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(09/15/09 4:07pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>INDIANAPOLIS — Sports coverage will accurately reflect athletes and issues only when news organizations hire more people of color and women — not only as reporters but as editors who embrace diversity, panelists at a sports media symposium said Monday.The panel discussion at IU's National Sports Journalism Center followed a 2008 report by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports showing that only 6 percent of the nation's top print and online sports editors are minorities. It also found that only 13 percent of sports reporters are people of color even though the athletes they cover in several sports are mostly minorities."We just can't have an understanding of the complexities of sports ... unless we begin to change these numbers in very dramatic ways," said Richard Lapchick, a panelist and director of the institute, based at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.Stephen A. Smith, a longtime television analyst for ESPN and ESPN Radio and columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, noted that most reporters are white even though they cover basketball and other sports dominated by black players."What that says is 'We don't mind you playing the games, but we're going to control the message,'" said Smith, now a contributor to MSNBC. He said blacks find that "inherently offensive."Panelists said it is up to management at newspapers to reverse what they said were sports newsrooms composed almost entirely of white men."I hope we learned our lesson ... that we have disconnected so much from our audience," said sports columnist William C. Rhoden of The New York Times.The media haven't, the panelists agreed."It's getting worse," said Kristin Huckshorn, senior news editor for ESPN in New York and a founding member of the Association for Women in Sports Media. "There's no internal or external pressure on sports editors to hire women."She said the journalism groups Associated Press Sports Editors and Associated Press Managing Editors should "pressure" news organizations to hire more women.Garry D. Howard, sports editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and president of the APSE, said news organizations that have a diverse staff will have better coverage because they are "more inclusive.""There's still a long, long, long way to go," he said.
(01/10/08 5:00am)
As the new year rings in, I once again offer Hollywood and our favorite celebs advice and resolutions for '08 (because, as always, I know so much more than they do).\nNickelback fans: Let yourselves be known! -- Seriously, who are you people? Do you exist? This band sells millions of albums, yet I've never met anyone who claims to like them. Please speak up! I have lots of questions I'd like to ask you. (Be warned, however, that the conversation will end with me punching you in the face for causing me to have to listen to "Rock Star" seven times a day at work.)\nJ.K. Rowling: Secretly stay in the Potter World -- Congratulations, J.K., '07 was a hell of year for you. "The Deathly Hallows" wonderfully completed your masterpiece saga. Take a nice, hard-earned vacation, then secretly get back to work. You've said no Harry Potter sequels, and I think everyone can agree that's for the best. However, you need to stock a few sequels and spinoffs ("The Adventures of Tiny Ted Lupin," "Hogwarts: A History of Magic," "Harry Potter and the Sudden Presence of Boredom and Loss Of Meaning in His Life as He No Longer Has Any Evil Wizard Ass to Kick"). Years after you're dead, Scholastic, or whoever's in charge of publishing your novels, will find some loophole to the books' rights and will surely reboot the Potter moneymaking machine by offering books worse than enduring the first half of a Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes Puking Pastille. If we're forced to deal with these, at least they'll have been written by you (ensuring awesomeness).\nBritney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Amy Winehouse -- I hate to be one of the countless columnists across the country telling you to get your lives back on track, but …\nThe Judd Apatow Gang -- My grandmother would love to clean your mouths out with soap. I, on the other hand love your crude, filthy "Superbad" sense of humor. Don't change it at all. But how about putting one of those swear jars where every time someone drops an f-bomb they drop in a quarter on set? At the end of production, all the money collected could be donated to charity (and with your guys' track records, that'd be enough to feed a whole country.)\nPromises Residential Treatment Center -- You guys seem to be the celebrity rehab of choice, and with the incredibly high number of celeb DUIs this year, why not set up an in-house driver's ed program (or remind these people they're rich enough to hire chauffeurs)? The streets of L.A. will become much safer.\nBrad Pitt, George Clooney, Matt Damon -- Please quit making the rest of the entire male population look completely inept. "Ocean's 13" was yet again an entertaining blast, but then you also go and make classy, smart, thinking-people pictures such as "The Assassination of Jesse James," "Michael Clayton" and "The Bourne Ultimatum." Cut it out.\nOprah -- If you're going to be charitable and help the less fortunate, at least be a little secretive and don't invite all the camera crews at every donation opportunity.\nVanessa Hudgens -- Grow a backbone and don't give into your Disney bosses so easily. One naked picture isn't the end of the world, but there you were apologizing like a terrified 5-year-old. Innocence may be the key to "High School Musical," but when it comes time for "College Musical," things may get a bit more risque.\n"Weeds" protagonist Nancy Botwin -- Relocate to the Midwest. Good luck restarting your life, but if things get touchy and you have to resort back to the business, head down to Bloomington. You should find plenty of customers here, and I think we could be pretty good friends.\nWhitney Houston and Jennifer Hudson -- Quit slacking, ladies, and get to work. Whitney's comeback album and Jen's debut should be sweeping the Grammys come February. Too bad you still haven't released them. Come on!\nSpice Girls -- Listen to your song "Never Give Up on the Good Times." You all seem to be having a blast on this reunion tour. Make it permanent, and hit the studio to start recording new material. \nWriters Guild of America and The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers -- Set aside your differences. Join hand in hand to sing "I'd like to Teach the World to Sing in Perfect Harmony," like in that old Coke commercial. Meet each others' demands and please get back to making great TV. \nKelly Clarkson -- Embrace the mainstream. You proved to Clive Davis you're a badass by releasing "My December" and it was way artsy (you scare the crap out of me when you're dressed up like an Asian Fergie invisibly kicking that guy's ass in the "Never Again" video). But you know what else was awesome? "Since U Been Gone," "Walk Away" and "Because of You." So go record the sugary rock-pop anthem music RCA wants you to, even if it's "Breakaway 2.0." Because that stuff rocks.\nKanye West -- Look up the word "humble" in the dictionary and make a lunch date with Susan Lucci. I feel your pain, Kanye. You deserve all those awards you get snubbed for, but I haven't won anything since a soccer game in second grade, and poor Susan Lucci had to wait 19 years for her Emmy. Quit the unattractive diva antics.
(08/21/07 10:15pm)
PRINCETON, Ind. – An accident at an air shaft under construction at a southern Indiana coal mine killed three people Friday, police said.\nDetective Mike Hurt said the people died in a basket used to transport people up and down a 600-foot air shaft, but he could not say whether they fell. Authorities did not believe there had been a cave-in or an explosion, he said. They also didn’t believe anyone else was trapped or injured.\nCrews were working to remove the bodies at Gibson County Coal after the late-morning accident, Sgt. Jay Riley said.\nA message left at the Gibson County coroner’s office was not immediately returned.\nThe mine, owned by Tulsa, Okla.-based Alliance Resource Partners, is northwest of Princeton, about 30 miles north of Evansville.\nFire crews, police and the coroner were at the scene at the remote location surrounded by farm fields.\nJulie Dozier, personnel coordinator at Gibson County Coal, confirmed the accident but offered few details.\nFrontier-Kemper Constructors Inc. was working on a service shaft for Gibson Coal near Princeton, according the Frontier-Kemper Web site. The company was designing and constructing a 550-foot deep shaft with a diameter of 28 feet, the Web site said.\nThe Indiana Department of Labor was trying to confirm details of the accident, said spokesman Sean Keefer. Officials from that agency and the Indiana Bureau of Mines are at the mine investigating, he said.\nAccording to the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration’s Web site, the last fatality at the mine was in November 2001, when a miner died when he was pinned by equipment. That accident was blamed on operator error.\nThe mine began production in July 2000.\nIn 2006, the company produced more than 3.5 million tons of coal, ranking second among the state’s coal producers, according to the Indiana Coal Council.
(07/23/07 12:21am)
INDIANAPOLIS – Indiana’s new public access counselor says she believes in the ideals of open government and would recommend to the state Legislature ways to improve laws regulating records and meetings when she sees problems.\nHeather Willis Neal, whom Gov. Mitch Daniels appointed to a four-year term June 30, said she has long been interested in the state’s access laws.\n“I believe records and meetings should be open to the public unless there is a reason for them not to be, and those reasons usually are conveniently well-addressed in statute for us,” she said.\nThe late Gov. Frank O’Bannon created the Office of the Public Access Counselor in 1998 after a group of newspapers detailed abuses of the state’s law regulating access to public records in local governments. Neal is the fourth person to hold the position and the first to be appointed by a Republican governor.\nNeal said she will keep track of how access laws are implemented, catalog issues as they develop and recommend ways lawmakers might improve the statutes.\n“I do see that as an important part of the job,” she said. “But I’m not a lobbyist. I don’t have time to be hanging out in the halls.”\nNeal, an attorney who worked for the secretary of state for six years until 2005, takes over an office with an annual budget of $150,845, unchanged significantly from when the office was created. Her salary and that of an administrative assistant will consume nearly $145,000, including benefits. That will leave about $6,000 for expenses such as office supplies and travel for programs to educate the public about the state’s access laws.\nThere was an effort among some open-government advocates this year to add $50,000 to the office for a second attorney to help with an increasing workload. But lawmakers did not include it in the state budget they enacted in April.\nThe office received 2,097 inquiries and complaints in the fiscal year that ended June 30, up 185 from the previous year. Formal complaints filed from January through June of this year increased 67 percent over the previous six months.\nWelcoming Neal to the office on her first day were 43 formal complaints needing an opinion from her within the required 30 days.\nKaren Davis, whom Neal replaced when Davis’ term ended, said cases stack up with only one attorney to review them.\n“It’s a miracle I got done what I did,” she said.\nThe access counselor has no power to enforce the state’s Open Door Law and Access to Public Records Act. But the counselor’s opinions often head off lengthy and costly court fights.\nFor Bernard Seegers of Wheatfield in Jasper County, Davis’ opinion in May helped him get a refund of fees the town of nearby DeMotte imposed for copying building permits for housing construction he opposed. The town charged Seegers $18 – a $10 search fee and $1 each for eight pages copied.\nDavis said in a written opinion that a public agency cannot charge a fee to search for records and can charge a copying fee to recover only the “actual cost.” She said the fee of $1 per page likely exceeded the town’s cost.\nSeegers said the town returned the entire search fee and all but 10 cents per page of the copying charge. He credited his success to the access counselor’s opinion.\n“We have to keep them halfway honest,” Seegers said.\nDealings with the access counselor weren’t as fruitful for Dorene J. Philpot, an attorney who represents parents of school children with special needs. She said she has been waiting for a year for an opinion on whether a school district is required to disclose information about its attorney fees.\n“It wasn’t an effective tool,” said Philpot, who recently moved to Galveston, Texas, but maintains an office in Indianapolis.\nDavis said Philpot did not fill out a form that would have raised the inquiry to a level of a formal complaint. As a result, she considered Philpot’s inquiry informal, with no specific time required for an opinion. Davis said she had to give priority to formal complaints.\nPhilpot said she probably will contact Neal for an opinion. Despite her experience, she supports the mission of the access counselor’s office.\n“In theory, I think it’s wonderful that we have this person,” she said.
(03/19/07 4:00am)
GREENCASTLE, Ind. – DePauw University’s president ordered the Delta Zeta sorority March 12 to leave its campus by September in response to a mass eviction of members that sparked allegations that only attractive, popular students were asked to remain.\nSchool President Robert G. Bottoms told reporters at a campus auditorium Monday that the values of the sorority were “incompatible” with the 2,200-student private college in western Indiana.\nBottoms said the school was unhappy with Delta Zeta’s policies and actions and with some of the postings on its Web site that disputed the controversy that followed the evictions.\n“I came to the conclusion that our approaches to these issues are just incompatible,” Bottoms said during a news conference.\nBottoms said in a letter delivered Monday to the sorority’s national president, Deborah A. Raziano that beginning in the fall, the sorority would no longer be recognized as part of the Greek system at the school. He asked the sorority to leave the campus in Greencastle, 40 miles west of Indianapolis, before next fall.\nIn a statement released to media Monday, Delta Zeta sorority repeated its stand that the 23 evictions were based on the members’ lack of commitment to recruiting pledges. But those asked to leave have charged that they were removed because of their appearance, contending they were active and supportive members of their sorority.\nThe sorority’s members have long had a reputation of being academically oriented rather than having conventional beauty or partying, and their chapter was widely known among students as the “dog house.” The chapter started the school year with just 35 women in its house, far short of the nearly 100 members at other sororities on a campus where 70 percent of students join the Greek system.\nDelta Zeta’s national leadership last fall reviewed the DePauw chapter’s members’ commitment to recruiting. As a result, it moved 23 women to alumnae status in December, evicting them from the sorority house. Six others left on their own.\n“I think it’s a shame they had to uphold these kind of stereotypes,” former member Kate Holloway, who left in protest after the membership review was announced, told The Associated Press last week.\nBottoms said of those six who remain on campus, four are seniors who will graduate this year. He said the university would help the other two women look for housing next fall.\nRepeated phone messages left last week for Raziano and the executive director of the sorority’s national headquarters in Oxford, Ohio, were not returned.\nIn a statement released by e-mail, Delta Zeta said it was “disappointed” that DePauw had closed the chapter and said the situation was being “mischaracterized.”\nWhile the issue has generated media attention, life on campus went on last week for students.\nAshley Louise, an 18-year-old freshman pledge for Alpha Chi Omega, said students have been talking about the Delta Zeta story but “are just taking as it comes.”\nLouise, who is from Naperville, Ill., said fellow students care deeply about the women at Delta Zeta.\n“We have great sympathy for the girls,” she said. “A lot of them are our friends.”\nThe statement e-mailed last week under the name of Executive Director Cindy Menges repeated her stand that Delta Zeta based decisions on the women’s willingness to recruit new members to revitalize a nearly 100-year-old chapter whose numbers had fallen steadily over 10 years.\n“Any statement otherwise is inaccurate and misleading and we are saddened that any member would feel this way,” the statement said.\nDePauw’s decision follows a letter of reprimand sent to the national organization Feb. 19.\n“We at DePauw do not like the way our students were treated,” Bottoms said in the letter.
(02/02/04 4:21am)
INDIANAPOLIS -- Indiana's largest press association bestowed its highest accolade on the late Gov. Frank O'Bannon Friday, remembering him for his support of open government.\nThe Hoosier State Press Association gave its Indiana Newspapers Publishers' First Freedom Award posthumously to O'Bannon, who died in September after suffering a stroke.\nFormer first lady Judy O'Bannon accepted the award at a luncheon during the annual meeting of the group, composed of publishers from daily and weekly newspapers throughout the state.\nShe said her husband developed his convictions for open government as publisher of a weekly newspaper, The Corydon Democrat, in southern Indiana. O'Bannon owned the paper before and during his 33 years in government service.\n"He realized that it's a bonding element of a community, that if people don't have free access to information, they can't participate," she said.\nThe HSPA also announced the start of a special award named for the governor -- the Frank O'Bannon Sunshine Award -- to recognize citizens and government officials for their work in keeping government open to the public. The first award will be given at next year's conference.\n"Throughout his career, Governor Frank O'Bannon was a strong advocate for open government," said HSPA President Robert Allman, the publisher of weeklies in Albion, Churubusco and Huntertown, Ind.\nAmong his work in open-government efforts, O'Bannon created the Office of the Public Access Counselor in 1998 after a group of newspapers detailed abuse of the state's Public Records Act. The office fields inquiries and complaints involving access to public records and meetings and recommends solutions.\nAnne Mullin O'Connor, the first public access counselor who held the job until last year, said other states struggling with public access issues have sought advice on how to establish similar offices. She said the key to Indiana's success was the extraordinary support from the governor.\n"No other state had a Frank O'Bannon," she said.\nHSPA General Counsel Stephen Key remembered O'Bannon especially for his opposition to a bill, passed by the Legislature in 2001, that would have exempted lawmakers from the state's open-records law.\nKey said O'Bannon could have played it politically safe by letting the bill become law without his signature. Instead, O'Bannon vetoed the bill, setting the stage for confrontation with legislative leaders. O'Bannon said the bill was "a step backward" in efforts to keep legislative matters open to the public.\nA year later, the House sustained the veto after many legislators reversed their positions.\nKey said the veto was "an example of personal courage and moral conviction that I'll always remember"
(03/24/03 4:21am)
FRANKLIN, Ind. -- The government's security policies since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have contributed to "an atmosphere of confusion and a climate of mistrust" toward immigrants, the Mexican consul of Indianapolis said Saturday.\nImmigrants have been subjected to arbitrary searches and prolonged detention without being charged or without due process of law, and have been denied the right to call their consulate, said Sergio Aguilera.\n"These policies threaten to deprive individuals of the most basic human rights," he said.\nAguilera spoke Saturday at a symposium at Franklin College's Pulliam School of Journalism about media coverage of Hispanics.\nReporters and editors from newspapers and television stations attended the luncheon speech, which Aguilera delivered in Spanish, along with representatives of Hispanic organizations.\n"We have to show to American society that immigration is not a problem, that (it) may well be the solution to many of the challenges of this country, presently as well as in the long-term," Aguilera said.\nInstead, he said, "conservative and ultraconservative sectors" have worked to block programs designed to promote integration. He said that has been most noticeable since Sept. 11.\n"Since then, many actions and policies of the federal government have contributed to an atmosphere of confusion and a climate of mistrust toward immigrants, promoting the false notion that immigrants are synonymous with terrorists," Aguilera said.\nTwo messages seeking comment were left Saturday with the Department of Justice. A worker who was answering phones for the agency said no one would be available for comment until Monday.\nAguilera said the government's "coercive efforts" have resulted in unintended consequences that include smuggling, document fraud and other criminal activities. He also said those policies have contributed to the deaths of hundreds of immigrants along the nation's borders.\nAguilera said every journalist should be committed to inform "in the most truthful and objective way."\n"Your support is necessary to the integration of all Latin American immigrants to the mainstream of society, making the process much more positive and enriching for everyone," he said.