InkBlots

Luke Horton has been named news editor of The Star-Herald in Kosciusko…Rachel Hodge has bee named lifestyles editor of The Greenwood Commonwealth.

Papers are beginning to toot their horns for awards picked up last weekend during the MPA’s Better Newspaper Contest-Advertising Division program held as part of the annual Mid-Winter Conference…

The Greenwood Commonwealth picked up 17 awards.

The Panolian in Batesville earned 19 awards.

The Natchez Democrat mopped in the Daily B division.

The Commercial Dispatch in Columbus reports on its awards.

From the LegalNewsline blog: “News stories about lawsuits that claim a lack of insurance coverage after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina have been everywhere recently. Mostly they have been stories from Mississippi, said an attorney and former newspaper reporter Monday.”

The blog amusingly flubs attorney Richard Scruggs name into Scrubbs.

Papers are clamoring to report news that Sara Lee intends to shutter the historic Bryan Foods plant in West Point, which hit Northeast Mississippi like a brick to the face Monday and comes a little more than six months after the huge conglomerate announced plans to eliminate 400 jobs there. Total job losses will range between 1,000-1,200 jobs when the plant, operating since 1936, shuts down at the end of March.

The Daily Times Leader, West Point’s newspaper, reports the local job sevice office is bracing for the impact of waves of unemployed going on to the rolls.

Columbus’ Commercial Dispatch said Monday that West Point’s mayor, Scott Ross, a member of the state IHL Board, was in Washington on, of all things, a tour to promote job growth in the region when news broke.

The Clarion-Ledger has dispatched a business reporter to the area and follows up on reports the plant is being vigorously shopped around to potential buyers.

The Daily Journal in Tupelo has the money quote from a warm and fuzzy Sara Lee suit: “…the West Point plant doesn’t fit the company’s goals for ‘efficiency or long-term profitability expectations.’”

A belligerent letter-write takes The Mississippi Press to task for “victimizing” the victim of alleged child abuse in a recent edition when the paper identified the mother and grandmother of the child.

A 71-year-old Franklin County man, charged in the 1964 abduction and slayings of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, has pleaded not guilty to their deaths and now a public defender in his case has filed for dismissal because of charges in the federal kidnapping statute made nearly 40 years ago.

Meanwhile, according to The Natchez Democrat, Franklin County Sheriff James Newman has said suspect James Ford Seale, a former crop duster, was never a commissioned deputy in that county.

The Hattiesburg American opines: The tentacles of justice have snared another of those individuals allegedly involved in the civil rights era-slayings in Mississippi and six other states with the arrest of reputed Klansman James Seale. His arrest is the 28th in a civil rights-era slaying since 1989, when Mississippi reopened its investigation into the 1963 assassination of NAACP leader Medgar Evers in Jackson, which later became the subject of the movie “Ghosts of Mississippi.”

Research by the Charlotte Observer and reported Sunday in sister McClatchy newspaper The Sun Herald indicates most resident movement in and out of South Mississippi counties “was to, well, other South Mississippi counties.”

From 2000 to 2005, people in Harrison County moved to Jackson and Hancock counties and vice versa. A few even ventured further north to Pearl River, Stone and George counties. The Observer determined the population shift patterns by examining IRS reports.

The Commercial Appeal on Sunday announced a realignment of its newsroom management structure. The changes are made in part, according to editor Chris Peck, to devote more resources to its five zoned editions, including The DeSoto Appeal, serving Southaven, Hernando and other communities in north Mississippi. Scott Sines, who joined the paper in 2003 from the Spokane (Wash.) Spokesman-Review as deputy editor, becomes managing editor. Several newsroom veterans have also taken on new or expanded roles at the Memphis metro.

Duane McAllister, publisher of The Clarion-Ledger in the 1990s, announced his plans to retire from the Gastonia (N.C.) Gazette in late March.

We’re looking forward to a terrific agenda at Mid-Winter next week and hope to see all of you there. Members registered thus far include: Baldwyn, Brandon, Brookhaven, Charleston, Cleveland, Columbia, Columbus, Corinth, Flowood, Fulton, Gautier, Greenville, Greenwood, Grenada, Hattiesburg, Hazlehurst, Holly Springs, Houston, Kosciukso, Laurel, Louisville, Magee, McComb, Morton, Natchez, Pontotoc, Prentiss, Senatobia, Tupelo/Journal, University/Ole Miss, Vicksburg, Waynesboro, Winona, Wiggins, Yazoo City.

Associates registered include Bowater, Multi-Ad, Rowlett, Tunica County.

It’s a great agenda, including results from the Fall 06 Readership Survey. For details and registration materials, go to mspress.org/midwinter.