The offices of the Mississippi Press Association and Mississippi Press Services will be closed Monday and Tuesday, Dec. 24-25, for the Christmas holiday. Additionally, we will close Tuesday, Jan. 1 for New Years Day. Our best wishes for a happy and safe holiday season to all our members, clients and associates.
Members attending next month’s Mid-Winter Conference at the Jackson Hilton have until Jan. 3 to make their reservations at MPA’s group rate of $114 per night.
Mississippi Power CEO Anthony Topazi is the honoree for the 2008 Celebrity Roast to benefit the Mississippi Press Association Education Foundation. The event will serve as the kick-off for the 2007 Mid-Winter Conference next month in Jackson.
Previously, Topazi was executive vice president at Southern Company Generation & Energy Marketing, responsible for Southern Company’s energy trading and wholesale marketing. He began his career with Alabama Power in 1969 as a cooperative education student engineer.
Perspective Editor Sid Salter, a past MPA president and one-time roast honoree, will once again service as roastmaster.
Other past honorees include Gov. Haley Barbour, Sen. Trent Lott and Ole Miss Chancellor Robert Khayat.
Tickets are $80 and tables of eight are $575. Both are available by calling the MPA, 601-981-3060.
MPA/MPS has retained the services of Hayes Dent Public Strategies, a Jackson-based firm, to serve as its representative at the capitol and act as an advocate for MPA’s 110 member publications. Under terms of the agreement, HDPS began representing MPA Dec. 1.
Hayes Dent, chairman of the firm, is a former executive director of the Delta Regional Authority, a federal-state partnership agency created to foster development in that region. He has also worked in the Congressional Affairs Office for the United States Department of Agriculture and in the administration of Gov. Kirk Fordice. Business partner Steve Browning previously served as executive director of Mississippians for Economic Progress, a non-profit coalition of trade and medical associations. It was during his tenure at MFEP the state legislature passed the 2004 Tort Reform Act. He has also served as an aide to Sen. Trent Lott.
The pair have met with MPA Governmental Affairs Chairman Jim Prince, publisher of the Madison County Journal and the Neshoba Democrat, concerning the association’s 2008 legislative agenda. Items of interest include continued efforts to pass uniform incident report legislation, assisting with further sunshine law initiatives, protecting public notices in newspapers and monitoring tax reform proposals.
Dent and Browning are expected to attend portions of the Mid-Winter Conference in January and will be officially introduced to the membership during the event.
From the Editors Weblog: A wave of outsourcing will begin in 2008 in the newspaper industry according to a survey of 15 private company executives done by Deutsche Bank analyst Paul Ginocchio. Outsourcing appears to be the most-sought solution to counter the advertising revenues’ swoon.
From MediaLife Magazine: The great social value of newspapers traditionally was that they were read by the leaders of their communities, the folks with the deepest investments, whether business owners or homeowners or civic leaders. They cared, and their opinions mattered. That’s no less so in this internet era.
From Editor and Publisher: Less than three weeks before one of the most competitive Iowa Caucuses ever, The Gazette of Cedar Rapids, the state’s second-largest paper, has lost its editor. Mark Bowden, who has been with the 59,425 daily-circulation paper since 1979 and served as editor for more than a decade left the paper last Tuesday with little explanation, according to staffers.
