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Report: Sports fans like print newspapers

March 12, 2013 · Add Comment

More male sports fans chose local print newspapers than TV, radio, or other print outlets when asked to list all the sources from which they get their “news, information and/or analysis,” according a new study from the Newspaper National Network. That question doesn’t include online properties, which it compares separately. The report says that among those, print newspapers’ sites came out on top: “Sports Section of Newspaper Website” was the choice of 76 percent of respondents; 66 percent listed ESPN.com.

Asked about their experience reading newspapers, 72 percent agreed with the statement that those outlets’ coverage “provides me with more depth about the teams and players I care about than anywhere else”; 63 percent said “I look forward to reading certain writers.”

The study polled 404 male sports fans between the ages of 18 and 54, half of whom said they read sports pages more than twice a week.

See the data and charts from the report>>

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Scott Aiken, 77, was a business editor for Enquirer

March 12, 2013 · 1 Comment

From The Cincinnati Enquirer

By the time former Enquirer Business Editor Scott Aiken landed in Cincinnati in the 1960s, he had built a career in 10 years that some journalists can only dream about in a lifetime.

He had traveled the world, covering news in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany and Finland, and even interviewed then-Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s wife in a Danish pasture.

Mr. Aiken, who grew up in Massachusetts, joined The Enquirer in 1967 and put his experience in international affairs to work as a foreign news analyst, an assistant editorial page editor and business editor before leaving the news industry in 1979 for jobs in public relations with Armco Inc. and Cincinnati Bell.

All the while, he remained true to his roots in journalism, staying active in the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) on the national and local levels.

Mr. Aiken, of Mount Lookout, died (March 6) at Hospice of Cincinnati after being diagnosed with a brain tumor. He was 77.

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Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police says bill to block access to gun records clouds government transparency

March 11, 2013 · Add Comment

From The Cincinatti Enquirer

A bill proposed last week by a Southwest Ohio legislator would prevent journalists from looking at concealed carry gun permit applications – the latest in a nationwide surge of efforts to seal gun records from public view.

A spokesman of the Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police said the legislation clouds government transparency. But gun rights advocates say there’s no news value in knowing who has a permit and the information should be private.

In the four-county Southwest Ohio region, 9,639 new and renewed permits were issued in 2012, according to an annual report by the Ohio attorney general’s office. Statewide it was a record year with 78,810 concealed carry permits being issued. A license lasts five years and costs $55. More than 300,000 Ohioans have permits.

When the concealed carry law was enacted in April 2004, all the records were public. Three months later the Cleveland Plain Dealer published a list of all carriers and their ages in Northeast Ohio, which prompted the Legislature to tighten the law to its current status.

Under current law, only journalists, not the general public, are allowed to view concealed handgun information after filing a request with a county sheriff, who keeps the local permit information.

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Ad tax update: ONA hires lobbyists, seeks member contributions

March 8, 2013 · Add Comment

By Dennis Hetzel, Executive Director

Here’s a scary number: Based on our estimates from Newspaper Association of America statistics, the advertising loss could total more than $57 million to Ohio newspapers and their websites annually if a sales tax on advertising becomes reality.

That is on top of the adjustments our members have had to make to severe revenue declines in recent years, from an estimated $2 billion for all Ohio newspapers and their digital products in 2005 to $958 million estimated in 2011.

We arrived at those figures, which very well could be low, based on Ohio’s share of the U.S. population and the feedback we get from major advertisers such as auto dealers that they won’t spend more if there is an advertising sales tax. Their budgets will adjust downward to accommodate what amounts to an increase of 6 percent or more based on local sales tax rates on top of the state rate. The cost of doing business for many of our customers also will explode as a result of this proposal.

The ONA has hired a government relations firm, Capitol Consulting, to help us in our legislative efforts, particularly as we oppose the sales tax expansion.

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Legislative Update: Lawyers, guns & money

March 8, 2013 · Add Comment

By Dennis Hetzel, Executive Director

If you’re not a Warren Zevon fan, you won’t get the headline, but I couldn’t resist that song title from the late, great Mr. Zevon.

It’s an apt description of what we are facing at the Statehouse.

I say “lawyers” because the proposed expansion of the state sales tax, which will include advertising, has raised major concerns among numerous groups, including the Ohio Bar Association. The lawyers and the auto dealers have emerged as among the most vocal public opponents to the plan. They are joined by bankers, insurance agents, laundry owners, travel agents, Realtors, broadcasters, outdoor advertisers, the motion picture industry, and on and on. The newspaper industry is hardly alone.

I say “money” because the sales tax expansion is all about money. The expansion as proposed helps offset the revenue loss from cutting the sales tax percentage to 5 percent and offering income tax and small business tax breaks. See the item below for more detail on the advertising tax situation.

I say “guns,” because Senate Bill 60 has been introduced that would eliminate the limited exception journalists now have in Ohio to view concealed carry gun permits. It is no surprise that this is an outgrowth of the controversy surrounding a New York newspaper’s decision to run a list, complete with a searchable map, of gun permit holders a few months ago.

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Ohio Supreme Court upholds large open records fee

March 8, 2013 · Add Comment

From The Columbus Dispatch

The Ohio Supreme Court batted down a public-records request by a Portsmouth businessman seeking deed and other information from Scioto County Engineer Craig Opperman.

By a 6-1 decision yesterday, the court ruled that Opperman did not have to give Portsmouth real-estate appraiser Robert Gambill a copy of the county’s electronic database of deed information and aerial photos of all Scioto County property. The court said that by offering Gambill a copy provided that he pay a $2,000 fee, the engineer had met requirements in the Ohio Public Records Act.

The court agreed with Opperman’s explanation that the database is “inextricably intertwined” with a copyright-protected software program and could not be extracted without considerable time and expense by the county. There is no evidence, the court majority said, that officials did that purposely to avoid having to provide public records.

Justice Paul E. Pfeifer, in a strong dissenting opinion, disagreed. He accused Opperman of intentionally mixing public records with the software, forcing “citizens seeking public records to pay an exorbitant price to untie the knot. A person seeking public records should expect to pay the price for copying the records, but not the price for a public entity’s mistake in purchasing inefficient software.”

The majority decision in the case “encourages public entities desiring secrecy to hide public records within a software lockbox and require individual citizens to provide the golden key to unlock it,” Pfeifer said.

Justices also rejected Gambill’s contention that the county’s charge of $2 per 11-by-17-inch copy of a tax map and photograph is excessive, and turned down his request for attorney fees.

The full decision is available at http://tinyurl.com/cgxdwq4.

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County officials skeptical of Kasich sales-tax proposal

March 8, 2013 · Add Comment

From The Toledo Blade

Ohio county officials generally like Gov. John Kasich’s plan to expand the sales-tax base to a long list of services, but they’re raising the alarm over the idea the state thinks it can then cut their locally approved “piggyback” sales tax rates.

“We believe that this violates the principle of local control and sets a dangerous precedent that could open the door to the reduction of other locally enacted taxes in the future,” Larry Long, executive director of the County Commissioners Association of Ohio, told a House subcommittee this week.

Counties are authorized to enact a local sales tax rate of up to 1.5 cents on the dollar to “piggyback” on top of the statewide rate of 5.5 cents. Forty-eight counties have enacted the maximum rate. Lucas County is at 1.25 cents on the dollar.

Mr. Kasich has proposed expanding the state’s sales tax base to a litany of currently untaxed services — cable TV, legal services, coin-operated laundries, haircuts, pet grooming, travel agents, advertising, and magazine subscriptions among them.

That alone is expected to generate more than $3 billion in additional sales tax revenue over the next two years.

The expansion, however, is part of a broader tax package that also calls for a half-penny reduction in the current sales tax rate to 5 percent, a hike in severance taxes paid by shale oil and natural gas drillers, and a net $1.4 billion income tax cut for individuals and small businesses.

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Job is winding down for 97 Enquirer production workers

March 8, 2013 · Add Comment

From The Cincinnati Enquirer

In two days, Diana O’Connor will press a red button and end 172 years of history at The Enquirer.

Her touch will stop the newspaper presses for the last time in Cincinnati.

Come Monday, when The Enquirer’s new format debuts, the paper will be printed in Columbus.

Stopping the presses means the end of the line for 97 production workers.

Together they have 2,544 years experience putting out the Queen City’s last daily newspaper. That’s an average of 26 years per person.

These newspaper veterans are not happy about losing their jobs. But the anger and sadness they feel are far outweighed by the affection they share for their work.

Each of the dozen employees I talked with before, during and after a recent press run described how they felt about their job with the same word: Love.

“I love my job,” O’Connor declared as she pulled ultra-thin aluminum photographic plates from the presses at The Enquirer’s soon-to-be-silent Western Avenue plant in Queensgate, where the paper has been printed since 1979.

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Cleveland’s homeless newspaper, which spurred lawsuits and changed policy and lives, celebrates 20 years

March 7, 2013 · Add Comment

From The Plain Dealer

A Cleveland newspaper written and distributed by homeless people is celebrating 20 years of publishing this year.

I'm sure most of us have forgotten all about it, or never really noticed.

But the paper -- first published under the banner, the "Homeless Grapevine," and later the "Cleveland Street Chronicle" – has an undeniable link to the city, downtown and to homeless services.

The paper has changed policy.

It's also changed a few lives.

The paper was inspired by Angelo Anderson and a small group of other homeless people, who were looking to make money on the streets without begging. Initially, they just made photo copies of stories they wrote but found that selling a paper that looked like a cheap flier was tough.

So, in 1993, they asked the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless and its then-director, Brian Davis, for help. With a grant from Trinity Cathedral, the coalition turned Anderson's vision into a tabloid-size paper on real newsprint. It featured stories about life on the streets and about battling addiction. It also included poetry and information about local shelters and homeless services.

The coalition smartly demanded anyone who wanted to sell the paper follow certain rules, including refraining from aggressive sales pitches. Homeless people had to pay 10 cents for each copy of the paper, which they could sell for $1 and keep the profits. Each vendor had to sell 200 copies to earn a permanent vendor's badge from the coalition. Those who broke the rules lost their right to buy the paper.

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Ohio senators want to prevent journalists from viewing gun-permit records

March 7, 2013 · 1 Comment

From The Dayton Daily News

A law proposed in the Ohio Senate this week would make records of people licensed to carry concealed firearms in Ohio completely off-limits to journalists.

Bill sponsor Ohio Sen. Joe Uecker and Dayton-area Sen. Bill Beagle, R-Tipp City, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said they were inspired by a New York newspaper’s recent decision to publish the names and addresses of gun-permit holders in three counties there.

“I don’t think it was proper,” Beagle said. “If the only way to prevent that is through legislation, then that’s legislation I’m interested in supporting.”

The proposed law would remove the exemption that allows journalists to to view, but not take notes or copy, records of gun permit holders, kept by county sheriffs’ offices.

As the law stands, publishing a list of carrying a concealed weapon (CCW) permit holders in Ohio would be impossible, said Dennis Hetzel, executive director of the Ohio Newspaper Association.

Even so, Beagle questioned why the information is accessible at all.

“I’m not sure there’s any public policy interest in whether or not an individual has a concealed carry license,” he said.

Uecker also cited a June 2011 Hamilton JournalNews story about elected officials in Butler County who held concealed-carry permits. Information was gathered for that story under the existing law.

“People don’t want the public to know who has a concealed-carry license,” Uecker said. “And of course, there is the philosophical notion that some people (question) why it is a public record for something that we believe is a constitutional right in the first place.”

Hetzel said preventing journalists from viewing CCW records would decrease government transparency.

“I wish the pro-gun forces would be as respectful of the First Amendment as they are of the second, and they should be fearful of excessive government secrecy,” Hetzel said.

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See Also

Lawmakers Move Swiftly to Block Release of Gun Permit Records (From Stateline, the Daily News Service of the PEW Charitable Trusts)

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UC protesters’ displays cause controversy

March 7, 2013 · Add Comment

From The Cincinnati Enquirer

University of Cincinnati student groups are displaying images of female genitalia on the UC main campus today and Friday in protest of previous anti-abortion demonstrations on the campus.

The display, titled “Re-envisioning the Female Body,” includes 12 4-by-6-foot images of some female students’ genitals. It is being sponsored by the UC Feminist and LGBTQ student groups. The images are displayed on McMicken Commons, close to but not visible from Clifton Avenue from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Quotes from the models concerning women’s issues – specifically in the areas of health care and abortion – accompany the posters.

Many of the models said this expression is empowering for them. Sarah Coressel, one of the student models for the display, said she was nervous prior to the start of the event, but is proud to be a part of it now.

“I’ve never really been comfortable with myself, and this is kind of me taking my body into my own hands and saying, ‘This is what I can do and I can do it if I want to,’” Coressel said.

The groups organizing the protest said on a Facebook page that the protest is in response to large images of aborted fetuses shown on campus in recent years.

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House bill rules out cuts to Saturday mail delivery

March 7, 2013 · Add Comment

From The Columbus Dispatch

A spending measure passed by the House (on March 6) to keep the government operating through September requires that the Postal Service maintain a six-day mail-delivery schedule, a potential setback for the agency, which announced last month that it planned to drop Saturday delivery to cut costs.

The legislation passed the House 267-151, with 137 Democrats voting against it. The Senate is expected to pass its own spending measure.

Faced with billions of dollars in losses, Postal Service officials said the service would stop delivering mail on Saturdays beginning in August, although it would continue to deliver packages on a six-day schedule. The agency said cutting Saturday delivery would save about $2 billion a year.

The agency lost about $15.9 billion last year, partly the result of a 2006 law requiring it to pay about $5.5 billion into a health-benefits fund for its future retirees. A drop in mail volume also is to blame.

The move to end Saturday mail delivery was condemned by some lawmakers, unions and postal customers.

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Kasich, Yost in showdown over JobsOhio

March 7, 2013 · Add Comment

From The Columbus Dispatch

State Auditor Dave Yost issued a subpoena for the financial records of JobsOhio yesterday after Gov. John Kasich’s privatized economic-development agency failed to turn them over.

“They are not cooperating with our attempts to audit them,” Yost told The Dispatch, asserting his legal authority to review the finances of the private entity that spearheads Kasich’s efforts to attract jobs to the state.

The subpoena gives JobsOhio until Wednesday to turn over all financial records through the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012.

The General Assembly created JobsOhio early in 2011 through the enactment of House Bill 1 shortly after Kasich became governor.

News of the subpoena came amid new questions about just how much taxpayer money has been poured into JobsOhio and how it got there apparently without state lawmakers knowing about it.

Yost said he issued the subpoena after several months of negotiations between his office and Jobs-Ohio chief financial officer Kevin Giangola, and only after “it became clear over the last three days or so that we weren’t going to hear back from JobsOhio.”

Yost added, “I was told that the CFO said it wasn’t going to be his decision.”

The auditor was unsure if the decision not to cooperate was made by the governor’s office, but he said he had heard “third-hand through the legislative process” that the Kasich administration might attempt to insert an amendment into the state transportation budget bill to clarify his authority to audit JobsOhio.

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Additional Coverage

JobsOhio used millions in extra public funds (The Columbus Dispatch)
Kasich on JobsOhio's financial records: 'It's complicated' (The Columbus Dispatch)
Gov. John Kasich calls dispute with Auditor Dave Yost over JobsOhio a misunderstanding (The Plain Dealer)

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Why everyone hates Facebook’s news feed, and why it will never stop

March 7, 2013 · Add Comment

From Business Insider

A lot of people are complaining about Facebook's News Feed, saying that the social network has tweaked it to give prominent placement to paid advertisements.

Get ready for more complaints—because Facebook is changing everything again this Thursday.

There's something to the complaints. Facebook didn't always have ads in its News Feed, the central stream of updates from friends and brands that appears when you log into the site.

So by definition, any placement given over to ads is taking up space that used to be occupied by a free post.

What a lot of people don't realize is that going back to the original creation of the News Feed in 2006, there's been a secret algorithm that decides what you see and don't see. It has always shown people a small slice of all the material your friends and the brands and celebrities you follow post on Facebook.

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The (newspaper) battle of New Orleans

March 7, 2013 · Add Comment

From The Columbia Journalism Review

In May, as the New Orleans Times-Picayune put to bed an epic, eight-part investigation into Louisiana’s prison system, its editors began to disappear. First, Mark Lorando, the features editor, was nowhere to be found. Then the chairs of the online editor, Lynn Cunningham, and the sports editor, Doug Tatum, were empty. So was that of the city editor, Gordon Russell. Newsroom wags called it The Rapture.

Conspicuously left behind: Peter Kovacs and Dan Shea, managing editors for news, whose subordinates, sworn to secrecy, hadn’t told them what was up. As Kovacs, Shea, and a team of 20 put final touches on the series, “Louisiana Incarcerated,” the chosen editors—including Jim Amoss, the top editor—were two miles away in the Place St. Charles tower, implementing a plan that would make a story like that series far more difficult to pull off in the future.

The secret meetings in May led to a bloodletting in June. Advance Publications laid off nearly half the paper’s newsroom, halted daily publication of the Picayune, and implemented a business and news model that shifts the focus of the operation to its free news website, NOLA.com.

Ten months later, a battle still rages for the soul of the Times-Picayune, and over the meaning of what happened. Much of the media coverage of the changes in New Orleans, while critical of Advance and the paper’s leaders, has focused on the decision to cut publication to three days a week and, to a lesser extent, on the layoffs, which were devastating even by today’s standards. Those are, of course, important storylines.

Less examined: the radical change in how journalism is done at the 176-year-old Times-Picayune and what that means for the future of news coverage. And even less examined are the strange finances of the move, which help explain what to many appears inexplicable, from either a journalistic or a business point of view.

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Pete Conrad, long-time sports journalist, dies at 56

March 6, 2013 · Add Comment

From The Dayton Daily News

Pete Conrad will be remembered as a “gentle giant,” a kind, softspoken man and a journalist who always gave everyone a fair shake.

Conrad, editor of The Oxford Press and longtime Miami University sports reporter, died March 4 at University Hospital in Cincinnati.

Born March 22, 1956, in Hamilton, Conrad was a life-long resident of Reily Twp. He graduated from Talawanda High School in 1974 and Miami University in 1978.

Pat Diangelo, founder and publisher of the Mason and West Chester Pulse-Journal, gave Conrad his first job when he graduated from Miami University.

“He was the first sportswriter I hired for the paper,” Diangelo said. “To me, he was like a son, and a big teddy bear who couldn’t hurt a soul.”

“He was a dedicated writer and never did anything that would upset anybody,” he said, “but was not the type of person who would get upset if someone didn’t like what he had put in the paper.”

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93-year-old still brings news home

March 6, 2013 · Add Comment

From The New York Times

In the troubled newspaper industry, where steady layoffs mean that gray-haired reporters have disappeared from newsrooms as quickly as the typewriters that preceded them, Newt Wallace, a broad-shouldered 93-year-old, has held on.

Every Wednesday morning, Wallace heads to the dusty, newsprint-scented offices of The Winters Express in Winters, Calif., population about 6,600. He starts his day by placing labels on the freshly printed copies of the 2,300-circulation weekly, slips a carrier bag stuffed with papers over his shoulder, pulls on his baseball cap and starts his route.

Wallace, one of eight carriers for the paper, has been walking the same blocks of downtown Winters since 1947. On foot, he briskly delivers to downtown Winters’ businesses the papers, which are filled with local stories such as the creation of a new bridge over Putah Creek and the rising value of Yolo County crops.

“I don’t hunt or play golf; I deliver papers,” Wallace said recently as he walked his route. “I like delivering papers. I get to see the people I know.”

Wallace’s tenure has now made him a contender for the world’s oldest newspaper-delivery person. The Guinness World Record title is currently held by Ted Ingram, who turned 93 on Feb. 14 and who delivers The Dorset Echo to his neighbors in the English hamlet of Winterborne Monkton. But according to Jamie Panas, a Guinness spokeswoman, Wallace is older than Ingram by eight months. The transfer of the record title depends on Wallace’s son Charley, the paper’s publisher, finishing the paperwork that Guinness officials sent him five weeks ago.

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Press+ data: Publishers tighten meters, increase digital subscription prices

March 6, 2013 · 2 Comments

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Newspapers shift focus to other revenue streams

March 6, 2013 · Add Comment

By Ken Doctor, Nieman Journalism Lab

Main Street is finally going digital. With the digitization of smaller business, newspaper companies believe they’ve found that elusive third leg of a business model — a model that could keep them standing, maybe even taller, into the second half of this decade.

We’ve see “marketing services” grow as a business pursuit over the past couple of years. Now — as newspaper publishers have just left the “Key Executives Mega-Conference” in New Orleans, where such services led off the weekend with a three-hour session — we can characterize it as the number one new business pursuit of many U.S. newspaper chains. It’s the new initiative they are most heavily investing in. In fact, in surveying the field, I’m estimating that marketing services revenue could equal at least 10 percent of newspaper company ad revenue — pushing $2 billion — by 2016. Aspirationally, this is the third leg of newspaper revenue — after advertising and circulation revenue — publishers know they need.

The business push goes by several names: marketing services, digital services, “becoming a regional agency.” Those terms all point to the same business, which targets small and medium-sized businesses (SMB). It’s a category of businesses many dailies long ignored — in the good times of 20-percent-plus profits, why focus on pennies, nickels, and dimes when the dollars were busting down the door? When Macy’s, Best Buy, and Safeway were subsidizing ink by the barrel, paying high rates, insertion orders were worth five figures.

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E-fairness proponents hope 2013 Marketplace Fairness Act will collect billions in unpaid online taxes

March 5, 2013 · 1 Comment

From The Plain Dealer

David Lewis, owner of Lewis Electronics in Shaker Heights, is fed up with customers who ask why he charges sales tax on items they can buy tax-free over the Internet. Some will even show him on their smart phones how much cheaper the price is online.

"As a brick-and-mortar retailer, I can get a [sale] because I provide better customer service than I need to," he said. "But I don't have a choice of paying that tax and I can't afford to eat it."

Lewis is among millions of retailers nationwide who are pinning their hopes on the latest version of the Marketplace Fairness Act introduced on Feb. 14, which would tax online sales at the same rates those items are taxed in stores.

The proposed federal law aims to close the loophole that lets online sellers like Amazon.com avoid charging sales tax in states like Ohio where they don't have any physical stores or warehouses.

Although people who shop at such sites are supposed to keep track of their purchases and pay the sales tax owed with their income taxes, less than 1 percent actually do.

"Don't put a sales tax on anybody or put a sales tax on everybody," said Lewis, whose 26-year-old business is facing a 30-percent drop in sales this year from Internet competitors.

That's on top of the 15 percent drop he saw in his 2012 sales.

He appreciates the customers who value his expertise and buy their stereo systems and custom leather interiors from him, but wonders "why should they be punished for supporting me?"

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Open-meetings laws, proposed Powell city amendment may be at odds

March 5, 2013 · Add Comment

From This Week News

Powell city leaders are standing by a proposal to expand City Council's right to meet privately, despite assertions that the proposition is on shaky legal ground.

Representatives of the Ohio Newspaper Association say a proposed charter amendment, which would expand the rights of Powell city officials to discuss matters in private executive sessions, could open the door to abuse.

"This might be the worst open-meetings language I have ever seen," said Dennis Hetzel, executive director of the Ohio Newspaper Association, a state trade group that represents Ohio newspapers. "It clearly violates the spirit of Ohio's open-meetings law, which only allows closed meetings under very specific circumstances.

"This is an open-ended invitation to deliberate about anything in secret any time two-thirds of the council wants to do it," Hetzel said. "This language essentially makes council immune from scrutiny whenever it wants to be immune from it. That is the opposite of what the open-meetings law was designed to do and the opposite of the intent of the charter language."

The amendment is one of seven Powell charter amendments set to be placed on the ballot in May or November; a final ballot date has not been chosen. All seven amendments were approved for the ballot at a Feb. 5 council meeting.

The amendment governing executive-session rules would make way for council to identify additional grounds on which discussions can remain confidential. Mayor Richard Cline said it would give council more flexibility to negotiate economic-incentive deals with companies interested in moving to Powell, among other potential uses.

If it's approved by voters, council could enter executive session to discuss an item if five out of seven council members agree it's necessary.

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Update on NCAA sports credentialing

March 5, 2013 · Add Comment

From This Week @ ASNE

(On March 4) representatives from six major national media groups met with representatives from the NCAA to discuss media concerns with current policies we have previously mentioned.

In Indianapolis, Tim Franklin, co-chair of ASNE's FOI Committee; Gerry Ahern, president of APSE; John Cherwa, chair of APSE's Legal Affairs Committee; David Barlow, cousel of SPJ; Jim Brady, president of ONA; and Mike Borland, president of NPPA, met with NCAA representatives Bob Williams, vice president of communications; Erik Christianson, managing director of external affairs; and Scott Bearby, general counsel.

The following items were agreed on as follow-up steps on the issues of media seating at the NCAA tournament:

The NCAA agreed to set up a call with our organizations after the upcoming basketball tournament to discuss the establishment of a permanent working group to address outstanding media issues.

The NCAA will include media groups in future discussions with the Division I men's basketball committee regarding the seating of working journalists in the tournament.

The NCAA said there would be no change to existing policies on photo positions at the basketball tournament.

The following items were agreed upon as follow-up steps on the issues of uniform injury reporting standards in football:

Editors will be invited to upcoming meetings with the NCAA and conference officials, and they will have the opportunity to introduce discussion on injury reporting standards.

The following items were agreed upon as follow-up steps on the issues of social media guidelines:

NCAA officials said there will be no numerical restrictions on social media posting during its tournament events.

NCAA officials will contact the Pac-12 Conference to inform the league that there is no longer a policy limiting live tweets during college basketball of football games by number.

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Repository editorial: Ruling strikes blow against secrecy

March 4, 2013 · Add Comment

Editorial from The Canton Repository

The issue: Ohio’s open-meeting laws
Our view: ‘Attorney-client privilege’ doesn’t give school board carte blanche

Thanks to a Franklin County court magistrate’s decision this week, public boards in Ohio may be less tempted to try to dodge the state’s open meetings law.

This is good news for all of us who want to know how local school boards, city councils and other public bodies do business on our behalf.

Here’s the backstory:

Columbus City Schools is in hot water with the state for changing enrollment figures to make its students’ achievement test scores look better on the district’s report card. Under state law, the board can meet privately with its attorney if it faces “pending or imminent court action.” But the Col-umbus district doesn’t face a lawsuit, so it can’t use that exemption to the open meetings law.

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Warren Buffett tells investors he loves newspapers

March 4, 2013 · Add Comment

From Jim Romenesko

Warren Buffett’s latest report to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders includes these observations about newspapers:

I love newspapers and, if their economics make sense, will buy them even when they fall far short of the size threshold we would require for the purchase of, say, a widget company. …At appropriate prices – and that means at a very low multiple of current earnings – we will purchase more papers of the type we like.
We do not believe that success will come from cutting either the news content or frequency of publication. Indeed, skimpy news coverage will almost certainly lead to skimpy readership. And the less-than-daily publication that is now being tried in some large towns or cities – while it may improve profits in the short term – seems certain to diminish the papers’ relevance over time.
Berkshire’s cash earnings from its papers will almost certainly trend downward over time. Even a sensible Internet strategy will not be able to prevent modest erosion. At our cost, however, I believe these papers will meet or exceed our economic test for acquisitions. Results to date support that belief.

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Former Toledo Blade sports writer Jim Taylor passes away

March 4, 2013 · Add Comment

Jim Taylor, whose clarity of eye and deft prose transported Blade readers to Super Bowls and college bowls, the World Series, heavyweight title bouts, and major golf matches, died Thursday in the University of Toledo Medical Center, the former Medical College of Ohio Hospital. He was 85.

He had pneumonia, his wife, Jan, said. He had Alzheimer’s disease and for nearly four years lived in Parkcliffe Alzheimer’s Community.

Before that, Mr. Taylor’s wife took care of him for several years in their South Toledo home.

Mr. Taylor wrote a regular sports column, “Taylored Topics,” for much of his last 20 years at The Blade. He retired on May 31, 1990. He worked at the newspaper from 1963-65 and returned in 1967 after a yearlong stint covering pro football at the Detroit Free Press.

“He was a step above the rest of us,” said Chet Sullwold, a retired colleague who during his own long Blade career was executive sports editor and a sports writer.

Mr. Taylor’s last column on June 1, 1990, began: “I’ve followed the bouncing ball over white-striped meadows and the flat courts, through the swales, and hills, and sand for more than 40 years.

“It’s been a special experience in a world of special people,” he wrote. “Now it’s time to go.”

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Shadows lengthen on access to public records

March 1, 2013 · Add Comment

By Dennis Hetzel, Executive Director

Every year, Sunshine Week underscores the importance of open government across the nation. It is a perfect moment to share concerns in Ohio about ever-growing exceptions to an open records law that should ensure you have access to information about what your government officials do and how well they do it.

Whether you’re a Tea Party activist, just an everyday citizen or an unrepentant liberal, we think you should be able to agree on this subject. The exception train needs to slow down.

Ohio’s statute once was considered a model open records law nationally. Most public officials are well-intentioned, and it’s often the case that each idea for a new exception has a justification that appears reasonable in isolation. It is the cumulative effect that alarms us.

We now have 29 categories of records that are secret under Ohio law. They’ve run out of single letters, so the latest exception was lettered “cc.” I have seen proposals already in the new legislative session involving fees for county recorder records, new restrictions on school-related records and more. Certain categories require repairs, too. For example, the lack of information on how taxpayer money is being spent at many Ohio charter schools should be fixed.

Government is a custodian of public records, not the owner. Restrictions on access should leap a high bar; there should be no reasonable doubt that secrecy is the better option.

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Magistrate raps Columbus school board on open meetings

February 28, 2013 · 1 Comment

From The Columbus Dispatch

Simply having an attorney in the room does not allow the Columbus Board of Education to close meetings about its ongoing student-data scandal, a Franklin County magistrate ruled yesterday.

Franklin County Common Pleas Magistrate Tim McCarthy issued a preliminary injunction that orders the school board to stop such meetings.

In doing so, McCarthy rejected a legal theory developed by Robert “Buzz” Trafford, a Columbus attorney the board hired to advise it on the scandal. Trafford, managing partner with Porter Wright, had argued that the age-old common-law edict of attorney-client privilege — or the right to meet privately with an attorney — required the board to close meetings to speak with him.

The board used the tactic to close seven meetings last year, over objections from The Dispatch, which charged that the board was violating the Ohio Open Meetings Act. The newspaper sued, resulting in the decision released yesterday.

“It’s been The Dispatch’s position that the school board had adopted a position inconsistent with the Ohio case law, including two Ohio Court of Appeals decisions, and today the magistrate agrees,” said Marion H. Little Jr., attorney for The Dispatchand a partner with Zeiger, Tigges & Little, of Columbus .The court determined that “a meeting that violates this order would cause irreparable harm and prejudice to” the newspaper.

McCarthy cited one of the same appeals-court cases that the newspaper’s reporters had pointed out to Trafford in concluding that the board can’t rely on attorney-client privilege as a reason to have private meetings on the data scandal.

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Otterbein journalists, police in public records fight

February 28, 2013 · 1 Comment

From This Week News

Otterbein University student journalists, led by adviser and communications professor Hillary Warren, are preparing to do battle with the university officials over university police records.

Since last summer, Warren and her students have been engaged in a back and forth with university officials on whether Otterbein University Police fall under Ohio public records laws and must provide public police records.

"People in the community have a right to know how the police are behaving," Warren said. "People have a right to know if their community is safe.

"People have a right to know if someone was arrested are charged if it was done right. I don't know of another law-enforcement body in this country that's allowed to operate in secrecy."

The debate began when Otterbein's security force underwent Ohio Peace Officer training in 2011 and converted to an official police force that July.

Initially, Otterbein police officials said they believed the university police force was subject to Ohio public records law, said Otterbein Police Chief Larry Banaszak.

But at a public records training course held by the Ohio Attorney General's office last fall, an official from the Attorney General's office advised that as a private university, Otterbein did not have to provide public reports, Banaszak said.

University officials do not want to release student-related crime information if they don't have to, Banaszak said, because they want to protect the privacy of students who are victims of or who perpetrate minor campus crimes.

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Scripps newspaper revenue down 4.6% in 4th quarter

February 28, 2013 · Add Comment

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Beacon’s Lin-Fisher honored with journalism award

February 28, 2013 · Add Comment

From The Beacon Journal

Betty Lin-Fisher, consumer writer on the business news desk at the Beacon Journal, has been named recipient of the 2013 Diversity in Media Distinguished Leadership Award by Kent State University.

She will be honored at ceremonies at Kent State on April 2.

The award is part of a journalism program honoring the late Robert McGruder.

The awards recognize the accomplishments of media professionals who encourage diversity in the field of journalism.

McGruder was a former executive editor of the Detroit Free Press, managing editor of the Plain Dealer in Cleveland and a graduate of Kent State University. McGruder died of cancer in 2002.

The 2013 McGruder Lecture and Award winner is Russ Mitchell, newscaster on WKYC (Channel 3) in Cleveland.

Lin-Fisher, 39, is an 18-year veteran of the Beacon Journal and has worked as a copy editor, metro reporter and assistant metro editor. For the last 12 years, she has been the consumer reporter and columnist and a general business reporter.

She covers consumer issues as well as several business beats, including retail, grocery stores, utilities and banks.

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Survey: Community papers still tops for local news

February 27, 2013 · 2 Comments

Community newspaper readers, surveyed recently, still say they prefer their local papers for getting their news and information. The survey was conducted in small U.S. towns and cities where the circulation size of the local newspaper was 15,000 or less.

The survey was conducted for the National Newspaper Association by the research arm of the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. This is the survey’s seventh year.

NNA President Merle Baranczyk, publisher of the Mountain Mail in Salida, CO, said the survey shows that without a doubt, people read their community newspapers.

“The numbers are self-evident. They indicate the level of connectedness people have with their community newspaper,” Baranczyk said. “From year to year, the studies have shown that people believe in their local papers, for the news they need and the advertising they rely on.”

Since 2005, NNA has done research on how people read and what they think about their local newspaper. Results have been consistent over the years, even as sample and community sizes have been adjusted slightly.

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State Rep. Lou Terhar: Restrict access to state job applicants

February 27, 2013 · Add Comment

From The Cincinnati Enquirer

A Southwest Ohio lawmaker is circulating a proposal to make it harder to find out about applicants for state jobs.

State Rep. Lou Terhar, R-Green Township, told The Enquirer the legislation is needed to “attract the best and brightest” to work for the state. The legislation would have no impact, he said, on the hiring practices of local government or school districts.

Terhar said the state’s public records law “is necessary to ensure public transparency,” but he wants to tweek it a bit.

Dennis Hetzel, executive director of the Ohio Newspaper Association, told The Enquirer the bill is just an example of “adding another exception to what used to be a model open records law. All the exceptions have gotten out of control. This never ends.”

Terhar said talented individuals who might be interested in working for Ohio don’t want to put their current jobs on the line, which could happen if an employer finds that person applied for another job. The lawmaker said private industry doesn’t release job applicant names and to a limited extent the state should follow that practice.

Terhar said his bill would require the name, resume and other information of a job candidate to be released should the person be offered and accept an interview for the position, but kept private until that point.

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Secrecy is trumping public interest in gun control coverage

February 26, 2013 · Add Comment

From Online Journalism Review

Our impoverished national conversation on guns appears to have a new casualty: public information.

The latest victim is the Bangor Daily News in Bangor, Me., whose request for the names of concealed gun permit holders – a public record in Maine – unleashed a firestorm. The paper withdrew its request.

The reason this sounds familiar, of course, is because of the controversy last December, when a White Plains, N.Y., newspaper (the Journal News) published the names and addresses of handgun permit holders. That newspaper, too, ended up succumbing to the outrage directed against it.

During the course of the latter controversy, the newspaper’s publisher, Janet Hasson, had this to say: “New York residents have the right to own guns with a permit and they also have a right to access public information.” Makes good sense to me. But not to the many public officials who, in each of these cases,rushed to make the information private.

Citizens who are reassured by this stampede to withhold information should consider: Secrecy is almost always the first instinct of politicians. That previous lawmakers have made a determination that the name and address of any handgun permit holder in New York State “shall be a public record” is evidence of an uncommonly enlightened understanding that certain kinds of information should be in the public domain. Why today’s readiness to deny that it is in the public interestfor such information to be available? We seem to be in one of those recurring periods in our society when concerns about privacy regularly trump an allegiance to informed self-governance. Fear for loss of privacy is eminently reasonable. But we can’t afford to forget the cost of ignorance.

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Cox Media Group to sell TV Stations in four markets, including WTOV-TV in Steubenville

February 26, 2013 · Add Comment

From a Cox Media Group Press Release

Cox Media Group (CMG) has reached a definitive agreement with Sinclair Television to sell TV stations in four markets as part of its broadcast portfolio realignment. The markets include:

El Paso, Texas (KFOX-TV) (Fox affiliate)
Johnstown, Penn. (WJAC-TV) (NBC affiliate)
Reno (KRXI-TV (Fox affiliate) and KAME-TV (MyNetwork affiliate)
Steubenville, Ohio (WTOV-TV) (NBC affiliate)

This news follows on the heels of CMG’s Feb. 12 announcement that Connoisseur is buying CMG’s Southern Connecticut radio stations and that SummitMedia is buying radio stations in Birmingham, Ala.; Greenville, S.C.; Hawaii; Louisville, Ky.; and Richmond, Va. All sales are expected to close during the second quarter following receipt of regulatory approvals. CMG is working with Citi as financial advisor and Dow Lohnes as transaction and regulatory counsel for all transactions.

The broadcast realignment, announced in July 2012, is part of CMG’s strategy to focus on larger markets, cross-media collaboration, and heightened impact in fewer markets.

“All of these media locations are valued brands with talented professionals who are committed to their audiences, advertisers and communities,” said CMG President Doug Franklin. “We wish all of the employees well and know they will continue to work hard to produce quality entertainment, news and information for their customers and new owners.”

As part of its broadcast realignment, CMG recently added four new TV stations in two markets – Jacksonville, Fla. and Tulsa, Okla. – to its broadcast group. The new stations – WAWS-TV (Fox) and WTEV-TV (CBS) in Jacksonville and KOKI-TV (Fox) and KMYT-TV (MyNetwork) in Tulsa – will provide opportunities for collaboration with CMG’s other businesses in those markets. CMG owns and operates WAWS-TV, KOKI-TV and KMYT-TV and provides operating services to WTEV-TV, which is owned by Bayshore Television.

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