taking down words

News Of The News: Indy Star Managing Editor Moving On In Early April

This just in (cross-posted from Bury The Lede because it's kind of a big deal when the managing editor of the state's largest newspaper moves on):

Dennis Ryerson/INI
Sent by: Heidi Sims
03/05/2008 02:34 PM
To
StarNewsroom
cc
DIRECTORS AT INI
Subject: announcement

To the staff:

Pam Fine, in a message below, has some great news for her but not so great news for us.  As Pam explains, she is leaving The Star to assume the Knight Chair at the University of Kansas.  It's a great job for a person who, as we all know, is a teacher at heart who has vast knowledge to share about what we do.

We'll miss Pam's incredibly hard work, her passion, and her quest every day for improving the quality of what we do.  She has accomplished wonderful things at The Star.

Listing Pam's accomplishments isn't easy; there are so many of them.  She lead efforts to help us focus our work more effectively so we could better impact the lives of our readers. She established new standards and procedures that improved accountability as well as quality.  She was instrumental in our push to provide a livelier, more interesting front page every day.  She conceived the well-received IndySunday section.  She led great coverage of everything from elections to horrific murders.  There's nothing in the paper, apart from our editorial pages, that she didn't touch in a positive way. in the digital world, Pam has been critical to our many improvements in what we are offering on-line.

Of course, no description of Pam would be complete without noting her fine sense of humor, which lightened the heavy load and added to the solid teamwork that exists here.

Pam's last day here will be April 4. I know you will join me in wishing her the very best.

Dennis

Thou Shalt Not Steal: White House Aide Resigns Over Plagiarism

While TDW was helping tend to a small herd of children over the weekend, she missed this story, which is cross-posted over on Bury The Lede:

A White House official who served as President Bush's middleman with conservatives and Christian groups resigned Friday after admitting to plagiarism. Twenty columns he wrote for an Indiana newspaper were determined to have material copied from other sources without attribution.

Timothy Goeglein, who has worked for Bush since 2001, acknowledged that he lifted material from a Dartmouth College publication and presented it as his own work in a column about education for The News-Sentinel in Fort Wayne. The newspaper took a closer look at his other columns and found many more instances of plagiarism.

"The president was disappointed to learn of the matter and he was saddened for Tim and his family," White House press secretary Dana Perino said in a statement.

She said Goeglein had accepted responsibility and "has apologized for not upholding the standards expected by the president."

The White House sought deal with the embarrassing situation quickly, the same day the plagiarism was reported by a blogger, Nancy Nall, a former News-Sentinel columnist.

Word on the street is that at least one person close to Goeglein had advised him to stop putting his name on other people's work, but he paid no attention to the warning.

Survey Says: Indy Star Wants Feedback On Races For Guv, Prez

The Indy Star is conducting an online advisory panel survey. This one's all about politics and the upcoming gubernatorial and presidential races.

Check it out. Fill it out. Peace out.

As Seen On The Internets: First-Grader Turns To Life Of Crime

Dang, this little girl is quite the troublemaker.

State Of The Fourth Estate: New Blog Reminder And Two Job Postings

For those of you who've enjoyed reading about news of the news on this site in the past, don't forget to check out TDW's new media-centric blog, Bury The Lede.

Today's update includes two job postings for positions with Inside INdiana Business.

And if you've got tidbits about what's going on inside the Fourth Estate, you know where to send 'em.

Bury The Lede: News Of The News Gets Its Own Home On The Internets

Those of you who are longtime readers of this site know that TDW has a teeny little side fixation on news of the news -- the nitty-gritty of what's going on behind the headlines.

In preparation for what's going to be a busy 2008 election cycle, the blogmistress has done a little bit of housecleaning. (Call it e-nesting, if you must.)

Instead of having "Media News" as something of an afterthought on this site, she's created a new step-blog, Bury The Lede, that's hosted on the TDW account but will deal solely with the Fourth Estate, predominantly in the local market. Coverage will extend to mainstream media and, on occasion, relevant news of the blogosphere.

That way, political insiders won't have to read about media insider stuff -- and vice versa.

So, if you're interested in that sort of thing, check it out here.

Feel free to send along your suggestions. The site has its own dedicated e-mail address, burythelede@yahoo.com, but you can also send things to takingdownwords@yahoo.com. Yours truly will figure it out.

No matter what your area of interest, thanks, as always, for stopping by.

Math Gaffe: The Sun And You And Me And All The Stars That We Can See

Want a quick laugh? Indiana Daily Insight excerpts this exchange (emphasis added) on CNN yesterday about a near-collision earlier this week in the skies over Fort Wayne:

"[CNN Anchor] DON LEMON: So Kyra and Chad, we're talking about safety at the gate. We're also talking about what happens when you -- is there going to be enough air space?

"But what about when you're on the plane? How safe are you? A midair collision came close to that over Indiana. We want to get to our Susan Roesgen to tell us about that.

"We understand seconds away from colliding, Susan?

"SUSAN ROESGEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Don. It really could have been seconds away from colliding.

"This was Tuesday evening over Ft. Wayne, Indiana, in that area. It was a Midwest Airlines plane, a small plane, about 28 passengers on board and a small United Express plane.

"They were both coming into the Chicago area, and apparently, what I've been told today is the two planes were coming in like this. Planes are supposed to, by FAA regulations, be at least five miles apart. These two were within 1.3 miles when one of the alerting devices on board, the technological divide on board, the warning sensor on board the Midwest Airlines plane said, 'Go up,' and the warning device on the United Express jet said come down.

"Now, 1.3 miles may not seem like that much, Don. But these planes were traveling at 12 miles a second.

"What had happened, what we've been able to find out today is that there was a controller in the federal aviation center in Aurora who was just in the middle of a shift change and had apparently forgotten. This was a 26-year veteran, knew what he was doing but had apparently forgotten that this Midwest Airlines plane was coming in, in the same general areas as the United Express plane. Now Midwest Airlines tells me that the passengers on board would not have felt a thing. Because I said, 'Hey, you go up really pretty quickly. Wouldn't they have known that something was wrong?'

"And they say, 'No, the crew and the pilot said the ascent was very smooth.'

"So apparently, the passengers and crew -- at least the flight attendants on each of the airplanes were not even aware of how close they came to a possible midair collision -- Don.

"LEMON: OK. Susan, let's get this straight. You said -- were they coming both together, head on, correct? And then going at 12 miles per second? That's pretty -- 1.3 miles, that's nothing.

"ROESGEN: That's nothing at 12 miles a second, exactly."

- From a Thursday afternoon CNN broadcast about the near-miss over Indiana. Of course, 12 miles per second would translate to 43,200 miles per hour. But even though the report and exchange was unclear, the Chicago Tribune explains that the reference was to the closing rate and not the speed of each plane . . . and that the CNN frame of reference was also a tad skewed, because "the two regional aircraft closed in on each other at a combined speed of more than 700 m.p.h. – or about 12 miles every minute."

News Of The News: Biddle Byline Back Two Weeks After Star Ouster

It would appear that RiShawn Biddle has landed on his feet after being fired by the Indianapolis Star for a racially charged blog post he wrote shortly before last week's election:

"As the battle over reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act rages on, school reformers are spending as much time arguing against one another as they have combating the teachers' unions and suburban school districts vehemently opposing it. Advocates of standards and accountability, who have shaped the six-year-old law, rightly argue that it is forcing public schools to confront their longstanding problems. Conservative and libertarian reformers such as the Cato Institute, who have long compared No Child to Soviet-style central planning, would rather expand voucher programs and other forms of school choice."

Here's the tagline on the story:

"RiShawn Biddle, an award-winning Indianapolis-based writer and the proprietor of dropoutnation.net, has written for Forbes, Reason and the Weekly Standard."

News Of The News: Recorder Website, Archives Now Easier To Use

The Indianapolis Recorder has an updated online presence, making it easier to search the archives and get up-to-date coverage.

Good stuff.

Also, since someone mentioned it on a recent open thread, what do we think about Indy.com, the Star's latest venture into what some focus group told it would go over well with the 18-35 demographic? Online social networking at the local level? No way! The kiddies will go mad for it!

Oh-Eight Debates: Find Out More About Group's Vision For Public Access

If you were looking for more information about the recently announced Indiana Debate Commission, which will be organizing at least three gubernatorial debates next year, the group has established an online presence here.

They're currently in search of financial support, organizational affiliates and other input. Check it out.