InkBlots

The Sun Herald is inaugurating a prestigious design award series to recognize the best of the built and the natural environment in South Mississippi since Hurricane Katrina.

The newspaper, in partnership with Mississippi State University, will present the awards in five categories: architecture, engineering, environmental, landscape architecture and planning. In addition to the annual awards, an Award of Excellence will be given for exceptional projects nominated by jury members.

ALSO: The Sun Herald has launched a new visitors’ guide product and companion Website for the Gulf Coast.

The drummer of the band Poison was arrested in California Friday on an affidavit charging him with a rape which allegedly occurred at the Silver Star Casino on Mississippi 16 west last year, the authorities said.

“The subject, Rikki Rockett, forcibly had sex with an adult in one of the hotel rooms,” according to a complaint.

Commercial Dispatch managing editor and MPA Emmerich Award winner Rachel Eide tells readers goodbye in her final column: “It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly six years since I came home to Columbus and plunged back into my journalism roots at The Commercial Dispatch. It was a full-circle kind of thing, since it was here I’d gotten my start in the newspaper business. With a still-fresh bachelor’s degree from Mississippi State College for Women (it became MUW right after I got my diploma), I was hired on at The Dispatch in 1974.”

New Neshoba Democrat associate publisher Carver Rayburn opines on joining the staff of the Philly weekly: “One thing I learned along the way to the Neshoba Democrat is that the local weekly newspaper may never die. In other counties, much like Neshoba, the weekly paper is treated like gold for readers. If it’s not at the store at 6 a.m., the phone calls start coming.”

Editor and blogger Patton Hughes makes his case for local ownership of newspapers and reminisces about former Oxford publisher Moon Mullins in the process:  “I suggest the ‘new’ business model we should be actively encouraging is actually a rather old one. That model is that of the locally owned and operated newspaper.”

Calhoun County Journal editor Joel McNeece’s column is now online. And this one is a good’un.

According to figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, fewer Mississippians have Internet access at home than residents of any other state. The  October 2007 report indicates 46 percent of Mississippians have Internet access at home. It is more than 50 percent in urban areas, 42 percent in rural areas.

Because of the Internet, newspapers are trying to figure out how to make the transition to Web. While some fear their extinction, others say reading news solely on the Web doesn’t compare to sitting down with a cup of coffee and thumbing through pages. Tony Ammeter, an assistant professor of management information systems at the University of Mississippi’s School of Business, said he’s not sure newspapers will go the way of the dinosaur.

An MPA Job Bank posting has an opening listed for general manager of the Monroe County Journal, which doesn’t quite exist yet. According to the ad and other sources, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Tupelo-based parent of  the Aberdeen Examiner and the Amory Advertiser, will merge the papers later this spring into one product.

Newton Record and Kosciusko Star-Herald publisher Robbie Robertson is on a 10-day mission trip to Chile and blogging about his experiences.

Vicki Barrett, Gary Raskett and Wanda Howell have all been promoted at The Sun-Herald.

State columnists, reporters and FOI advocates are celebrating the passage of HB 474, the “Incident Reports” bill which is now on its way to Gov. Haley Barbour for his signature (fingers crossed)…

• The Clarion-Ledger’s David Hampton and its editorial board
  
• The Sun Herald’s Geoff Pender
• The Hattiesburg American’s editorial board

Doc Foglesong, still the lame duck occupant of the President’s Office at Mississippi State, told a newspaper in Charleston, WV this week that taking the top administrative post at the state university was “Plan 2.” He really said it.

Foglesong’s resignation came amid growing discontent with him by alumni, students and faculty, over such issues as email etiquette and his seeming dislike of daffodils.

Said the Charleston Gazette in an editorial page missive: “After (the native) West Virginian…quit as president of Mississippi State University, some Dixie newspapers said it was because the retired Air Force general gave military-style commands unsuited for independent-thinking professors. This recalls a story from the 1950s: When World War II hero Dwight Eisenhower was elected to the White House, departing President Harry Truman said of Ike’s new civilian role: “The general is in for a surprise. He’ll give an order, and nothing will happen.”

The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal says the Foglesong matter is spilled milk. What matters now is the selection of a new permanent leader, and the state college board’s stubborn and potentially reckless penchant for keeping the selection process secret.