InkBlots

Sun-Herald political editor Geoff Pender recently sat down for question-and-answer session with Gov. Haley Barbour on the upcoming one year anniversary of Katrina and the progress made on the Gulf Coast and in South Mississippi.

Someone named John Carroll, an alleged educator, scribing in something called The Phoenix, what we can only assume is a paper that must be offered for free before anyone will take a read, manages to insult everyone from his own state’s governor, to Trent Lott, to the very late Strom Thurmond, to just about the entire populace of Mississippi. And, oh, the Pascagoula reporter who covered Mitt Romney’s visit to the Gulf Coast. We can’t deny politicians make good targets, but classifying the entire state as “Low Achiever” is rather tired and unimaginative.

For those who still doubt the learned, very talented nature of Mississippi, we always enjoy recommending the Mississippi: Believe It! Website as the path to enlightenment.

WLBT’s Marsha Thompson gives the station credit for protecting consumers by instigating change in classified advertising policies at The Clarion-Ledger and Jackson Free Press. Seems some folks were being duped into buying postal exam booklets via the classifieds that are, in fact, offered free to the public by the USPS.

David Crisp of the free distribution Billings Outpost pontificates over the large newspaper companies trying to corner the distribution market in Montana, and he suggests the actions have a faint whiff of desperation to them. The hubbub is similar to the noise surrounding Gannett’s implementation of a distribution network in the Jackson metro area.

“Pam J.” of Massachusetts, reader of the Everyday Cheapskate published in the Northwest Herald and syndicated to a gazillion others, recently offered some startling advice to fellow tightwads: “To reduce the cost of subscribing to a newspaper, I read it mostly online.” This slap-to-the-forehead idea lets us traditional print folk know the gig is up and readers have caught on. Why pay if it can be had online for free?

Why, indeed. Even papers that had been charging for accessing Web content are coming around. And plenty of papers are facing the notion that they may one day forego cover prices or even newsprint itself.

Can free distribution be far behind for most of us? The Mary McMisers of the world aren’t the biggest concern — the big task ahead for traditional print is addressing the entire generation of surfers coming of age who’ve been conditioned that information is free.

The Wall Street Journal (via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) expounds on the story of homeowners denied claims by insurance companies in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, including one instance where a U.S. district judge has become the plaintiff in another suit against Nationwide Insurance.

The Clarion-Ledger has lost its bid to gain access to a copy of the contract between Entergy and Nissan North America. The paper – correctly in our expert opinion – argued the public deserves a right to see the pact between the entities, given that other Entergy customers might be subsidizing a special rate bestowed upon the automaker. The court opined that granting access to such would harm future competition for industry.

Something called the Drug War Chronicle, which — going by its URL — proposes an end to the drug war, references a recent article in the Laurel Leader-Call. The story centers on the investigation of the Southeast Mississippi Drug Task Force, which Brian Livingston reports is nearly complete.

Gov. Haley Barbour was Madison County Journal publisher Jim Prince’s guest recently at a meeting of the Canton Rotary Club.

Your sardonic editor has been reminded repeatedly over the past few days that he’s officially no longer a kid: First, a nice clerk at the grocery store informed him she knew of “Tang,” but only because she’d seen it on “That 70s Show;” second, he no longer recognizes one song in the pop top 10; third, the new editor of The Meridian Star is a youthful 26-years-old.

Wunderkind Fredie Carmichael (yes, only one D in Fredie) has returned to the Star to take the paper’s editorial reins. He’s an accomplished reporter who many will remember for his frequent wins at MPA summer confabs in years past.  He succeeds Steve Stewart, who departed this spring to become publisher of The Tidewater News in Franklin, Va.