a developer's decision to build here?

According to the city, negative headlines slow growth.

In fact, the city says Merced's current headlines are doing more to slow growth than a low-skill labor force, lagging schools, poor air quality, crumbling transportation system and high crime rate.

That analysis comes from the city's development forecast, a document you can find on the city's Web site here: http://www.cityofmerced.org/depts/cd/planning/documents_and_handouts/def...