Media

Martha’s Big Adventure: Enquiring Minds Want to Know

kpaul.mallasch — Thu, 4 Sep 2008 20:08:50 -0700

By Martha Randolph Carr

It has been noted that some mainstream media folks have acquired a bugaboo about tabloid news and in particular, the National Enquirer. There have been some dismissive comments made in their direction lately by a few prominent editors. This is despite the Enquirer breaking the story about Clinton and the infamous blue dress in the late 90’s or the scoops out of the O. J. Simpson trial a decade earlier. Back then the Enquirer was referred to as ‘the bible’ for their coverage and other media sources were using them as a starting point to run down tips.

No one took the stories at face value. The reporters checked out the facts and built on them. That’s usually how it works. Leads come in from all kinds of places with all kinds of pedigrees attached to them. The standard for what makes it into the mainstream has more to do with what can be verified, not where it originated. If that were true a lot of big stories never would have gotten off the ground.

But lately, the Enquirer’s been getting dissed. David Perel, editor in chief at the tabloid says certain segments of the media have become very condescending. “Sometimes one of the things new media is exposing about old media is how elitist they are,” said Perel. “We trust our readers and give them the news they want instead of the news we think they should know.”

Now, even the founding fathers realized that if we stuck to that criterion we’d end up with just celebrity news and stock prices. There has to be a balance between information about how the country’s being run and who’s dating who in Hollywood. Perhaps citizens still pick who they vote for based on looks or just party affiliation but maybe a little bit about domestic policy or foreign affairs seeps in as well.

And in the middle sometimes there’s a tabloid, like the Enquirer, which is celebrity-driven, that ends up serving a little of both. But unlike their rivals, People Magazine or Us, the Enquirer has been getting largely ignored.

The best example of this is the recent scandal involving former presidential candidate John Edwards and his affair with a member of his campaign staff while his wife is struggling with cancer.

The National Enquirer broke the story last year during Edwards’ campaign for the Democratic nomination but no other major news source outside of North Carolina, his home state, picked it up. No one even checked it out to see if there were some verifiable facts surrounding Edwards. That’s not typical journalistic behavior.

Gary Hart threw down the same kind of gauntlet as the Enquirer in the run-up to the 1988 presidential election by telling reporters to follow him around, they’d be bored and got caught carrying on aboard his boat, Monkey Business. It derailed his campaign and perhaps his career as a politician.

This time Edwards vehemently denied the affair, laying it at the feet of another staff member and almost everyone gave him a pass. That is except for the Enquirer, which checked out the story and came back with photos of Edwards in a hotel. Then the story slowly rolled out in other news sources.

Take note that when it was discovered that newly minted Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin has a pregnant teenage daughter, which she had already disclosed to McCain’s handlers, the media was all over it. Pundits were charging at it from every side. Frankly, teen celebrity Jamie Lynn Spears recent pregnancy got far more coverage than Edwards dating policies.

Some say all of this is because the Enquirer is willing to pay for news tips, which they always have, but Perel notes that in their niche market of celebrity news even this has its journalistic advantages. “We’re not beholden to any special interest group,” says Perel. “Sometimes we pay sources for stories as long as all the information checks out.” Other celebrity news sources, says Perel, rely heavily on publicists who they can’t afford to anger and it ends up stilting coverage. “We are unfettered.”

So, who is right? The old guard who decided we didn’t need to know that one or the newer mouthy kid who said its news and laid it out there for us to decide? Sometimes, the hardest part about having any kind of national discussion can be when we aren’t given all of the information at hand.

Martha Randolph Carr’s latest book, A Place to Call Home, a memoir about the reemergence of U.S. orphanages is available wherever books are sold. If you’d like Martha to come and speak to your group visit: www.newvoicespeakers.com. Email Martha at: Martha@caglecartoons.com or visit www.martharandolphcarr.com.

©2008 Martha Randolph Carr.

Local News @ The Herald Bulletin - 8/25/2008

kpaul.mallasch — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 01:28:02 -0700

By K. Paul Mallasch

This is a daily feature that will highlight local news at The Herald Bulletin website. Please note that I'm offering these links as a service to the reader and it is in no way officially connected with The Herald Bulletin.

That said, AFP members should feel free to comment about any of The Herald Bulletin stories found below here at Anderson Free Press.

Please let me know if you like this service.

* Greeting from Justin Schneider - August 25, 2008 06:51 am

* WEATHER: Warm, less humid today - August 25, 2008 06:54 am

* Suspect charged with attempted murder in southside shooting - August 25, 2008 10:05 am

* 3:15 p.m UPDATE: Attempted murder charge expected in south Anderson shooting - August 25, 2008 10:05 am

* 9:13 p.m.: Lapel church demolishedAugust 25, 2008 09:14 pm

* 9:18 p.m.: Man arrested after dispute with neighbor - August 25, 2008 09:19 pm

* 10:14 p.m.: Lawsuit targets welfare rollout - August 25, 2008 10:16 pm

Local News @ The Herald Bulletin - 8/24/2008

kpaul.mallasch — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 01:16:08 -0700

By K. Paul Mallasch

That said, AFP members should feel free to comment about any of The Herald Bulletin stories found below here at Anderson Free Press.

Please let me know if you like this service.

* Man Shot Outside 53rd Street Business August 24, 2008 11:51 pm

This Story started to break on the AFP Scanner News Thread around 11 p.m.

* Anderson man escapes serious injury in Rushville August 24, 2008 07:35 pm

* Pendleton's State Street on National Register of Historic Places August 24, 2008 06:55 pm

* Festival an opportunity to show off diversity, pride August 24, 2008 05:59 pm

The Great Garet Garrett

kpaul.mallasch — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:38:44 -0700

By Bill Steigerwald

Economic journalist and author Garet Garrett (1878-1954) is largely forgotten by history. Only libertarians and “Old Right” conservatives who still believe in individual liberty, free markets, small government and a foreign policy founded on noninterventionism keep Garrett’s name and memory alive today.

Yet, as Seattle Times editorial writer and columnist Bruce Ramsey details in his coming biography “Unsanctioned Voice: Garet Garrett, Journalist of the Old Right,” Garrett was a major figure in the American media mainstream from the turn of the 20th century to the 1950s.

A self-taught economist with a fiction-writer’s style and a knack for clearly explaining how the real world worked, Garrett was a vocal foe of the New Deal, socialism and U.S. involvement in World War II. He was a financial writer or editorialist at The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and then the Saturday Evening Post, arguably the most important middle-class media outlet of the '30s and '40s.

A handful of his more than a dozen books and novels -- some of which, like “The Wild Wheel” (about Henry Ford), are in the public domain -- can be read online (links are at Garrett’s Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garet_Garrett). And four Garrett books, including “Defend America First: The Antiwar Editorials of the Saturday Evening Post, 1939-1942” and “Salvos Against the New Deal,” both of which were edited by Ramsey, have been published by Caxton Press (www.caxtonpress.com).

The small but freedom-friendly Idaho company, which has been printing Ayn Rand's "Anthem" in hardback for nearly 50 years, will bring out Ramsey’s biography of Garrett next month. I talked to Ramsey by phone from Seattle.

Q: Why does Garrett deserve a biography?

A: The reason I wanted to do a biography of him was that he stated some ideas very clearly that I think are valuable ideas, even though they’ve become unpopular -- or at least were unpopular for a long time. One of those ideas is a justification for a limited-government, free-market capitalist society that’s based on self-reliance. He directly ties self-reliance in with the idea of freedom and individual liberty in a way that is not done by a lot of modern writers.

Secondly, he has an idea of foreign policy that is America-centered -- basically from a time when America was a continental power or maybe a hemispheric power but did not have pretensions to being a world power with a lot of world responsibilities. He ties that in with the idea of a limited government by saying that when you become a world empire, as he called it, instead of a republic, you really can no longer have a limited government and true individual freedom. You can’t have a limited government because you need to have this strong presidential power – the president who can take you to war on his decision is not bound very much by a constitution. And if you become a world empire you need to have a Congress that can levy all sorts of taxes on you and basically determine domestic policy on how it influences the empire or the whole world. So he made this argument for what he called a limited constitutional government in a republican form that I think is more consistent than the arguments made since then by conservatives. Also, he ought to be remembered for his writing style. He was a colorful and exact writer. As a writer I really admired him and much of the reason why I wanted to write about him instead of somebody else was that I liked his writing and I wanted to bring it back and show it off.

Q: Was he well-known?

A: Yeah. He was the principal writer on The Saturday Evening Post from 1922 to 1942. He became friends with Herbert Hoover. He was a lifelong friend of Bernard Baruch, who was a kind of Democratic senior statesmen. In the circle of political types, he was well-known.

Q: Was he famous?

A: Yes. He was known mostly as an economic writer. He wrote extensive on things like foreign policy, on trade, on foreign debts from World War I, the whole issue of repayment by the French and the British and the Germans; he wrote a lot of pieces on the New Deal and he became famous as attacking the New Deal; an then as World War II got closer he became a spokesman for an America First point of view. He wanted to try to stay out of the war but at the same time arm in case we had to go in it.

Q: What were his politics and who would he resemble today?

A: In the recent campaign it would be (Texas Republican Congressman) Ron Paul. That’s for sure. It was a very much Ron Paul-type foreign policy and the emphasis on the Constitution. Even on the immigration issue, he’s close to Ron Paul.

Q: What were his political beliefs?

A: The closest word today would be “libertarian.” But he didn’t use that word. He never labeled himself. But he was for a small government and basically a pre-New Deal interpretation of the U.S. Constitution; for sound money -- meaning gold-backed currency; for a mind-your-own-business foreign policy; and for an internal free market in the United States. Basically, he was opposed to the welfare state. He wanted an independent, self-reliant America that would go its own way and not be all bound up in obligations to other countries to modify and do what they wanted to do.

Q: What are his least-likable beliefs – things that you might find embarrassing yourself?

A: He expressed at the end of his life that he thought that America had let in too many immigrants in the early 20th century and basically that they had brought in a lot of European ideas – particularly socialism and internationalism --that had watered down the kind of opinions that America held when he was young. In his last book, he had the line “The Copper Woman had done her work.” Another belief he had was that he was sometimes was a protectionist. He had an interesting argument for it. He wasn’t averse to tariffs. I’m basically a free-trader. I don’t think tariffs make a lot of sense, so we’re different there. He credited tariffs for crating the American steel industry and the steel rail industry and the steel wire industry and some other things in the 19th century. So he thought it was OK to have a tariff. He didn’t want the government to manage who traded with whom though.

Q: What made him different or better than the other anti-New Dealers?

A: Well, some of the others focused on personality -- the personality of Roosevelt or people around him like Rexford Tugwell or the zany Henry Wallace over at the Agriculture Department. Garrett really was focusing on the economic essence of what the New Deal was trying to do. So he really homed in on the central idea of the thing -- one of which was to try to restore the previous price structure by pushing prices of things up. Garrett thought it was insane to do that in a depression -- to go around and try to push prices up -- because it made it harder for anybody to put together an enterprise and make any money, because they had to pay more for inputs, labor, whatever. It just wasn’t the way we ever got out of a depression before. And another thing some of the Roosevelt people had was this vision of a more stable society – that society under capitalism was too erratic and they wanted more of a steady-state society. Garrett thought that was terrible because there would be no progress in it.

Q: What would he think of the size and scope of the federal government today?

A: He’d say it was way too big, because he would have the government be more like the size it was about a century ago -- more like 5 or 6 or 7 percent of GDP instead of 20 percent. He’d still have an Army and a Navy and some of the traditional functions, but he was not in favor of the Social Security program and he didn’t even envision Medicaid, Medicare and all the stuff that costs all the money now – or military bases in 130 countries around the world.

Q: Why should we care about Garet Garrett today?

A: Well, because we are facing some of these same questions today. They’re perennial questions about the size and power of the federal government and just what it undertakes to do and how much control it has over our lives; secondly, because he linked these two things -- the size and power of constitutional government in the domestic sphere on one hand and foreign policy.

He was a man of the right. He was in those days essentially a conservative, and I think the right in America needs to rediscover somebody like this because they have gotten all seduced by a kind of a nationalist, rah-rah-rah for our side (mentality) and they don’t question the bigger questions -- what the troops are deployed for, what’s the purpose of it, whether it makes any sense and whether it’s really in our interest.

Actually, the American right got sidetracked by the Cold War. Before the Cold War, we had an attitude that was more like Garrett’s and then you have four decades of struggling against the Communists. And, of course, the right wasn’t going to like the Communists, and they were going to disregard Garrett’s misgivings about it and go have this big battle to contain the Communists. But fighting communism changed the right. It made the right into the pro-military party -- the feeling that it was a good thing to have bases in Korea and Germany and Diego Garcia and who knows where.

I think it’s mistaken. You actually have more freedom as a free country if your government is smaller and you stay out of other people’s problems and Garrett was someone who expressed that very clearly.

A Garet Garrett Sampler

Republic or empire?

Garet Garrett biographer Bruce Ramsey chose this passage for the Trib from Garrett's 1952 book, "Rise of Empire":

The history of a Republic is its own history. Its past does not contain its future, like a seed. A Republic may change its course, or reverse it, and that will be its own business. But the history of Empire is world history and belongs to many people.

A Republic is not obliged to act upon the world, either to change it or instruct it. Empire, on the other hand, must put forth its power.

What is it that now obliges the American people to act upon the world? …

It is not only our security that we are thinking of -- our collective security. Beyond that is a greater thought.

It is our turn.

Our turn to do what?

Our turn to assume the responsibilities of moral leadership in the world.

Our turn to maintain a balance of power against the forces of evil everywhere -- in Europe and Asia and Africa, in the Atlantic and Pacific, by air and by sea. …

It is our turn to keep the peace of the world. …

But this is the language of Empire. The Roman Empire never doubted that it was the defender of civilization. Its good intentions were peace, law and order. The Spanish Empire added salvation. The British Empire added the noble myth of the white man’s burden. We have added freedom and democracy. Yet the more that may be added to it the more it is the same language still. A language of power.

Other quotes from Garet Garrett

Lenin, the greatest theorist of them all, did not know what he was going to do after he had got the power.

--

Loyalty of the law-making power to the executive power was one of the dangers the political fathers foretold.

--

There are many aspects of government. The one least considered is what may be called the biological aspect, in which government is like an organism with such an instinct for growth and self-expression that if let alone it is bound to destroy human freedom – not that it might wish to do so but that it could not in nature do less. No government ever wants less government ... that is, less of itself. No government ever surrenders power, even its emergency powers -- not really. It may mean to surrender them, but on the first new occasion it will take them all back.

A link to a chapter of Garrett's 1953 book, "The People's Pottage":

http://www.fff.org/freedom/0693e.asp

Bill Steigerwald is a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. E-mail Bill at steigerwald@caglecartoons.com. ©Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, All Rights Reserved.

SI Gets Semi-Naked

kpaul.mallasch — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 01:18:47 -0800

By Tom Purcell

You've got to give the Sports Illustrated people points for being honest.

It's February, you see. In many parts of the country, it's bitter cold. The Super Bowl is over and baseball is yet to begin. We men don't know what to do with ourselves.

Our minds unoccupied, we lack direction. We dwell randomly on negative things -- our post-holiday flabbiness, old girlfriends who didn't work out and, for some, girlfriends who did.

But one thing -- the smile of a beautiful, scantily clad woman -- can make us forget our woes. SI has been helping us forget since it published its first swimsuit issue 44 years ago.

But this year it hit the mother lode.

The cover features Marisa Miller, a 29-year-old stunner who cut her teeth modeling for Victoria's Secret. As her curviness spills off the page, she gazes at us with angelic calm. She makes us feel like everything is going to be all right.

And maybe it is going to be all right.

Surely you know the origin of the swimsuit issue. The editors came up with the idea to boost magazine sales during the dead of winter.

It's been driving feminists batty from the start. They say it exploits women, and it does. They say it is wrong for men to view women as mere objects, and it is. But what angers them most is that the cover models often go on to fame and fortune just because they are gorgeous.

Then they marry a multimillionaire, eventually divorce him, and live happily ever after on a considerable pile of dough.

The evolution of the swimsuit issue is also worth noting. The early issues were simple and mild. But in the late 1970s -- thank you, Cheryl Tiegs -- things really started heating up. The swimsuits got scantier and the models more beautiful.

That trend continued until the late 1990s, when something went terribly wrong. The 1998 issue, for instance, featured bony women with frowns on their faces. It had more feature stories than photos -- such as interviews with beautiful female meteorologists who were covered up with more clothing than a winter mannequin at Macy's.

But in the past few years, Sports Illustrated has been getting back to the basics. This year's issue can be summed up in two words: yow-sa!

It features 19 of the world's most glamorous supermodels pictured, says the press release, "in visually dynamic photo spreads, all set in unique and exotic locations from around the world."

It features many body-painting photos -- the fine art of painting swimsuits right onto the models' skin. I tried getting a job like that once, but couldn't afford the $1000 a week they wanted me to pay.

There is a feature on Russian-born beauties for the simple reason that no magazine ever in the history of mankind ever went wrong featuring Russian-born beauties in scanty duds.

The Sports Illustrated people spent 10 days with supermodel Bar Refaeli in her native Israel. She's stunning and not wearing very much. I'm sure that feature will endear us even more with our pals in Iran.

Another feature depicts NFL cheerleaders wearing even less than we usually see them not wearing.

And let's not forget race-car driver Danica Patrick. NASCAR fans will sum up her dark-eyed beauty in three words: yow-ow-sa!

In any event, you got to hand it to Sports Illustrated for being honest -- for getting back to the basics.

In an odd way, in a nutty culture like ours, the swimsuit issue is a good sign. SI is admitting that the swimsuit issue is a disgustingly honest cultural icon -- that its purpose is to objectify women because boorish men will pay good money to ogle them.

They're admitting that gorgeous women have always exploited beauty for bucks -- that they've always used it to part men from their dough. And rest assured: if the swimsuit issue is about anything, it's about generating dough.

In these confusing times, in which we pretend men and women are the same, there's something refreshingly primitive about that.

Still, things are confusing. Did you know more women buy the annual swimsuit issue than men? Must be the Will Ferrell photos.

Tom Purcell is a humor columnist nationally syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons. For comments to Tom, please email him at Purcell@caglecartoons.com.

Editorial: Protecting Grassroots Journalism

kpaul.mallasch — Sun, 6 Jan 2008 17:10:02 -0800

By K. Paul Mallasch

In late 2007, President George W. Bush signed the "Openness Promotes Effectiveness in our National Government Act of 2007," making it law. As a grassroots journalism publisher, I find news like this heartening.

In our own state, Congressman Mike Pence's work with a federal media shield law would include those who derive a substantial amount of their income from acts of journalism.

It's important for those of us interested in taking back the media to let our elected officials know when they do something that makes it easier to accomplish our task - poking and prodding big media until they wake up and begin listening to the citizens they serve.

A free and independent media is important to the American way of life. These are small steps, but they're in the right direction.

From Mashable:

Additionally, the representatives of new media has been privy to an expansion of definition, according to the following:

[T]he term ‘a representative of the news media’ means any person or entity that gathers information of potential interest to a segment of the public, uses its editorial skills to turn the raw materials into a distinct work, and distributes that work to an audience. In this clause, the term ‘news’ means information that is about current events or that would be of current interest to the public.

Examples of news-media entities are television or radio stations broadcasting to the public at large and publishers of periodicals (but only if such entities qualify as disseminators of ‘news’) who make their products available for purchase by or subscription by or free distribution to the general public.

These examples are not all-inclusive. Moreover, as methods of news delivery evolve (for example, the adoption of the electronic dissemination of newspapers through telecommunications services), such alternative media shall be considered to be news-media entities.

Are you yawning yet? What all this mumbo jumbo means is that citizen journalists and journalists are now covered under the amended Act. That deserves one big, fat hooray, for the most part. While the new definition of new media representative isn’t all inclusive, it’s a step in the right direction. Thanks, Mr. Bush, for giving the next president a head start on the right way to handle the Internet as a distribution tool. Bloggers need protection, too.

Items like this will help as we try to change Indiana Code for the benefit of the state.

Editorial: Ron Paul, kpaul, and Grassroots Journalism

kpaul.mallasch — Fri, 4 Jan 2008 20:12:50 -0800

By K. Paul Mallasch

I've noticed recently that big media is starting to handle the Ron Paul Revolution that's happening online quite differently than they were just a few short weeks ago. (A lot like the Herald Bulletin starting to change its Editorial tone.)

If you've followed the Ron Paul campaign, you must know that Fox News stock went down a lot after Ron Paul supporters started emailing sponsors about boycotts and other actions. (And if you haven't heard of Ron Paul, he's a Republican you should look into...)

The interesting thing to me is the way CNN has noticed this and appears to be making a conscious effort to relay more news about Ron Paul or to at least tap into the massive amounts of people traversing the web for his cause.

Great, problem fixed, you say. The thing is, the situation with Ron Paul and the mainstream media highlights some of the problems with the current media powers in this country.

How can a potential candidate be so large online but have very little overspill into mainstream news? Why must they continue harping about Hillary, Rudy, Obama and other over and over and over again? Why isn't the media pointing out that it's pretty silly to have a two party system in this the Information Age.

Is it because the politicians need to spend so much money with the media to get their point across?

As a publisher of what I like to call grassroots journalism here in the Hoosier state, I try to give the Libertarians as much play as the Democrats and Republicans. (Some of you out there might know Ron Paul actually ran on a Libertarian ticket years and years ago in 1988...)

The thing is, the blatant disregard of Ron Paul (and other candidates, those without a lot of money) by big media on a national level is telling about the state of American media.

Now, before you run off thinking I'm just some anti-corporate loon, let me state that I do see a need for profit. (This is vital as I've proved that with one person and no offices you can only go so far...) The thing is, though, we're not talking about a normal business that sells pizzas or hamburgers - we're talking about Journalism, something vital to the American way of life.

And something so important to the political process (among other things) has for too many years become nothing more than a conceited, holier-than-thou monologue spewing machine of destruction. (As Jon Stewart said a while back, the media in this country is *hurting* America...)

The current state of the media in this country is harmful - not just for Ron Paul and this election, but for America as a whole, the entire process.

This problem, though, shows another great thing about the American spirit, the willpower to affect change. Al Jordan and myself have been struggling with grassroots journalism in East Central Indiana for going on three years now.

We're starting to see a little growth from all our efforts, but without capital it's hard to build something from the ground-up. To attempt to stir up the current system of media in this country without any money is perhaps even more ludicrous, but it's something that has to be done.

We're not the only ones, of course, as there are a lot of others around the country doing similar things on their own (some for even longer than we've been at it...) The thing is, I've worked for big media for almost a decade. I don't see change happening from within.

Like the Ron Paul Revolution itself, I believe it will take the people standing up on their own and demanding a better media. Individuals like Al and I are out here on the front lines in the Midwest, willing and happy to help people create a better media.

Personally, I think the 'business model' that will work best will be one that combines professionally trained as well as amateur (citizen) journalists - so called Pro-Am journalism. I've been trying to work with other individuals in the state to create a loose confederation of media sites and sources.

I'm hoping that if we have more companies and individuals running the media and they've been started with a dialog that includes the audience from the get-go, that we have a real chance to affect change on a big scale.

Going back to the current media, though, and Ron Paul. It's too late to expect big media to admit their mistakes and do an honest and complete turnaround. With that in mind, I wonder why there isn't a 'Ron Paul Revolution' sized movement behind grassroots journalism in this country?

Where is the support for those fighting corporate Goliaths from the trenches in an effort to fix a bigger problem in the American political realm - the media itself.

If you're a national visitor and am interested in helping, now's the time.

I'm accepting donations. I have an Amazon Wishlist.

If you have *any* questions about what we're doing to create a better media in the Midwest, please feel free to ask. If you're interested in starting a site like this in your town, check out LocalJournalism.net.

Oh, and Ron Paul, if you're listening, we'd love to have you stop by America's first (AFAIK), public newsroom in Elwood, Indiana (just a bit north of Indianapolis if you're going to be there...)

Thanks for your time.

Editorial: Indiana Code, Competition and the Definition of News

kpaul.mallasch — Thu, 3 Jan 2008 20:44:36 -0800

I'm going to start with something I believe is important, the definition of 'Qualified Publication' in Indiana Code. You find the definition scattered throughout IC, but I first came across it while looking up what I needed to do to be able to carry a scanner in my car like reporters and photographers from a 'newspaper.' What I found is that Indiana defines what the state considers a legitimate news source.

As I dug around, I came across one area that was really interesting - legal classifieds. As you may or may not know, government officials are required by law to run announcements for the public. As it stands, in most cities around the state, the only source they have to publish these legal announcements are newspapers. And since newspapers are the only option, you can imagine they're paying a pretty penny.

Now, I'm not saying any Blog, Forum or MySpace Page should be eligible to receive city money to run legal announcements, but I do believe there should be something in place that defines a legitimate online only news source. (Be it age of the site, circulation or number of unique visitors per month, etc...)

I once received a call on the office phone from a gentleman in Arizona. (It appears he saw the website and thought we were a 'real' newspaper.)

He said he was selling a house that had something to do with Muncie and had to run a classified announcement of some sort. In Arizona and Illinois the rate was high, but Muncie was an incredibly higher amount. The man was quite upset and wanting an alternative.

I had to tell him because I was online only, I probably wasn't eligible to fulfill his requirements. (And truth be told, I don't think our traffic level at this point should make us eligible under any future possible requirements.) He wasn't happy, but he thanked me.

I've also heard from more than one Mayor and a few other officials in East Central Indiana that they're tired of paying outrageous rates to newspapers to run legal announcements. (No, it wasn't either the current or former Anderson Mayor, although I may ask him that question someday...)

Competition is a good thing, what made early America boom. It's unfortunate that we don't see much competition in the realm of media anymore.

I've contacted Senator Sue Errington about this. She was worried about no qualifications for a 'news source.' I tried to assure her that I believed we needed some set of qualifications, but they needed to include online-only news organizations as well. I haven't heard back from her since.

Eventually when I have more time to take up this cause (for the people and future news organizations to come), I'll try Terri Austin and she if she wants to help. I have a lot of verbal acknowledgments from people from all walks of life that they'll support me when the time comes.

I know, though, it's going to be a big struggle, best saved for a later date with more resources. It's something that needs to be looked at, though. I do wonder how much money the City of Anderson gives to the Herald Bulletin each month for legal classifieds - that should be public info, shouldn't it?

With so much money involved, if we do try to change Indiana Code, I imagine the lobbyists will come out in force. I've been told it's been tried before in Indiana - to break the stranglehold newspapers have over city governments in this respect - but has failed due to lobbyists.

I say, though, with enough people we can make our voice heard in the Indiana Statehouse. Anderson Free Press believes the definition of Qualified publication should be looked at and expanded to include the Internet, which has made many things (like AFP) possible.

IC 35-44-3-12 Unlawful use of a police radio; exemptions; "police radio" defined
(A) who is regularly engaged in newsgathering activities;
(B) who is employed by a newspaper qualified to receive legal advertisements under IC 5-3-1, a wire service, or a licensed commercial or public radio or television station; and
(C) whose name is furnished by his employer to the chief executive officer of a law enforcement agency in the county in which the employer's principal office is located;

IC 5-3-1-0.4
"Newspaper" defined
Sec. 0.4. As used in this chapter, "newspaper" refers to a newspaper:
(1) that:
(A) is a daily, weekly, semiweekly, or triweekly newspaper of general circulation;
(B) has been published for at least three (3) consecutive years in the same city or town;
(C) has been entered, authorized, and accepted by the United States Postal Service for at least three (3) consecutive years as mailable matter of the periodicals class; and
(D) has at least fifty percent (50%) of all copies circulated paid for by subscribers or other purchasers at a rate that is not nominal; or
(2) that:
(A) is a daily, weekly, semiweekly, or triweekly newspaper of general circulation;
(B) has been entered, authorized, and accepted by the United States Postal Service as mailable matter of the periodicals class;
(C) has at least fifty percent (50%) of all copies circulated paid for by subscribers or other purchasers at a rate that is not nominal; and
(D) meets the greater of the following conditions:
(i) The newspaper's paid circulation during the preceding year is equal to at least fifty percent (50%) of the paid circulation for the largest newspaper with a periodicals class permit located in the county in which the newspaper is published, based on the average paid or requested circulation for the preceding twelve (12) months reported in the newspaper's United States Postal Service Statement of Ownership published by the newspaper in October of each year or based on the newspaper's initial application for a permit from the United States Postal Service.
(ii) The newspaper has an average daily paid circulation of one thousand five hundred (1,500) based on the average paid or requested circulation for the preceding twelve (12) months reported in the newspaper's United States Postal Service Statement of Ownership published by the newspaper in October of each year or based on the newspaper's initial application for a permit from the United States Postal Service.As added by P.L.64-1995, SEC.1. Amended by P.L.38-1997, SEC.1; P.L.169-2006, SEC.1.

IC 5-3-1-0.7
"Qualified publication" defined
Sec. 0.7. (a) As used in this chapter, "qualified publication" means a publication that:
(1) is published daily, weekly, semiweekly, or triweekly;
(2) is of general circulation to the public;
(3) has been published for at least three (3) consecutive years in the same city or town;
(4) has continuity as to title and general nature of content from issue to issue;
(5) contains news of general or community interest, community notices, or editorial commentary;
(6) contains advertisements from unrelated advertisers in each issue;
(7) has, in more than one-half (1/2) of its issues published during the previous twelve (12) month period, not more than seventy-five percent (75%) advertising content;
(8) has a known office location in the county in which it is published; and
(9) has been entered, authorized, and accepted by the United States Postal Service as mailable matter of standard mail (A) class for the time published.
(b) A publication is not a qualified publication if any of the following apply:
(1) The publication is owned by, or under the control of, the owners or lessees of a shopping center or a merchant's association.
(2) The publication is owned by, or under the control of, a business that sells property or services (other than advertising) and the predominant advertising in the publication is advertising for the business's sales of property or services.
(3) The publication is a mail order catalog or other catalog, advertising flier, travel brochure, house organ, theater program, telephone directory, restaurant guide, shopping center advertising sheet, or other similar publication.
(4) The publication is primarily devoted to matters of specialized interest such as a labor, fraternal, society, political, religious, sporting, or trade news publication or journal.
(5) The publication is a magazine, racing form, or tip sheet.
As added by P.L.64-1995, SEC.3. Amended by P.L.38-1997, SEC.3.

As competition is introduced and cities have a choice where to print their legal notices, I imagine the price will go down instead of up each year. Looking at this might not only save money for cities across the state, but also allow grassroots journalism to blossom across the state.

If Indiana is the first state to move in this direction, to politically say they support the grassroots journalism movement, we could become known for more than hogs and corn, CAFOs and Ethanol.

We may be losing our manufacturing in this state, but we have the potential to become a powerhouse in the Information Age.

Indiana Code limiting the abilities of fledgling news organizations to do business and collect revenues is something that needs to be looked at sooner than later.

Signed,
K. Paul Mallasch - Publisher