late summer 2015 apme news magazine

‘CampusInsecurity’The ColumbusDispatch probes therise in sexual assaultson college campuses

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’m particularly fond of our summer issueeach year, as we detail the great journalismbeing recognized in APME’s annual journal-ism competition, as well as the honors we

bestow for outstanding performanceamong staff members of The Associated Press.You’ll find a complete listing of this year’s hon-orees in this issue, along with terrific “How TheyDid It” features by Autumn Phillips on two ofthe winners: The Columbus Dispatch and TheDetroit News.

I also hope you will take time to read a summa-ry of the compelling work by the AP in its

“Seafood from Slaves” investigation, which hasresulted in the rescue of more than 800 men whowere forced into labor in the Southeast Asianseafood industry. I hope you share the pride wefeel at APME News for being affiliated with suchcompelling and impactful journalism.

Finally, please also take note of the recap ofour first AP/APME national reporting project,“Fractured Framework,” which launched onFeb. 22.

This collaborative project is a great exampleof how our association does more than just talkabout great journalism; it helps make it happen.

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Alan D. Miller: Small-market public service journalism gets a boost

Ken Paulson: New survey offers mixed messages for U.S. news media

How They Did It: “Surviving through 18 in Detroit” by The Detroit News

How They Did It: “Campus Insecurity” by The Columbus Dispatch

APME Journalism Excellence Awards: The industry’s best and brightest

2015 Conference Preview: The countdown to Stanford begins

Seafood from Slaves: Inside a sobering Associated Press Investigation

Great Ideas: Recognizing great work in print, Web or social media

Sonny Albarado: Access denied: The First Amendment Report

Remembered: Respected journalist Dori Maynard to be lauded at conference

Gary Graham: APME Sounding Board all ears for public records access

NewsTrain: Attendees enthusiastic after hopping on Orlando NewsTrain

Editors in the News: Promotions, appointments, awards and recognition

Member Showcase: APME Photo of the Month winners

AP Stylebook minute: Defining the role of the definite article in writing

EDITORAndrew OppmannAdjunct Professor of JournalismMiddle Tennessee State [email protected]

DESIGNERSteve [email protected]

APME News is the quarterly magazine of the Associated Press Media Editors, a professional, nonprofit organization founded in 1933 in French Lick, Indiana. Its members include senior editors and leaders from news operations in the United States and Canada who are affiliated with The Associated Press, including more than 1,400 newspapers and online sites and about 2,000 broadcast outlets. The groupalso includes college journalism educators and college student media editors. APME works with AP to support and recognize journalism excellence and the First Amendment. To learn more about APME’s programs and activities, visit apme.com.

ABOUT THE COVERAlaina Gonville kisses her 3-month-old son, Brandon, at the NeonatalIntensive Care Unit at Hutzel Women’s Hospital in Detroit. Brandon was born premature through an emergency C-section. PHOTO: MAX ORTIZ

HOW THEY DID IT PAGE 6

From the EditorAndrew Oppmann

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t’s journalism that makes a difference. It changes lives. Iteven saves lives.

But it can’t always happen in small markets if the fund-ing isn’t there to support it — even as little as a few hun-dred dollars to pay for copies of public records or travel

outside routine beat coverage.Public-service journalism is our highest calling. So imagine

the frustration of the editor or reporter at a small-market newsorganization who wants to answer that call but simply can’tafford it. Feeling that frustration, APME established theCommunity Journalism Public Service Initiative four years ago.It’s a competitive program that provides grants to journalists insmall markets who demonstrate a need for the grant and theability to do the reporting.

A single recipient in each of the past three years received amodest $1,000 grant from the APME Foundation to aid thereporting and production of enterprising projects, as well asmoney for travel expenses to come to the APME conference toreceive his or her award and attend conference sessions. Thatsmall amount made a huge difference.

And we’re thrilled to say that this year and next, the ParkFoundation of Ithaca, N.Y., has committed to underwriting andincreasing the grants. With Park Foundation’s generous support,we will make two awards of $2,500 each in 2015 and 2016. Andthe APME Foundation will continue to help with travel expens-es for the winners.

The 2015 winners will present their work at the joint ASNE-APME Conference Oct. 16-18 at Stanford University in Palo Alto,California.

The Park Foundation was established in 1966 by the late RoyHampton Park Sr. — a newsman who was founder, chairman,and chief executive officer of Park Communications Inc. whichacquired or built 22 radio stations, 11 television stations, and144 publications of which 41 were daily newspapers.

What drew the Park Foundation’s attention to the APMECommunity Journalism Public Service Initiative was the low-cost, high-impact nature of the program. In short, the founda-tion saw results:

The first winner of the award, The Daily Citizen, of BeaverDam, Wisconsin, produced the series “Mental Health on Hold,”which examined a lack of funding and services for those whodesperately need mental-health care.

The Sedalia (Missouri) Democrat won in 2013 for its project“Meth at the Crossroads,” which revealed how deeply the com-munity was affected by growing addiction to methampheta-mines.

And the Oklahoma newspaper that won last year’s grant usedit to reveal potentially life-threatening issues within the poorestparts of its city.

The Enid News & Eagle won for its community initiative,“Under Pressure.”

Enid's 13,000-circulation newspaper began looking into thepoor east side neighborhoods after the fire marshal said thearea was a “pretty significant life safety hazard” because firehydrants there were useless. The fire department also didn'tconsider the area safe for new construction.

“With miles of water pipes almost a century old, the cityknows it has a problem on its hands. Developers withoutknowledge of the issue have been surprised when city officialsrequire costly changes to construction plans to improve firesafety, a side effect of low fire flow in older and unimprovedsectors inside city limits,” wrote Dale Denwalt, the reporter onthe story.

“This investigation looks at the cost of being under pressure– from the eyes of developers and those who live in theseneighborhoods.”

News & Eagle staff members found the area is made up ofminority populations, and 99 percent of elementary school stu-dents are eligible for free or reduced-cost lunches. It also foundthat many are immigrants from the Marshall Islands, with oneof every 20 Marshallese now living in Enid. While other areasare prospering, the east side continues to struggle.

“A person only has to cross the railroad tracks to find the for-gotten Enid — underdeveloped, poor and largely ignored byyears of prosperity.”

The Enid newspaper used the grant not only to help free upDenwalt to complete the project, but also to provide for transla-tion of the project into Marshallese and Spanish. It also usedsocial media and mobile video to help tell the story to its com-munity. You can read the series online athttp://bit.ly/1NWYULH.

The grant is awarded to media companies that have a web-site and serve a metropolitan area (MSA) of 100,000 or fewerpeople, with preference given to Associated Press members.The project can use print and/or digital platforms and includesocial media and/or a mobile strategy.

The project should be considered entrepreneurial and shouldhave the potential to be used elsewhere, including by a largermedia company.

The APME awards committee has determined at times thatother projects deserved honorable mentions. Those projectsreceived $500 grants.

The outstanding work of smaller news organizations contin-ues to be a priority for APME, and the Park Foundation granthas allowed APME to provide greater funding and increase theimpact of public-service journalism that otherwise might neverhave been done.

The APME board of directors is proud to assist in helpingsmall-market journalists answer the call.

Alan D. Miller is APME president and interim editor of The Columbus Dispatch. [email protected]

Small-market public servicejournalism gets a boost from Park

The President’s CornerAlan D. Miller

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’ll have to admit I rarely see strong reactions to mycolumns. Writing about the First Amendment and therole of a free press doesn’t typically incite frenziedresponses.

But a couple of years ago I made the mistake of writ-ing about media bias, which I characterized as a myth. Thenotion of a partisan press with an agenda is a favoritetheme of politicians, but I saw a real commitment to bal-ance and getting things right in my 23 years in newspapernewsrooms. I’m sure most of my colleagues in APME havehad similar experiences.

If there is a bias, I argued, it’s against people in power,regardless of party. The responses were ugly, unique in theirvolume and venom. In readers’ views, I was either cluelessor calculating, and almost certainly wrong.

It turns out those angry readers have a lot of company.According to the new State of the First Amendment Surveyfrom the Newseum Institute’s First Amendment Center, just24 percent of Americans believe the news media try toreport on the news without bias. That marks a 22-pointdrop from just two years ago.

Most disturbing is that the youngest audience trusts usthe least, with just 7 percent of 18- to 29 year-olds believingthat we try to report without bias.

Some of that can be attributed to the nation’s polarizedpolitical climate, but I fear that we have brought much ofthis on ourselves. We so often refer to “the media” asthough it were a single institution encompassing everynewspaper, broadcast station, website and blog.

That takes a toll. I recently reviewed 15 essays written bymass communications students. Every essay referred tomedia in the singular.

The survey results remind us that it’s more importantthan ever to demonstrate to our readers why we play suchan important role in a community.

“The media” won’t ask tough questions about the citybudget, uncover local government waste or strive daily tofully and fairly reflect your hometown. But the local news-paper will.

There are other journalism-related findings in the 2015survey, some of them encouraging:

• About 69 percent of Americans believe that the newsmedia should act as a watchdog on government.

• Fully 88 percent of those polled believe that people shouldbe allowed to shoot video of police activities as long as the

recording does not interfere with law enforcement work. • 83 percent of Americans believe that video from police

body cams should be public records. • 60 percent of the public agree that students should be

allowed to express their opinions of their teachers andschool administrators on social media without facing pun-ishment.

• 60 percent of those surveyed say cartoonists should beallowed to publish images of Muhammad even though itmight offend some. That noted, it’s a little unsettling that 1in 3 Americans believe the cartoons should not be allowed.

So there are mixed messages in the survey. The publicrecognizes the valuable role the press plays as a watchdog,but sees the reporting as intrinsically biased. And if there’scynicism about the news media, there’s also suspicion ofother institutions, fueling support for video monitoring ofpolice and student speech about school administrators.

In the end, every newspaper has to make its own case,conveying its own ethical standards to the community itserves. Journalistic integrity may not poll well, but itremains at the heart of this profession.

Ken Paulson is the president of the Newseum Institute’sFirst Amendment Center and dean of the College of Mediaand Entertainment at Middle Tennessee State University.

New survey offers mixedmessages for America’s news media

By Ken Paulson

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By Autumn PhillipsAPME News

he residents of Detroit are so used to theidea that they live in one of the poorest,most dangerous cities in the United States

that the horror of high child mortality hasstopped getting attention. So, when your read-ers are numb to the stories of children caught inthe crossfire of violence and high infant death

rates, how do you tell the story again so that it makes a dif-ference?

Reporter Karen Bouffard had an idea. She covers healthcare for The Detroit News and in 2013, she set out on whatwould become a year of reporting on how difficult it is tosurvive to the age of 18 if you live in Detroit. Put together onthe page, the statistics everyone had already heard told astory that was hard to stop reading and impossible not tofeel an urgency that something should be and could bechanged.

Bouffard spent six months collecting and studying thedata. She partnered with and received two grants from theUSC-Annenberg fellowship program to help with the work.She found out about the grant at the 2013 Association ofHealth Care Journalists. She stopped by the program’s tableat the conference and shared her idea of writing about childmortality in Detroit. Fellowship program consultant MarthaShirk, who covered public health for 23 years for the St. LouisPost-Dispatch, and Greg Tasker at The Detroit News helpedher with her application and final proposal for the project.

What gave the project “Surviving through age 18 in

‘Surviving through age18 in Detroit’

T>> Continued on next page

HOW THEY DID IT:APME AWARDSTHE DETROIT NEWS

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PHOTO / HUY MACH

Darnella Miller, 24, ofDetroit is expecting herfourth child. She's takingparenting classes so shecan get her three otherkids out of foster care.

The Detroit News was the winner of APME’s 45thAnnual Public Service Award in the 40,000 to 149,999circulation category for its investigation of Detroit'shigh infant-mortality rate. “This is tremendous report-ing and a compelling story line that carried throughthe year,” the judges said. “It's impossible to stopreading, and it is the best of a very strong class.”

PHOTOS BY MAX ORTIZ/THE DETROIT NEWS



Detroit” its impact for readers was the comparative data toother U.S. cities. Because the information wasn't readilyavailable, Bouffard had to contact each state health depart-ment individually for city-level data. She used the U.S.Census Bureau's American Fact Finder database to get city-level population data for children by year, which she neededto calculate death rates.

“City-level death rates were not available for children inthe age range I studied, so I calculated these rates by hand.Then I entered the rates into Excel, which I used for mynumerical analysis. I also used Excel to create graphics ofstate of Michigan data that allowed me to view how Detroit’schild death rates changed over time since 2000,” Bouffardwrote in an email for this story.

“Using these graphics, I was able to see that total childdeath rates, and rates of death by homicide, increased dur-ing the recession years. This was important to establish acorrelation between economic instability and public healthoutcomes.”

The factors that make Detroit the most dangerous placein the nation to be a child are complex, Bouffard found.

For example, literacy rates correlate to survival rates.“Some Detroit parents struggle to understand doctors’

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Sunsearae ‘LoLo’ Hall, motherof Kenis GreenJr., holds herson's ashes.Kenis was 12when he wasshot and killed onhis front porch.

Tanisha Jones checks the blood pressure of Derrick Jenkins, 7,aboard a mobile clinic outside Dixon Elementary School.

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instructions, read prescription labels or measure the correctdosage of medication for their children, because an estimat-ed 47 percent of adults are functionally illiterate,” was thelead of her story “Parents’ illiteracy a challenge.”

Literacy is part of the cycle of poverty that starts with vio-lence in the schools. Parents won’t send their children toschool, afraid of what might happen. Children are “homeschooled,” by parents who didn't get much schooling them-selves.

Once Bouffard launched her project, The Detroit Newswas committed to following it through. This wasn’t an easydecision.

Bouffard is the sole health care beat reporter at TheDetroit News and she was focused on child mortality at thesame time that the Affordable Care Act went into effect.

“We had to make some tough decisions,” said Gary Miles,

The Detroit News managing editor. “We turned to freelancing and relied on the wire more

than we otherwise might.”After six months of research, the first set of stories ran

over two days at the end of January 2014. Stories followedthroughout the year. A story in May looked at the city'sabortion rate — one in three pregnancies is terminated. InJuly, a story looked at maternal death rates— triple what it isin the rest of the nation. In December, Bouffard examinedDetroit’s elevated asthma rate.

“The bottom line is that health care availability in metroDetroit is pretty good,” Miles said. “There's the Children’sHospital of Michigan in Detroit, which is well regarded.There is the University of Michigan children’s hospital.

“But despite the quality health care available, we still hadsuch high numbers. It was alarming.”

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>> READ THE SERIEShttp://bit.ly/1T1jIt8



Alaina Gonville kissesher 3-month-oldBrandon at theNeonatal Intensive CareUnit at Hutzel Women'sHospital in Detroit.Brandon was born premature through anemergency C-section.



Many families in Detroit must cope with the slaying of a familymember. MarcelJackson was killedwhile working as asecurity guard, leaving behind, fromleft, Tarik, 13; wifeHollie holding Aaliyah,2; Jala, 16; Najidah, 18; Tamia, 13; andGwendolyn, 7.

Expanding the conversationIn October, The Detroit News co-hosted a forum with the

W.K. Kellogg Foundation to get the communityinvolved in the discussion around infant mortal-ity in Detroit.

They invited a keynote speaker, Dr. MichaelLu, associate administrator of maternal andchild health for Health Resources and ServicesAdministration of U.S. Department of Healthand Human Services.

A panel of Detroit health leaders discussedhow improving the economy and the schoolscould lead to higher life expectancy for Detroit’schildren.

“We brought attention to a problem that thehealth industry was aware of, we just made thenumbers more clear,” Miles said. “What we alsooffered was perspective, that this is the worst inthe country and even comparative to the thirdworld.”

After Bouffard’s initial stories published, she was invitedto present the project to the National Institute HealthWorking Group on Population Health at its meeting at UC-Irvine in September.

Also, as a result of the project, The Detroit News is work-ing on a joint story with PBS NewsHour about how highstress and emotional trauma might be related to the high

incidents of childhood asthma in Detroit, where20,000 children suffer from the disease, Bouffardsaid.

Setting prioritiesTaking the health care reporter out of the

rotation while the Affordable Care Act was beingenacted led to a lot of difficult discussions in thenewsroom. Miles said it was worth it to ease upon the need for daily stories — to rely on wireand freelance — in order to dedicate resourcesto something larger.

“When you're talking about newsrooms thesedays, you often hear people talk about decliningresources," Miles said. “We can't do it all and wehave to make choices.

“The higher-end enterprise reporting is reallywhat sets newsrooms apart in a way quick hit

breaking news stories can’t.”

Autumn Phillips is editor of The Southern Illinoisan in Carbondale. She’s on Twitter at @AutumnEdit.


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Detroit News reporterKaren Bouffard listensduring the Detroit InfantMortality roundtable.



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By Autumn PhillipsAPME News

hile Rolling Stone magazine was inthe headlines for botching an investi-

gation into a campus gang rape, TheColumbus Dispatch in Ohio, was

approaching a similar story — method-ically and accurately. The stories they

published put into motion a shift oncampuses and in the Ohio Legislature when it comes to thereporting and response to crime.

Studying the two projects side-by-side — Rolling Stone’s“A Rape on Campus” and The Columbus Dispatch series“Campus Insecurity” — is a journalism lesson in how tocover a controversial topic, where sources are often anony-

mous and accusations are difficult to prove.“Campus Insecurity” was a data-driven investigation told,

in part, through the lens of the college students who havebeen victims of sexual assault.

“We made sure there was a paper trail, a documentedpaper trail from official places,” said interim editor AlanMiller. “We really tried to make sure and verify and vet every-thing. There were salacious details we didn't include, becausewe couldn’t verify they were true.”

And they did something most news organizations avoidwhen writing about sexual assault. They identified the vic-tims when they gave consent. One woman consented tohave her name used in the story and several victims, includ-ing one male, agreed to be in photographs.

‘Campus Insecurity’

HOW THEY DID IT:APME AWARDSTHE COLUMBUSDISPATCH

A stranger sexuallyassaulted this OhioState student in Maynear campus on E.17th Avenue in May2014, but OSU did notput out a crime alert to warn others.

W>> Continued on next page

DISPATCH PHOTO BY ERIC ALBRECHT


“We were able to get many victims to allow us to taketheir photo," Miller said. "We concealed their identity. It waspretty incredible.”

Photographer Eric Albrecht took the photos from anangle, using shadows and silhouette to tell the story withoutshowing faces. One victim had been sexually assaultedagainst the trunk of her car. Albrecht shot a photo of her atthe spot where the attack occurred, standing near the car.

“You can see her back and her shadow on the car trunk,”Miller said. “It’s a fantastic photo given the goal of not iden-tifying the subject.”

Journalism through partnership“Campus Insecurity” was a yearlong project that looked at

campus reporting and investigation of violent crime. Theyfound that colleges and universities skewed reports andwere light on penalties in order to appear as a safe campusto any parent or prospective student looking up the infor-mation.

The trend first came to light as Sara Gregory, a fellow atthe Student Press Law Center, pulled 12 years’ worth of U.S.Department of Education crime statistics. The data bore outthe same way in Ohio and on campuses across the country.She saw that large campuses were reporting few or no sexu-al assaults. It didn't seem possible. There must be more tothe story.

The Student Press Law Center knew The ColumbusDispatch was the newspaper to approach to partner on aninvestigation. The Dispatch has been focused on in-depth,data-driven projects for 15 years. They have a two-memberinvestigations team — Jill Riepenhoff and Mike Wagner —who are given the time and resources needed to work exclu-sively on this kind of journalism.

Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press

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The Columbus Dispatch and the Student Press LawCenter were the winners of the APME First Amend-ment Award in the 40,000 to 149,000 circulation cate-gory for “Campus Insecurity.” The project also receivedan honorable mention in the 40,000 to 149,000 catego-ry of the 45th Annual Public Service Awards.

An Ohio State student who was assaultedat a friend’s apartment on E. 18th Avenuesaid OSU doesn’t pay enough attention to off-campus crimes.




Law Center, approached The Dispatch. Years earlier, TheDispatch exposed how college athletic departments wereusing the federal student privacy law to cover up wrongdo-ing by athletes, coaches and boosters.

The author of the Family Educational Rights and PrivacyAct (FERPA) told The Dispatch that universities had “bas-tardized” the law. (Read that project, titled “Secrecy 101” athttp://bit.ly/1gjG6MJ.

“He knew FERPA was an issue we cared about,” saidRiepenhoff.

By partnering, The Dispatch had extra help with collectingand sorting data, and the SPLC had a mainstream mediamegaphone to share its work.

Riepenhoff traveled to the SPLC headquarters in Wash-ington, D.C., for a week to go through the data Gregory hadcollected. Then Gregory flew to Columbus, several times towork with staff and download her data to Dispatch comput-ers.

“To start, we built a timeline of everything that has hap-pened with FERPA and the places where FERPA went awry,”Riepenhoff said.

The story, “Reports on college crime are deceptively inac-curate," had four bylines — Riepenhoff, Gregory, Wagnerand higher education reporter Collin Binkley, who nowworks for The Associated Press in Boston.

“This was a great win for everybody,” Miller said. “SPLCput out records requests and Sara’s data produced this greatreservoir of data for our reporting. Together we could covera lot more ground.”

National view on local storyColumbus is home to Ohio State

University, one of the largest uni-versity campuses in the UnitedStates with more than 50,000 stu-dents.

The Dispatch focused on OSUfor many of its sources, but alsocast a national net for data anddocument requests.

“It was locally focused with anational perspective,” Miller said.

It was an approach the paperused before. For “Secrecy 101,”they surveyed 120 Division I foot-ball schools. As a result, they wereable to share the project to all edi-tors on the Associated Press MediaEditors listserv to publish in itsentirety, including the page 1 illus-tration and graphics. Broadeningthe scope, broadened the impact,Miller said.

Expanding data collection from

a local focus to a national one take organization, Riepenhoffsaid.

She put every contact in a spreadsheet. On that spread-sheet, she recorded the day she made the public recordsrequest, whether they complied and if there was a fee.

“This is standard operating procedure for a massive pub-lic records request,” Riepenhoff said.

The other complicating factor in a national public recordssearch is that the law differs from state to state.

Several Dispatch projects have involved collecting recordsfrom around the U.S., including one called Credit Scars,which exposed how Americans were being victimized by thelarge credit reporting agencies.

“For Credit Scars we filed requests in all 50 states withattorney general offices,” Wagner said. “In order to do thatyou must know the public records law.” In some cases, youhave to have someone pick it up who is a resident of thatstate. Alan (Miller) had to call people he knew in thosestates to help us.”

A year-long project“Campus Insecurity” published in three installments —

September, October and December of 2014 — after monthsof reporting.

“The first two or three months were a flat-out brawl withuniversities,” said Riepenhoff. “Many didn't know the law;some wanted thousands of dollars for records. We had toinvolve the attorney general of Ohio. Thankfully, he knewthe law.”

The first installment examined the Clery Act. The Clery

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This Miami University student says she is suingthe Ohio college because it didn’t do enough toaddress earlier accusationsof sexual misconductagainst the man whoassaulted her. She remainsa student at Miami andstruggles with the traumaof her assault.


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Act requires schools to disclose crime in and around cam-pus. The Dispatch reporting showed that schools areallowed to draw their own reporting boundaries, whichmeans they often exclude neighborhoods where studentslive and where high crime occurs. On paper, campuses looksafe because crime stats are obscured.

Clery Act numbers are reported to the U.S. Department ofEducation and are downloadable online (http://1.usa.gov/1PbBYu4). Riepenhoff turned to Investigative Reporters andEditors (IRE) for the help that organization offers its mem-bers.

“They collect the information and make it digestible,” shesaid. “I did buy the data from them, which made it easier tonavigate.”

The Clery Act story published Sept. 30, right before thelatest federal Clery numbers were released “so readerswould know the numbers they were going to see were full ofholes,” Miller said.

The second installment was published in November overthree days.

“This is where we unveiled how awful the judicial studentreview boards can be. They are not fit to be judgingfelonies,” Wagner said. “They are often giving out soft pun-ishments for severe crimes.”

The Dispatch documented several examples of the holesin the judicial review board process. One instance, docu-mented by court records, involved a student admitting shedid not understand the significance of a rape kit while shewas judging a sexual assault complaint.

“We showed how unqualified the students and faculty areto make judgments on these cases,” Wagner said.

The stories showed the bias in the system — to protectthe reputation of the school rather than the victim.

There is an exemption under FERPA allowing schools torelease the outcomes of student disciplinary hearings whena student has committed a “crime of violence.” In this con-text, “crime of violence” ranges in severity from vandalismto homicide. Some states have passed laws to protect theserecords from being released. But in many states, Ohioincluded, they are public records.

The third installment explored how Title IX has become anew tool to help students force universities to address sexu-al violence at their schools.

Carving out timeThe commitment to this project — and others at The

Dispatch — began at the top.“To me, the most important ingredient in pulling off

something like this is the vision — to come up with the idea— and the commitment of an editor and a reporter to pur-sue the idea,” Miller said. “It may take longer, but the payoffis so big for both readers and the paper and the staff.”

Former editor Ben Marrison, Miller and LoMonte all rec-ognized that to do this project justice required a near full-

time effort from Binkley, Gregory, Riepenhoff and Wagnerfor nearly six months.

“The commitment here is extraordinary,” said Wagner,who was an investigative journalist at the Dayton DailyNews before joining The Dispatch in 2006.

LoMonte extended Gregory’s fellowship for four monthsto allow her to see the project through to its end. Binkleyalso juggled a major-breaking news story — the sexualizedculture of the Ohio State Marching Band — while workingon the project.

The Dispatch is increasingly looking for ways to includebeat reporters in projects, teaming young reporters withveterans.

“Working on a project elevates their game and translatesto better work during the routine stories,” Miller said.

Wagner and Riepenhoff each landed full-time projectreporting jobs because of projects work they did as beatreporters.

Wagner offers this advice for beat reporters hoping totackle something bigger: “You can’t walk into your boss’soffice and say, ‘I want to do a story on human trafficking.’You have to have a plan. Do some pre-reporting and vetting.Find out what data is out there and what records exist. Callsome experts. Put together a one-page proposal. That doeswonders.”

Autumn Phillips is editor of The Southern Illinoisan in Carbondale. She’s on Twitter at @AutumnEdit.



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he Miami Herald, The Wall Street Journaland USA Today were among the newsorganizations that won top honors in the

annual Associated Press Media Editors’Journalism Excellence Awards.

APME also announced that the Seattle Times,Alabama Media Group, the Sarasota (Florida)

Herald-Tribune and Vermont Public Radio were winners ina new contest category, the Community EngagementAward, which drew a large number of entries.

“Challenges in our industry clearly have notdiminished the quality of investigative, watch-dog reporting in the United States," said AlanD. Miller, president of APME and interim edi-tor for The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch. “It’sinspiring to read through the many entries inthis year's contest and see not only great jour-nalism but also the responses to it."

“These stories, whether in print or online,have so affected readers that they have takenaction or pressed public officials to takeaction to right wrongs and fix problems that have affectedmillions of people,” Miller said. “The world is a better placebecause of the excellent work done by these journalists.”

The Miami Herald won the 45th Annual Public ServiceAward in the large-circulation category for “InnocentsLost,” its investigation of child deaths because of abuse orneglect after Florida changed its policy and reduced thenumber of children in state care. The Herald also won theBest of Show award, sponsored by the APME Foundation,which carries a $1,500 prize.

“The death of a child is tragic, but the deaths of more

than 500 children instate care is a tragedyof epic proportions —and criminal,” thejudges said in honoringthe paper. “The depthof reporting allowed forsuch strong writingthat a reader would becompelled to keepreading. And the government would be compelled to act, as

it has. ... This is the epitome of public servicereporting.”

The Detroit News won in the 40,000 to149,999 circulation category for its investiga-tion of Detroit's high infant-mortality rate."This is tremendous reporting and a com-pelling story line that carried through theyear,” the judges said. “It’s impossible to stopreading, and it is the best of a very strongclass.”

The Desert Sun of Palm Springs, California,was recognized in the small-circulation cate-gory for its investigation that found that moreMarines from the Twentynine Palms Marinebase have died back home than in the MiddleEast. “Stunning, powerful work by The DesertSun,” the judges wrote. “Strong reporting andcompelling writing makes this entry stand outin a strong category.”

The WallStreet Journalwon the TomCurley FirstAmendment Sweepstakes Award for “Medicare

Unmasked,” which forced the federal government to makepublic Medicare data that had been kept secret for decades.

“The newspaper kicked open locked doors and providedaccess for all of us — media and the public — to scrutinizehow the government spends taxpayer dollars on healthcare,” the judges said. “This is high-impact journalism thatmade a difference for the entire country.” The award,named after AP's former president and CEO, carries a$1,000 prize.

USA Today’s project “Fugitives Next Door” won the First

APMEJournalism Excellence Awards

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� �“It's inspiring toread throughthe manyentries in thisyear's contestand see notonly greatjournalism butalso theresponses to it.”Alan D. Miller,president of APMEand interim editor forThe Columbus (Ohio)Dispatch



APME NEWS


Amendment Award in the large-cir-culation category for revealing how lawenforcement agencies let fugitives go free. The newspaper “put together anoutstanding expose of one of lawenforcement's dirty little secrets:Hundreds of thousands of fugitivesfrom justice remain free, often to com-mit more crimes, because police andcourts refuse to retrieve them fromother jurisdictions,” the judges said.

The Columbus Dispatch and theStudent Press Law Center won in the40,000 to 149,999 circulation categoryfor “Campus Insecurity,” a series ofreports on the denial and injustice thathides the truth about the crime on col-lege campuses from parents and stu-dents.

The newspaper and the Law Center“overcame obfuscation, flawed dataand public colleges' willful efforts to hide the facts to pro-duce a stunning and revelatory look at the lack of profes-sionalism in law enforcement and the star-chamber qualityof ‘justice’ at the nation's taxpayer-funded universities,” thejudges said.

The San Bernardino (California) Sun was honored in itscirculation category for reporting on the Rialto UnifiedSchool District, its administrators and school board mem-bers — all of whom showed reluctance to provide publicrecords, and even failed to tell the truth. The judges laudedthe work as “dogged pursuit of a dysfunctional publicagency entrusted with children's education.”

In the new Community Engagement category, the SeattleTimes was recognized in the large-circulation entries, for itsEducation Lab, which used guest columns, live chats, pub-lic forums and other engagement forms to create a dia-logue with the community about fixing public schools. TheAlabama Media Group was a joint winner in that categoryfor bringing together a range of voices to address the longhistory of problems in the state's prison system.

The Sarasota (Florida) Herald-Tribune was cited in thesmall-circulation category for “Newtown 100: A Legacy ofStruggle and Triumph,” a series on an African-Americancommunity and its rich history, voices, successes andstruggles.

The broadcast winner in the Community Engagementcategory was Vermont Public Radio for its efforts to reachout to the public and let them tell how they had beenaffected by the state's heroin problem.

The Seattle Times' investigation of the Oso, Washington,landslide and The Saginaw (Michigan) News’ series on thecity’s population decline were honored in the Al NeuharthAward for Innovation in Investigative Journalism. The

award, sponsored by the Gannett Foundation, provides$2,500 to each winner.

APME also announced that the Boston Herald, the LosAngeles News Group and The Oklahoman were finalists forits Innovator of the Year Award. They will compete atAPME's joint conference with the American Society ofNews Editors from Oct. 16 to Oct. 18 at Stanford Universityin Palo Alto, California. The winner will be judged by con-ference attendees and receive a $1,000 award sponsored byGateHouse Media's Center for News & Design.

The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City was cited for the BestMobile Platform.

The newspaper’s efforts included placing a large videoscreen with targeted content at the corner of its buildingoverlooking a busy intersection; The Oklahoman Radioapp, a hands-free daily newspaper; and NewsOK Now, anapp and website that lets readers share location specificnews content.

USA Today’s project on “Fugitives Next Door” was alsohonored for Digital Storytelling in the large-circulation cat-egory.

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune won in the 40,000 to149,999 circulation category for “Home to Havana,” a storyabout a family's return to Cuba. The Herald-Tribune alsowon the International Perspectives Award in its circulationcategory for the Havana story.

The Desert Sun was named in the small-circulation cate-gory for Digital Storytelling for “How Climate Change IsAltering the Deserts of the Southwest.”

The Los Angeles Times won the large-circulation categoryin the International Perspective Awards for its “Product ofMexico,” the story of poorly paid and badly treated migrant

>> Continued from previous page“Newtown 100”



APME NEWS


workers who harvest the produce for America’s tables.Marquette University's student media group in the

Diederich College of Communication in Milwaukee washonored with the Innovator of the Year Award for CollegeStudents. The group created the Marquette Wire, whichdelivers news digitally.

Judges did not take part in discussions or vote on cate-gories involving entries from their own news organizations.

APME is an association of editors and content leaders atnewspapers, broadcast outlets and digital newsrooms, aswell as journalism educators and student leaders, in theUnited States and Canada. APME works closely with TheAssociated Press to foster journalism excellence.

Here are the award winners and honorable mentions:

> 45th Annual Public Service Awards• Winner of Public Service Best of Show and $1,500:The Miami Herald• Over 149,000 circulation:Winner: The Miami Herald, “Innocents Lost”Honorable mentions: Arizona Republic, “Scandal at theVA”; The Wall Street Journal, “Medicare Unmasked”; andThe Record of northern New Jersey, “Stuck in a Jam”• 40,000 to 149,000 circulation:Winner: The Detroit News, “Surviving through age 18 inDetroit.”Honorable mentions: The Post and Courier, Charleston,South Carolina, “Till Death Do Us Part,” and The Columbus(Ohio) Dispatch and Student Press Law Center, “CampusInsecurity.”• Under 40,000 circulation:Winner: The Desert Sun, Palm Springs, California, “Marinesin Distress.”Honorable mentions: The Santa Fe New Mexican, “Mis-steps and secrets” about laboratory officials downplayingwaste dangers after a leak, and The San Bernardino (Calif.)Sun, “The Truth Behind Rialto Unified”• Judges: APME President Alan Miller, interim editor of TheColumbus Dispatch, chairman; Debra Adams Simmons,vice president of news development, Advance Local; BobHeisse, editor, The Times Media Co.; and Brian Carovillano,AP managing editor for U.S. news.

> 45th Annual First Amendment Awardsand Citations• Winner of the Tom Curley Sweepstakes Award and$1,000: The Wall Street Journal, “Medicare Unmasked”• Over 149,000 circulation:Winner: USA Today, “Fugitives Next Door”Honorable mentions: The Wall Street Journal, “America’sRap Sheet,” and The Miami Herald, “Cruel and Unusual”• 40,000 to 149,000 circulation:Winner: The Columbus Dispatch and the Student PressLaw Center, “Campus Insecurity”

Honorable mentions: Tulsa (Oklahoma) World, “FatalFlaws” about problems with Oklahoma’s executions, andThe Blade of Toledo, Ohio, for suing the federal governmentover the military police's detention of a photographer and areporter and the deletion of photos from the photographer'scamera.• Under 40,000 circulation:Winner: The San Bernardino Sun, “The Truth Behind RialtoUnified”Honorable mentions: Saginaw (Michigan) News, for chal-lenging in court a small town’s refusal to make public thenames of 100 reserve police officers whose donations fundthe 12-member police department.• Judges: Sonny Albarado, projects editor, Arkansas Demo-crat-Gazette, chairman; Adams Simmons; Miller; LauraSellers-Earl, editor, the Daily Astorian, Astoria, Oregon; BillChurch, executive editor, Herald-Tribune Media Group,Sarasota, Florida; Jim Simon, managing editor, The SeattleTimes; Joe Hight, former editor, The Gazette, ColoradoSprings, Colorado; and Brian Barrett, AP corporate counsel.

> Fifth Annual Al Neuharth Awardfor Innovation in Investigative JournalismEach winner will receive $2,500. The award is sponsored bythe Gannett Foundation:• Above 75,000 circulation:Winner: The Seattle Times, “The Deadly Slope: Examiningthe Oso, Washington, Disaster”Honorable Mentions: Orange County (California) Register,“Illusion of Safety” and The Los Angeles Times, “TheHomicide Report.”• 75,000 circulation and below:Winner: The Saginaw News, “I Used to Live Here,” a seriesabout the factors contributing to Saginaw's rapid popula-tion decline between 1960 and 2010.• Judges: Sellers-Earl, chairwoman; Chris Cobler, editor,Victoria (Texas) Advocate; and Kelly Dyer Fry, editor, TheOklahoman.


The Seattle Times’ winning entry: “The Deadly Slope”


APME NEWS


> Community Engagement Award• 75,000 circulation and above:Winners: The Seattle Times, for its Education Lab, andAlabama Media Group, for problems in the Alabama prisonsystem. Broadcast: Vermont Public Radio, for efforts to reach outto the public for stories about how they had been affectedby the state's heroin problem.Honorable mention: WBNS-TV (Channel 10), Columbus,Ohio, for "Maria's Message," about the death of sportsanchor Dom Tiberi's daughter in a car accident. "Maria'sMessage" is aimed at ending distracted driving and provid-ing tools for parents to help their children become defen-sive drivers.• Under 75,000 circulation:Winner: Sarasota (Florida) Herald-Tribune, for “Newtown100: A Legacy of Struggle and Triumph,” a series on anAfrican-American community and its rich history, voices,successes and struggles.Honorable mention: Oakland (California) Tribune, for Oak-land Voices, which allows a wide range of community voic-es to be heard through a storytelling project.Honorable mention: MLive Media Group, Ann Arbor, Mich-igan, for Ballot Bash, which opened up editorial forums forstate candidates to the public, with events and webcasts.• Judges: Angie Muhs, executive editor, The State Journal-Register, Springfield, Illinois, chairwoman, and Ray Rivera,editor, The Santa Fe New Mexican.

> Finalists for the Eighth AnnualInnovator of the Year Award• Boston Herald, for its innovative platform called BostonHerald Radio that is fully integrated with its print, online andvideo divisions and has attracted major audiences.• Los Angeles News Group, for its new Audience Growth

and Engagement Team and its focus on metrics, social,mobile, SEO and all platforms.• The Oklahoman, Oklahoma City, for its "Downtown BigScreen" and its content management system, new appsand other website innovations.• Judges: Hight, chairman; David Arkin, vice president ofcontent & audience, GateHouse Media; George Rodrigue,editor, The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer; and Alison Gerber, edi-tor, Chattanooga (Tennessee) Times Free Press.

> Fourth Annual Innovator ofthe Year Award for College Students• Winner: Marquette University, Milwaukee, student mediagroup in the Diederich College of Communication,Marquette Wire.• Judges: Arkin, chairman; Muhs; and Chris Quinn, vicepresident of content, Northeast Ohio Media Group.

> Best Mobile Platform Award• Winner: The Oklahoman, for efforts on multiple platforms.• Judges: Autumn Phillips, editor, The Southern Illinoisan,Carbondale, Illinois, chairwoman, and Gary Graham, editor,The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Washington.

> Digital Storytelling Award• 150,000 and above circulation:Winner: USA Today, “Fugitives Next Door”Honorable Mention: The Los Angeles Times, “A Sting inthe Desert”• 40,000 to 149,999 cir-culation:Winner: Sarasota Herald-Tribune, “Home toHavana”Honorable mention:Asbury Park (New Jersey)Press, “The Iron Soldier”• Under 40,000 circula-tion:Winner: The Desert Sun,“How Climate Change Is Altering the Deserts of theSouthwest”• Judges: Thomas Koetting, deputy managing editor,Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, chairman, and Jack Lail, direc-tor of digital, Knoxville (Tennessee) News Sentinel.

> International Perspective Awards• Over 60,000 circulation:Winner: The Los Angeles Times, “Product of Mexico”Honorable mention: The Seattle Times, “Culture Clash:Europe Confronts Amazon's Reach”• Under 60,000 circulation:Winner: Sarasota Herald-Tribune, “Home to Havana”• Judges: Graham, chairman; John Daniszewski, AP seniormanaging editor/international news; and Simon.


The Saginaw News winning entry: “I Used to Live Here”

L.A. Times: “A Stingin the Desert”



APME NEWS

By Jim SimonAPME News

hat journalists can learn from Sili-con Valley. Data storytelling.

Navigating the shifting media ethicsof the digital age. Drone journalism.

Creating a real-time news desk. That’s just part of what’s on the agen-

da for the 2015-16 ASNE-APME Confer-ence Oct. 16-18 at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Califor-nia. The conference theme is “3-D: Digital, Diversity,Disruption.

“During this time of transition in the industry, we're excit-ed about holding this year's conference in Silicon Valley,where sunshine and great ideas shine brightly," said AlanMiller, interim editor of The Columbus Dispatch and presi-dent of Associated Press Media Editors.

The John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford isworking closely with the American Society of News Editorsand APME in organizing the conference. AP Photo Man-agers (APPM) is also a conference partner.

After months of planning, the schedule is starting to takeshape.

On Friday evening, the conference will kick off with a talkon creativity by David Kelley, founder of the renownedInstitute of Design at Stanford and a creator of the Applemouse. That will be followed by an outdoor reception,where you can sip some California wine with friends, listento a bit of stand-up comedy and bid on auction items.

Highlighting Saturday and Sunday will be several keynotesessions:

• Tom Rosenstiel of the American Press Institute will get

Saturday morning rolling with his popular “What’s new,what’s next” session, looking at what the future has in storefor the news industry and efforts to attract new audiences.

• “The War on Science: what journalists need to know”program later Saturday will explore why millions of Amer-icans reject what science says about topics like globalwarming and vaccinations

• “Startup Stories: What journalists can learn from SiliconValley,” on Sunday will feature entrepreneurs sharing theirexperiences starting innovative new media ventures.

• Davan Maharaj, editor of the Los Angeles Times, will bethe keynote speaker at lunch on Sunday. Tina Seelig, directorof the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, will close theconference Sunday with a talk on fostering innovation and

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APME ASNE AP PHOTO MANAGERS

2015 CONFERENCE

PREVIEW



creating breakthrough ideas. Breakout sessions will cover a lot of terrain,

as well. One of the biggest challenges facing tradi-

tional news organizations — how to reachyounger and more diverse audiences — will bea major focus.

A panel of researchers and top editors willdig into the latest research on millennials andtheir news habits. A session on engagingdiverse communities will include facilitated,small-group conversations on topics such aslessons learned from Ferguson, Missouri, andMuslims in America.

Other sessions will offer guidance on creat-ing a real-time news desk, data storytelling,confronting growing challenges to mediaaccess, and where journalism ethics are head-ed in the age of instant, often unsubstantiatedinformation.

APPM will host a session exploring thepotential of drone journalism.

A discussion on the tightrope journalists face coveringterrorism will feature Dana Priest, the Pulitzer Prize-win-ning investigative reporter for The Washington Post, andLucy Daglish, dean of the Philip Merrill College of

Journalism at the University of Maryland.Representatives of major social media and

tech companies will talk about emerging part-nerships with newsrooms.

Jill Geisler and Butch Ward will once againbe on hand to share some shoptalk — andwine — with editors in a free-flowing conversa-tion about newsroom leadership. They willalso be available for one-on-one sessions witheditors.

The ASNE-APME awards luncheon will cele-brate the past year’s best in journalism onSaturday, while voting for the annual Innovatorof the Year award take place on Sunday morning.

And Sunday afternoon, they’ll be a chance towander through the “Digital Showcase” check-ing out demos of cool new things from jour-nalism organizations, vendors, start-ups andothers.

For those who need a bit more enticement,here’s one other detail about the 2015 ASNE-APME conference: The average October day-time high in Palo Alto is 74 degrees.

See you at Stanford.

Jim Simon, managing editor of The Seattle Times, can bereached at [email protected]

APME NEWS



� �

“Stanford andSilicon Valley arethe epicenter ofthe informationearthquake thathas disruptedjournalism. Thatmakes it aperfect place forAPME andASNE to meet.”Jim Bettinger, director of the John S. Knight JournalismFellowships atStanford

The registration fee is $275 for members ofAPME and ASNE and $375 for nonmembers.A group rate for hotel rooms is available atthe Sheraton Palo Alto until Sept. 15 for only$169/night for Friday, Saturday and SundayTo register for the conference or getinformation about hotel bookings, go towww.apme.com or www.asne.org.

ORESKES



By Martha MendozaThe Associated Press

ou were sold, and no one is ever coming torescue you.”That brutal condemnation from a Thai fish-

ing captain resonated with Myanmar migrantMyint Naing for 22 years, after he wastricked into slavery. Myint, 40, along with

more than 800 others to date, has nowbeen rescued after an Associated Press investigationinto forced labor in the Southeast Asian seafoodindustry.

Veteran AP journalists Robin McDowell inMyanmar, Margie Mason in Jakarta and MarthaMendoza in the Silicon Valley tracked slave-caughtfish to the supply chains of some of America’s biggest foodsellers, such as Wal-Mart, Sysco and Kroger, and popularbrands of canned pet food, including Fancy Feast, MeowMix and Iams. The expose and follow-ups in all formatshave prompted congressional hearings, new federal legisla-

tion, arrests, business commitments from retailers and dis-tributors and, most importantly, the rescue of the men.

The story started in 2014 with Mason and McDowell’sfrustration that forced labor within the Thai seafood indus-try persists as an open secret, and their determination tofollow the fish to consumers.

“Impossible,” one expert told them — citing themurkiness of the Thai industry: the transfer of fishbetween boats at sea, improper documentation onland, and the mixing-up of the product at majorseafood markets.

While researching, the reporters heard about acompany on a tiny, remote island in Indonesia thatwas using forced labor. When McDowell got there,the desperation of the men stood out.

“It was truly shocking. The second the men knew we werejournalists they started pouring out their story. They allwanted to get messages to their families that they werealive, scribbling down the names of their parents or their

Seafood from SlavesAN ASSOCIATED PRESS INVESTIGATION


AP PHOTO / DITA ALANGKARA

Burmese fishermen raise theirhands as they are asked whoamong them want to go home atthe compound of Pusaka BenjinaResources fishing company inBenjina, Aru Islands, Indonesia.

Y‘‘MENDOZA


villages back in Burma so that wecould go tell them,” said McDowell,who helped launch the first all-formatinternational bureau in Yangon.

The fishermen — from Myanmar,Cambodia, Laos and Thailand – wereworking as much as 20- to 22-hourshifts, seven days a week, out at sea.They were beaten by their Thai cap-tains, and many saw slaves who werekilled or simply jumped overboard indespair.

Using a hand-held camera, McDow-ell and her Burmese-fluent colleague,Esther Htusan, interviewed men onthe ships and the dock, and captured both still and videoimages. Htusan gave the camera to a dockworker, a formerslave himself, who took up-close footage of eight slavesimprisoned in a cage — images that would lead both the

text and video stories.Once back home, McDowell and Mason

tracked the slave-caught fish on a giantrefrigerated cargo ship by satellite to theThai port of Samut Sakhon. They thenwent there to watch the shipmentunloaded over four nights and follow thetrucks on to factories. The reporters had tokeep their heads low to avoid notice —

millions of dollars and criminal charges were at stake, andthe Thai seafood industry has a dangerous reputation.

Bangkok reporter Thanyarat Doksone and Mendoza thenworked to establish connections to specific companies.Doksone talked to security guards and workers in SamutSakhon. And Mendoza used U.S. Customs records to docu-ment shipments from the Benjina load to dozens of differ-ent businesses. She also went to supermarkets to confirmthat the particular brands and types of food the AP wastracking were there.

When Mendoza asked the companies for response, shefound most already knew there was slavery in the Thaiseafood industry.

Days after the story broke, Indonesian officials visitedBenjina to investigate.

As AP reported that morning in Apri: “At first the men fil-tered in by twos and threes, hearing whispers of a possiblerescue. Then, as the news rippled around the island, hun-dreds of weathered former and current slaves with long,greasy hair and tattoos streamed from their trawlers, downthe hills, even out of the jungle, running toward what theyhad only dreamed of for years: Freedom.”

The reporting team, led by AP International EnterpriseEditor Mary Rajkumar, is still tenaciously pursuing allangles. The latest story came in June, when Myint Naingreturned to his village and his mother, AP at his side.

“Myint Naing’s story shows how badly we need to step upefforts to monitor our supply chains,” said U.S. Rep. SeanMalone, D-N.Y. “The AP is playing an essential role in bring-ing stories like this to light. If Americans knew that slavelabor was being used to make products they consume, theywould stop buying those products and demand change.”

APME NEWS



Burmese fishermen prepare to boarda boat during a rescue operation.Indonesian officials investigatingabuses offered to take them out ofconcern for the men's safety.

AP PHOTO / DITA ALANGKARA

MASON

In this May 2015 photo, former slave fisherman Myint Naing andhis mother, Khin Than, cry as they are reunited after 22 years attheir village in Mon State, Myanmar. Myint, 40, is among hun-dreds of former slave fishermen who returned to Myanmar fol-lowing an Associated Press investigation into the use of forcedlabor in Southeast Asia's seafood industry.

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APME NEWS

great ideas2014 APME/ASNE

CHICAGO CONFERENCE

ave you launched a great new feature,page or Web project, or used a socialmedia tool in a great new way? Well,we want to recognize your great idea.

Associated Press Media Editors recognizes aGreat Idea every month on APME.com and weshowcased monthly winners in our popularannual Great Ideas book, which will be released

at our next conference in October.This is a chance for your newspaper to show

off great work and to help fellow editors by pro-viding ideas that might work in their markets.

It’s simple to submit your Great Idea. Just goto the Great Ideas page at APME.com, fill outthe online form and attach an image or submit alink.

VETERANS PROJECTHerald-Tribune, Sarasota, FloridaBill ChurchWHAT THEY DID:The Patterson Foundation, a Sarasota-basednonprofit that has tackled a variety of national issues, provided $12million and an endowment to build the first privately backed amphi-theater and art display at a national veterans cemetery. The Herald-Tribune’s coverage of the opening went beyond balloons and bandmusic. A four-page pullout section offered rich context on a projectwith roots back to President Lincoln. The project generated reprintrequests and much praise from print readers and veteran organiza-tions. Herald Tribune.com also created a veterans niche site toserve as a community archive of ongoing coverage and resourcesfor veterans.

SEARCHABLE DATABASE LISTSThe Columbus Dispatch,Columbus, OhioAlan MillerWHAT THEY DID: When it’stime to cut Christmas trees,you can use a handy list onDispatch.com to find a farm.Want to pick your own straw-berries? Looking for sweetcorn? Go to Dispatch.com for asearchable database that shows those nearest you by address andon a map. These lists can be tedious to compile, but they are wild-ly popular on The Columbus Dispatch’s website.

H



GREAT IDEAS

THE MUSICALUNMASKEDBinghamton Press & Sun, Binghamton, New YorkNeil BorowskiWHAT THEY DID: We all spend alot of time, paper and Web screenscovering high school athletics.What about the other stuff? Wedecided to follow the making of ahigh school musical from auditionsto cleanup after the last perfor-mance. We did this over a four-month period with several stories.This forged a great connection withthe Union-Endicott school com-munity and also with students andparents across our region who areactive in school but are not athletes. We wrote the series largelyin narrative form and, as it turnedout, there were some great humanstories (the leads were bestfriends since elementary school).

FLASHBACK MIAMI.comMiami Herald, Miami, FloridaAmy DriscollWHAT THEY DID: We built a website to showcase the MiamiHerald’s newly digitized photo archives. By sharing curated weeklyposts, we allow the public to view and buy copies of the outstandingand sometimes historically significant work of the Herald through the decades. We documented Miami from the streets and the halls of power, capturing everything from Elvis’ visit to Miami in 1960 tothe race riots of the '80s.

WALL STREET JOURNAL BOOK CLUBThe Wall Street Journal, New YorkRubina FillionWHAT THEY DID: The Wall Street Journal book club is an online group that hasmore than 5,600 members around the world. It’s a way for readers to ask ques-tions, discuss books and talk to prominent authors regardless of where they live.The author-led book club has included hosts Neil Gaiman, Khaled Hosseini,Elizabeth Gilbert and Gillian Flynn. They select books that inspired their own workto share with readers. We sent a weekly email to members with updates and dis-cussion questions. Readers can respond to them on Twitter (with hashtag#WSJbookclub), WSJ.com or on theWSJ Book Club Facebook group, which hasmore than 1,200 members. We post interviews with the author and weekly dis-cussion questions online at WSJ.com/bookclub. In many cases, the authorsthemselves are the ones coming up with the questions. As readers finish thebook, they have the opportunity to ask the author questions during a live videochat on Spreecast.com. We also collect the questions beforehand on Facebook,Twitter and Google Form.




APME NEWS

ori Maynard, a nationally respected journal-ism educator and thought leader on diver-sity issues, will be honored posthumouslyas recipient of the 15th annual Robert G.McGruder Award for Diversity Leadership,

awarded by the Associated Press MediaEditors in partnership with the American

Society of News Editors.Maynard, 56, served as president

of the Robert C. Maynard Institutefor Journalism Education. She diedof lung cancer on Feb. 24.

Maynard will be remembered andhonored during the annual awardsluncheon of the ASNE-APME con-ference, to be held Oct. 16-18 on theStanford University campus in PaloAlto, California.

The McGruder Award for Diver-sity Leadership is given annually toindividuals, news organizations orteams of journalists who embodythe spirit of McGruder, a formerexecutive editor of the Detroit FreePress, managing editor of The PlainDealer in Cleveland and a graduateof Kent State University.

McGruder died of cancer in April2002. A past president of APME anda former member of the board ofdirectors of ASNE, McGruder was a relentless diversitychampion.

Maynard will be remembered for the numerous initiativesshe championed through the years. The Maynard institute isnamed after her father, who was editor and then owner ofThe Oakland Tribune. He and Dori both were Niemanscholars.

“Dori Maynard changed lives in newsrooms and commu-nities across the country,” said Alan D. Miller, APME presi-dent. “Thousands of journalists learned to think differently,to be more inclusive, and to make sure that we representthe diversity of our communities in our news coverage andour newsrooms.

“Her words will long ring in our ears, and our readers canbe grateful for that. She was the epitome of diversity leader-

ship and left us too soon. We areprivileged to honor her and her lega-cy with the 2015 McGruder Award.”

The institute’s website remembersDori Maynard this way: “Maynardadvocated tirelessly for the future ofthe institute and its programs,reminding all that the work of bring-ing the diverse voices of Americainto news and public discourse ismore vital than ever.

Under her leadership, the Institutehas trained some of the top journal-ists in the country and helped news-rooms tell more inclusive andnuanced stories.”

Maynard received several nomina-tions for the McGruder Award forDiversity Leadership. Wrote KevinMerida, managing editor of TheWashington Post, “To the very end,she was a passionate warrior for

diversity in journalism, committed to telling stories that hadnot been told — or told well — in communities of coloracross this nation. She had an innovator’s spirit, and anegalitarian desire to work with everyone. She wanted tochange minds and hearts. She was fearless, and also some-one to fear if you ran a news organization and didn’t believethat all lives matter.”

DORI MAYNARDRespected journanist to be lauded at APME-ASNE conference

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“Dori Maynard changed lives in newsrooms and communities acrossthe country. Thousands of journalists learned to think differently, tobe more inclusive, and to make sure that we represent the diversityof our communities in our news coverage and our newsrooms.”Alan D. Miller, APME president



APME NEWS

he city of McKinney, Texas, sends Gawker a costestimate of $79,000 to fulfill the news site’s

Freedom of Information Act request for records con-cerning the police officer who pointed his gun at a

group of teenagers at a pool party.The Metropolitan Housing Alliance of Little Rock, Ark.,

sends the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette a cost estimate ofmore than $16,000 to provide copies of work orders goingback five years.

Rapid social media response critical of the Texas price tagon public records results in city officials saying the cost esti-mate was a mistake.

In Little Rock, the newspaper filed a criminal complaintin October 2014 against the housing agency’s executivedirector for violating Arkansas’ Freedom of Information Act,a misdemeanor. After a bench trial in May, a district judgefound the housing director guilty in June and fined him$100 plus $140 in court costs.

The judge said she could not order the housing agency toproduce the requested records because it was beyond thescope of her authority in the case. The housing agency pro-vided the records on its own, but filed a request for adeclaratory judgment in circuit court regarding the stateFOIA’s provisions regarding the fees an agency may chargein fulfilling public records requests.

These seemingly unrelated public records fights have onething in common: they represent the growing struggle tokeep access to government records open.

On the surface, the surfeit of publicly available govern-ment data online might lead the casual observer to thinkwe’re in a golden age of access. But the reality on theground, especially when it comes to local and state govern-ment records, belies the first-glance conclusion.

At its June meeting, the APME Board spent much of itssecond meeting day discussing access and what can bedone about the perceived closing of access to public recordsand government employees and officials.

APME President Alan Miller has made access a key ele-ment of his tenure. To that end, APME’s Sounding Boardsurvey in May asked members about access problems theyface.

Sounding Board chairman Gary Graham of Spokane’sSpokesman-Review reported in June that the most common

complaint among respondents dealt with access to policereports. His full report on the survey results can be found onPage 30 in this magazine.

The discussion in June centered on steps APME can orshould take to call attention to access problems and to givejournalists tools that can help them fight access battles.

Obviously, other journalism organizations also makeaccess part of their mission, and APME likely can partnerwith some of them to drive home to the public – and gov-ernment officials – the importance of openness to a freeand democratic society.

But is there something specific in the broad arena ofaccess that APME can own, can make a centerpiece of itsservice to its members and the public?

That’s the question that was asked most often during theboard’s discussion in June.

Is it enough to collect and broadcast the horror stories,the tales of intransigent officials and increasingly redactedinformation? Or is there an action plan we can develop on afocused element of access?

For example, this spring saw many local and state govern-ments grappling with how and when police body cameravideo should be publicly available. The First AmendmentCommittee is interested in finding out how police bodycamera video is treated in your communities.

And if you have other suggestions on how APME canmake access a vital part of its mission, let us know.

Contact First Amendment Committee chair SonnyAlbarado at [email protected], or call 501-244-4321.

ACCESS DENIEDBy Sonny Albarado

The First Amendment Report

T APME’s First Amendment Committee encouragesAPME members to contact us if you know of situa-tions that would benefit from exposure to sunshine.

Contact committee chairman Sonny Albarado at [email protected] or 501-344-4321 oron Twitter: @salbarado. Other committee membersare Ray Rivera ([email protected]), JeanHodges ([email protected]) and MarkBaldwin ([email protected]).

�But is there something specific in the broad arena of access thatAPME can own, can make a centerpiece of its service to itsmembers and the public?



APME NEWS

his was to be a Fourth of July column, an essayof gratitude for being among the sliver of

humans in history fortunate enough to live wherefreedom, justice and equality under the law are the

rule rather than the exception; where a great manypeople can be trusted a good deal of the time; and wherehonest people can generally live their lives in peace.

Then 12 leaders of the Wisconsin Legislature pulled a fastone.

And now, after a whirlwind weekend, this has evolvedinto a story of appreciation for the citizens of this state whocontacted their elected representatives and demandedopen, honest government.

In an act of brazen cynicism Thursday night, the Legi-slature's powerful Joint Finance Committee sneaked into

the state budget bill a group offundamental policy changes thatwould have blown up Wisconsin'slong, proud history of open gov-ernment and access to publicrecords.

They tried to rewrite state law sothe public could no longer seetheir communications while writ-ing legislation. They tried toexempt from public view a host ofrecords created by the governor's

administration, state agencies and local governments, andput new limits on public access to information about dis-missed criminal charges. They tried to grant themselvesbroad new special legal privileges that would allow them torefrain from releasing records when they were sued, and tobar current and former staff members from disclosinginformation.

They tried to wall off Wisconsin records behind a cloak oflegal privilege and operational secrecy beyond what anyother state in America allows.

They did this all without warning, after the last workdaybefore a long holiday weekend — a classic ploy for politi-cians unable to achieve their goals, as our nation'sfounders intended, through full disclosure and opendebate.

Their party (Republican) controls every branch of stategovernment: Gov. Scott Walker's administration, the Senateand Assembly, and the conservative justices the GOP backson the state Supreme Court. Given that authority by thevoters, they have been able to reshape state law in myriadways. They passed Act 10, right to work, tuition freezes, taxcuts, concealed carry, voter ID. They replaced a liberal chiefjustice with a conservative one. They changed theCommerce Department into the Wisconsin EconomicDevelopment Corp. They redrew the lines of legislative dis-tricts to virtually ensure they will stay in power for years tocome.

Our open records laws did not hinder them.Still, it wasn't enough. They wanted to strike future deals

in private, where no one could stop them or hold themaccountable.

By George StanleyThe First Amendment Report

Citizens step up to defend openand honest government in Wisconsin


GOV. SCOTT WALKER

Editor’s note: Media coverage of anattempt to quietly change Wisconsin’s openrecords laws helped prompt officials to dropthe measure. APME News asked GeorgeStanley, editor of the Milwaukee JournalSentinel, to share the column his newspaperpublished on July 4 on the matter.

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APME NEWS


They calculated that we would all be too busy this week-end visiting family and friends, enjoying cookouts and fire-works, to be paying any attention.

That was their mistake.The citizens of Wisconsin responded to this assault on

open government by letting their elected representativesknow, loudly and clearly, just who works for whom.

By the afternoon of Independence Day, Gov. Scott Walkerand the Republican leaders of the Legislature announced:"We have agreed that the provisions relating to any changesin the state's open records law will be removed from thebudget in its entirety."

Now it is our job to see they are true to their word, andstrip every change to our open records law from the budgetbill before it is passed and signed.

These are the Republican lawmakers who votedThursday to keep you in the dark about the public's busi-ness: Sen. Alberta Darling of River Hills; Rep. John Nygrenof Marinette, Sen. Leah Vukmir of Wauwatosa; Rep. DaleKooyenga of Brookfield; Sen. Sheila Harsdorf of River Falls;Sen. Howard Marklein of Spring Green; Sen. Luther Olsenof Ripon; Sen. Tom Tiffany of Hazelhurst; Rep. Mary Czajaof Irma; Rep. Dean Knudson of Hudson; Rep. AmyLoudenbeck of Clinton; and Rep. Michael Schraa ofOshkosh.

Fortunately, there were only 12 of them and many moreof you. You reminded them of that.

Our nation's founders built checks and balances into oursystem of government for a reason. This was one of thosekey moments to use the levers they gave us.

So, this began last week as a column about the blessingsbrought to us by Independence Day and now, thanks to

you, that is also how it will end. I had collected somequotes that strike me as more appropriate than ever now:

The liberties of people never were nor ever will be securewhen the transactions of their rulers may be concealed fromthem. —Patrick Henry

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people...Theyare the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.—Thomas Jefferson

The greatness of America lies not in being more enlight-ened than any other nation, but rather in her ability torepair her faults. —Alexis de Tocqueville

Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively exposedeception in government. —Hugo Black

The only security of all is in a free press. The force of publicopinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to beexpressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. Itis necessary, to keep the waters pure. — Thomas Jefferson

A popular government without popular information, orthe means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or atragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever governignorance: And a people who mean to be their own gover-nors must arm themselves with the power which knowledgegives. —James Madison

Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest canrepair; the rest is in the hands of God. —George Washington

George Stanley is the editor of the Milwaukee JournalSentinel. He can be reached via email at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @geostanley




APME NEWS

ewspaper editors are finding it increasinglydifficult to obtain access to public records withlocal law enforcement departments often citedas the most resistance to records requests.

A recent online survey about public accessconducted by the Associated Press Media Editors SoundingBoard drew responses from 40 news organizations, mostlydaily newspapers. Many of the editors suggested the solu-tion to access problems encountered by their reporters is toinitiate legal action more aggressively and consistently.

Nineteen of the editors who participated in a survey dur-ing May and early June listed law enforcement records asthe ones their reporters routinely have the most difficultygetting. Editors said reporters are often told that cases areunder investigation and the records are withheld because ofthat. Some editors reported that getting copies of such doc-uments as detailed traffic accident reports, arrests and basicincident response records are frequently hard to obtain.

While issues with law enforcement records were the mostcommonly listed by the editors, a variety of other publicagencies at the state and local level were also cited. One edi-tor said city and county governments "seem to drag theirfeet on just about any records request."

Editors listed a number of types of public records that areoften difficult to obtain in a timely fashion, including:

• Community college and university records, such asfinancial and budget documents

• Local school district records, salaries and terminations• State prisons bureau records• Decisions made in executive sessions

Some of the editors reported that they frequently uselawyers versed in First Amendment issues to pursue recordswhen public agencies and their employees refuse to providethe requested documents or fail to handle the requests in atimely fashion. Seventy-five percent of the editors acknowl-edged that newsroom budget limitations affect how oftenthey use legal counsel in responding to denials of access.

One editor said media lawyers are consulted three tofour times a month, while one does rarely and another saidnever. Only a few newspapers reported having access to alawyer on staff at the local or corporate level.

Editors expressed considerable support for pursuing legal

action more frequently. Some editors said taking agencies tocourt would draw more attention from the public and per-haps elicit support. While many favor court action, a num-ber also said a key to better access is more education for theagencies and employees who routinely receive and reviewrecords requests from the media and the public.

Bill Morlin, an award-winning investigative reporter forThe Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., and who is nowretired, cited two main reasons for the typical delay inobtaining police records: unwarranted concern for privacyon behalf of crime victims and the threat of litigation overthe release of information. Morlin said victims often want totell their stories to reporters but their names are eitherredacted from the reports or they are instructed by officersnot to talk to the media.

Morlin, who began his 37-year-career as a reporter withThe Associated Press, recalled in an interview in July thatwhen he began reporting, the relationships with police offi-cers were much more spontaneous. "Now, everything is fil-tered by public information officers."

Access to official records is important, said Morlin,because “the press is the public eyes and ears for everyone.”

Morlin also said access rules need to be enhanced, uni-form and consistently enforced. “The public needs to knowthis information in a timely manner,” Morlin said.

Another veteran reporter, Doug Schneider of the GreenBay Press-Gazette in Wisconsin, expressed similar concernsabout delays in obtaining records. “What the public doesn'tknow CAN hurt them, financially, and perhaps physically,”said Schneider in an email interview.

Schneider, who has worked for five daily newspapers inhis 25-year career, is government watchdog reporter for theGreen Bay daily and is also the USA Today Wisconsin corre-spondent.

Survey respondents represented all regions of the coun-try. Fifty-five percent of the respondents work for newspa-pers of circulation under 50,000, while 45 percent of themwork for papers of 50,000 to 250,000 circulation.

Graham is editor of The Spokesman-Review in Spokane,Washington, and chairman of the APME Sounding BoardCommittee. He can be reached at [email protected].

Editors discuss solutionsfor easier public records access

By Gary GrahamAPME Sounding Board

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APME NEWS


wo community newspapers in Illinois andIndiana were selected by the Associated Press

Media Editors for $2,500 grants to help completepublic service projects.

The Park Foundation of Ithaca, New York, agreedto sponsor, for the first time, the Community JournalismPublic Service Initiative awards for the Journal-Standard ofFreeport, Illinois, and the Tribune-Star of Terre Haute,Indiana, said APME President Alan D. Miller.

The award, now in its fourth year, is open to media com-panies that have a website and serve a metropolitan area of100,000 or fewer people.

“We’re thrilled to announce that this year and next, thePark Foundation has committed to underwriting andincreasing the grants,” Miller said. “With the ParkFoundation’s generous support, we will make two awards of$2,500 each in 2015 and 2016.” A $1,000 award had previ-ously been given to only one news organization annually.

“Public service journalism is our highest calling,” saidMiller, interim editor of The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch.“The APME board is grateful for the Park Foundation’s sup-port and proud to help eager journalists answer the call.”

The Journal-Standard will use its $2,500 grant to analyzethe effect of the dramatic increase in shootings on Freeport’s24,000 residents. The money will help the newspaper organ-ize community discussions and forums on the issue.

The Tribune-Star plans to use its $2,500 grant for in-depthreporting on the city’s financial crisis. It also intends to pro-duce podcasts, short video documentaries and interactivegraphics to go with the project, and to host digital town hallforums.

In addition, Miller said the APME Foundation will providetravel expenses for newspaper representatives to attend theASNE-APME conference Oct. 16-18 at Stanford University.

The St. Augustine (Florida) Record was cited as an honor-able mention and will receive a $500 grant to complete itsreporting on how the city is spending public funds in prepa-ration for a weeklong celebration of its 450th anniversary inSeptember.

“I have been amazed by the dedicated investigative andproject work accomplished by smaller community newsorganizations in this country,” said Joe Hight, chairman ofthe APME committee that selected the winners. “They provewhat can be accomplished with relatively few people. Theyshow why community journalism is now more importantthan ever.”

In selecting the Journal-Standard, George Rodrigue, edi-tor of The Plain Dealer of Cleveland, said the newspaper’sproject was “public service at the highest level.”

He said the newspaper “identified an issue of life-and-death importance. It used a full range of tools to share sto-ries, facts, and analytical work with its subscribers. Then itdecided to sponsor a series of community conversations toensure that the message got out to the citizens who mostneeded to hear it.”

In Terre Haute, the Tribune-Star plans to use the grant tohire an independent consultant to help reporters researchthe city’s financial problems and explain what it means tothe city and its taxpayers today and in the future.

“The project, ‘A City on the Brink: Terre Haute’s FinancialCrisis,’ would seek to explain how the city’s municipal gov-ernment got into the financial situation, dig into the opera-tional areas most affected by the rapidly decreasing citybudget and explore how the lack of money has affectedinfrastructure and public safety needs,” said Alison Gerber,editor of the Chattanooga (Tennessee) Times Free Press. “Italso would examine potential solutions.”

The St. Augustine newspaper has already obtained thou-sands of documents in public records requests. LindaNegro, retired managing editor of the Evansville (Indiana)Courier & Press, said the work “is exactly the kind of watch-dog journalism news agencies of all sizes should do.”

Under grant guidelines, the winning projects can useprint or digital platforms and include social media or amobile strategy. They should be considered entrepreneurialand should have the potential to be used elsewhere, includ-ing by larger media companies.

As part of the grant, the winners will travel to the APME-ASNE conference in Palo Alto, Calif., to present on theirprojects. The conference is Oct. 16-18. More information isat http://bit.ly/1MaRXsq

Previous grant winners have been:• The Enid News & Eagle for its project "Under Pressure"

about the city’s lack of services for poor parts of the north-ern Oklahoma city.

• The Sedalia (Missouri) Democrat for "Meth at theCrossroads."

• The Daily Citizen of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, for itsseries “Mental Health on Hold.”

The Park Foundation primarily supports scholarships inhigher education, quality media that heightens publicawareness of critical issues and protection of the environ-ment.

APME is an association of editors and content leaders atnewspapers, broadcast outlets and digital newsrooms aswell as journalism educators and student leaders in theUnited States and Canada. APME works closely with TheAssociated Press to foster journalism excellence.

Community newspapers win $2,500public service grant from APME

T



APME NEWS

ighty-four journalists, educators and studentsattended the Orlando NewsTrain May 15-16,

and they left the University of Central Floridaenthusiastic about the training they received.Here’s a sample of their tweets:

“#NewsTrain was amazing! I learned somuch from other journalists ... Great two-day work-shop.” – Ailin Le Bellot, University of Central Florida stu-dent

“What a productive use of time. Thanks for a fan-tastic two days of training and education,#NewsTrain.” – Caitlin Dineen, Orlando Sentinel reporter

“So stoked to put into practice what I learnedat #NewsTrain conference. HUGE THANKS!” –Brenda Barbosa, Charlotte Sun staff writer

On feedback forms, attendees rated the presenta-tions an average of 4.6 on a 5-pointscale, with 5 being “very useful andvery effective.”

A big thanks goes to our trainers andto the host committee chair, GilThelen, executive director of theFlorida Society of News Editors, andour campus liaison, Rick Brunson,associate journalism instructor at the University of CentralFlorida. Trainers were Linda Austin, NewsTrain projectdirector; Michelle Guido, former WESH-TV managing edi-tor; Kathy Kieliszewski, Detroit Free Press visuals director;Ron Nixon, New York Times Washington correspondent; andKaren Workman, New York Times senior staff editor.

Apply to bring a NewsTrain to your town in 2016

Apply by Oct. 1 to bring a NewsTrain to your town in2016. Hosting NewsTrain brings home affordable training inthe skills that matter most to journalists in your area. We areseeking sites for three NewsTrains in 2016 to follow ourworkshop in Lexington, Kentucky, on Jan. 21.

NewsTrain staffers work closely with successful applicantsand their host committee of local journalists to determinecritical training needs. Then, NewsTrain finds and pays top-flight trainers to address those needs. Attendees’ $75 regis-tration fee is retained by APME.

The host committee’s obligation includes supplying alight breakfast, lunch and snacks for either a one-day or

two-day workshop attracting 100 journalists, journalismstudents and journalism educators. It should seek localsponsors to cover that cost, which can run $1,500 to $3,000,depending on the length of the workshop and cateringcosts. The host committee also markets the workshopregionally and secures a venue, usually a free or low-costuniversity site.

Details on how to apply are at http://bit.ly/HostNewsTrain.Questions? Email Project Director Linda Austin [email protected].

Four affordable NewsTrain workshopsoffer digital skills nationwide

NewsTrain is bound for four more cities, deliveringtraining in the digital skills identified by local jour-nalists as vital to their success. Here are the loca-tions, dates and skills that will be taught:

• Monroe, Louisiana, Oct. 15-16:social media, mobile newsgathering,data-driven enterprise reporting,mobile-first breaking news coverage,journalism ethics in the digital age.http://bit.ly/MonroeNewsTrain

• DeKalb, Illinois (65 miles west ofChicago), Oct. 29-30: social media,

smartphone video, audience analytics, data-driven enter-prise reporting, beat mapping, creative local features cover-age. http://bit.ly/DeKalbNewsTrain

• Philadelphia, Nov. 13-14: a digital-storytelling bootcamp including social media, data-driven enterprise report-ing, smartphone video and photos, writing news for mobile.http://bit.ly/PhillyNewsTrain

• Lexington, Kentucky, Jan. 21: social media, smartphonevideo, data-driven enterprise reporting.http://bit.ly/LexingtonNewsTrain

The skills taught are chosen by a committee of local jour-nalists in each town who conduct an assessment of theneeds in their newsrooms.

We’d welcome your financial support. To help keepNewsTrain training coming to your community, pleasedonate at the big red buttons on APME.com.

For updates on NewsTrain’s next stops, follow us onTwitter @NewsTrain or like us at Facebook.com/NewsTrain.

Linda Austin is the project director for NewsTrain. Contacther at [email protected] or @LindaAustin_.

Attendees enthusiasticafter hopping on Orlando NewsTrain

By Linda Austin

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APME NEWS


By Thomas KoettingAPME News

hen readers of theSun Herald in Biloxi-

Gulfport picked up theirSunday newspaper the

last weekend in June, astriking package examining traffic con-gestion blanketed the front page. Fiveheadlines stacked at the top flowedinto a local column on riding a bus towork; a regional story on urbanMississippi commutes; a national storyon the future of freeways; a graphicshowing road conditions state-by-state; a local photo of a passengerboarding a bus; and headlines high-lighting how Mississippians fit into thediscussion.

The same morning in Rhode Island,an in-depth package on the same topicgreeted readers of the ProvidenceJournal. Their front page: a powerfulstory on how Providence-Warwickworkers face the worst commutes inthe country for communities their size;a national story predicting a grimfuture of clogged roads; focused head-lines that drove home the issue; andtwo local photos of commuters jostlingfor position – one shot at an express bus stop, the other ata train escalator. Much, much more was found inside.

Both papers focused on the same issue. Both broughtcritical national perspective home to their readers. Both hada sense of place.

And neither front page overlapped – not one paragraph,not one line.

That flexibility is at the heart of the national reportingproject undertaken this year in a combined effort of APMEand the Associated Press.

The intent specifically for 2015 was to take an importantissue – in this case, the nation’s crumbling infrastructure –and put it under a microscope through quarterly install-ments. The larger intent, though, was to develop a modelfor doing projects of a national scope, with layers of infor-mation – reporting, photography, graphics, data – that couldbe tailored by member news organizations and regional APbureaus to particular audiences.

“We were looking for a topic thataffects virtually everyone, and this onepushed all of the buttons,” said Alan D.Miller, interim editor of The ColumbusDispatch and president of APME. “Thisproject touches us all on many levels. Italso has been the most popular AP-APME collaborative project we’ve everdone in terms of member participationand use of the stories.”

The first installment in Februaryfocused on the lack of funding andplanning for highway improvements.That was followed by June’s deep diveinto worsening traffic congestion inever-denser cities and suburbs.Upcoming efforts will focus on drink-ing water and the nation’s energyfuture, including the vulnerability of itspower grid. Each topic affects the dailylives of most Americans, but in differ-ent ways, depending on where theylive.

Brian Carovillano, AP vice presidentfor U.S. news, is supervising the year-long project. Tom Verdin, AP’s enter-prise editor for state government cov-erage, is in charge of pulling all thepieces together and making it happen.The first two installments received

strong play by news organizations across the country. Many– perhaps most – took advantage of the ability to add localtouches.

“We are committed to providing explanatory journalismto our readers in Rhode Island, and, most of the time, weare able to do that with our own talented reporting staff,”said Karen Bordeleau, senior vice president and executiveeditor of The Providence Journal. “However, there are timeswhen we just can't add one more reporting project to ourwork load. So when the AP came along with the relevanttopic of commuting/infrastructure, we were grateful. It is aterrific example of a quality project that we have used tosupplement our own work.”

Key to the success has been ample planning time.“Advance notification was baked into the initiative as a

key ingredient allowing members to make each package rel-evant to their audiences,” Verdin said. “AP has promised to

National Reporting Project:Pushing all the right buttons

W


�“This project touches us allon many levels.” Alan D. Miller


deliver a full description of the package onemonth ahead of the publication date, datathat can be used for localization purposesthree weeks ahead of publication and embar-goed versions of the stories a week ahead.Videos and interactive graphics also are a pri-ority.”

One example of how that timeline has paidoff: When data was released for the firstinstallment, the Wisconsin State Journal hadthe time to create a 50-state graphic – andagreed to share it will all AP members.

The lead time “has allowed members toreport stories, assign photos and create chartstailored to their own audiences, save space forthe various components in weekend newspa-per editions, and plan for video and interac-tive displays on their websites,” Verdin said.

There have been some lessons andimprovement along the way – smoothing outthe distribution of all the different elements,providing more help with data analysis. Afterthe first installment, it became clear thatmembers would embrace more options. As aresult, the second installment had four datasets, six sidebars (one based on a nationalpoll), and interactive graphics.

The project also has highlighted the impor-tance of local data in the relationship betweenAP and its members.

“It's a whole new way the AP can providevalue to its members that is local and nationalin scope at the same time,” Carovillano said.“And with so many news organizationsintensely focused on local coverage, it's agreat example of AP’s relationship with mem-bers evolving in the way that it always has tomeet the challenges we all face.”

And that circles back to the experiences inBiloxi, Providence and others.

“I suspect a lot of editors appreciate some-one giving us an overview with a big projectlike examining our infrastructure, and then inour local communities we can tailor it, put-ting ourselves in that universe in the way thatour readers do every day,” said Stan Tiner,executive editor and vice president of the SunHerald and sunherald.com. “It’s a great proj-ect – I hope to see more of it.”

Thomas Koetting is the deputy managingeditor/news and enterprise for the MilwaukeeJournal Sentinel. He can be reached [email protected].

APME NEWS





APME NEWS

overage of the grand jury'sdecision not to indict a

Ferguson, Missouri,police officer in the shoot-ing death of Michael

Brown won honors for deadlinereporting in this year's AssociatedPress Media Editors awards for jour-nalism excellence by AP staffers.

An investigation of Duke Energy,the nation's largest electricity compa-ny, after a coal ash spill in NorthCarolina was honored in the enter-prise category, and a profile of adrug-addicted prisoner who becamea hospice nurse won the feature writ-ing award.

Jake Pearson of the New York Citybureau won two awards for his inves-tigation of the deaths of prisoners atRikers Island, a 10-jail complex inNew York's East River.

“The AP staff did excellent workproducing enterprising, in-depth sto-ries and hundreds of compellingphotos in the past year, making it dif-ficult to pick only a few to honor,"said APME President Alan D. Miller,interim editor of The Columbus(Ohio) Dispatch. “Those receivingAPME awards are exceptionallystrong and represent some of the bestof journalism in America - to thebenefit of readers around the world."

Photographs of the protests in Baltimore over the death ofFreddie Gray while in police custody and the conflict inUkraine won the spot news categories, while photos from arefugee camp in Chad and a series on coal miners inAppalachia won the feature categories.

Coverage of the Oso, Washington, mudslide was selectedas the Best Use of Video by the judges, and a series of inter-actives on Ebola garnered Best Use of Multimedia honors.

In selecting the deadline reporting winner, the judgespraised the staff work in covering the grand jury decisionnot to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson inBrown's shooting. “The AP team's coverage stood out for its

accuracy on deadline, for the speedwith which it reported fresh news inthe aftermath of the decision, and forthe evenhanded treatment of an issuewhere stakeholder emotions ran high.”

North Carolina staffers MichaelBiesecker and Mitch Weiss, whodetailed the cozy relationship betweenDuke Energy and the administrationof Gov. Pat McCrory, were honored forenterprise work by the judges. "Thedegree of difficulty in getting this

important story elevated this entry to the top. The AP staff ...had to dig hard, but the payoff was staggering and the out-rage factor high," they said.

Matt Sedensky, correspondent in West Palm Beach,Florida, won the feature writing award for "One Death TooMany," the tale of Jay Westbrook, a troubled man who foundhis calling as a hospice nurse until death came too close."The writer takes you on a journey that is inspiring andhaunting," the judges said. "Your outlook on life and lovewill be changed."

Pearson was honored with the Charles Rowe Award for

CAWARDS


APME AP

Riots in Ferguson, Mo.

Mudslide in Oso, Wash.


distinguished state reporting for his investigative work onRikers Island, which detailed three deaths over five years inwhich inmates were alleged to have been fatally beaten byguards. He also won the John L. Dougherty prize for exem-plary work by an AP staff member who is 30 years old oryounger.

“His dogged reporting, source building in the correctionssystem and extensive document and data work yielded bothexclusive stories and prompted action from city officials,”the judges said.

Baltimore photographer Patrick Semansky won the NewsSingle Photo award for what the judges called his “iconicimage" from the Baltimore protests. “The smoke from burn-ing stores, the long row of police in riot gear and the gasmask on a young, black man raising his fist in protest, areimages that define a moment and a new age of racial ten-sion in the United States,” they said.

Photographer Evgeniy Maloletka, based in Ukraine, washonored with the News Story Photo award for his series onthe conflict in Ukraine. The judges said the images “showpretty scenes - a field full of bright yellow sunflowers, agrassy meadow, an apartment with lace curtains - allmarred by the jarring, graphic evidence of war. ... Thesechilling images show the surreal impact of war in modernsociety and in places we wouldn't expect to see it."

Photographer Jerome Delay, based in South Africa, wonthe Feature Single Photo award for his image of two youngrefugee girls from the Central African Republic walkingtogether in a refugee camp in Chad. “Once again, we seeinnocent children amid conflict,” the judges said. “But wealso see hope. We see that even amid bleak circumstances,friendship blooms.”

David Goldman, a photographer based in Atlanta, wonthe Feature Story Photo award for his collection of images ofcoal miners in Harlan County, Kentucky. The photos“showed us the effects on families and community as KingCoal loses its influence on this Appalachian region.”

Peter Santilli, Youyou Zhou, Peter Hamlin and HeidiMorrow, all based in New York, and Shawn Chen, inChicago, were awarded the Best Use of Multimedia for theirinteractives on the Ebola outbreak. The series traced theprogress of the disease from Africa to the U.S.; followed thefinal days of Thomas Eric Duncan, Ebola's first U.S. victim;and examined the work of treatment centers. The judgesdescribed the interactive on Duncan's last days as “an espe-cially powerful” presentation.

Videographer Bill Gorman of Washington won the BestUse of Video award for “Scars, Memories Remain after OsoMudslide,” which the judges described as a “powerful, emo-tion-filled and compelling story. ... Gorman makes expertuse of the tools at his disposal.”

APME is an association of editors and content leaders atnewspapers, broadcast outlets and digital newsrooms aswell as journalism educators and student leaders in the

United States and Canada. APME works closely with TheAssociated Press to foster journalism excellence.

Here are the award winners and honorable mentions:

> DEADLINE REPORTING:• Winner: coverage of the grand jury’s decision not to indictFerguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson in the fatalshooting of Michael Brown.• Honorable mention: coverage of Israel's fighting withHamas in Gaza. “AP's team responded with lightning speedto each new development in the story, adding depth anddetail each day in a manner that illuminated an incrediblycomplicated conflict,” the judges said.• Judges: Mark Baldwin, executive editor, Rockford RegisterStar, chairman; Ray Rivera, editor, The Santa Fe NewMexican; and Cate Barron, vice president of content, PAMedia Group.

> ENTERPRISE REPORTING:• Winner: investigation by North Carolina staffers MichaelBiesecker and Mitch Weiss of Duke Energy, the nation'slargest electricity company, after a coal ash spill in NorthCarolina. They detailed the cozy relationship between thecompany and the administration of Gov. Pat McCrory.• Honorable mention: Alberto Arce, based in Mexico City,for his coverage of the violence in Central America, whichthe judges described as “remarkable reporting and writing.”• Judges: Chris Cobler, editor, Victoria (Texas) Advocate,chairman; Chris Quinn, vice president of content, NortheastOhio Media Group; and Laura Sellers-Earl, editor, The DailyAstorian, Astoria, Oregon.

> JOHN L. DOUGHERTY AWARD:• Winner: Jake Pearson, based in New York City, for hisinvestigative work on Rikers Island, which detailed threedeaths over five years in which inmates were alleged to havebeen fatally beaten by guards.• Honorable mention: Esther Htusan, based in Yangon,Myanmar, for her coverage of the country. The judges saidHtusan “displayed extraordinary courage and ingenuity inferreting out painful stories of persecution and its repercus-sions, infusing her stories with agonizing details of fleeingRohingya minorities.”• Honorable mention: Youkyung Lee, technology writer inSeoul, South Korea, was cited by the judges for her “strongreporting instincts (which) led her to a surviving crew mem-ber and key information about how the Seoul ferry tragedytranspired.”• Judges: Jim Simon, deputy managing editor, The SeattleTimes, chairman; Rivera; and Sonny Albarado, projects edi-tor, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

> FEATURE WRITING:• Winner: Matt Sedensky, correspondent in West Palm

APME NEWS





APME NEWS


Beach, Florida, for “One Death Too Many,” the tale of JayWestbrook, a troubled man who found his calling as a hos-pice nurse until death came too close.• Honorable mention: Martha Mendoza, based in SanJose, California, for “Leaving the Jungle,” the journey of ahomeless woman as she reluctantly moves from one of thepoorest areas of Silicon Valley to her own apartment.• Judges: Bill Church, executive editor, Herald-TribuneMedia Group, Sarasota, Florida, chairman; Kelly Dyer Fry,editor, The Oklahoman; and Dennis Anderson, executive edi-tor, Peoria (Illinois) Journal Star.

> BEST USE OF MULTIMEDIA• Winner: Peter Santilli, Youyou Zhou, Shawn Chen, PeterHamlin and Heidi Morrow were awarded the Best Use ofMultimedia for their interactives on the Ebola outbreak.• Honorable mention: “The Goal of Life,” a bilingual featureoffering a child's-eye view of the daily brutality for a majorityof children growing up in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and ex-ploring how the discipline of soccer can provide an alterna-tive to criminal gangs. "Emotionally compelling storytelling,"the judges said.• Judges: Barron, chairwoman; George Rodrigue, editor,The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer; and Fry.

> CHARLES ROWE AWARD• Winner: Jake Pearson, based in New York City, for hisinvestigative work on Rikers Island, which detailed threedeaths over five years in which inmates were alleged to havebeen fatally beaten by guards.• Judges: Anderson, chairman; Cobler; and Thomas

Koetting, deputy managing editor, Milwaukee JournalSentinel.

> BEST USE OF VIDEO• Winner: Bill Gorman, Washington videographer, for“Scars, mMemories Remain After Oso Mudslide.”• Honorable Mention: “D-Day: AP Marks 70 Years sinceAllied Invasion in Normandy.” “Great use of video to tell sto-ries of human emotion,” the judges said.• Judges: Jack Lail, director of digital, Knoxville (Tennessee)News Sentinel, chairman; and Eric Ludgood, assistant newsdirector, WAGA-TV, Atlanta.

> NEWS SINGLE PHOTO• Winner: Patrick Semansky, based in Baltimore, for pro-tests in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray• Honorable mention: Single Photo: Khalil Hamra, based inGaza, for a child treated in Gaza.• Judges: Miller, Sellers-Earl and Barron.

> NEWS STORY PHOTO• Winner: Evgeniy Maloletka, based in Ukraine, for a serieson the conflict in Ukraine.

> FEATURE SINGLE PHOTO• Winner: Winner: Jerome Delay, based in South Africa, fortwo refugee girls from the Central African Republic walkingtogether in a refugee camp in Chad.

> FEATURE STORY PHOTO• Winner: David Goldman, based in Atlanta, for a collectionof images of coal miners in Harlan County, Kentucky.



APME NEWS


By Mark BaldwinAPME News

ou don’t have to spend much time in a news-room to understand that certain qualities are part

of every successful journalist’s DNA.A skeptical attitude toward authority, particularlyas wielded by government.

A strong belief that more information, not less, is essen-tial to feeding and watering our democracy.

An ironclad commitmentto accuracy, achievedthrough verification.

A devotion to fairness.An ability to sift through

reams of information, someof it contradictory, to sepa-rate facts from their lessercousins: rumors, urban leg-ends and outright lies, toname just a few.

So, what would happen ifthe general public — thefolks who read and use ourproducts — learned to con-sume news using the samesorts of skills that are hard-wired into journalists fromtheir first day on the job?

That, in a nutshell, is the goal of the News LiteracyProject, a national educational program that teaches stu-dents in middle and high school how to distinguish verifiedinformation from spin, opinion and propaganda. It’s anurgent challenge at a time when digital technology hasmade more information available in more forms than at anytime in history, and urban legends can whip around theworld in a nanosecond.

Not every drop from the digital fire hose is as importantas every other. That’s the thinking behind the News LiteracyProject. If you’re interested in bringing the program to yourcommunity, submit an information request at thenewsliter-acyproject.org.

Two avenues exist for editors looking to get involved inthe movement.

First, talk to your local schools. In Rockford, we’ve puttogether a consortium comprising our public school district(the second-largest public system in Illinois) and twoparochial institutions with the goal of introducing a newsliteracy curriculum within the next year or two.

The educators are eager partners — they see studentsstruggle every day to make sense of huge volumes of digitalinformation. Plus, news literacy, with its emphasis on veri-fied information, nicely complements the common core,which stresses evidence-based argument.By working with journalists, “educators gain authentic, real-world subject matter experts, which is an extremely impor-tant part of a 21st century education,” Peter Adams, seniorvice president of the News Literacy Project, said in an email.

“They get to address atopic that is extremelyimportant and foundation-al for their students (bothin and out of the class-room); they get strategies,ideas and the momentumto spark substantive civicengagement in the class-room; and as an ancillarybenefit they get mentorsand role models for theirstudents.”

For news professionals,Adams said, participationin news literacy program-ming offers “the chance toexplain what distinguishesquality journalism from the

wide and dynamic variety of information in the 21st centuryinformation landscape” — and an excellent means of con-necting with the community.

You can also get involved in the National Community andNews Literacy Roundtables Project, a partnership of theAmerican Society of News Editors, the News Literacy Projectand the American Press Institute.

The national project will work with communities aroundthe country to identify a challenging local topic and bringtogether community leaders, activists and ordinary resi-dents to learn more about the topic and use the techniquesof news literacy to separate fact from fiction and develop acommon understanding of the issue.

The project needs local media and educational partners. Ifyou’re interested, contact Project Director Clair Lorell [email protected].

Mark Baldwin is executive editor of the Rockford (Illinois)Register Star. He can be reached at [email protected].

News Literary Project teachesunwavering journalistic tenets

Y



APME NEWS

Seattle Times names Simon as new managing editor

In a move designed to integrate digitalplanning from story inception, SeattleTimes Editor Kathy Best has named JimSimon the newsroom’s managing editorand Michele Matassa Flores its deputymanaging editor. Simon will oversee thenewsroom’s digital, metro, business, enterprise and investi-gations teams. Matassa Flores will have responsibility forvisuals, sports, features and the news desk. In 2018, Simonwill become president of the Associated Press MediaEditors, where he now serves as an officer.

Sun Herald executive editor retiring Sept. 1Stan Tiner, who has served as executive editor of The

Sun Herald, of Gulfport, Mississippi, for 15 years, will retireSept. 1. Tiner led the newsroom during coverage of 2005’sHurricane Katrina, which earned the paper a Pulitzer GoldMedal for Public Service.

John Ross named managing editor in Ky.The Times-Tribune in Corbin, Kentucky, has named staff

writer John L. Ross as managing editor.The daily newspaper in southern Kentucky reports that

Ross began serving in the position recently. Former editorBecky Killian left the paper on June 30.

Tennessee editor Jones to step downGreeneville (Tennessee) Sun Editor John M. Jones Jr.

plans to step down from that position later this year, hewas quoted as saying. Jones, who turned 73 in June, hasheaded the Sun's news and editorial operations since July14, 1986.

Dreeszen named managing editorfor news at Sioux City (Iowa) Journal

Dave Dreeszen, longtime business editor of the SiouxCity Journal, has been promoted to managing editor fornews. He replaces Jackie Kaczmarek who was earliernamed managing editor for features. The transitions wereannounced by editor Bruce Miller. Dreeszen, a native ofAuburn, Iowa, joined the Journal as a political reporter andgeneral assignment reporter in 1989.

Oxford names Rebman as its new editorStephanie Rebman has been named editor of The

Oxford Eagle in Oxford, Mississippi. Rebman’s hiring wasannounced by publisher Tim Phillips. She succeeds DonWhitten, who is retiring after 38 years with the newspaperand 10 years as editor. Rebman, who is 34, previouslyworked for nine years at the Northeast Mississippi DailyJournal in Tupelo.

Marrison steps down as Dispatch editor;Alan D. Miller named interim editor

After 16 years of leading The Dispatch newsroom,Benjamin J. Marrison stepped down as editor on June 19.“I’ve long believed that when a newspaper changes pub-lishers, the editor should step aside to allow the new pub-lisher complete freedom to implement his or her vision,”he said. The Dispatch Printing Co. recently completed thesale of The Dispatch and its other print assets to NewMedia Investment Group. New Media, the holding compa-ny for GateHouse Media, bought The Dispatch for $47 mil-lion.

Alan D. Miller, a 31-year Dispatch veteran, was namedinterim editor by Kirk Davis, GateHouse Media CEO.

editorsin the newsIndustry’s promotions, appointments, awards and recognition


SIMON

MARRISON



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Miller has been managing editor/news since 2004.Miller, 55, started at the paper as a reporter in 1984 and hascovered regional news, urban affairs, Columbus City Hall,and higher education. He was an assistant city editor, stateeditor and assistant managing editor before becomingmanaging editor in 2004. He teaches journalism at DenisonUniversity in Granville and is president of the nationalAssociated Press Media Editors association.

Greg Moore, AP West editor, namedMilwaukee correspondent

Greg Moore, an editor on The Associated Press’ Westregional desk, has been named supervisory correspondentin the cooperative’s Milwaukee bureau. Moore, 36, joinedAP in 2011 on the West regional editing desk, where he hasfrequently handled top stories such as gay marriage, thehealth care overhaul, the resignation of Oregon Gov. JohnKitzhaber and the debate over childhood vaccines.

Baker retiring as Times Leader news editorThe Times Leader in Princeton, Kentucky, says that News

Editor Anita Baker is retiring after a 39-year career in localmedia. The newspaper is part of the Kentucky New EraMedia Group, based in Hopkinsville.

David Emke named editor of The Journal inMartinsburg, West Virgina

David M. Emke has been named the new editor of TheJournal in Martinsburg, West Virginia.

Emke has been with The Journal since May 2012 as thenewspaper's regional editor. Prior to coming to Martins-burg, Emke worked at The Post-Journal in Jamestown,NewYork.

Guajardo new Journal editor in MississippiThe Daily Journal in Tupelo, Mississippi, reports that 26-

year-old Rod Guajardo will succeed Lloyd Gray, who'sbeen editor for 23 years. Guajardo had been a reporter forlocal government and politics. Gray is leaving to becomeexecutive director of The Phil Hardin Foundation inMeridian. Guajardo grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, andwas news editor of The Natchez Democrat before joiningthe Tupelo newspaper. Daily Journal publisher and CEOClay Foster announced his appointment.

Schaneman named editor in ScottsbluffAt the Star-Herald in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, longtime

Editor Steve Frederick was replaced by Bart Schane-man, the present assistant editor. Maunette Loeks, whohas been in charge of the Star-Herald’s digital media, waspromoted to digital news editor. Frederick remains with thepaper as special projects editor.

Frederick (Maryland) News-Post picksnews veteran Pexton to serve as top editor

A veteran journalist and former Washington Postombudsman will serve as The Frederick (Maryland) News-Post’s top editor. The company announced that 60-year-oldPatrick Pexton of Chevy Chase will oversee the newspa-per's editorial staff. The Los Angeles native began his jour-nalism career in the 1980s covering two Connecticut townsand later worked at The Montgomery Journal and The NavyTimes. He served as a managing editor and deputy editor ofThe National Journal and became The Washington Post’sombudsman in 2011.

New editor takes helm in Harlingen, TexasLisa Seiser has been named editor at the Valley Morn-

ing Star in Harlingen, Texas. She had spent the past threeyears at the Daily Union in Junction City, Kansas. Seiser hasbeen in the newspaper industry for more than 20 years,starting as a sports reporter, reporter, assistant editor andeventually rising to the position of managing editor at mul-tiple communication companies in Wisconsin and, mostrecently, in Kansas.

Burton named managing editor in CasperJason Adrians, publisher and editor of the Casper Star-

Tribune in Casper, Wyoming, announced that opinion edi-tor Mandy Burton is new managing editor for the paper.Burton, 29, joined the Star-Tribune in February 2014 asnews production manager, supervising the copy and designdesk as well as being a member of the editorial board.

Mayberry named North Iowa editorDavid Mayberry, 40, content editor of the Casper

(Wyoming) Star-Tribune newsroom, has been named edi-tor/managing editor of the North Iowa Media Group, whichincludes the Globe Gazette in Mason City, Iowa. He suc-ceeded Jane Reynolds, who is retiring. Mayberry will over-see news gathering operations of the Globe Gazette and itsthree weekly affiliates, the Britt News-Tribune, Forest CitySummit and Mitchell County Press-News.

Sports editor to become managing editorat Times Observer in Warren, Pa.

The (Warren) Times Observer in Warren, Pennsylvania,has promoted sports editor Jon Sitler to managing editor.Sitler was hired as a part-time sports writer in 1996, thenworked as a news reporter before being named sports edi-tor in 2003.

Dean Lehman resigns as Times-Call editorDean Lehman, editor and publisher of the Longmont

Times-Call and publisher of the Loveland Reporter-Herald,





APME NEWS

has announced his resignation from the Colorado newspa-per company. The Times-Call reported that Lehman's resig-nation closes a 35-year career with Lehman Communica-tions Corp. He will take on the title of publisher emeritus

Phillip Lucas appointed AP reporterin Birmingham, Alabama

Phillip Lucas, a journalist who has helped The Associa-ted Press coordinate and cover significant stories across theSouth and beyond, has been hired to work as a reporter forthe news cooperative in Birmingham, Alabama.

Marjorie Miller promoted to newleadership role at AP

Marjorie Miller, a veteran journalist and newsroomleader, has been promoted to Director of Global News and

Enterprise for The Associated Press. Miller has been the AP’sregional editor in Latin America since late 2010. In the newposition, she will be responsible for several departments,including the Nerve Center, which crafts the daily newsreport from the flow of breaking news and a regular selectionof AP-generated investigative and enterprise stories.

Gunn named editor of The Virginia-PilotVirginia's largest newspaper has named Steve Gunn as

its top editor. Gunn was the editor of The Capital Gazette inAnnapolis, Maryland. Before coming to Annapolis in 2013,Gunn worked at The Charlotte Observer in North Carolinafor 18 years. Gunn held several positions at the Observer,including metro editor and director of audience develop-ment and strategic products. He has also previously workedat New York Newsday, the Dallas Times Herald and theKansas City Times and Star.



APME recognizes contributions to the APphoto report through the Showcase Photoof the Month Award. The competition isjudged by AP and member photo editors.The monthly winners are displayed at theannual conference and a Showcase Photoof the Year Award is presented.showcase

member


APME NEWS

FEBRUARYAP Photo/The Idaho Statesman

Kyle GreenIn February, members of the Eagle Rock Dance Platinum team stretch in a stairway before their audition

for America's Got Talent at Taco Bell Arena in Boise, Idaho. The group drove from Idaho Falls to audition for the show,joining thousands of other hopefuls who also auditioned.



APME NEWS

MARCHAP Photo/Star Tribune via AP

Aaron LavinskyIn this March 28, photo, Yamah Collins, center, faints during a prayer service marking

the tenth day since the disappearance of her stepson, 10-year-old Barway Collins, in Crystal, Minn.At left is Barway's father, Pierre Collins.



APME NEWS

APRILAP Photo/The Orange County Register

Mindy SchauerHundreds of family and friends, including Samual Milner, front, take part in the memorial services for the

late televangelist Rev. Robert H. Schuller on April 20, in Garden Grove, Calif. Schuller who founded the CrystalCathedral was 88 when he died on April 2 after a battle with esophageal cancer.



APME NEWS

MAYAP Photo/The Gazette via AP

Michael CiagloCapt. Debbie Tuttle, of the California State Military Reserve, touches her son Pfc. Keith Williams’ name during

the Mountain Post Warrior Memorial Ceremony at the Global War on Terrorism Fallen Soldiers’ Memorial, May 21,in Colorado Springs, Colo. Williams was honored along with six other Fort Carson soldiers during the ceremony.

The seven Fort Carson soldiers died while deployed in 2014.


n AP Stylebook usage, “the” is definitely achallenge.

What’s the role of the defi-nite article in writing?“The” restricts or partic-

ularizes a term; ithelps specify a particularthing or indicates a nounthat stands as a typicalexample of its class, saysthe American HeritageGuide to ContemporaryUsage and Style.

In AP news stories, “the” is often spelled lowercasewith proper nouns or names, governed by the Stylebook’sprimary rule on capitalization: In general, avoid unneces-sary capital letters.

The “down” guidance covers buildings, landmarks, politi-cal parties, geographical locations, teams, religious refer-ences, sports, musical groups and other many terms pre-ceded by “the.”

Some examples: the Capitol, the Oval Office, the Demo-cratic Party, the Republican Party, the Badlands, the South-side, the Great Lakes, the Colosseum, the MetropolitanMuseum of Art, the Rev. Billy Graham, the Bible, the LastSupper, the New York Giants, the Derby, the Series, theMasters, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones.

But in some entries in the Stylebook, the definite articleused with a name is capitalized.

“The” as part of a formal company name should beincluded uppercase. For example:

The Proctor & Gamble Co., The Walt Disney Co.This guidance also applies to news media names on first

reference, if that's the way the publication prefers to beknown: e.g., The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal andThe Associated Press.

But on follow-up references, media names are usuallyshortened with “the” spelled lowercase: the Times, theJournal, the AP.

If a story mentions several newspapers, some of whichuse "the" and some that don't, lowercase “the” before theseries: e.g., ... as reported in the Washington Post, DallasMorning News and Los Angeles Times.

AP guidance differs with universities that capitalize the

definite article in their names andnews releases.

AP news stories don't include capi-talized definite articles if schools use “The” in the name.

It’s Ohio State University in our reporting, rather than TheOhio State University. Same for University of Texas, GeorgeWashington University and others.

In AP sports stories, school names are typically evenshorter without an article because they are well-known tofans: Texas, Ohio State and George Washington.

The “composition titles” entry specifies a significantexception: “The” is uppercase as the first word of book titles,computer game titles, movie titles, opera titles, play titles,poem titles, album and song titles, radio and television pro-gram titles, and the titles of lectures, speeches and works ofart.

It’s the same for the indefinite articles “a” and “an” start-ing a title.

Some examples: “The Star-Spangled Banner," “The Riseand Fall of the Third Reich,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,”Mozart's “The Marriage of Figaro.”

On the other hand, country names using the definite arti-cle are spelled with “the” lowercase in AP news stories: theNetherlands, the Philippines. But there’s always an excep-tion: it’s The Hague with a capital T for the Dutch city.

When news questions arise about how to handle the defi-nite article, consult the AP Stylebook or the online help site,Ask the Editor.

By David Minthorn


APME NEWS

IAP Stylebook minuteDefining the role of the definite article in writing



APME NEWS

Officersn President: Alan D. Miller, The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatchn Vice President: Laura Sellers-Earl, The Daily Astorian,Astoria, Oregonn Secretary: Bill Church, Herald-Tribune Media Group,Sarasota, Florida n Journalism Studies Chair: Jim Simon, The SeattleTimesn Treasurer: Dennis Anderson, Peoria (Illinois) Journal Star

Executive Committee(officers above plus)n Past President: Debra Adams Simmons, AdvancePublicationsn AP Senior Vice President/Executive Editor: KathleenCarroll, New Yorkn AP Vice President/Managing Editor U.S. News:Brian Carovillanon Marketing Chairwoman: Angie Muhs, State Journal-Register, Springfield, Illinois n Conference Program: Jim Simon, Seattle Times; Joe Hight, Oklahoma City

Directors(Terms expiring in 2015)n Dennis Anderson, Peoria (Illinois) Journal Starn Mark Baldwin, Rockford (Illinois) Register Starn Chris Cobler, Victoria (Texas) Advocaten Angie Muhs, State Journal-Register, Springfield, Illinois

(Terms expiring in 2016)n David Arkin, GateHouse Media n Sonny Albarado, Arkansas Democrat Gazetten Jack Lail, Knoxville News Sentineln Autumn Phillips, The Southern Illinoisan, Carbondalen Thomas Koetting, Milwaukee Journal Sentineln Russ Mitchell, WKYC-TV, Clevelandn Cate Barron, Patriot-News, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

(Terms expiring in 2017)n Gary Graham, The Spokesman-Review, Spokane,Washingtonn Joe Hight, Oklahoma Cityn Eric Ludgood, Fox 5 News, Atlantan Kelly Dyer Fry, The Oklahomann Chris Quinn, Northeast Ohio Media Groupn George Rodrigue, The Plain Dealer, Clevelandn Ray Rivera, Santa Fe New Mexican

APME News Editorn Andrew Oppmann, Middle Tennessee State University

APME BOARDOF DIRECTORS2015

Our communication vehiclesn apme.comn http://www.facebook.com/APMEnewsn https://twitter.com/APMEn http://www.facebook.com/NewsTrainn https://twitter.com/NewsTrain and, APME Update:n http://www.apme.com/?page=Newsletters


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