The reasoning is complicated, but an Ohio Supreme Court decision this week could help dislodge investigative records of closed cases that many police departments across the state have refused to release.

The stonewalling by some big-city police departments in particular has blocked the efforts of journalists, private investigators and defense lawyers to scrutinize closed cases and, in many cases, do the investigating necessary to determine if innocent people have been wrongfully convicted.

For several years, the ONA has been part of a coalition seeking either a court or statutory remedy to the argument that some agencies have been making that a case is never really closed as long as the defendant has any legal remedies available.  The extension of this thinking is that if the defendant is alive to file even the most ridiculous motion, post-conviction records aren’t available for release.

It goes without saying – but I can’t resist saying it anyway – that a wrongful conviction doesn’t do a defendant much good if he’s dead.

The most stirring arguments against this have come from the Ohio Innocence Project, which is centered at the University of Cincinnati. Ironically, the majority of closed-case investigations determine that the right person was convicted, and the authorities did their jobs. However, mistakes get made, and sometimes there is outright malfeasance or abuse of power that puts innocent people in prison or even to their deaths.

In a friend-of-the-court brief filed in the new case, attorneys for the national Innocence Network said this:

“Innocence network organizations across the country depend on public records to operate. As of May 20, 2012, there have been 891 exonerations in the United States (28 of these exonerations were in Ohio) … a high percentage of these exonerations have taken place only because of open public record laws that allow for meaningful investigation of old cases.”

If we value liberty in our nation, independent scrutiny of the court system and the police is essential. To cite one example among many, the Columbus Dispatch and the Ohio Innocence Project used public records to uncover huge problems with the way law enforcement officials were handling DNA evidence.

In recent years, authorities have cited a 1994 case, Steckman v. Jackson, to deny access to records that would be “closed cases” by any layman’s definition. Since then, the rules of criminal discovery have changed in ways that are more open for defendants.  On Wednesday, the Ohio Supreme Court cited those new rules in a case, State of Ohio v. Athon, in which the argument focused on whether a defendant could, in effect, avoid discovery requirements by using the public records law to get access to documents. (Hey, I told you this is complicated.)

Some members of our coalition say that the court’s 4-3 decision could support our claim that post-conviction records are subject to release under the same requirements as other public records.  It also means that defendants can use the public records law to get information just like any other citizen, but must share that material with the prosecution under the rules of discovery in court proceedings.

In the links below, I particularly urge you to read the brief filed by Innocence Network. You will be stirred by the descriptions of outstanding work by journalists and others to free wrongly accused defendants and angered by how Ohio has become an outlier among states in recent years by refusing to release post-conviction records.

While there are no guarantees, I would urge editors and reporters who have been rebuffed in requests for such records to try again. You should cite this new case in support of an argument that the 1994 Steckman decision has been superseded by these new rules of discovery and the Athon case.

Let us know of your efforts.  If you do not succeed, we will know that we must continue to pursue a remedy to right a shameful wrong.

Postscript: You may have noticed I speak with passion about this. The reason is a man named Ray Krone. When I was editor and publisher of the York, Pa., Daily Record, our efforts helped to free an innocent local man from an Arizona prison for a murder he did not commit.  Krone was twice convicted based in large part on what we now know was “junk science.” Police had him bite a Styrofoam cup, and prosecutors found an “expert” to say the marks were a match with a bite on the victim’s body.

The day I met Ray Krone in person, at a welcome-home party in York, we hugged. And I knew that if I did nothing else in my career, I had done at least one thing that helped make a difference.

Links:

• Full text of Ohio Supreme Court decision State of Ohio v. Athon
• Supreme Court news release summarizing decision
• Innocence Network brief in Athon case

By Jason Sanford, ONA Manager of Communications and Content

Last week’s rescue of three kidnapping victims from a house in Cleveland generated international headlines and coverage. Ohio newspapers ran the rescue across the front pages of their editions for several days, and continued to run smaller stories through this week.

One paper which excelled in its coverage was Cleveland’s Plain Dealer, whose reporters were on the scene within minutes and created numerous in-depth reports in the following days. These reports continued long after the international media moved on from the story, as in their report on May 16 describing how the Cleveland community had raised a half million dollars to help the kidnapping victims. The Plain Dealer also created a special section on their website focused on the kidnappings and an excellent frequently asked questions article, which was updated when new information became available.

Congratulations to the Plain Dealer for demonstrating how a local newspaper can take the lead on such an important and emotional story.

For more information on the Plain Dealer’s coverage, check out the American Copy Editor’s Society special article focused on the paper’s print editions. And in related news, Poynter has an interesting article on how Cleveland’s Department of Public Safety used Twitter to communicate with journalists. And a Cleveland TV station had to apologize after reporting on the criminal record of the man who helped the women escape.

The Kent Multimedia Workshop was founded by faculty members at Kent State in 2012 to provide low-cost training to journalists and students from Ohio. The workshop is an outgrowth of the Keystone Multimedia Workshop founded in 2008 by Penn State University faculty members.

Since 2009, KSU School of Journalism lecturer and student media adviser Susan Zake and her husband, adjunct photography instructor Bruce Zake have helped the Keystone faculty. Since beginning of the collaboration, the Keystone faculty has talked about having a workshop in Kent. This year, it has become a reality.

Penn State University faculty – Curt Chandler, John Beale and Will Yurman will join us for our first year in Kent. The three-day training event will be held on the Kent State University Campus in Franklin Hall, home of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Registration fee:

$195 for Professionals & general public
$95 for Ohio college students
$295 for out-of-state participants.

To Register, click HERE

Last May, after delaying publication for five days at the request of Obama administration officials who cited national security concerns, the Associated Press published a story detailing a CIA operation in Yemen and Saudi Arabia that derailed an al-Qaida plot to bomb an airliner bound for the United States.

Soon after, the Justice Department announced it was investigating how that story leaked. Often such probes go nowhere, but the Obama administration has been especially tenacious about pursuing leaks: It has prosecuted six officials under the Espionage Act — compared to three previous cases since the law passed in 1917.

Last week, AP executives were notified that federal prosecutors had obtained phone records for some 20 office, personal and cellphone lines used by its reporters in three cities over roughly two months. Officials waited the maximum 90 days allowed under Justice Department guidelines before telling AP, a cooperative owned by member newspapers — including The Plain Dealer — and broadcasters, what had been done.

The sweep of the federal seizure is startling and seems designed to have a chilling effect on journalists and their sources — far beyond the realm of national security. That’s dangerous in a democracy and demands further investigation and closure of legal loopholes that may have enabled such an abuse.

In a letter to the Justice Department, AP President Gary Pruitt said those telephones would have been used by more than 100 reporters and editors. The records could give investigators an X-ray look at a wide swath of AP’s reporting, not just the story at issue.

That alone would make this a fishing expedition well outside the boundaries of the Justice Department’s long-standing policy to make narrow information requests from news organizations. The prosecutors also gave AP no notice that they were seeking information and therefore no opportunity to reply or negotiate. Indeed, they didn’t even say initially what they were investigating. That makes it hard to have a conversation or develop a coherent response.

American democracy depends on a free press and a free flow of information. This kind of government intimidation threatens both.

Additional Coverage

• Criticized on Seizure of Records, White House Pushes News Media Shield Law (From the New York Times)
• NAA issues call to action in wake of AP phone records scandal

The Associated Press learned May 10 that the Justice Department had obtained more than two months’ worth of telephone records from April and May 2012. The call logs covered more than 20 telephone lines assigned to AP journalists and offices. These included both home and cell phones, as well as AP offices in the press gallery at the U.S. House of Representatives and in New York City; Hartford, Conn.; and Washington, D.C.

In a scathing response to Attorney General Eric Holder, AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt estimated that more than 100 journalists could have been affected by the records seizure. Pruitt wrote:

“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.”

Deputy Attorney General James Cole immediately responded to Pruitt’s letter.

Pruitt and others have called into question whether the Justice Department followed its own regulations governing subpoenas to the news media and to service providers for telephone toll records of members of the news media. Those regulations require, among other things, notice and an opportunity to negotiate unless the notice would pose “a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation.”

Cole did not explain why notice was delayed, but simply stated that the investigation was related to the unauthorized disclosure of classified information. It is widely suspected that the investigation concerns a May 7, 2012 story by the AP about how the CIA thwarted a second attempted underwear bomb plot. The next day, The New York Times revealed that the CIA had been working with a double agent.

“We held that story until the government assured us that the national security concerns had passed. Indeed, the White House was preparing to publicly announce that the bomb plot had been foiled,” Pruitt explained in a follow-up blog post.

NAA issued a statement this week demanding a full accounting of what happened. NAA also joined more than 50 news organizations in sending a letter to the Justice Department questioning the lack of notice to the AP and whether other DOJ regulations for issuing subpoenas to the news media were followed, including a requirement to narrow the scope of the records requests.

“These tactics will not scare us off, or the AP, but they could reveal sources on other stories and frighten confidential contacts vital to coverage of government,” The New York Times wrote in an editorial.

Holder revealed in a press conference and later during a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing that he had recused himself from the investigation after the FBI questioned him because he was one of a few people who had access to the classified information at the center of the leak probe. Holder confirmed that Cole was the one who approved the telephone records request, even though DOJ regulations require the attorney general’s approval.

Congressional Response

The House Judiciary Committee held a DOJ oversight hearing on May 15 with Holder as the sole witness. During the hearing, several members of Congress from both sides of the aisle expressed outrage over the Justice Department’s actions in the AP case, and expressed renewed support for a federal shield bill to protect journalists’ confidential sources. Holder responded that the DOJ and the Obama Administration continue to support a federal shield bill.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced on May 15 that he will reintroduce his shield bill, which passed the Senate Judiciary Committee with bipartisan support in the 111th Congress.  In the House, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, a member of the House Judiciary Committee and a former judge, introduced the Free Flow of Information Act of 2013 (H.R. 1962). This is similar to legislation that passed the House of Representatives in the 110th and 111th Congresses by an overwhelming margin and by unanimous consent, respectively. NAA appreciates the leadership of Schumer and Poe on this issue.

As you may remember from our collective effort on a shield bill, after extended negotiations in 2009 to craft a national security exception, the Obama Administration endorsed a Senate Judiciary Committee bill that was approved by the committee that December. While the full House had passed a bill in March 2009, the Senate bill stalled on the Senate floor following the string of WikiLeaks disclosures in 2010. Several members of Congress were concerned that “document dump” sites such as WikiLeaks could invoke a shield law if subpoenaed for the names of their anonymous leakers.

NAA is currently working with our coalition of more than 70 media groups, as well as with interested members of Congress and the executive branch, to see if a federal shield bill can finally be passed in the wake of the AP records scandal. The events that have come to light this week demonstrate that clear, uniform standards – administered by an impartial judge – are needed for the compelled disclosure of confidential source information so that overly broad requests do not chill the flow of information to the public on important government issues.

NAA Member Newspaper Call to Action

In the coming days, we will provide member newspapers with updates on the shield bill effort, including talking points on the issue. If you want to take action now, call your congressional representative and senator and ask them to cosponsor the Schumer media shield bill in the Senate and the Poe media shield bill in the House. The Capitol Switchboard number is (202) 224-3121.

Meanwhile, please don’t hesitate to contact Paul Boyle or Sophia Cope if you need additional information.

How would you like to add $100,000 to your bottom line? That is just what one of our OhioScan Network members made in one year.  It could be as easy as training your classified sales representatives to ask one more question when they are on the phone with clients or at the front desk taking an ad.

Would you like to have a better reach with your ad?  Let the client know your newspaper offers a network of newspapers where their ad could reach over a million more people.

A few ideas for advertisers to up-sell could be for collectibles, antiques, collectors of cars and motorcycles.  You can try this with people advertising horses, festivals in your area, area attractions, and camping facilities. The categories are endless. Sell one of these ads for $295 and you get to keep $177.  When was the last time you made that from one sale in line classified?

Want a few other ideas on how to increase revenues?  Become a member of the AdOhio 2 x 2/ 2 x4 networks.  If you are not a member of this network you are also losing revenue, including year-end rebates. Last year, network participants received more than $100,000 in rebates from AdOhio.

Many of these ads are placed for area festivals and weekend getaways.  Bed and Breakfast people love this avenue of advertising.  You need to be creative and get your people thinking.  Sell one of these ads for $995 and keep $696.50.  It all adds up quickly.

One suggestion to get the word out to your readers is to do a small ad on your web page promoting the OhioScan network in your classified section and in main news, promote the 2 x 2/2 x 4 network.  Be sure your clients know the added value you can offer with these networks.

If your newspaper is not a member of the networks, please contact Kathy McCutcheon at 614-486-6677 ext. 1022 or e-mail Kathy at kmccutcheon@adohio.net.

It’s time to add to your bottom line and help your customers get new results that only can help you improve your relationship with them .  Happy Selling.

Eddie Adams was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American photographer and photojournalist noted for portraits of celebrities and politicians and his coverage of 13 wars. Eddie Adams passed away on September 19, 2004. His legacy continues in the annual photojournalism workshop, Barnstorm: The Eddie Adams Workshop, which he created in 1988, and is still running strong today.

The Eddie Adams Workshop would like to announce the 26th Workshop, which will be held October 11-14, 2013 in Jeffersonville, New York. The Workshop is one of the premier photojournalism events for students and young professionals, and the only one that is tuition-free. The weekend offers an excellent opportunity to meet the top photojournalists in the world, and to work alongside the best photo editors in the business. We will be accepting applications through May 31, 2013. Please encourage all who qualify to apply at www.eddieadamsworkshop.com.

Deseret News Service, which has focused a good share of its content on faith and family values issues, now is expanding that effort by syndicating the material to other publishers.

The first such deal, announced this morning, is with GateHouse Media, which publishes 78 small and midsize dailies and claims 12 million unique visitors per month to its websites.

“Others are in the pilot stage,” Matt Sanders, who is directing the licensing effort, told Poynter by phone. “We will be announcing other relationships as the year goes on.”

Deseret shifted to an aggressive digital expansion strategy several years ago under CEO Clark Gilbert. Part of that initiative has been to re-orient enterprise coverage to faith, family and related matters and offer that in several platforms available to a Mormon audience worldwide. (Deseret, based in Salt Lake City, is owned by the Church of the Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).

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The Supreme Court of Ohio ruled today that when the defendant in a criminal case directly or indirectly makes a public records request for information that could have been obtained from the state through a discovery demand, the public records request is the equivalent of a demand for discovery, and it triggers the defendant’s duty under Ohio Criminal Rule 16 to provide reciprocal discovery to the state.

The court’s 4-3 majority decision, authored by Justice Terrence O’Donnell, reversed a ruling by the First District Court of Appeals.

The case arose from a December 20, 2010 traffic stop  in Hamilton County during which Sergeant Cory Wright of the Ohio State Highway Patrol arrested Gary Athon and charged him with operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol, speeding, and failing to reinstate his driver’s license.  Athon, represented by attorney Steven Adams, pleaded not guilty to the charges.

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Under fire over the Justice Department’s use of a broad subpoena to obtain calling records of Associated Press reporters in connection with a leak investigation, the Obama administration sought on Wednesday to revive legislation that would provide greater protections to reporters in keeping their sources and communications confidential.

President Obama’s Senate liaison, Ed Pagano, on Wednesday morning called the office of Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and asked him to reintroduce a version of a bill that he had pushed in 2009 called the Free Flow of Information Act, a White House official said.

The bill would create a federal media shield law, akin to ones most states already have, giving journalists some protections from penalties for refusing to identify confidential sources in federal law enforcement proceedings, and generally enabling journalists to ask a federal judge to quash subpoenas for their phone records.

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When you spend five years with people, places and things that make you smile, that make you humble, that make you proud, that and more is what comes with the job of a publisher. I have experienced those emotions as publisher of The Madison Press, The Plain City Advocate, The Tribune, and the Acres Midwest publications.

As a result, the Madison County community has become so much a part of my professional as well as personal life.

So, it is with mixed emotions that I announce my decision to leave as publisher of The Madison Press and its sister publications effective Friday, May 10, 2013. I appreciate the opportunity that Civitas Media has provided me and my family to live, work, and serve the great communities here in Madison County and Central Ohio.

I have accepted a position as regional publisher with Community Media Group, which is based in DuBois, Pa., which is less that two hours from our hometown of Meadville, Pa.

My hope has always been that we as a newspaper have informed our readers by reporting as fairly as possible the news and events that take place in Madison County. One truly remarkable story that continues to unfold is the rise of our local school districts from the depths of the recession and how the public continues to grow its appreciation for every teacher and precious resource that schools utilize to educate the next generation. We should be proud of the schools we have here in Madison County.

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Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe may soon be forced to choose which laws to flout to keep the barely solvent U.S. Postal Service running.

A five-year restructuring plan delivered with the help of advisers at Evercore Partners Inc., Boston Consulting Group Inc. and Accenture Plc has gathered dust for 15 months in the absence of action from Congress, which must approve changes in the service’s business model.

With the service on pace to almost run out of operating cash in October, Donahoe may have to decide whether to make unilateral changes without congressional consent, said Evercore’s George Ackert, lead adviser to the agency on its turnaround plan.

“It will reach a crisis point and then the Postal Service will have to choose from various illegal alternatives,” Ackert said. “They’ll say it’s illegal to go from six delivery days to five, well it’s also illegal to not deliver the mail, so you’re talking about choosing amongst various bad outcomes.”

Those potential changes include ending Saturday mail delivery and closing post offices and sorting centers. Donahoe has already shown he’s willing to ignore a law. He hasn’t paid the cost of pre-funding future retirees’ health care for the past two years, something required by federal law only of the Postal Service.

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A Republican lawmaker and the GOP state treasurer want to post Ohio’s checkbook online, enabling residents to keep tabs on state spending, particularly who receives public funds.

State Rep. Mike Dovilla of Berea, R-7th, said he plans to introduce his “Open Ohio” legislation this week to create an online database detailing all of the state’s expenditures. The site would be maintained by the state treasurer’s office and would provide an easy way for users to search checks issued by name or agency.

“Our taxpayers deserve to know what money is being spent on and where their money is being spent,” Dovilla said. “Our taxpayers deserve to know that we are committed as legislators to advancing efficient effective state government that respects them. Quite simply, our taxpayers deserve better. One of the best ways to accomplish this objective is to allow Ohioans themselves to help us root out government waste, fraud and abuse.”

The proposed database would include the date of each state expenditure, the name of the recipient, the agency that offered the payment and the amount of money involved.

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Anybody who has checked out Brandon Phillips’ Twitter feed or gotten a picture posted on the Great American Ball Park scoreboard knows the Cincinnati Reds are heavily involved in social media. But who knew the teams’ fans are more connected through Twitter and Facebook than almost any other Major League Baseball team’s followers?

That’s right. The Reds ranked second among MLB’s 30 teams in fan engagement through Facebook during April. That’s just one of the key stats Lisa Braun, the Reds director of digital media, trotted out when I talked to her in the Reds executive offices Monday following the team’s successful homestand. It gets 1.5 likes, comments, shares and other interactions for each of its 650,000 Facebook fans.

Here’s another metric: The Reds rank fourth in getting fans to engage through Twitter. It gets 1.1 engagements – retweets, replies or clicks – on Twitter during April for each of its 200,000 followers.

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The U.S. government isn’t allowed to wiretap American citizens without a warrant from a judge. But there are plenty of legal ways for law enforcement, from the local sheriff to the FBI to the Internal Revenue Service, to snoop on the digital trails you create every day. Authorities can often obtain your emails and texts by going to Google or AT&T with a simple subpoena. Usually you won’t even be notified.

Two senators introduced legislation last month to update privacy protection for emails, but the bill remains in committee. Meantime, here’s how law enforcement can track you without a warrant now:

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A former president and publisher of USA Today said (May 10) there’s no end in sight for how the digital revolution can transform the communications industry in a positive and meaningful way.

But David Hunke also said there’s still room for old-school journalism values of fair, accurate, and balanced reporting.

During a presentation at the University of Toledo, Mr. Hunke said he was proud to have been raised during an era in which getting a story right was as important as being the first to report it.

He said he is optimistic the laws of supply and demand will ultimately prevail, with market forces favoring online Internet publications that put substance and accuracy over style.

Now chief strategy officer at Digerati, a Detroit-based computer software and consulting company, Mr. Hunke has a distinctive perspective as an executive for companies that have heavily invested in traditional and emerging technologies.

The former chief executive officer of the Detroit Media Partnership and publisher of the Detroit Free Press gave an upbeat assessment of the digital era.

He said it has put the world on the cusp of great improvements.

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Which media does better with social media? It seems everyone can claim some victory — with TV believing it grabs more benefits.

Local broadcast TV viewers are 85% more likely to post photos and videos than users of all media — as compared to radio, newspapers, broadcast and cable television. But local newspapers  are higher than all other media in generating retweets — with a 54% greater likelihood.

Radio and cable TV users hit the Facebook “like” button more often —  they are 46% more likely.

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A former Gannett News Service columnist and noted expert on charitable giving has been selected to serve as president of Magnificat High School.

The school’s Board of Directors, with the support of the Sisters of the Humility of Mary, announced Renata J. Rafferty will become the school’s third president – the first lay leader of the Magnificat community – in July.

Magnificat Board Chair P. Kelly Tompkins said it is an exciting time for the school.

“After a six-month search, the Search Committee, Board of Directors and Sisters of the Humility of Mary are confident that Renata’s experience, zeal and passion for Catholic education and the empowerment of young women will be invaluable to the Magnificat Community,” Tompkins said.

“Renata understands and appreciates the virtues of teaching and learning; especially the education of girls and women around the world.”

Rafferty succeeds Sister Carol Anne Smith, H.M. who announced in late 2012 that she was stepping down at the end of the current school year.

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The tug-of-war over whether Auditor Dave Yost has the power to examine JobsOhio’s books eased after the development company delivered records to Yost’s staff to comply with a subpoena.

But the issue is far from settled.

The auditor’s staff and JobsOhio are negotiating over Round 2 — the next audit.

But while this specific tussle involved Yost and JobsOhio, the job creation entity that was the brainchild of Republican Gov. John Kasich, several groups focused on business growth have made pleas to the General Assembly to help settle the issue in a broader context before it hurts job development in the state. They want legislation that makes it clear how far into a private company’s books the auditor can reach.

The auditor’s office issued the subpoena in March, demanding records it had sought for months from the private, non-profit development corporation. JobsOhio complied, but at the time made clear it disagreed.

Yost, a Republican, contends that he has authority to look at the private non-profit corporation’s books because the root of its revenue is linked to state money. JobsOhio says that as a private company its books are beyond his authority.

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When Dick Maxwell retired as senior director of broadcasting for the National Football League in 2006, league officials weren’t ready to let him walk out the door.

As Maxwell prepared to retire, the league came to him with a proposal: To stay involved with the NFL’s player engagement department in its career outreach and transition programs, and to offer current and former players consultation in his area of expertise.

For the next six years, Maxwell, a Fostoria High School and Bowling Green State University graduate, spearheaded the NFL’s broadcasting boot camp, a four-day seminar that introduces current and former players to the broadcasting industry.

Last year, the NFL asked Maxwell to create another program, one that focused on social media and digital media with a writing component. That program comes to fruition today when Maxwell and the NFL open the three-day NFL Sports Journalism and Communications Boot Camp at BGSU.

“The sports journalism one made a lot of sense,” said Maxwell, who worked in the NFL for 36 years and who established the Maxwell Center for Sport Media at BGSU. “The players want to stay involved, if possible, in sports somehow, either as a full-time second career or as a career that could complement what they’re doing as a second career. Some players own their own companies that have nothing do with with sports, but they want to keep their hand in sports, and they can get involved in media.”

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A year after announcing a plan to reorganize The Times-Picayune of New Orleans into a more digitally focused enterprise that produced a newspaper just three days a week — enraging local residents — its owners have added a new innovation: they will go back to producing a printed product every day.

“We are excited about this opportunity to extend our daily reach in print,” an advertising executive at the newspaper said in the announcement.

You don’t say.

This daily newspaper thing may be catching on. Last week, The Philadelphia Inquirer announced that it would begin selling a Saturday edition on newsstands after a nearly two-year hiatus.

The much ballyhooed unmaking of daily newspapering seems to be unmaking itself, and there’s a reason for that. Most newspapers have hung onto the ancient practice of embedding prose on a page and throwing it in people’s yards because that’s where the money and the customers are for the time being.

The industry tried chasing clicks for a while to win back fleeing advertisers, decided it was a fool’s errand and is now turning to customers for revenue. But in order to charge people for news, you have to prosecute journalism.

The belief that historic monopolies will hold together just on the basis of inertia has proved to be wrong. Newspapers that have cut their operations beyond usefulness or quit delivering a daily print presence have suffered. The audience has to be earned every day.

Newspaper publishing will never return to the 30 percent plus margins it once had, but some people believe there is a business model. Warren E. Buffett thinks that a 10 percent return is reasonable, now that sale prices have sunk.

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I had the opportunity during several days last week to listen to people in focus groups talk candidly about how they consume information in this digital age.

It was both fascinating and frustrating.

Generally speaking, our media-consumption habits have changed dramatically across a wide demographic spectrum.

Not surprisingly, fewer of us receive news solely from newspapers and television. Generally speaking, you don’t trust any single source for information, although you put The Dispatch highest on your credibility list for local sources.

Many of you watch TV with a computer or electronic tablet on your lap, so that you can look up more information about topics discussed on TV or other sources, such as social media, or because you don’t want to wait until the story just teased on TV is aired. You are very impatient when getting information, so much so that you’re even willing to accept bad information, so long as you get it quickly.

Many in the focus groups said that they accept that the initial reports from breaking news events will include errors that will be sorted out later — statements that left me numb, because we work diligently to verify information before we report it on any platform, including social media.

Most of those we heard from said they were very busy — too busy, in fact, and overwhelmed with information. What they need, they said, is someone to sift through the best news out there and deliver it to them.

If I had hair to pull out, I would have done so for a simple reason: That’s what we do.

We have a newsroom full of people working for you day and night. When covering news and sports in central and southeastern Ohio, we have the largest, best-trained staff in the region, and no one else is close.

In fact, other “news” outlets often rely on our work for their reports that you’re accessing on smart phones and computers.

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The Republican-led House on Wednesday approved a measure that would give private sector workers the option of trading overtime pay for extra time off weeks or months later.

The bill, approved on a 223-204 vote, would allow employees who work more than 40 hours a week to save up to 160 hours of earned time off for future use. GOP lawmakers say they want to give busy working parents at private firms the same flexibility that public sector workers have to take time off to spend with their children or care for aging parents.

Democrats and worker advocacy groups say it opens the door for employers to pressure workers not to take overtime pay. And they warn there is no guarantee workers would be able to take the extra time off when they want.

The bill has little chance of success in the Democratic-controlled Senate. President Barack Obama has threatened a veto, saying the bill would not prevent employers from slashing overtime hours and doesn’t offer enough protection for workers who may not want to receive compensatory time off instead of overtime pay.

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Assemblyman Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood), the author of Legislation sponsored by AOL/Patch that would threaten the system of printed public notices in newspapers has pulled the bill, AB 642, from the Assembly Judiciary Committee’s hearing schedule.

AB 642 would have allowed Internet-only entities to become adjudicated as newspapers of general circulation qualified to post public notices on the Internet.

Rendon’s decision means the bill is dead for this legislative session. Since this is the first year of the biennial session, AB 642 will be eligible to be heard in January with all of the other two-year bills.

This result would not have been possible but for the efforts of the Executive Committee, Governmental Affairs Committee, Public Notice Committee and CNPA’s membership, including the membership’s willingness to assess itself to fund the creation of the CNPA aggregated website, capublicnotice.com, the nearly completed reader survey and the public notice defense fund. The website was a big help in our efforts to defeat the bill.

Staff thanks CNPA members for their incredibly thoughtful letters, phone calls and sit-down meetings with assembly members. That pressure was invaluable and made a deep impression on the author leading to this result.  Staff also recognizes the additional lobbying power brought to bear on behalf of the industry by John O’Malley, Capitol Advocates, and Darius Anderson and his Platinum Advisors.

Staff will continue to develop arguments and gather information that demonstrates the superiority of published notices in newspapers in anticipation of the bill being heard by the Judiciary Committee in January.

AOL’s hyperlocal media network Patch has rolled out its redesign from a handful of pilot communities to 100 markets across the country, Tim Armstrong, AOL’s chief executive, said during an earnings call Wednesday morning. The move comes as AOL focuses in on Patch’s model, pushing the closely-watched news network to reach run-rate profitability by Q4 of this year.

The redesign, which the company originally debuted on several of the network’s sites in September 2012, aimed to transition Patch from a traditional news property to a community-driven platform, in part to reduce the heavy editorial costs that have brought down the company’s bottom line. The original pilot centered around subject-specific Groups, where readers could discuss topics such as crime, schools, and government.

The rolled out redesign appears to be something of a departure from the original pilot. On the Bellmore, NY site  — one of the original pilots that has since been updated — Groups (now called Boards), which dominated the pilot’s central feed, are now buried into a secondary tab, leaving the homepage a mixture of blog posts and “announcements” posted by readers.

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See Also

• AOL/Patch backed online public notice bill dies in California (from California Newspaper Publishers Association)

Reporters Kelli Young and Jim Thomas have been named the best at their specialties within GateHouse Media, the parent company of The Repository.

Young adds the company’s best news writer award to several Associated Press awards in her career. She covers Stark County government and has been a Repository reporter since 2003.

Thomas was named the company’s best sports writer. He has covered high school sports since joining The Repository in 2000.

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Otterbein University will stop requiring students involved in sexual-assault cases to sign confidentiality agreements, after student journalists discovered that the school was violating federal law.

After initially denying it, an official at the private liberal-arts school in Westerville told reporters for the student newspaper on Monday that he didn’t realize Otterbein had had victims, as well as others, sign a nondisclosure clause. The requirement is being dropped.

“Otterbein will be seeking legal counsel to better understand the rights of our students and the institution,” Otterbein’s vice president of Student Affairs, Bob Gatti, told The Dispatch in an email last night.

The privacy clause has been removed from a judicial administrative checklist that students receive once an assault is reported, Gatti said. The university also will make other changes if necessary.

“We support open conversation and actively encouraging students to seek counsel from campus or off-campus resources,” he added.

Earlier this week, Gatti told the student reporters that the nondisclosure clause was included in the form to conform with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act — FERPA — which prevents colleges from releasing student academic records, such as grades.

But public-records advocates said FERPA is not intended to allow schools to hide crimes.

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The Summit County Board of Elections fired a longtime employee Monday after he wrote an anonymous comment on the Beacon Journal’s website saying he hoped a judge and prosecutor would be the next victims of an accused killer.

Andrew Wright, a Republican who worked on campaign finance reports, was identified as the author following an investigation by both the sheriff and prosecutor.

No criminal charges were filed in the case.

The one-sentence comment was made on Ohio.com in January under the name “DeathByAkron.” It was posted on a story about an Akron man acquitted by a jury of murder and targeted Democratic Common Pleas Judge Mary Margaret Rowlands and county Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh.

“Rowlands and Bevan Walsh hopefully they will be the victims of this guy the next time,” Wright wrote.

The elections board made its decision after meeting in a closed-door session that lasted an hour and 45 minutes.

When the board reconvened, Ray Weber, a Republican board member, made two motions: to adopt a new, stricter Internet-use policy and to fire Wright, who is the brother of Common Pleas Judge Alison McCarty.

The board unanimously approved both motions.

Weber suggested the board terminate Wright, who didn’t attend the meeting, for “bringing embarrassment to the board.”

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In another blow to the nation’s dwindling labor unions, an appeals court on Tuesday struck down a federal rule that would have required millions of businesses to put up posters informing workers of their right to form a union.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the National Labor Relations Board violated employers’ free speech rights in in trying to force them to display the posters or face charges of committing an unfair labor practice.

Unions had hoped the posters would help them boost falling membership, but business groups argued that they were too one-sided in favor of unionization.

The court’s ruling is the latest success for business groups that have worked to prevent the NLRB from shifting the legal landscape in favor of labor unions, despite President Barack Obama’s appointment of several labor-friendly board members.

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First, Ohio Auditor David Yost presented a compelling — and successful — argument that JobsOhio, the so-called private economic development agency, must be audited like any other public agency because it received more than $5 million in taxpayer dollars.

Republican Gov. John Kasich, the mastermind of JobsOhio, at first fought Republican Yost’s subpoena, but ultimately gave in by handing over the entity’s books. Transparency won the day.

Now, the Dayton Daily News has peeled another layer of the JobsOhio covering to reveal that the “private” designation is an exaggeration.

The newspaper analyzed records pertaining to the organization and its predecessor, the Ohio Department of Development, to show that Gov. Kasich’s characterization of ODOD as a “black hole” that failed to even return phone calls was a stretch.

The Daily News’ reporter, Andrew J. Tobias of the paper’s Columbus bureau, recalled a comment Kasich made when he was running for governor in 2010: “The days of trying to connect with business leaders through bureaucrats are over.” Tobias’ story noted that JobsOhio is staffed mostly by former development department employees and other ex-government workers.

And, nearly all those workers also received large raises to leave the public sector, the analysis shows.

But that’s not the only reason the public has a right to know what JobsOhio is up to.

Auditor Yost’s insistence on transparency is necessitated by the reality that $5.3 million in state grants were awarded to the agency and its subsidiary in fiscal 2012. In addition, state liquor profits are used to attract private financing.

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Media company E.W. Scripps Co. posted a smaller first quarter loss despite seeing a significant dip in political revenue that helped drive it to profitability last year.

Cincinnati-based Scripps said Monday it had a net loss of $2.7 million, or 5 cents a share, in the first three months of 2013. The first quarter loss was down 40 percent from the comparable 2012 period.

Revenue was down 4.1 percent to $198.7 million in the first quarter and the company said the dip in political advertising was responsible for more than half the decline.

Political advertising during the presidential election campaign and other key races around the country helped lift the company’s revenue and profit level last year. However, the company warned its revenue for the remainder of the year would reflect a drop in advertising.

Scripps is among media companies that want to boost revenue from its digital operations. Through April, the company has hired 35 digital-only sales people and plans to add a total of 100 by the end of the year. Scripps said in the second quarter, it will move all but two of its newspaper markets to bundled subscriptions that include the digital platform.

This year, the company expects TV revenue to be down 10 percent from a year ago while newspaper revenues are expected to dip at a low-single-digit rate.

Scripps has 19 television affiliates including WCPO in Cincinnati and has daily and community newspapers in 13 U.S. markets.

Taxpayers should know where their money goes, what their local government does and whether it is a good steward of public dollars.

While Ohio has better-than-average “sunshine” laws governing public-records accessibility, a proposed new law would help ensure that public information from Ohio’s hundreds of local-government entities is available online, is searchable and can be compared oranges to oranges with data from other local governments throughout the state.

Championed by Rep. Mike Duffey, R-Worthington, and Christina Hagan, R-Alliance, the DataOhio Initiative sets guidelines and establishes grant funding for local governments to put their data in a common, searchable format online. The effort would use commonly available, free software, and would establish $10,000 grants to help pay for the time that Ohio’s 2,334 general-purpose governments — counties, cities, villages and townships — would need to dedicate to making their data accessible through a common portal.

This is a common-sense idea that would provide benefits to everyone at a modest cost.

The state budget now being considered by the Ohio Senate initially would provide $3.5 million for the grant program, with the opportunity to expand funding later.

The initiative is voluntary, but Duffey thinks the $10,000 grants for a project that needn’t be time-consuming should prove compelling to local governments. Local officials themselves could benefit from benchmarking against peer cities; Duffey recalls that as a member of Worthington City Council, he found it difficult to compare metrics on how his city was doing with other cities around the state.

“With more information, people are going to make better choices,” Duffey told The Dispatch recently. “And with better choices, the cost of government is going to come down…natural efficiencies of scale are going to occur.”

The basic idea of the initiative has been championed for years by Gene Krebs, a former Ohio House member. Representing the Greater Ohio Policy Center, with which he was working a year ago, Krebs told the Ohio Senate that “Ohio is still a data desert” for those seeking to evaluate their local government’s performance and compare it with its peers.

The drive to encourage efficiency at the local level is critical to the state’s interest in making Ohio tax-friendly for residents and businesses. Rob Nichols, spokesman for Gov. John Kasich, told The Dispatch in discussing the issue a year ago that while state-level taxes have been reduced, “Ohio’s local-government taxes increased 41.6 percent from 1999 to 2009” according to the U.S. Census. “It’s unsustainable and is a barrier to job creation,” Nichols said.

Duffey also predicts making data easily accessible would create opportunities for private-sector research that could be commercialized or create jobs; he cites the growing field of “big data,” based on data analytics, and the recent decision of IBM to locate its new Client Center for Advanced Analytics in the Tuttle Crossing area.

He says the DataOhio Initiative would encourage more jobs in Ohio in the well-paying and growing field.

By simply making already-public data more accessible, this project can benefit all: residents, the private sector and the public sector.

It finally feels like spring, and I finally feel like cleaning. One overdue task I’m getting to is sweeping the cobwebs out of The Rep’s guidelines for letters to the editor.

We published 945 letters on the Viewpoints page and the Sunday Your Voice section in 2012 — a decent showing but not enough to satisfy me, and maybe not you, either. We’ve also gotten off to a slow start this year, thanks to a balky new email system, but an improvement made last week should help us to process your letters faster.

By expanding the guidelines to cover more questions that you call and email The Rep about, I hope you’ll find the writing easier, so that we can feature more of your thoughts in your Rep and at CantonRep.com.

Here are the new guidelines that we’ll publish daily and post on our website, with a brief explanation of each.

• Include your name, street address (only the city or township is printed) and a daytime phone number (used only for verification).

This should be self-explanatory, but it’s amazing how many letter writers omit this basic information, or give us a daytime number where they actually can’t be reached during the day. We just don’t have the staff or time to track down these folks.

• Letters should be 300 or fewer words.

I know this can be tough to do when you feel passionately about a subject or are writing about a complex issue. The same frustration affects every writer here, but we, too, are bound by space limits.

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Ohio native John Daniszewski, a top editor and vice president at AP with decades-long experience covering international news, has been named to the Pulitzer Prize Board.

Daniszewski, a native of Centerville, Ohio, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, joined the AP in 1979 and went overseas to Poland in 1987. In 1993, he was named as bureau chief in Johannesburg, South Africa. He left the AP in 1996 for the Los Angeles Times, serving as bureau chief in Cairo, Moscow and London, and remaining in Baghdad during the Iraq war to cover the U.S. invasion. He returned to AP as international editor in 2006 and was named a managing editor in 2007.

He was named in 2009 as AP’s vice president and senior managing editor for international news, overseeing more than 500 editors and reporters around the world.