InkBlots

• Cyndi Pittman has returned to take the reins as publisher of the DeSoto Times Today. She succeeds Brian Bloom…
• The Calhoun County Journal has unveiled a new Website design…
• R&B superstar Usher made a “roundabout” appearance at the MPA Convention. Well…he was at the Beau Rivage at the same time. The Meridian Star has video…
• Linda Lange, a columnist for Scripps Howard News Service, thinks the Mississippi coast is a good place to play hooky…
• The Clarion-Ledger Editorial Board calls the special session a tangled mess after Gov. Haley Barbour’s appearance at the convention.

A new law requiring Mississippi law enforcement agencies to make incident reports public record was met with mixed responses Tuesday, the day it went into effect.

Law enforcement officials say they intend to comply with the law, but some say they need more time to get a system in place. Some are disputing how quickly they need to make the reports public.

Writes Chris Joyner, First Amendment bulldog for The Clarion-Ledger: “…Police reporter Kathleen Baydala told me today that the Jackson Police Department is vaguely familiar with the law, but is not prepared to implement it. Based on the [questions] she was asked about it, it sounds like it hasn’t been read yet…”

The new law and goals for the future were the topic of a panel discussion Friday during MPA’s 142nd Annual Convention in Biloxi.

Newspapers trumpet their wins during the MPA’s Better Newspaper Contest last weekend at the 142nd Annual Convention:

• The Clarion-Ledger takes GenEx, Website honors
• Natchez Democrat wins GenEx and barrel of first place awards
  
• Greenwood Commonwealth again takes GenEx
• Starkville Daily News takes home 11 trophies
• Photo of the Year among Sun Herald’s honors
• Pontotoc Progress wins Community Service Award
• Scott County Times picks up six awards
• The Daily Leader earns 14
• The Enterprise-Journal awarded eight
• The Vicksburg Post details its wins and profiles Hall of Fame inductee Edgar Crisler.

Has your newspaper published a story about its BNC Awards? Send us the link.

Members of the editorial staff of The Spectator, the campus newspaper of the Mississippi University for Women, are fighting to keep their newspaper’s print edition after MUW faculty decided to move the newspaper exclusively online.

Cutbacks instituted by the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning led each department at the university to make a 5 percent cut back in expenditures. The communications department chose to eliminate the print copy of The Spectator, moving the paper from the newsstand to the Internet.

John McCain denied a Republican colleague’s claim that he roughed up an associate of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega on a diplomatic mission in 1987, saying the allegation was “simply not true.” Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., told The Sun Herald that he saw McCain, during a trip to Nicaragua led by former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., grab an Ortega associate by his shirt collar and lift him out of his chair.