Attorneys for Gannett Louisiana newspapers, including The Daily Advertiser, and several other national media companies, including USA Today and The Associated Press, on Monday filed court documents to open court proceedings in the Jena 6 case.
The lede in Reuben Mees’ assessment of newspaper coverage way back when: “The Hattiesburg American ignored local aspects of the civil rights movement of the 1960s - unless events forced its hand.”
The paper goes on to review another less-than-stellar point in its history: “When Pine Belt residents woke up on this day 81 years ago, the publisher of the Hattiesburg American had made the front page. The headline read: ‘Grand Jury Indicts Harmon on 7 Counts.’”
Leesha Faulkner, an editor at the Daily Journal in Tupelo, has departed for the managing editor’s post in Selma, AL.
The Madison County Journal waited out a marathon session of the Ridgeland city board Wednesday as members debated a proposed 13-story high-rise just off I-55. Assistant managing editor Andrew Ujifusa sat through six hours of hearings, debate and an executive session before becoming the first paper in the metro to post the news of the council’s decision early, early Thursday morning.
From the New York Times: “The candidate is running to serve his Creator. He is running to restore prayer in schools, bring Jesus into public discourse, force the “money changers” from the state capitol, and move his extensive gun collection into the governor’s mansion.
“It is not extraordinary in the local context, except that John Arthur Eaves Jr., the man saying these things, is the Democratic candidate for governor of Mississippi. And the politician he is trying to unseat with these shots from the right is a Republican star, Gov. Haley Barbour.”
Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal editor Lloyd Gray recalls the turmoil in Oxford 45 years ago surrounding James Meredith’s enrollment at Ole Miss: “For me personally, it was the beginning of the knowledge of the incredible burden of race that our state had long carried, and would carry for years to come. It was the beginning of an understanding that lifting that burden by changing the social order could take generations, but that we had no choice but to get to work.”
Greenwood Commonwealth editor and publisher Tim Kalich mulls the passing of a good boss and even better friend: “Dave came into my life at a time when my own father was becoming less a part of it. My parents had divorced, and my father soon afterwards relocated to California. My mother had taken it hard, and home at the time wasn’t a very happy place. I found some normalcy inside the cinder-block walls of the restaurant, a half-mile walk from my house.”
The Clarion-Ledger’s Chris Joyner blogs about the fact-finding behind an eye-opening story in the paper concerning crime rates in many Mississippi communities: “The full UCR, released last week, gave stats for smaller cities around the nation, giving us a chance to look at dozens of Mississippi cities. That look found that smaller cities like Laurel and Moss Point were fighting their own war against crime.”
Voice of America recently visited West Point, hometown of this blog’s editor, where soaring unemployment brought about by several plant closings this year has dulled the one-time “Point of Opportunity.” The feature includes visits with local residents and Daily Times Leader editor Jeanetta Edwards.
The Laurel Leader-Call debuted an online newscast Monday, featuring headlines from the Jones County daily paper. The paper is one of several in the state, including the Clarion-Ledger and Meridian Star, as well as weekly Calhoun County Journal and Madison County Journal, now posting video on their companion Websites. But it is one of the first to do so in a packaged, newscast form.
Columbus Commercial Dispatch news editor Joey Vaughan has been named sports editor of the afternoon daily.
Retired sportswriter Glenvall Estes, who chronicled high school and local events for over a half-century for the Natchez Democrat, died last week after a long bout with illness.
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