Charlie Mitchell, who has been pontificating now for 20 years on the op-ed pages of The Vicksburg Post and other state newspapers, recently lamented the passing of copyright law in the U.S., which he declared as dead as Hammurabi and his code.
(If you need a refresher on your ancient Babylonian references, you may find it here.)
No doubt there were plenty of conversations at the Lake County News-Sun in Waukegan, Ill. about “ripping the band-aid off all at one” in terms of shock to readers. The 22,000 daily recent converted from a afternoon broadsheet to a morning “compact” (read that: tabloid) and did so less than two months after the arrival of a new publisher.
John McCusker, a photographer for New Orlean’s Times-Picayune was arrested last week after he begged cops to shoot him. E&P reports McCusker was despondent after realizing insurance payments would not be enough to rebuild his home after hurricane Katrina.
A couple of days after the incident, McCusker was being held for psychiatric evaluation and more than $9,000 had been raised on his behalf by Friends of the Times-Picayune, a philanthropic effort founded last year to benefit staffers who were victims of the massive storm.
In an unrelated incident, a 27-year-old Baton Rouge-based sportswriter for the paper was busted in a teen internet sex sting. William Kalec was arrested last Wednesday in Kenner, La. He faces a mandatory two years in prison if convicted.
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