And now the print coverage of Marathon

The post below with photos of the Akron Road Runner Marathon extolls the virtues of the Beacon Journal website Ohio;com in providing a better working platform and a lot faster delivery in showcasing the work of photographers with breaking news of the race.

Now comes the print edition in a 12-page section containing results plus at least 18 photos. Just about everyone on the photo staff was out there shooting.

Ohio.com meanwhile had a couple of galleries of photos–probably about six times more than the seven we saw Saturday morning.

You can bet, however, that there were many extra copies of the newspaper sold to race enthusiasts who can find nothing better as a keepsake of the record turnout. How do you save a website as a memento? There is no way for us to easiily learn how many extra papers will be sold today..

The marathon, however, provided a look at the advantages of both elecronic and print media.

The blog guy still likes the bridge photos by Ken Love and Paul Tople on the ground and from the air that best show the gang of runners. Neither photo made the print edition. A shadow photo by Bob Demay was chosen for the A-1 spreader on the race with a race feature by Jim Carney.

A1 was dominated by a far more important and well-done report by David Knox headlined the “Increbile Shrinking Paycheck..” One sidebar tells the story of an American family in three generations in a tale spanning five decades from census information. Another “must read” report.

Covering the Road Runner marathon

Beacon Journal photographer Ken Love on the ground and Paul Tople covering from the air provided 17 photos on Ohio.com before 6 p.m. today in covering the Akron Road Runner marathon. Staff reporter Katie Byard was meanwhile providing minute by minute updates on the Ohio.com site.

A 25-year-old Michigan resident, originally from Kenya, captured first place in the men's division of the Road Runner Akron Marathon today.

Joshua Koros, of Byron Center, Mich., finished shortly before 9:30 a.m. with a time of 2:28:05. Koros wins $2,000.

The course record is 2:18:48, set by Charles Kamindo of Kenya in 2005.

In the women's division, 31-year-old Melissa Rittenhouse of Wadsworth took first place with a time of 2:52:29. She wins $2,000.

A record number of Road Runner Akron Marathon participants -- about 6,300 -- took more than four minutes to cross the starting line this morning.

The blog posted a magnificent Ken Love photo of runners on the bridge last year.

Cleveland Scene pays birthday tribute to Regina

Regina Brett got a birthday gift today from the Cleveland Scene which seems to relish the “usually nasty” adjective used to describe it. Last week was Regina’s “Big 50" birthday

Jared Klaus wrote a piece today titled “Fifty Reasons I Can't Read Regina Brett” for the Scene’s C-Notes blog. Klaus wrote four nasty paragraphs but then reprinted the “45 Life Lessons, and 5 to Grow On.” from PD Extra, a Plain Dealer weblog. The 45 lessons were in a column Regina wrote five years ago. It incidentally is one of her most-requested columns.

Says Klaus: At least this time, Plain Dealer editors had the foresight to throw it on the blog instead of in the paper.

This blog herewith presents only the top 5:

1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
4. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.

To read the full Klaus tirade, see the C-Notes blog

Or read Regina’s piece on PD extra.

Or read other Brett columns

By the way:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY REGINA

BJ dominates second place in SPJ awards

The Akron Beacon Journal and its website, Ohio.com did not win any first place awards from the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists this year, but they won eight second place awards. Former staff writers in bold type below shared in two of those second place awards.

Included in the second place awards was best deadline reporting by the staff for Fire at the Airdock.

The Cincinnati Inquirer, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cleveland Scene and Columbus Dispatch each won five first place awards, the Dayton Daily News and Toledo Blade each won two and the Associated Press tied with Cleveland Scene for a first place on sports coverage.

The awards were for work last year in the over-100,000 circulation division for newspapers: An awards luncheon will be at noon Oct. 27 at Confluence Park Restaurant, 679 W. Spring St., Columbus.

Best headline was “Tortilla Flat” by Erich Burnett of Cleveland Scene. Here art the four others won by Cleveland Scene:

Denise Grollmus for best arts reporting “The Great Pretenders”
Elaine Cicora for best arts profile “Soul Kitchen”
Erich Burnett for best headline writer “Tortilla Flat”
LisaRab for best newsmaker profile “Fa;ll of the Fourth Reich”
Joe Tone for best sports coverage “Man on Fire”
Tie with Associate Press for Ohio State Championship

Here are the Beacon Journal awards:

Staff writer Tracy Wheeler and former staff writer Elizabeth Suh tied for second place in the best medical/science reporting category for Deadly Admissions: Hospital-acquired Infections are Fourth Largest Killer in Ohio.

Wheeler, Suh, staff writer Cheryl Powell and former staff writer Kathy Spitz won second place for best coverage of minority issues for The Great Health Divide.

Former staff writer Kymberli Hagelberg tied for second for best government coverage for To the Victors Go the Jobs? The story looked at nepotism within Summit County government.

Staff writer Carl Chancellor won second for best newsmaker profile for an article about Mike DeWine.

Former sports columnist Terry Pluto tied for second for best sports profile for an article about Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert.

Staff writer Elaine Guregian won second for best arts reporting for Last Dance, which looked at the decline of the Ohio Ballet.

The newspaper won second place for best Web site, www.ohio.com. Cleveland.com got the top spot.

Click on the headline for a complete list of the awards.

Pluto may be first to get billboard upon leaving

A number of former Beacon Journal reporters have gone to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, but probably the only one so far to rate a billboard is former BJ sports columnist Terry Pluto. See our earlier posts on Pluto by using the search engine above.

You can see the billboard driving wes on the West Expressway near East Avenue. The billboard is on a hill overlooking Lincoln Elementary School on Crosier St. off Lakeshore Blvd.

Click on the photo to enlarge for a better view, but please pay no heed to the bottom line.

Rita Madick is leaving Beacon Journal

The BJ Retirees Blog heard from the Rumor Mill that Rita Kelly Madick, the Beacon Journal community relations director, was leaving-- so we asked her and got this response:

Wow! news does travel fast! (even if my response is slow! I was out of the office yesterday with Leadership Akron)

Yes, I am leaving. And all I can say about where I'm going is that I'm excited about it. And thats all I can say because I truly have no idea where the next stop will be. While I've known for a while that I was ready to move on, I didn't feel that I could look for a job while still here. My position as Community Relations Director would make that a little uncomfortable for me and any folks I might contact about new opportunities.

So I will start my search in the next week or so. I'm thinking that since I've been working since I was 14, taking the Holidays off might be nice (Im here until Nov 9).

I'm hearing all the time that I will be pursued and that my biggest problem will be one of discernment in choosing....I don't know about that, so for now, will plan on doing some substitute teaching if nothing else.

Stay tuned!
Rita

He started in a tent, going to end up in tent

Beacon Journal reporter Colette M. Jenkins saved the kicker on local services for the Rev. Rex Humband until next to the last graph:

“Dad started in a tent in Akron,'' Rex Humbard Jr. said. ''And he's going to end up in a tent in Akron.''

The Rev. Rex Humbard, the first evangelist to have a weekly nationwide TV program in America, will lie in state from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday at Ernest Angley's Grace Cathedral, 2700 State Road, Cuyahoga Falls.

A memorial home-going celebration will be held at 4:30 p.m. Sunday under a large tent at Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens, 714 N. Portage Path in Akron.

The service will be officiated by the Rev. Clement Humbard, Rex Humbard's younger brother, and the Rev. Wayne Jones, Humbard's brother-in-law and his assistant pastor for 38 years.

Humbard, 88, died Friday in an Atlantis, Fla., hospital.

Click on the headline to read the story by Colette on page A1 of the BJ on Wednesday.

Chris Harte memo announces Susan is going

Memo to Minneapolis Star Tribune staffers
Editorial Page changes
by Chris Harte, Publisher and Chairman

September 26, 2007 - Susan Albright, our editorial page editor, will be leaving the Star Tribune, effective Oct. 12. Scott Gillespie, our managing editor, will move over to be the editorial page editor on an interim basis.

Susan has ably guided the Star Tribune editorial pages with the highest integrity since 1993, and I have the utmost respect for her as a journalist and an editorialist. She is a nationally recognized leader among editorial writers and a former president of the National Conference of Editorial Writers (NCEW).

Under her leadership, the Star Tribune editorial staff has won numerous editorial, op-ed and cartooning awards. In 2001 her staff conceived and launched the Sunday Op Ex section, now called "Opinion Exchange."

With all of these fine credentials to Susan's credit, it is all the more difficult to say that she and I have a difference of opinion that results in her leaving. As I moved into the chairman's role in March and then into the publisher's role, it was clear as Susan and I talked that we had different views of the future.

We have a professional disagreement about the role of the editorial pages and how they should be edited. The main shift I want to see is toward even more locally focused editorial pages.

I believe the role of a metro newspaper is changing radically and rapidly in a world of instant global access to information. I see the need for our editorial pages, like the rest of the newspaper, to concentrate more heavily than ever on local, state and regional issues. This is where we can stake a claim like no other media can.

Our readers can go to many places to get informed opinion on the Iraq war or global warming. But there are very few places they can go for expert opinion on local issues. And that is where I want us to dwell, with the active participation of our readers.

As you know, we will soon be locally zoning the metro news pages, and my mandate to Scott is to move our editorial pages in a direction that complements this local strategy.

Regarding her departure, Susan said: "It has been an honor and a privilege for me to serve as the Star Tribune's editorial page editor for nearly 15 years. I am proud of what the opinion page staff has accomplished in those years. On leaving, I can only express my profound gratitude to all my colleagues, and wish them all the best."

I hope you will please take the time to congratulate Susan on a job very well done. She is a true professional who stands up for her beliefs, articulates them eloquently and genuinely respects the views of others. I wish her all the best.

Letter to Strib staff from editor Nancy Barnes

Dear staff,
As you have heard from Chris today, Scott Gillespie will be filling in as editorial page editor for the next several months. Chris asked Scott to take on this role because both the paper and the community need a respected, talented editor during this transition period. Scott clearly fits the bill in so many ways. While we in the newsroom are focused on reporting the news, we all know that the success of the editorial pages is critical to the success of the paper as a whole. This will be a challenge for the newsroom, since Scott is integral to the everyday operations. Here's how we will work in the meantime: Scott will continue to work with me in making major personnel and organizational decisions regarding the newsroom. However, out of respect for the line between news and editorial, he will not be involved in any news coverage decisions once he moves over to editorial. The management team and I will divide up the daily management responsibilities over the next few months. I know that both Scott and I can count on the support of everyone in the newsroom in making this work. Meanwhile, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Nancy

[Source: Our thanks as always to Jim Romensko of Poynterwho gets all the neat memos]

A Rex Humbard memory from Char

Charlene Nevada just couldn’t resist offering her Rex Humbard story which she recalls is the most bizarre reporting experience she ever had.

Here’s Char’s story:

By CHARLENE NEVADA
Among the many Rex Humbard stories on this site, there is one still to tell – how I wound up seeing a guy cut in half one night at the Cathedral of Tomorrow.

This was NOT a David Copperfield stunt. In three decades of reporting, this was my most bizarre experience.

It was 1973 or 1974, Rev. Rex was in financial trouble, and born-again celebrities were raising money for him. Johnny Cash was scheduled to come to the Cathedral on a Sunday evening. I accepted the offer of OT.

Mind you, this was the time of mini-dresses and no bras. I saw no reason to dress any differently for church. I got to the assignment early and sat in the front row.

The Beacon had asked to interview Johnny before the service, but the only time available was afterward – and would have required me to ride in Rex Humbard’s private plane as Rex’s pilot flew the star back to Atlantic City. I declined.

After an opening prayer, out comes Johnny. He says a few words, introduces a documentary he made about the Holy Land and bids folks farewell. That was it! How am I going to explain this to Scott Bosley, I wondered. No interview. No story. Not even a picture because no photog had been sent.

The film ended and Rex came out to give the benediction. Then came a strange noise and the bust of a man appeared at the back of the stage.

What happened next almost needs a blueprint. At the back of the cathedral stage was a smaller hydraulic stage. It had been lowered because a piano on the stage partially obstructed the view of the film. When lowered all the way, the smaller stage led to a set of double doors that opened into a basement social area.

During the movie, some college age kids had gone through the doors on the lower level to watch the movie (albeit with craned necks). They were caught off guard when the stage started to rise. Two made it back through the lower-level doors before the horizontal hydraulic stage met the stationary vertical back of the stage.

One – a 19-year-old from the Cleveland area -- didn’t make it.

Churchgoers started to scream and someone began to lower the hydraulic stage. I didn’t even think. I leaped up on the stage, past the astonished Rex (remember – very short dress, no bra) and jumped about two feet onto the moveable stage as it was being lowered.

There were lots of prayers down below. But it was very clear that only skin attached the young man’s torso and lower body. Strangely, nobody kicked me out. I was able to get the name of the youth who was killed from the coroner in time to make the deadline.

One post-script. Art was the first artist at work Monday morning. Somebody – Bob Giles we seem to remember – asked him if he could do an illustration to go with the story. “Of a guy in two parts?” Art wanted to know. After his objection, the diagram showed the kid dangling from the rising stage just before the accident.

Zippy needs your help

This is a flagrant promotion and has nothing to do with BJ retirees or the news media.

Zippy, the University of Akron kangaroo mascot, needs your help.

Zippy has been named to the 12-member Capital One All-America Team and is vying to be Mascot of the Year. He is confident you will back him by voting for him once every day through the end of the year at http://www.capitalonebowl.com

So bookmark that site or make it one of your favorites to call up every day.

Covering a minister's death in the old days

Coverage of Rex Humbard's death reminded former Beacon Journal news editor Tom Moore how another such story.was covered in the old days.

Here are Moore’s recollections:

A few years ago I was working Saturday night. First edition was off the floor and with only Donn Gaynor and myself left on the news and copy desk and one person on the metro desk waiting to check to paper for errors, a call came to the desk from publisher Ben Maidenburg.

Seems he called the city desk to report that another well-known minister, the Rev. Dallas Billington, had passed away.The fellow on the city desk was new to the city and wanted to know just who Billington was.

And that had not set too well with Ben, so he called the news desk. I told him to to worry. We'd take care of it.

Donn, who had been a long-time reporter and rewrite man before joining the copy desk, picked up the phone and called Billington's son.

While Donn got the information for a story, I made plans to clear off a spot on Page one because we still had at least three-fourths of the run to go and the presses were shut down for a few minutes beteen the first and second run.

I went to the morgue for a photo of the Reverend. Plenty of photos but no engraving (this was in the days of hot type).Seems we were in the process of changing to a thinner thickness of engraving plate, so all the old mugs in the thicker metal had been
thrown away, even though we could still use them by adjusting the base used to mount them in the page.)

And of course, the engravers had long since gone home. I bemoaned this fact to old buddy Donn. He reminded me that on Saturday mornings, Billington ran an add with
his mug in the ad.

I ran into the composing room and one of the printers found that ad and cut the mug from it.

So we wound up with a photo and a story on the death.

But even then there were screwups. Somebody forgot to tell me that a full page of type and pictures had been readied for just such an occasion. So we ran that on Monday.

But we got the death with a photo in the paper...with a local byline.

--tom moore

[Blogger Note: Billington died in 1972. Gaynor died July 6, 2005]

Pete Geiger on covering Rex Humbard

Peter Geiger, former Beacon Journal religion writer who covered Rex Humbard, writes his recollectios of the televangelist who died Friday at a hospital near his home in Lantana, Fla. Humbard was 88.

The Rex Hbumbard Ministry site calls him “one of the 25 principle architects of the Amterican Century and Elvis Presly’s pastor."

See the Ministry site

Collette M. Jenkins filed the first story for the Beacon Journal on Ohio.com which showed six photos of Humbard over the years .By 10 last night there were 34 comments mostly laudatory but a couple nasty.

See Jenkins’ first story

Today’s Beacon Journal carried an update by Jenkins with a timeline

See also the New York Times story by Michael Pollak

Here’s Pete’s story:

By PETER GEIGER
I"m here in Mongolia, cramped with an intestinal virus and struggling to pack up 13 years of life here and return to the U.S. My wife, Sandy, awaits me there. She had quintuple bypass open-heart surgery on July 7 and we are going to retire.

Thanks for letting me know about Rex's passing. I'm sorry I didn't respond with more alacrity to your earlier request for Rex recollections. But here goes:

His name was actually Alpha Rex Emanuel Humbard, named partly for his dad, the Rev. Alpha Emanuel (A.E.) Humbard. The Humbards were a traveling salvation show family, known well in the Ozark region. They began to travel further after World War II, bringing their tent into the Midwest. When Rex landed in Akron, he became entranced. The city was well populated with Bible Belt expatriates, a ready-made audience for the Humbard style of Christianity. And, because of the population concentration here, making Akron his home would obviate all the put-up and take-down of the evangelism tent. He campaigned with A.E. to put down roots, but the elder Humbard declined. Rex and Maude Aimee stayed on alone.

The other seminal feature of his ministry, Rex used to say, was the day he saw one of the first television sets running in the South Main St. window of the former O'Neil's department store. He had a vision: put "old time gospel" in living rooms across America via this new medium. The man was a visionary and opportunist, and Akron became a nexus of televangelism.

The Cathedral of Tomorrow was not the first originating point for the show. He ran from the movie theater on Copley Road that later became WAKR-TV studios and from the theater on State Road in the Falls that became Hilarities comedy club. Many folks remember that Rex build his Cathedral with a mortgage from the Teamsters Mid-States Pension Fund. There seemed to be no other connection with Big Bill Presser, however;
just a Teamsters investment.

Covering Rex and his family was like a regular encounter with untreated bi-polar disorder. The man needed ink, but (like politicians and business mavens everywhere) wanted only his own spin on the coverage. He would sit me down in his office or one his four-engine Lockheed Electra plane and explain patiently to me that I was missing
the real story of his ministry.

"Lives are being changed!" he would exult. "Marriages are being saved, drunkards are being reformed and all you want to write about is the money."

This at a time when the Cathedral of Tomorrow was raking in $25 million a year. (And back in the '70s and '80s, that was real lucre.)

You bet I wanted to cover the money. But I also wrote some stories about eager converts who wanted to tell me about how their lives had got straightened out from watching the Humbards' weekly, hour-long TV shows broadcast from Cuyahoga Falls or from road shows around the U.S. and Canada. On occasion I would accompany the family troupe and walk the lines of fans waiting to get into the theaters where they held their services, interviewing people about their reasons for coming.

Rex and Maude Aimee (named by her mother for Aimee Semple McPherson,
a female traveling evangelist in the '40s and '50s who was the inspiration for the film, "Elmer Gantry") had four children, not three as the newly-sloppy BJ ascribes to them. Rex, Jr., was the oldest and seemed to understand well my responsibility to cover the whole Humbard story. Donald was next in line, a very angry young man who more than
once threatened to punch me out if I didn't stop writing about the Humbards' finances. Elizabeth Darling (she married an Atlanta guy named Darling, really) was in her late teens and early 20s when I was covering her family. She seemed unsettled about the show-biz atmosphere of the family ministry and more than once came to me with questions about the authenticity and usefulness of the whole thing. I advised her to do as I had done and get out from backstage and talk to the audience members. She did so. Charlie was the youngest and the one not mentioned in the hip-shot BJ obit. He was a laid-back teenager who liked to play folk and gospel guitar and jammed with me on occasion when I was in my guitar-strumming days.

Maude Aimee was the least understood member of the family, I felt. Sycophants in the Humbard retinue treated her as a goddess, but I enjoyed her down-home Texas style (she was a Dallas native.) One winter day on Mackinac Island, Mich., I rolled up a snowball and tossed it into Maude Aimee's back. The staff gasped: a great heresy had been committed. Maude Aimee simply bend down, made her own snowball and threw it at me.

Once when our adopted son ran away from home, Maude Aimee called from Florida to say she was praying for him and for our family. Some staffer had heard it on the radio and mentioned it to her in a phone conversation. That was Maude Aimee, not Rex.

It is amazing to me that she is still alive. She's had congestive heart failure for years. In the end, the same malady took Rex before it claimed her. Perhaps hers is the bigger heart.

Press Club honcho presses BJ editor

Intercepted email from the Press Club's Abe Zaidan to BJ editor Bruce Winges:

Bruce:

The speaker at yesterday's Akron Press Club program was Ted Gup and as I quickly scanned today's BJ I regretfully didn't find a word about his talk despite the fact that:

He is a distinguished award-winning reporter (Polk Award among many others), who spent his investigative reporting days at the Washington Post and Time Magazine.

He is a former Beacon Journal reporter.

His is the author of a new book on secrecy in government, a topic that used to be red meat for newspapers, including the Beacon Journal. He delivered that topic yesterday.

Many volunteers have worked on the success of these public affairs programs during my six years as vice president of programs. You should know that we now have more than 100 members and it is growing despite the BJ's cursory attention. Jack Knight, a tiresome name to the BJ's current cast, was among the first to renew his membership each year because he believed in the Press Club's importance. We've had appearances by several BJ staffers, including that fellow Moss, who came and promised the luncheon crowd great things and disappeared in a wink.

It disappoints me, and I'm sure many others, to see people like Ted Gup ignored by the town's only daily newspaper.

What's wrong with this picture?

Abe Zaidan
Allen Castoff
Minor role player in the BJ's greatness.

Word from Chris Harte at Star Tribune

The Minneapolis Star Tribune plans a nationwide search to replace Par Ridder, who likely will not return to the paper after his one-year banishment. Here’s the Star-Tribune story:

By Matt McKinney, Star Tribune
Chris Harte, chairman of the Star Tribune Co. and the paper's interim publisher, told the newspaper's staff Thursday that it is unlikely that Ridder will return to the paper after his one-year injunction expires.

Harte, speaking to the staff for the first time since Tuesday's court ruling that ousted Ridder for taking proprietary data from his former employer, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, praised the Star Tribune, noting that it remains profitable despite an industrywide slide in advertising revenue that has hurt papers nationwide.

"This company remains -- in this toughest of times that the newspaper industry has seen in, I think, all of our lifetimes -- a good business, a profitable business and a business with a very strong future," he told the staff.

Harte said that the paper will launch zoned editions Oct. 10, delaying by a week a plan that Ridder unveiled to staff last week. The plan expands on the successful weekly editions that the paper has been running Wednesdays in some suburbs.

The strategy slices up the newspaper's audience so that smaller advertisers can pay less for an ad that reaches just a portion of the paper's circulation. The paper plans to hire more sales representatives to lure smaller advertisers. At the same time, at least two pages of each zoned edition will carry unique news stories and other editorial content so that readers feel more local connection to the paper, according to editor Nancy Barnes.

Harte has served as chairman of the Star Tribune Co. since the private equity firm Avista Capital Partners purchased the newspaper six months ago from the McClatchy Co. for $530 million. Harte, who has served as a newspaper publisher in Maine, Ohio and Pennsylvania, said that he personally invested in the deal. Harte, who has homes in Maine and Texas, said he plans to buy a home here.

[Harte replaced John McMillion as publisher of the Beacon Journal in 1989 and left in 1992]

Simmons named PD managing editor

The Plain Dealer named Debra Adams Simmons as its managing editor today. Adams Simmons, who most recently was editor and vice president of the Akron Beacon Journal, replaces Tom O'Hara, who left the paper last week for a teaching job at Kent State University.

Plain Dealer Editor Susan Goldberg announced the decision to the staff this afternoon. "Debra is a wonderful journalist, blessed with an analytical mind, a knack for understanding readers' interests and an enormous capacity for problem solving," Goldberg said.

Adams Simmons, 42, worked as deputy managing editor and metro editor at The Virginian Pilot in Norfolk, Va., before working at the Beacon Journal. She has also worked at the Detroit Free Press, The Hartford Courant and the Syracuse-Herald Journal.

Posted on Cleveland.com by PD Metro staff September 20, 2007 14:02PM

-------------------------------------------------------

Akron News Now in an article by Ed Esposito just before 4 p.m. called it:

The PD’s Beacon Look

Here’s that story:

Another move in the northeast Ohio newspaper community puts a former manager of the Akron Beacon Journal in charge at the Plain Dealer.

Debra Adams Simmons is a former editor and vice-president of the Akron Beacon Journal; now she's the new managing editor for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, filling the vacancy left by Tom O'Hara who left to pursue other interests, including a teaching position at Kent State University. Simmons left the Beacon Journal at the end of 2006.

Simmons most recently helped lead the building and celebration for the Akron Urban League's new headquarters building. Workers at the Plain Dealer were informed of the new hire this afternoon. According to the PD, the 42-year old Simmons resume includes stops in Richmond, Detroit, Syracuse and Hartford newspapers in addition to the Beacon Journal. PD Editor Susan Goldberg, also relatively new to her position in Cleveland but a former Knight-Ridder newspaper alum as is Simmons, referred to her as having "an enormous capacity for problem solving."

This is just the latest game of ink-stained music chairs; longtime ABJ sports and religion columnist Terry Pluto sent shock waves across the newsroom on East Exchange and South Main when he announced he was leaving the Akron newspaper and rejoining the PD staff. The Plain Dealer is running an aggressive ad campaign promoting Pluto's return to the Cleveland paper.

---------------

Finally, see Susan Goldberg's welcome memo as published by Jim Romensko at Poynter Online

Don Roese letter in Voice of People

Here's a letter to the editor by retired photographer Don Roese in the Voice of the People column of the Beacon Journal on page A10 on Wednesday:

As in sandwich?

About that headline last Sunday, "Hometown hero puts music on menu": Just what act of heroism has Chrissie Hynde ever performed?

The media's trivilization of the word "hero" has almost rendered it useless. Singing and eating veggies does not a hero make. Next time let's ,make her what she is, a celebrity.

Don Roese
Cuyahoga Falls

McClatchy's revenues drops in August

By Dale Kasler
Sacramento Bee Staff Writer
The McClatchy Co., still mired in a slump that's afflicted newspaper publishers everywhere, on Wednesday reported a 9.2 percent decline in advertising revenue for August. Total revenue fell 8.4 percent.

Sacramento-based McClatchy, which owns The Bee, said a big problem was the continuing decline in real estate advertising. Its papers in California and Florida have been especially hard hit.

"We expect little improvement in advertising trends before the fourth quarter of 2007 and expect that revenue will likely still be negative in that quarter," Chairman and Chief Executive Gary Pruitt said in a press release. "But we are not accepting business on these terms - indeed we are working hard to mitigate the impact of revenue declines by exerting strong cost discipline."

August revenue totaled $169.4 million.

Newspapers have been struggling with a shift of business to other media, especially the Internet, as well as a slow economy that has cut advertising. Total revenue year to date is down 7.1 percent.

McClatchy's stock was trading at $21.19 a share, down a penny, on the New York Stock Exchange.

Press Club to hear Ted Gup

Former Beacon Journal reporter Ted Gup, who is a: Case Western Reserve University professor of journalism and author, will discuss his new at the Akron Press Club's luncheon Thursday at 11:45 a.m. at the Martin Center at 105 Fir Hill on the University of Akron campus.

Gup’s book is about the threat of secrecy in government. It is titled Nation of Secrets: The Threat to Democracy and the American Way of Life.. The book is published by Doubleday and is 321 pages/

It is best described by Gup himself in an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education. Here’s the quote:

“As a child of the 50's and the cold war, I was taught both at home and in the classroom that ours is an open society. Openness was what set us apart from other nations, particularly those despotic regimes in Moscow and Beijing. It was presented as something sacrosanct and unassailable, a part of our national birthright and identity. Hallowed ground. To question it would have been, well, un-American. So I accepted it as an article of faith. It was only later, after years as an investigative reporter, that I came to see that the open society was more myth than reality.

“Don't get me wrong. I know perfectly well -- better than most -- that if I practiced my craft of investigative reporting in most other countries, I would be writing this essay from prison -- if I were lucky enough to have escaped a bullet.”

Although Gup spent most of the past 20 years in the Washington, D.C., area, he is well-acquainted with Ohio. He grew up in Canton, attended Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, and earned his law degree from CWRU in 1978. He worked only briefly at the Akron Beacon Journal from 1974-75 as a news reporter

The cost of the luncheon is $10 for members and $15 for nonmembers. Contact Abe or Nancy Zaidan at 330-835-4980 or azaidan@neo.rr.com for further information.

Click on the headline for more about the book.






.

Judge tells Par Ridder to leave Star-Trib

Click on the headline for a long treatise on the Mississippi Mess in Editor & Puiblisher.

By JOSHUA FREED (AP Business Writer)
From Associated Press
MINNEAPOLIS - A judge on Tuesday ordered Star Tribune publisher Par Ridder to leave his job for a year, a sweeping victory for the rival St. Paul Pioneer Press, which had accused its former publisher of misusing proprietary information.

Ridder's actions when he joined the Star Tribune in March caused the Pioneer Press "irreparable harm," Judge David C. Higgs wrote.

He said an injunction was necessary to prevent further damage to the Pioneer Press "and to ensure that Ridder is not unjustly enriched by his past misconduct."

The judge also granted the Pioneer Press's request to block Jennifer Parratt, a former employee hired away by Ridder, from working at the Star Tribune before April 2008. Higgs denied the paper's motion to also block Kevin Desmond, who had been director of information technology for the Pioneer Press, from working at the Star Tribune.

Star Tribune chairman Chris Harte said the ruling was "clearly not what we expected" and the paper would consider its legal options. He said he would take over as publisher.

"We continue to believe that Pioneer Press information was not improperly used in order to cause competitive harm to Pioneer Press," Harte said. "And we continue to believe that Par Ridder and Jennifer Parratt were not unlawfully hired away from the Pioneer Press."

There was no immediate comment from Ridder. The newspaper said he left the building at about the time the ruling was issued, and his home number is unlisted.

Ridder had been accused of violating a noncompete agreement by joining the rival Star Tribune, and much of the testimony during a summer hearing in the case dealt with that. Higgs ultimately ruled that Ridder's noncompete agreement was invalid because he didn't receive any compensation for it. But he wrote that even without the noncompete agreement, Ridder violated the state's trade secrets act and his common law duty of loyalty to the Pioneer Press.

Ridder testified in June that he took information with him from the Pioneer Press to the Star Tribune, but he said he never used it for competitive advantage.

The judge found Ridder's explanations not credible.

"Given Ridder's past conduct and his cavalier attitude toward his use and disclosure of confidential Pioneer Press information, it seems to the Court that his past actual misappropriation is a good indicator" that he may do it again, Higgs wrote.

The Pioneer Press said Ridder copied more than a dozen computer documents, including budgets, monthly profits, employee wages, and how much advertisers were paying - key intelligence in a competitive newspaper market.

Ridder's hiring by the Star Tribune was a stunning move in Twin Cities media circles.

The Pioneer Press had been in Ridder's family since 1927, but Knight Ridder was sold to McClatchy last year. The Pioneer Press is now controlled by MediaNews Group Inc.

Ridder joined the Star Tribune in March, on the same day McClatchy sold that paper to Avista Capital Partners.

Associated Press Writer Doug Glass contributed to this report.

TechPresident.com wns Knight-Batten award

TechPresident.com, a data-rich, nonpartisan group blog that covers real-time, online activity of the 2008 presidential candidates -- and chronicles online content from voters who will elect them, is this year's $10,000 Grand Prize winner in the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism.

The site invites every-day people to help break campaign news and it tracks voter-generated videos on YouTube, candidate "friends" on MySpace and Facebook, blog mentions on Technorati, voter demands for appearances on Eventful, and voter-generated photos on Flickr.

"The site not only reports on, but encourages, citizens to participate more directly in the political process," the panel of judges said. "It's an amazing source of information from a non-traditional news outlet." The site is published by the Personal Democracy Forum.

Winning a $2,000 First Prize is another non-traditional news organization, the Council on Foreign Relations. CFR.org's rich media "Crisis Guides" present compelling, in-depth news about the world's most pressing crisis zones. "This is an institution stepping up and honoring the best of journalism. It's filling an absolutely articulated need," the judges said.

Four other innovative efforts each won $1,000 awards. And, for the first time, the judges cited four more creative ideas with Honorable Mentions.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation invests in journalism excellence worldwide and in the vitality of 26 U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Since 1950 the foundation has granted more than $300 million to advance quality journalism and freedom of expression. It focuses on projects with the potential to create transformational change. For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.

J-Lab helps news organizations and citizens use new media technologies to create fresh ways for people to participate in public life. It also administers the Knight Citizen News Network (www.kcnn.org) and the New Voices community media grant program (www.j-newvoices.org). Or click on the headline to read the rest of this article.