NEWS: Spitzer in Town to Talk About Money

by Barbara Fought
The governor will be back in town this morning to meet with industry leaders and talk about state priorities and where to spend tax dollars. WSYR-TV reports the governor is meeting with the Manufacturers Association of Central New York. Last week local pundits and politicians named its head, Randy Wolken, as a possible candidate for Congressmember in the 25th District. Photo is Eliot Spitzer by Mary Altaffer (c) 2008 Associated Press

NEWS/SPORTS:No Turf for J-D

by Barbara Fought
Continuing the saga of which local high schools will build an artificial turf field, the Jamesville-Dewitt school board said "no," Monday night, according to the Post-Standard. Cost appeared to be the factor. Many parents wanted their students to be competitive with other area teams and work on a fake field, but the school board turned down their requests to put the idea to a public vote.
Several local districts are contemplating this, or have recently decided to go to turf. One district found its field so bad that it banned students from playing on it.

NEWS: Voting Roundup

by Barbara Fought
Today's the first full day of operation for Hillary Clinton's local office. Staff opened it yesterday and are no doubt busy shoring up support for Clinton in next week Tuesday's New York primary. The Post Standard lists contact information for many presidential candidates, including names to know: Denise Willaims-Harris, 395 8913, the Clinton local leader and Lisa Daly, 428 1384, CNY coordinator for Barack Obama. Reporter John Mariana doesn't list local contacts for Republican presidential candidates, but includes contact information for their national offices. The local parties, Democrats and Republicans do have web sites.
WAER reports that today is the last day to absentee-vote-by-mail for Tuesday's primary.
Meanwhile, speculation continues on who might run for Jim Walsh's seat. Dan Maffei, the leading Democratic candidate, brought together many supporters from the party and unions Monday.

NEWS: New Jobs Slated for East Syracuse.

by Barbara Fought
A great economic boost to the area -- the Post Standard reports that a German company will build a plant in East Syracuse and recruit nearly 300 people to run it. The firm, Biztzer US Inc. currently employees 12 people at an engineering office in the village. New employees will make air conditioning equipment.

The official announcement is yet to come but P-S reporters apparently followed up on a tip dropped by Governor Eliot Spitzer in his State of Upstate address. The firm appears in a list from the governor's office of job creation.

INDUSTRY: No Facebook or Wikipedia for French Reporters

by Barbara Fought

Well, maybe we should learn something from the French.
A European equivalent to AP, Agence France Presse, says to its reporters -- don't get sources from Facebook or Wikipedia. You likely read about the bogus posting about the Bhutto son that many news organizations fell for. And since about anyone can change a Wikipedia entry, most news organizations don't ever trust it as a primary sourse, either. Logo from facebook.com

INDUSTRY: ND Resigns Over Conflict of Interest

by Barbara Fought
A Wisconsin newspaper reports the news director at TV-13 in Eau Claire, Wisc., left the station after a disagreement over whether staff of one hospital should be the exclusive spokespersons on medical stories at the station. The Leader Telegram says station bosses were trying to negotiate a deal with one hospital over all others in the area and the news director said this was an obvious conflict of interest.

INDUSTRY:Mag Editor Fired over Noose on Cover

by Barbara Fought

A follow-up to the sportscaster's supposedly-joking comment during a golf game about Tiger Woods and "lynching." As if she didn't get in enough trouble, Golfweek found it a provocative story, and after staff discussion (at least they discussed the pros and cons!) put a noose on its cover. The cover read, “Caught in a Noose: Tilghman slips up, and Golf Channel can’t wriggle free.”

The public outcry sparked the publisher's decision to fire the editor and apologize to readers and advertisers. Read about it in this New York Times story. Photo from Golfweek

INDUSTRY:Survey Shows Consumers Turn to Net for Campaign News

by Barbara Fought
The folks at the Pew Center have done their every-four-year study on media habits and find that more people are going to the web to find out about the presidential campaign than did so in 2004. Two centers -- Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Internet &
American Life Project -- released the report last week. It shows some decline in use of local TV and newspapers and a larger decline in watching of network news for information about politics.

Along with increased internet use, more people reported listening to NPR than they did in 2000.

INDUSTRY:Stations and Networks Win DuPont Awards

by Barbara Fought
Stations in Houston, Chicago, Dallas, St. Louis, and yes even small a TV station in Monroe, La., won national awards last week. Broadcasting and Cable reports that both CBS' 60 Minutes , NBC and MSNBC also won awards. It's hard to tell the content of the winner stories from the titles but some related to justice, education, the Iraq war and crime. The small Louisiana station exposed looting by National Guard members during Katrina. The radio piece that won, from Chicago Public Radio, focused on discrimination a New Jersey Muslim family faced.

Note that several of these stations are owned by the Belo Corporation, which Newhouse faculty believe is one of the best companies around.