The Greenwood Commonwealth has taken the wraps off a spiffy new Web design. Meanwhile, Jenny Humphryes is back in the saddle as managing editor after a two-year hiatus elsewhere and the paper has brought on board Tennessee grad Charlie Smith as a new reporter.
The Hattiesburg American reported earlier this week that the sex columnist for the Student Printz newspaper at USM was canned after a debate over referencing the likes of Brittany, Lindsey and Paris while commenting on sexually-transmitted diseases.
The now-free-agent sex columnist Glory Fink went ahead and posted the unedited column on her Website. That’s libelous, editor Ashley Bryan wrote in her SP column. But the editor vows the sex column will return. Meanwhile, SP readers can keep their gray cells engaged mulling hard-hitting editorial pieces such as “Don’t bed your bud.”
The “Pillow Talk” column began as a regular feature in the Printz last year and immediately stirred controversy. And more controversy. And even more controversy. And yet even more controversy.
The Madison County Herald has softened its approach on weekends, explains managing editor Annie Oeth in a recent column. The paper has switched to tabloid on Saturdays and is taking somewhat of a magazine approach with expanded features and photos.
The left-of-center New Republic magazine has painted a rather unflattering portrait of Gov. Haley Barbour. The Website is worth a visit just for a glimpse of the rather wicked artwork accompanying the article…
“Earlier this summer, The New Republic received a document that appeared to be a copy of Barbour’s blind trust agreement. It was dated February 27, 2004–six weeks after he’d become governor–and signed by Barbour and his trustee, a man named S. Griffin Norquist of Yazoo City, Mississippi. What immediately caught our eye were the assets the document catalogued: among them, nearly 50,000 shares of Interpublic Group, which had become BG&R’s corporate parent when the partners sold the firm in 1999. This seemed to contradict Barbour’s earlier statement. Either Barbour had delayed cutting ties to his firm, or he hadn’t really cut them at all.“
Marhsall Ramsey rather cryptically referenced a big decision he’s recently mulled. That’s generated a bit of scuttlebutt over at the Clarion-Ledger blog pages.
“I’ve had to make a pretty big decision in my life,” Ramsey wrote this morning, after a trip by plane and more than a few days of scattershot blogging. “I am very, very blessed to have good friends and family to lean on — I am a very rich man indeed.”
Evansville, IN Courier-Press columnist Mizell Stewart recalls heading to Gulfport and The Sun Herald two years ago to assist in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina…
“The editor, Stan Tiner, balanced a deep concern for his staff with a fierce determination that south Mississippi’s plight would not be forgotten. Through the Sun Herald’s powerful editorials, he alerted the nation that the relief promised by the federal government was nonexistent.
“There was Publisher Ricky Mathews, who dispatched reporters to round up the region’s leaders for a meeting at the newspaper. He urged them to put differences aside and focus on rebuilding the community.
“It was a force of will that stood in sharp contrast to the reports coming out of the Crescent City, where police fled rather than help those who couldn’t help themselves…”
LA Times writer James Gerstenzang regurgitates the latest laments about New Orleans post-Katrina, including the argument Mississippi got a disproportionate share of funding as opposed to Louisiana. Not surprisingly, Gerstenzang only spent a couple of grafs reporting on the Magnolia State near the end of the article.
Campus police did their best impression of prohibition-era cops Saturday in the Grove at Ole Miss, enforcing a new alcohol policy that forbids beer and light wine but is oddly permissive of hard liquor. At least the Daily Mississippian benefited a bit: The University took out ads in the paper to warn students and others of the pending crackdown at one of America’s top party colleges.
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