InkBlots

Don Spille said he lost almost everything in Hurricane Katrina, including his home in Kenna, La., and his father, who lived in coastal Mississippi. The Tallahassee Democrat even ran a front-page story about Spille and his family…to coincide with the one-year anniversary of Katrina. But there was at least one big problem with Spille’s story – his father, Ed Spille Sr., isn’t dead. He’s alive and well and living in Central Florida.

Read the paper’s setting of the record straight and about other interesting corrections, clarifications and clarifications of corrections at the Regret the Error blog.

Oprah Winfrey made her first official visit to Kosciusko, her hometown, in nearly eight years on Labor Day to celebrate the opening of a multi-million dollar Boys and Girls Club Facility that she helped fund through her foundation. She was quick, however, to pass out accolades and credit to local folks who spearheaded the project.

The Star-Herald has a play-by-play of the day’s events. (She even stopped for fries at Burger King.)

The Clarion-Ledger: Oprah thanked her grandmother, Hattie Mae Lee, who presided over Winfrey’s formative years in Attala County.

AP via The Sun Herald: “What I have learned is you dream a big dream and you hand that dream over to a power that is greater than yourself. I call it God.”

USA Today has a cover story on the Manning Bros. rivalry:

“When Eli Manning got beat up as a child by his older brother, it wasn’t in the traditional manner. Instead of fists, Peyton Manning bruised his kid brother with bullet-like football passes…”

Note the AP cutline for the photo of the two gets the brothers confused.

Former Delta Democrat Times editor and Sun Herald reporter Donald Adderton has landed in New Jersey as assistant city editor of the Herald News. We found a column or two by him the other day online.

Jim Gabour, a noted documentary producer/director, has an interesting perspective on digitaljournalist.org about the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the plight of John McCusker, the  Times-Picayune photojournalist whose meltdown in front of New Orleans police was well-documented in his own paper and nationwide in the press this summer.

Begins his essay: “The destruction laid upon New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina was a direct result of women’s lib…”

Jonathan Miles, a 35-year-old freelance writer for Men’s Journal and The New York Times, among other titles, was born in Cleveland, raised in Phoenix, but considers home to be Oxford, which he described as a “cheap and funky enclave for misfits, drunks, vaguely artistic aspirants, blues travelers, (and) freaks of the highest order.” Despite his, um, carnival of impressions, (or because of it, actually) a recent interview on popmatters.com is a must read.

Turns out, Miles was dismissed from the Oxford Eagle after three years as a staff writer covering topics from school board meetings to murders and, of course, an unfortunate instance of romance between man and bovine that a few of us north Mississippi editors and writers will shudder to recall. He still calls his Eagle tenure “invaluable.”

Miles talks about the magic of Mississippi, the allure and romanticism of newspapering, “finding stories you own,” and how the late, great novelist Larry Brown changed his life. Read the article here…

The Chicago Tribune stuck its proverbial toe in the pond of free-circulation papers back in 2002, launching RedEye, a Monday-Friday tabloid aimed at professionals in their 20s and 30s. Now, editor Jane Hirt says in an interview with journalismjobs.com the paper has “gone all the way,” moving from a paid-free hybrid to one that’s available at no cost and subsists on advertising revenue alone: