InkBlots

The Insurance Journal reports State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. has filed a motion in federal court in Gulfport, claiming it will get a fairer trial somewhere other than the Mississippi Gulf Coast. State Farm, in its motion, cites news coverage in The Sun Herald newspaper, “negative'’ television reports and a “substantial bias'’ against insurance companies among registered voters surveyed in south Mississippi.

In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted State Farm is a client and customer of Mississippi Press Services.

Print is dead — at least that’s what the newspaper industry keeps telling itself and keeps getting told. And it’s what columnist Bill Virgin writes about in the near-dead Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
For some reason the magazine industry did not get the same memo. Maybe it was distributed electronically and a spam filter ate it.

Dr. Samir Husni of the Ole Miss Department of Journalism is quoted liberally in the article.

Project Runway contestants contend Cyrus Webb agreed to pay them $2,500 plus other expenses to appear at a weekend event at the Telcom Center and then didn’t deliver. Webb says it was all a big misunderstanding. If you make it all the way through this convoluted account of what Webb may or may not have been trying to do, you’ll learn he is was a freelancer for The Clarion-Ledger.

Jenny Humphryes, former news editor at the Clarion-Ledger, has been named editor of The Messenger in Troy, AL, a Boone newspaper. An Alabama native, Humphryes was managing editor of the Greenwood Commonwealth from 1999-2005. Prior to that, she worked for The Star-Herald in Kosciusko and for The Commercial Dispatch in Columbus.

Walt Disney, Warren Buffett, H. Ross Perot, James Cagney, “Bing” Crosby, Jimmy Durante, Ernie Ford, Bob Hope, Willard Scott, “Red” Skelton, Ed Sullivan, Danny Thomas, John Wayne, J. Edgar Hoover, John Glenn, Alan Shepard Jr., Tom Brokaw, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Harry S. Truman and Martin Luther King Jr.: All one-time newspaper carriers, aka paperboys.

Michael King, circulation delivery manager for the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal pays homage to carriers past and present in honor of National Newspaper Day.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations FAS-FAX report for the six-month period ending September 2006 released Monday confirmed yet again that major metros are struggling to show growth. The losses are steep while the gains are meager.

Here are the top 25 daily newspapers in the U.S. by circulation (with percent change) for the six-month period ending September 2006. This list does not include the Chicago Sun-Times and The Dallas Morning News. (NOTE: Two of only three papers showing an increase are tabloids.)

The Los Angeles Times keeps getting it on the chin or in the shins: declining advertising revenue, an ousted publisher, impending job cuts, wealthy locals angling for ownership, displeased staffers, and now this. Circulation at the L.A. paper, according to the FAS-FAX released this morning, took one of its biggest drops ever with daily down 8% and Sunday down 6% for the six-month period ending September 2006.

Meanwhile, NAA is reporting an actual increase in the newspaper audience, taking Internet readership into account: An analysis by the Newspaper Association of America shows that newspapers are extending their audience reach beyond the core print product by attracting new readers to their Web sites and specialty publications, redefining the traditional newspaper audience. This analysis continues to demonstrate the importance of applying measurement techniques that more accurately reflect the total newspaper audience.

The weekly Winona Times has unveiled its new Website.

Not in print according to Time columnist Michael Kinsley. Here we go again…

“It seems hopeless. How can the newspaper industry survive the Internet? On the one hand, newspapers are expected to supply their content free on the Web. On the other hand, their most profitable advertising–classifieds–is being lost to sites like Craigslist. And display advertising is close behind. Meanwhile, there is the blog terror: people are getting their understanding of the world from random lunatics riffing in their underwear, rather than professional journalists with standards and passports.”

Writes Vicksburg Post managing editor Charlie Mitchell in his weekly column: Again in 2007, the Mississippi Press Association and the Mississippi Coalition for Freedom of Information will try to convince the Mississippi Legislature that law enforcement agencies need to have standard “incident reports” available to the public.

Star-Herald editor and publisher Mark Thornton on creepy coaches: Last week, my friend and colleague Robbie Robertson got put in the most unenviable position a small-town journalist can be put in. He had to write a Scarlett Letter-like story about someone he had been friends with — a coach who was charged with statutory rape of a 16-year-old student in Newton County. That charge came about as a result of the investigation into a similar charge in Marion County.

Clarion-Ledger editorial director David Hampton issues an invite: …We want to broaden the conversation by expanding the blogs. I am in the process of recruiting potential bloggers. So, want to join the conversation?

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on Wednesday criticized ongoing press coverage of this city and efforts to rebuild since Hurricane Katrina, saying the media, local and national, was ignoring many of the positive events.

Meanwhile, Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway offered his own media critique, telling the dozens of editors gathered that the national media had missed the story in his city. “New Orleans’ story was sexier than Mississippi, it showed more on TV. New Orleans is a world class city, we don’t expect to get their attention,” he said, but added, “With all of you here today, we expect to get more.”