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Plan would put Ohio’s ‘checkbook’ online

May 15, 2013 · Add Comment

From The Vindicator

A Republican lawmaker and the GOP state treasurer want to post Ohio’s checkbook online, enabling residents to keep tabs on state spending, particularly who receives public funds.

State Rep. Mike Dovilla of Berea, R-7th, said he plans to introduce his “Open Ohio” legislation this week to create an online database detailing all of the state’s expenditures. The site would be maintained by the state treasurer’s office and would provide an easy way for users to search checks issued by name or agency.

“Our taxpayers deserve to know what money is being spent on and where their money is being spent,” Dovilla said. “Our taxpayers deserve to know that we are committed as legislators to advancing efficient effective state government that respects them. Quite simply, our taxpayers deserve better. One of the best ways to accomplish this objective is to allow Ohioans themselves to help us root out government waste, fraud and abuse.”

The proposed database would include the date of each state expenditure, the name of the recipient, the agency that offered the payment and the amount of money involved.

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How the Reds built one of strongest social media followings in MLB

May 15, 2013 · Add Comment

From The Business Courier

Anybody who has checked out Brandon Phillips’ Twitter feed or gotten a picture posted on the Great American Ball Park scoreboard knows the Cincinnati Reds are heavily involved in social media. But who knew the teams’ fans are more connected through Twitter and Facebook than almost any other Major League Baseball team’s followers?

That’s right. The Reds ranked second among MLB’s 30 teams in fan engagement through Facebook during April. That’s just one of the key stats Lisa Braun, the Reds director of digital media, trotted out when I talked to her in the Reds executive offices Monday following the team’s successful homestand. It gets 1.5 likes, comments, shares and other interactions for each of its 650,000 Facebook fans.

Here’s another metric: The Reds rank fourth in getting fans to engage through Twitter. It gets 1.1 engagements – retweets, replies or clicks – on Twitter during April for each of its 200,000 followers.

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No warrant, no problem: How the government can still get your digital data

May 14, 2013 · Add Comment

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Former publisher of USA Today discusses digital revolution

May 14, 2013 · Add Comment

A former president and publisher of USA Today said (May 10) there’s no end in sight for how the digital revolution can transform the communications industry in a positive and meaningful way.

But David Hunke also said there’s still room for old-school journalism values of fair, accurate, and balanced reporting.

During a presentation at the University of Toledo, Mr. Hunke said he was proud to have been raised during an era in which getting a story right was as important as being the first to report it.

He said he is optimistic the laws of supply and demand will ultimately prevail, with market forces favoring online Internet publications that put substance and accuracy over style.

Now chief strategy officer at Digerati, a Detroit-based computer software and consulting company, Mr. Hunke has a distinctive perspective as an executive for companies that have heavily invested in traditional and emerging technologies.

The former chief executive officer of the Detroit Media Partnership and publisher of the Detroit Free Press gave an upbeat assessment of the digital era.

He said it has put the world on the cusp of great improvements.

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Local TV viewers crazy for social media, newspapers generate more tweets

May 14, 2013 · Add Comment

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Magnificat High School in Rocky River selects former Gannett columnist Renata Rafferty as school’s first lay president

May 14, 2013 · Add Comment

From The Plain Dealer

A former Gannett News Service columnist and noted expert on charitable giving has been selected to serve as president of Magnificat High School.

The school's Board of Directors, with the support of the Sisters of the Humility of Mary, announced Renata J. Rafferty will become the school's third president - the first lay leader of the Magnificat community - in July.

Magnificat Board Chair P. Kelly Tompkins said it is an exciting time for the school.

"After a six-month search, the Search Committee, Board of Directors and Sisters of the Humility of Mary are confident that Renata’s experience, zeal and passion for Catholic education and the empowerment of young women will be invaluable to the Magnificat Community," Tompkins said.

"Renata understands and appreciates the virtues of teaching and learning; especially the education of girls and women around the world.”

Rafferty succeeds Sister Carol Anne Smith, H.M. who announced in late 2012 that she was stepping down at the end of the current school year.

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Development agencies, chambers ask Ohio Legislature to clarify laws on auditor’s powers over private companies

May 13, 2013 · Add Comment

From The Plain Dealer

The tug-of-war over whether Auditor Dave Yost has the power to examine JobsOhio's books eased after the development company delivered records to Yost's staff to comply with a subpoena.

But the issue is far from settled.

The auditor's staff and JobsOhio are negotiating over Round 2 -- the next audit.

But while this specific tussle involved Yost and JobsOhio, the job creation entity that was the brainchild of Republican Gov. John Kasich, several groups focused on business growth have made pleas to the General Assembly to help settle the issue in a broader context before it hurts job development in the state. They want legislation that makes it clear how far into a private company's books the auditor can reach.

The auditor's office issued the subpoena in March, demanding records it had sought for months from the private, non-profit development corporation. JobsOhio complied, but at the time made clear it disagreed.

Yost, a Republican, contends that he has authority to look at the private non-profit corporation's books because the root of its revenue is linked to state money. JobsOhio says that as a private company its books are beyond his authority.

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NFL holds journalism boot camp at Bowling Green

May 13, 2013 · Add Comment

When Dick Maxwell retired as senior director of broadcasting for the National Football League in 2006, league officials weren’t ready to let him walk out the door.

As Maxwell prepared to retire, the league came to him with a proposal: To stay involved with the NFL’s player engagement department in its career outreach and transition programs, and to offer current and former players consultation in his area of expertise.

For the next six years, Maxwell, a Fostoria High School and Bowling Green State University graduate, spearheaded the NFL’s broadcasting boot camp, a four-day seminar that introduces current and former players to the broadcasting industry.

Last year, the NFL asked Maxwell to create another program, one that focused on social media and digital media with a writing component. That program comes to fruition today when Maxwell and the NFL open the three-day NFL Sports Journalism and Communications Boot Camp at BGSU.

“The sports journalism one made a lot of sense,” said Maxwell, who worked in the NFL for 36 years and who established the Maxwell Center for Sport Media at BGSU. “The players want to stay involved, if possible, in sports somehow, either as a full-time second career or as a career that could complement what they’re doing as a second career. Some players own their own companies that have nothing do with with sports, but they want to keep their hand in sports, and they can get involved in media.”

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Times-Picayune of New Orleans goes back to producing a printed product every day

May 13, 2013 · Add Comment

From The NY Times

A year after announcing a plan to reorganize The Times-Picayune of New Orleans into a more digitally focused enterprise that produced a newspaper just three days a week — enraging local residents — its owners have added a new innovation: they will go back to producing a printed product every day.

“We are excited about this opportunity to extend our daily reach in print,” an advertising executive at the newspaper said in the announcement.

You don’t say.

This daily newspaper thing may be catching on. Last week, The Philadelphia Inquirer announced that it would begin selling a Saturday edition on newsstands after a nearly two-year hiatus.

The much ballyhooed unmaking of daily newspapering seems to be unmaking itself, and there’s a reason for that. Most newspapers have hung onto the ancient practice of embedding prose on a page and throwing it in people’s yards because that’s where the money and the customers are for the time being.

The industry tried chasing clicks for a while to win back fleeing advertisers, decided it was a fool’s errand and is now turning to customers for revenue. But in order to charge people for news, you have to prosecute journalism.

The belief that historic monopolies will hold together just on the basis of inertia has proved to be wrong. Newspapers that have cut their operations beyond usefulness or quit delivering a daily print presence have suffered. The audience has to be earned every day.

Newspaper publishing will never return to the 30 percent plus margins it once had, but some people believe there is a business model. Warren E. Buffett thinks that a 10 percent return is reasonable, now that sale prices have sunk.

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Benjamin J. Marrison commentary: You can help by sharing our fine work with others

May 13, 2013 · Add Comment

From The Dispatch

I had the opportunity during several days last week to listen to people in focus groups talk candidly about how they consume information in this digital age.

It was both fascinating and frustrating.

Generally speaking, our media-consumption habits have changed dramatically across a wide demographic spectrum.

Not surprisingly, fewer of us receive news solely from newspapers and television. Generally speaking, you don’t trust any single source for information, although you put The Dispatch highest on your credibility list for local sources.

Many of you watch TV with a computer or electronic tablet on your lap, so that you can look up more information about topics discussed on TV or other sources, such as social media, or because you don’t want to wait until the story just teased on TV is aired. You are very impatient when getting information, so much so that you’re even willing to accept bad information, so long as you get it quickly.

Many in the focus groups said that they accept that the initial reports from breaking news events will include errors that will be sorted out later — statements that left me numb, because we work diligently to verify information before we report it on any platform, including social media.

Most of those we heard from said they were very busy — too busy, in fact, and overwhelmed with information. What they need, they said, is someone to sift through the best news out there and deliver it to them.

If I had hair to pull out, I would have done so for a simple reason: That’s what we do.

We have a newsroom full of people working for you day and night. When covering news and sports in central and southeastern Ohio, we have the largest, best-trained staff in the region, and no one else is close.

In fact, other “news” outlets often rely on our work for their reports that you’re accessing on smart phones and computers.

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U.S. House approves bill to change overtime pay law

May 10, 2013 · Add Comment

From the Dayton Daily News

The Republican-led House on Wednesday approved a measure that would give private sector workers the option of trading overtime pay for extra time off weeks or months later.

The bill, approved on a 223-204 vote, would allow employees who work more than 40 hours a week to save up to 160 hours of earned time off for future use. GOP lawmakers say they want to give busy working parents at private firms the same flexibility that public sector workers have to take time off to spend with their children or care for aging parents.

Democrats and worker advocacy groups say it opens the door for employers to pressure workers not to take overtime pay. And they warn there is no guarantee workers would be able to take the extra time off when they want.

The bill has little chance of success in the Democratic-controlled Senate. President Barack Obama has threatened a veto, saying the bill would not prevent employers from slashing overtime hours and doesn't offer enough protection for workers who may not want to receive compensatory time off instead of overtime pay.

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AOL/Patch backed online public notice bill dies in California

May 9, 2013 · Add Comment

From the California Newspaper Publishers Association

Assemblyman Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood), the author of Legislation sponsored by AOL/Patch that would threaten the system of printed public notices in newspapers has pulled the bill, AB 642, from the Assembly Judiciary Committee's hearing schedule.

AB 642 would have allowed Internet-only entities to become adjudicated as newspapers of general circulation qualified to post public notices on the Internet.

Rendon's decision means the bill is dead for this legislative session. Since this is the first year of the biennial session, AB 642 will be eligible to be heard in January with all of the other two-year bills.

This result would not have been possible but for the efforts of the Executive Committee, Governmental Affairs Committee, Public Notice Committee and CNPA's membership, including the membership's willingness to assess itself to fund the creation of the CNPA aggregated website, capublicnotice.com, the nearly completed reader survey and the public notice defense fund. The website was a big help in our efforts to defeat the bill.

Staff thanks CNPA members for their incredibly thoughtful letters, phone calls and sit-down meetings with assembly members. That pressure was invaluable and made a deep impression on the author leading to this result. Staff also recognizes the additional lobbying power brought to bear on behalf of the industry by John O'Malley, Capitol Advocates, and Darius Anderson and his Platinum Advisors.

Staff will continue to develop arguments and gather information that demonstrates the superiority of published notices in newspapers in anticipation of the bill being heard by the Judiciary Committee in January.

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AOL: Will use ‘all means possible’ to get Patch to profitability

May 9, 2013 · Add Comment

From StreetFight

AOL’s hyperlocal media network Patch has rolled out its redesign from a handful of pilot communities to 100 markets across the country, Tim Armstrong, AOL’s chief executive, said during an earnings call Wednesday morning. The move comes as AOL focuses in on Patch’s model, pushing the closely-watched news network to reach run-rate profitability by Q4 of this year.

The redesign, which the company originally debuted on several of the network’s sites in September 2012, aimed to transition Patch from a traditional news property to a community-driven platform, in part to reduce the heavy editorial costs that have brought down the company’s bottom line. The original pilot centered around subject-specific Groups, where readers could discuss topics such as crime, schools, and government.

The rolled out redesign appears to be something of a departure from the original pilot. On the Bellmore, NY site — one of the original pilots that has since been updated — Groups (now called Boards), which dominated the pilot’s central feed, are now buried into a secondary tab, leaving the homepage a mixture of blog posts and “announcements” posted by readers.

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See Also

AOL/Patch backed online public notice bill dies in California (from California Newspaper Publishers Association)

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The Repository’s Young, Thomas win top awards

May 9, 2013 · Add Comment

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Otterbein University won’t demand students keep mum on sexual assaults

May 9, 2013 · Add Comment

From The Columbus Dispatch

Otterbein University will stop requiring students involved in sexual-assault cases to sign confidentiality agreements, after student journalists discovered that the school was violating federal law.

After initially denying it, an official at the private liberal-arts school in Westerville told reporters for the student newspaper on Monday that he didn’t realize Otterbein had had victims, as well as others, sign a nondisclosure clause. The requirement is being dropped.

“Otterbein will be seeking legal counsel to better understand the rights of our students and the institution,” Otterbein’s vice president of Student Affairs, Bob Gatti, told The Dispatch in an email last night.

The privacy clause has been removed from a judicial administrative checklist that students receive once an assault is reported, Gatti said. The university also will make other changes if necessary.

“We support open conversation and actively encouraging students to seek counsel from campus or off-campus resources,” he added.

Earlier this week, Gatti told the student reporters that the nondisclosure clause was included in the form to conform with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act — FERPA — which prevents colleges from releasing student academic records, such as grades.

But public-records advocates said FERPA is not intended to allow schools to hide crimes.

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County worker fired over comment on Akron Beacon Journal website

May 9, 2013 · Add Comment

From The Akron Beacon Journal

The Summit County Board of Elections fired a longtime employee Monday after he wrote an anonymous comment on the Beacon Journal’s website saying he hoped a judge and prosecutor would be the next victims of an accused killer.

Andrew Wright, a Republican who worked on campaign finance reports, was identified as the author following an investigation by both the sheriff and prosecutor.

No criminal charges were filed in the case.

The one-sentence comment was made on Ohio.com in January under the name “DeathByAkron.” It was posted on a story about an Akron man acquitted by a jury of murder and targeted Democratic Common Pleas Judge Mary Margaret Rowlands and county Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh.

“Rowlands and Bevan Walsh hopefully they will be the victims of this guy the next time,” Wright wrote.

The elections board made its decision after meeting in a closed-door session that lasted an hour and 45 minutes.

When the board reconvened, Ray Weber, a Republican board member, made two motions: to adopt a new, stricter Internet-use policy and to fire Wright, who is the brother of Common Pleas Judge Alison McCarty.

The board unanimously approved both motions.

Weber suggested the board terminate Wright, who didn’t attend the meeting, for “bringing embarrassment to the board.”

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Appeals court strikes down union poster rule

May 9, 2013 · Add Comment

From The Plain Dealer

In another blow to the nation's dwindling labor unions, an appeals court on Tuesday struck down a federal rule that would have required millions of businesses to put up posters informing workers of their right to form a union.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the National Labor Relations Board violated employers' free speech rights in in trying to force them to display the posters or face charges of committing an unfair labor practice.

Unions had hoped the posters would help them boost falling membership, but business groups argued that they were too one-sided in favor of unionization.

The court's ruling is the latest success for business groups that have worked to prevent the NLRB from shifting the legal landscape in favor of labor unions, despite President Barack Obama's appointment of several labor-friendly board members.

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Editorial: JobsOhio’s ‘private’ status still generates controversy

May 8, 2013 · Add Comment

Editorial from the Vindicator

First, Ohio Auditor David Yost presented a compelling — and successful — argument that JobsOhio, the so-called private economic development agency, must be audited like any other public agency because it received more than $5 million in taxpayer dollars.

Republican Gov. John Kasich, the mastermind of JobsOhio, at first fought Republican Yost’s subpoena, but ultimately gave in by handing over the entity’s books. Transparency won the day.

Now, the Dayton Daily News has peeled another layer of the JobsOhio covering to reveal that the “private” designation is an exaggeration.

The newspaper analyzed records pertaining to the organization and its predecessor, the Ohio Department of Development, to show that Gov. Kasich’s characterization of ODOD as a “black hole” that failed to even return phone calls was a stretch.

The Daily News’ reporter, Andrew J. Tobias of the paper’s Columbus bureau, recalled a comment Kasich made when he was running for governor in 2010: “The days of trying to connect with business leaders through bureaucrats are over.” Tobias’ story noted that JobsOhio is staffed mostly by former development department employees and other ex-government workers.

And, nearly all those workers also received large raises to leave the public sector, the analysis shows.

But that’s not the only reason the public has a right to know what JobsOhio is up to.

Auditor Yost’s insistence on transparency is necessitated by the reality that $5.3 million in state grants were awarded to the agency and its subsidiary in fiscal 2012. In addition, state liquor profits are used to attract private financing.

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Scripps posts smaller Q1 loss despite dip in political ads

May 7, 2013 · Add Comment

From the Cincinnati Enquirer

Media company E.W. Scripps Co. posted a smaller first quarter loss despite seeing a significant dip in political revenue that helped drive it to profitability last year.

Cincinnati-based Scripps said Monday it had a net loss of $2.7 million, or 5 cents a share, in the first three months of 2013. The first quarter loss was down 40 percent from the comparable 2012 period.

Revenue was down 4.1 percent to $198.7 million in the first quarter and the company said the dip in political advertising was responsible for more than half the decline.

Political advertising during the presidential election campaign and other key races around the country helped lift the company’s revenue and profit level last year. However, the company warned its revenue for the remainder of the year would reflect a drop in advertising.

Scripps is among media companies that want to boost revenue from its digital operations. Through April, the company has hired 35 digital-only sales people and plans to add a total of 100 by the end of the year. Scripps said in the second quarter, it will move all but two of its newspaper markets to bundled subscriptions that include the digital platform.

This year, the company expects TV revenue to be down 10 percent from a year ago while newspaper revenues are expected to dip at a low-single-digit rate.

Scripps has 19 television affiliates including WCPO in Cincinnati and has daily and community newspapers in 13 U.S. markets.

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Editorial: Grants could help local officials to make records more accessible

May 6, 2013 · Add Comment

Editorial from The Columbus Dispatch

Taxpayers should know where their money goes, what their local government does and whether it is a good steward of public dollars.

While Ohio has better-than-average “sunshine” laws governing public-records accessibility, a proposed new law would help ensure that public information from Ohio’s hundreds of local-government entities is available online, is searchable and can be compared oranges to oranges with data from other local governments throughout the state.

Championed by Rep. Mike Duffey, R-Worthington, and Christina Hagan, R-Alliance, the DataOhio Initiative sets guidelines and establishes grant funding for local governments to put their data in a common, searchable format online. The effort would use commonly available, free software, and would establish $10,000 grants to help pay for the time that Ohio’s 2,334 general-purpose governments — counties, cities, villages and townships — would need to dedicate to making their data accessible through a common portal.

This is a common-sense idea that would provide benefits to everyone at a modest cost.

The state budget now being considered by the Ohio Senate initially would provide $3.5 million for the grant program, with the opportunity to expand funding later.

The initiative is voluntary, but Duffey thinks the $10,000 grants for a project that needn’t be time-consuming should prove compelling to local governments. Local officials themselves could benefit from benchmarking against peer cities; Duffey recalls that as a member of Worthington City Council, he found it difficult to compare metrics on how his city was doing with other cities around the state.

“With more information, people are going to make better choices,” Duffey told The Dispatch recently. “And with better choices, the cost of government is going to come down...natural efficiencies of scale are going to occur.”

The basic idea of the initiative has been championed for years by Gene Krebs, a former Ohio House member. Representing the Greater Ohio Policy Center, with which he was working a year ago, Krebs told the Ohio Senate that “Ohio is still a data desert” for those seeking to evaluate their local government’s performance and compare it with its peers.

The drive to encourage efficiency at the local level is critical to the state’s interest in making Ohio tax-friendly for residents and businesses. Rob Nichols, spokesman for Gov. John Kasich, told The Dispatch in discussing the issue a year ago that while state-level taxes have been reduced, “Ohio’s local-government taxes increased 41.6 percent from 1999 to 2009” according to the U.S. Census. “It’s unsustainable and is a barrier to job creation,” Nichols said.

Duffey also predicts making data easily accessible would create opportunities for private-sector research that could be commercialized or create jobs; he cites the growing field of “big data,” based on data analytics, and the recent decision of IBM to locate its new Client Center for Advanced Analytics in the Tuttle Crossing area.

He says the DataOhio Initiative would encourage more jobs in Ohio in the well-paying and growing field.

By simply making already-public data more accessible, this project can benefit all: residents, the private sector and the public sector.

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Canton Repository’s guidelines expanded in hope they’ll make writing letters easier

May 6, 2013 · Add Comment

By Gayle Beck, The Canton Repository

It finally feels like spring, and I finally feel like cleaning. One overdue task I’m getting to is sweeping the cobwebs out of The Rep’s guidelines for letters to the editor.

We published 945 letters on the Viewpoints page and the Sunday Your Voice section in 2012 — a decent showing but not enough to satisfy me, and maybe not you, either. We’ve also gotten off to a slow start this year, thanks to a balky new email system, but an improvement made last week should help us to process your letters faster.

By expanding the guidelines to cover more questions that you call and email The Rep about, I hope you’ll find the writing easier, so that we can feature more of your thoughts in your Rep and at CantonRep.com.

Here are the new guidelines that we’ll publish daily and post on our website, with a brief explanation of each.

Include your name, street address (only the city or township is printed) and a daytime phone number (used only for verification).

This should be self-explanatory, but it’s amazing how many letter writers omit this basic information, or give us a daytime number where they actually can’t be reached during the day. We just don’t have the staff or time to track down these folks.

Letters should be 300 or fewer words.

I know this can be tough to do when you feel passionately about a subject or are writing about a complex issue. The same frustration affects every writer here, but we, too, are bound by space limits.

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Centerville native named to Pulitzer board

May 6, 2013 · Add Comment

From the Michigan-Ohio AP News blog

Ohio native John Daniszewski, a top editor and vice president at AP with decades-long experience covering international news, has been named to the Pulitzer Prize Board.

Daniszewski, a native of Centerville, Ohio, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, joined the AP in 1979 and went overseas to Poland in 1987. In 1993, he was named as bureau chief in Johannesburg, South Africa. He left the AP in 1996 for the Los Angeles Times, serving as bureau chief in Cairo, Moscow and London, and remaining in Baghdad during the Iraq war to cover the U.S. invasion. He returned to AP as international editor in 2006 and was named a managing editor in 2007.

He was named in 2009 as AP's vice president and senior managing editor for international news, overseeing more than 500 editors and reporters around the world.

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Members ask about e-mail meetings, contest ads, public notices and more

May 3, 2013 · Add Comment

By Dennis Hetzel, Executive Director

Our legal hotline gets a steady stream of calls. Helping reporters, editors, advertising account executives and others solve problems is one of the best parts of my job, although sometimes the answers aren’t what any of us wants to hear.

Here, in Q&A format, are some of the responses we have given to recent member questions.

Board deliberates via e-mail

Q: A school board member has filed a lawsuit accusing the other board members of violating Ohio’s open meetings law by exchanging views and deliberating an issue via e-mail exchanges. Can they do that?

A: This is a murky one – one of those in which the courts may have to decide. It also suggests the law needs some clarity.

A meeting is defined as a prearranged gathering to discuss public business, though the courts have adopted a narrower definition of public business than we would like. (An excellent bill, Senate Bill 93, is pending in the Ohio Legislature that could fix this, by the way.) Obviously, most e-mail exchanges are not prearranged. However, in this case, it appears that the back-and-forth turned into exchanges that were neither unexpected nor unsolicited. The board members, in other words, were using e-mail to deliberate public business. This certainly violates the spirit of the law.

There might be a case here, but Lou Colombo, ONA’s legal hotline attorney, adds that it is hard to predict how a court will rule.

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Weekly newspaper for sale

May 3, 2013 · Add Comment

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Dispatch reporters to receive Central Ohio SPJ First Amendment Award

May 3, 2013 · Add Comment

From the Central Ohio SPJ

Bill Bush and Jennifer Smith Richards will be presented the First Amendment Award at the Central Ohio SPJ Pro Chapter’s annual Founders Day event for their work on the “Counting Kids Out” series, an investigation that continues to make headlines.

The award is the fifth in six years for a Dispatch staffer, going back to 2008 when Smith Richards and Jill Riepenhoff won for their work on the “ABCs of Betrayal” series.

Join your colleagues at the event May 16 at the Fawcett Center to celebrate their achievement.

Former Dispatch editor and freshman state representative Mike Curtin will be the keynote speaker.

Also at the event, Tom Griesdorn, retiring WBNS-10TV president and general manager, and Bill Cohen, who’s retiring after a 40-year career in public radio, will receive the chapter’s Appreciation Award for their service to journalism in central Ohio.

Tickets are $30 for SPJ members, $35 for non-members and can be purchased online at centralohiofoundersday.eventbrite.com. Reservations are needed by May 10.

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How journalists are using Facebook’s new live Q&A feature

May 3, 2013 · Add Comment

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Fill open records requests ASAP, AG official says

May 3, 2013 · Add Comment

From The Vindicator

A state attorney general office official advises local government to “go above and beyond” when it comes to honoring legitimate open-records requests.

That means filling the request as soon as possible, working with those seeking the information, and it’s not a bad idea to forgo charging a fee to those making the inquiries to create good will, said Jeff Clark, principal assistant attorney general.

Clark spoke Monday to about 60 to 70 government officials and community activists at a three-plus-hour training session at the Newport Branch of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County on the city’s South Side.

Nearly all of the session focused on open records with about 10 minutes at the end discussing open meetings.

“It can be very confusing when you get a request” for public records, said Youngstown Councilwoman Annie Gillam, D-1st, who attended Monday’s session. “It can get complicated. It’s always good to hear it for yourself.”

The state Legislature has changed Sunshine Laws — those dealing with open records and open meetings — over the years, and there have been court decisions resulting in other changes, so it’s important for public officials to understand the law, Clark said.

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Google AdWords certification training

May 3, 2013 · Add Comment

Editor's note: Thanks to an agreement between the ONA and the Local Media Association , ONA members receive a significant discounts off different LMA services. For the Google training described below, ONA members will be able to take part at the "Association Partners" rate.

From the Local Media Association

Local Media Association, the professional trade organization for over 2,220 local community newspapers and their online sites, has launched a program that will train sales professionals to be experts in Google AdWords in just three weeks. The program offers three options: a live-online-training module, on-site training or train-the-trainer. All participants are trained to take the Google-administered exams for final certification.

“Our Google AdWords certification-trainer, Amie Stein, is one of the best in the industry and has worked with and trained hundreds of sales professionals during her career,” said Nancy Lane, president of Local Media Association. “Last year local advertisers spent over $6 billion dollars on local paid search. That’s one third of the total amount spent on local digital advertising.”

Amie Stein, training and development director of Local Media Association added, “We see this as a way for local media to get in the game and get their share. When an account executive tells a client or prospect that they are Google AdWords certified it tells the client they have the knowledge and expertise to produce ROI.”

Local businesses are generating a high demand for assistance in paid search. Google AdWords certification gives local media account executives an advantage in this sophisticated ad medium. The affordably priced program is open to non-members also and trains sales reps in the fundamentals necessary to complete Google’s two certification exams.

LMA offers three Google AdWords certification-training options:

Live online-training module – Seven one-hour training sessions conducted online by our Google AdWords certification-trainer (with course materials and quizzes).

On-site training – The Google AdWords certification-trainer works with the local sales team to give them personal hands-on training for two days.

Train-the-trainer – The Google AdWords certification-trainer will consult with a publisher’s certified AdWords ReSeller to bring them to trainer status so that they can train their own sales professionals.

For more information go to http://www.suburban-news.org/Resources/GoogleAdWordsCertification.aspx

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Enquirer, Newark, Chillicothe win Gannett awards

May 3, 2013 · Add Comment

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Judge sides with ‘Dispatch’ in open-meetings school case

May 3, 2013 · Add Comment

From The Columbus Dispatch

Ruling in a lawsuit filed by The Dispatch, a judge has upheld a magistrate’s order prohibiting the Columbus Board of Education from meeting privately with its attorney to discuss the student-data scandal.

Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Julie Lynch issued the ruling yesterday, rejecting the school board’s effort to overturn a preliminary injunction granted in favor of The Dispatch. The school board had argued it was entitled to meet privately to discuss matters protected by attorney-client privilege.

Magistrate Tim McCarthy rejected that argument on Feb. 28 and granted the newspaper’s request for an order forbidding the meetings. He said the seven closed-door meetings of the school board with its attorney were legally questionable because they did not involve “pending or imminent court action,” which permits public bodies to meet in executive session.

An attorney for the school board asked Lynch to reverse McCarthy’s ruling. She refused, writing that the magistrate’s ruling was proper and the school board’s position was not “ well-taken.”

The case is scheduled to go to trial in the fall on The Dispatch’s claims that the school-board meetings excluding the news media and the public violated Ohio’s open-meetings laws. The newspaper is seeking a permanent injunction prohibiting such meetings and payment of its attorney fees.

Columbus City Schools spokesman Jeff Warner said he could not comment on Lynch’s ruling. The school board’s attorney in the case, Douglas R. Cole of Dublin, could not be reached for comment.

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Toledo paper for homeless moves forward

May 2, 2013 · Add Comment

A new chapter is about to begin in the life of an upstart newspaper that has breathed new life into some of Toledo’s road-weary souls.

Toledo Streets, the city’s only paper written largely by and produced with significant help from area homeless people, introduced a new editor in chief on Wednesday.

Jamie Rye, missions pastor at Crossroads Community Church in Ottawa Lake, will be one of the paper’s two paid employees. The other is newly hired Christy Grob, Toledo Streets director of vendor management.

Mr. Rye replaces founding Editor in Chief Amanda Faith Moore, who plans to relocate to southern Ohio with her husband after getting married in Toledo on May 25.

Toledo Streets “really reflects the community and voices of the community,” Mr. Rye said.

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Statehouse reporting veteran Bill Cohen retiring after 40 years

May 2, 2013 · Add Comment

From WOSU Public Media

Fresh out of college, Bill Cohen went to work at WOSU in 1970. It wasn’t long before he took a job as a reporter at what would become the public radio statehouse news bureau. Now after more than 40 years in public broadcasting Bill Cohen is set to retire.

For almost 40 years Bill Cohen has been reporting on state government from an office in the basement of the Ohio Statehouse.

“I don’t know if that’s a commentary on how the legislators feel about us but that’s okay; as long as we’ve got some space to do our job,” Cohen says.

Cohen is one of the longest serving members of the Statehouse press corps. He follows Ohio’s political maneuverings as easily as he navigates the capitol building’s labyrinth of underground walkways.

“This is one of the hallways here in the basement of the capitol that leads to the radio/TV newsroom here where we do the work after we gather the raw materials for our stories.” Cohen says.

He writes copy at his desk then moves to a small studio where he assembles each report, always signing off with the familiar:

Bill Cohen at the Ohio Pubic Radio Statehouse News Bureau.

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Additional Coverage

Video about Bill Cohen's retirement (From The Ohio Channel)

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Sidney Daily News gets Romenesko shout-out

May 2, 2013 · Add Comment

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Senate Judiciary Committee approves electronic privacy bill

May 2, 2013 · Add Comment

The Newspaper Association of America applauds the Senate Judiciary Committee for passing a bill that would reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (S. 607), sponsored by Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah. The strong bipartisan vote reflects the importance of requiring the government to obtain a warrant from a judge based on probable cause before seeking the contents of private electronic communications and documents stored by third-party service providers.

“As more journalists move to the cloud – whether they use Web-based e-mail or document storage services – having a higher standard for government access to electronic content is critical to ensuring online privacy and protecting the integrity of the newsgathering process,” said NAA President and CEO Caroline Little.

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