Imagine this: Doors slam open, and a small, aggressive woman with a microphone enters your store followed by a camera crew. Bright, hot lights rain down on some hapless store manager while the pushy, relentless reporter fires barbed questions at him, hoping to catch him in a half truth or compromising position. Beads of sweat pour down his face as he makes his retreat.

60 Minutes? Geraldo Rivera? Hard Copy? No, Up & Coming Weekly, apparently, according to some area chain stores that have found it easier to say "no comment" rather than offer a quote.

As editor of Up & Coming Weekly, I have encountered lots of antsy store clerks and nervous PR spokespersons in the last few years. Not everyone is comfortable talking on the record, with a tape recorder. When the red light comes on, people get nervous, because one false comment burns in print for all eternity.

But, come on. I know some companies associate the media with Satan, but even we don't have that delusion of grandeur. We don't go into interviews looking to trap someone, and we rarely bring out some ugly deed. We may come in a tabloid shape, but we are not a tabloid. We usually look for positive stories and positive people, and our reporters are honest with their subjects as to the intent of our interviews.

But we've found more and more stores have put up brick walls when it comes to talking on the record. They are usually chain stores, with corporate owners located in other states, far, far away, who come to our community, ask for our money, and scare their employees from commenting on even the most innocuous story.

I recently sent a reporter to PetSmart to do a story about pet grave markers. I sent her to PetSmart because I had seen the markers there and an employee had mentioned to me, not knowing who I was, that they were a popular item at the store. Great. This was a positive piece about remembering your pet after death, she was giving some free publicity to the store, everyone wins.

Well, no. Employees wouldn't talk, managers wouldn't talk, our cameras were not allowed in the store. No photos could be taken of the packages. We were rebuffed, similarly, from doing a "no harm" piece advertising the fact that PetSmart has pet grave markers, a fact most people already know. Where is the logic in this?

A few years back, when the Starbucks in the Raeford Road Harris Teeter opened, a story was cut because a nervous store manager would not comment on anything. Not on Starbucks, not on Harris Teeter, not on whether the sky was blue. Again, free publicity was shot down because corporate rules state you can't talk to the press.

This isn't a two-store epidemic, it happens almost weekly. Barnes & Noble refused a photographer entry at the debut of the latest Harry Potter book until proper permission was granted. The photographer ended up leaving before a manager could get the OK from either Mr. Barnes or Mr. Noble. This was an event the store publicized to the media, yet were nervous to have cameras take photos.

A local movie chain wouldn't comment on ticket receipts because they were told not to talk to the media. The story went instead to a locally-owned movie theatre, and they got the free publicity.

I understand corporations make rules so that they can control the information to the public. Store clerks making $8 an hour don't want to risk their careers to talk to reporters, and managers, who have more at stake, don't want to lose their jobs for the same reason.

But if the chain stores want to move into our community and be a part of our lives, they should enable their managers and representatives to speak to our community. They should have the power, and the responsibility, to handle simple questions, while forwarding a reporter to a corporate spokesperson if the conversation becomes uncomfortable.

I have worked for big companies in the past and I know the mentality: protect the information. The idea is to convince you that the store is yours, even though it isn't really. The store is the same in Fayetteville or Raleigh or Asheville, only the faces change. Individuality of any kind is frowned upon, thus the silence. Cities beg chain stores to come in only to, what, gain a few jobs and some discount merchandise? Meanwhile you are stripped of your individuality and community identity.

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