Another staffer jumps ship

Herald-Press sports editor Sean Giggy is the latest staffer to bail on the paper. His last day was last Friday, January 8.
We've had a chance to meet Sean on a couple occasions, and we knew about this for a while, but didn't want to say anything until he was officially done.
Sean's a good kid. He came in with no experience (just like everyone else) and was put in a terrible position right away. He was in a no-win situation with the ridiculous 5 p.m. deadlines imposed upon him. None of his stories were published in a timely manner. For a paper covering just one high school, it's insane that writeups took two days to get published.
Paxton Media had some strange ideas about sports. Obviously, it had a low priority. They also stressed coverage of elementary and youth sports, figuring that parents and grandparents of the youngest athletes were a huge untapped potential for newspaper sales.
Now we're all for recognizing youth sports, but not at the expense of timely coverage of high school sports. A lot of good stories are being missed, and we can't put all the blame on Sean.
By the way, Sean's heading to Wisconsin, where he'll be working for a television station.

Sean didn't leave quietly, though. One of our regular contributors passed along Sean's Facebook status update on his final day at the Herald-Press.

Sean Gggy is done at the Herald-Press. Sad to leave co-workers, but glad he doesn't have to deal with management anymore. If you have a position of authority in Paxton and are reading this, you're likely an idiot.

Needless to say, Sean will be leaving quite a bit of frustration behind him.

The Herald-Press search for a new sports editor is going on. There's an interesting discussion going on at sportsjournalists.com about the Huntington position. Apparently there are quite a few people who have had experience with Paxton and the way they run things.

In the meantime, sports at the Herald-Press will be handled by Austan Kas, who is the sports editor at Peru, another member of Paxton's Central Indiana Newspaper Group (CING). Kas, a Huntington University grad like Giggy, has his roots at the Herald-Press. He started there under the previous staff, serving as a part-time writer. Looks like he'll fill in until a new sports editor is found.

Getting right on it

Here is a submission from one our our readers:

Just received the email pasted below and below it was my original August 28, 2009 email to Rebecca Sandlin suggesting this policy which she forwarded to Andy Eads on September 11, 2009. Better late than never. Damn, thats a new H-P type idea, c'mon guys!


From "Jay" hpcirc@h-ponline.com

Happy Holidays from The Herald Press.
Thank you for your email regarding our website/on-line version of The Herald-Press.
We have reviewed your comments and made some changes, the most relevant is offering FREE on-line service to all our regular subscribers.
If you are a current subscriber (or would like to subscribe and receive FREE on-line) please reply to this email at hpcirc@h-ponline.com and we(sic) get you started.
Again, thanks to(sic) all the input and helpful suggestions.

Season's Greetings from The Herald Press.

Let's Do the Time Warp Again!

Just a quick follow up to something we had here back on Nov. 11:

The Huntington school board had OK'd a new tech high school for Huntington North that had been reported in Fort Wayne newspaper and television, locally at the TAB and on HuntingtonFreePress.com, and even here on our our blog.

The Herald-Press finally had a story in on Friday, Nov. 20, a total of 11 days after it had been approved. The H-P likes to use the word "recently" to date stories that they've completely missed. That way the reader can't really tell how long ago the event actually happened.

There was another HUGE story this week in Huntington as Coroner Leon Hurlburt announced the county's first death from H1n1 flu.

The Herald-Press did put the story on the front page of the paper Thursday, but at the bottom of the page, apparently having much less importance to them than their main story, a story on the annual Great American Smokeout.

That story was nothing more than a rehashed press release from the American Cancer Society.

Now, we're all for people to stop smoking, but to make that the story of the day when there was a death from H1N1 is just plain stupid.

It's especially stupid when the Herald-Press has never looked into what is happening with H1N1 in the county. They've had stories from press releases saying that the flu is here, then stories saying it isn't here.

Then, all of a sudden, there's a death from the flu here. The H-P doesn't ask any questions, they just print what is released from the coroner's office. Do they ask how widespread the flu is in Huntington County? Do they ask if it could possibly be a problem?

No.

But they did not that it s Herald-Press policy not to print names of victims.

Which victims? Just flu victims? How about accident victims? Murder victims?

Most media outlets don't print names of victims in cases of sexual assaults, or minors who are victims in certain cases.

But most newspapers probably don't have a policy on naming flu victims. In this case, the name was not provided by the coroner, nor was it integral to the story. The main point was that there was a death, and what ramifications there are from that. But the H-P missed on that follow-up as well.

Still, we'd be interested to see that list of Herald-Press policies.

Maybe they should spend a little more time doing some actual reporting and asking people some real questions rather than worrying about names of flu victims or retyping stories on things like "National Pumpkin Week" or some such thing.

One step forward, many steps back

Well, maybe from our chiding or not, the Herald-Press did finally refer to the helicopter service as Parkview Samaritan in its second-day story on the two-car accident at the instersection of Stadium and Jefferson streets earlier this week.

But despite getting one thing right, there were some more horrible journalistic decisions made on Wednesday.

In the story on the accident, writer Drew Stone was apparently having trouble getting some information.

Monday evening, HNHS Athletic Director Michael Gasaway said he was told Krueger was losing consciousness after the crash.
“I heard she’s been in and out of consciousness,” Gasaway said. “It’s an unfortunate situation.”

Sure, you've gotten someone to comment on the the crash, but you've got one person relaying what he heard from other unnamed person who may or may not have heard something about what may or may not be true.
Not exactly the best way to get information.
This comes after a recent Herald-Press editorial that said the paper is not in the business of reporting on rumors.
Technically this isn't a rumor. But exactly, it is hearsay, which is just as bad.
There were some details of the accident from a police report, but then there were some strange additions, which aren't reported on police write-ups.

Krueger reportedly suffered severe bleeding from the accident but was wearing a seat belt and was not ejected. Butts was reported to be in fair condition but complained of body aches after the crash.

Using the word "reportedly" means it must have come from some kind of report. Whose report? You would think a medical condition would come from an official medical report. Maybe those who reportedly said the girl suffered severe bleeding came from the same person who "reported" information to Michael Gasaway.
In any case, even if Michael Gasaway HAD reliable information, passing it on to someone else is a violation of HIPAA regulations. That information can only be released by a health care provider once the patient has given an OK to do so.

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One of our alert readers brought another story from Wednesday to our attention.
Our poster writes:

"On the right side column is a piece of work he should be terminated for. In a story regarding a man sentenced for sexual misconduct with a 15 year old girl he begins the story with this description of the one-time event which resulted in a pregnancy and his conviction:"

A Huntington man was sentenced Monday to two years in prison for having an affair with a 15-year-old girl, which resulted in a child.

Not to get into any kind of legal semantics, by definition, sex with a minor is rape.
In any case, it's not an "affair."

This goes beyond just being a misuse of a word. It's a horrible, horrible transgression. If Drew Stone isn't experienced enough to know what he's writing about, Editor Rebecca Sandlin certainly should have caught that. Unless, of course, she's not editing.

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There was another story this week that was completely whiffed by the Herald-Press.

At Monday's school board meeting, it was announced that a new tech program was approved for Huntington North High School. This is becoming a popular program at many schools. It was reported by the Fort Wayne television stations and newspapers, as well as the Huntington County TAB.
Even given the H-P's early deadlines, there still should have been a story in Wednesday's paper.
Nada.
But they did have the perfect school attendances and the local bridge scores.

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Continuing to follow up on the fire department situation, the Herald-Press missed on which fire station is slated to be closed.
Despite correct reports in the TAB, the Fort Wayne papers and on television, as well as on this space, the Herald-Press stck with its incorrect report.
No word on if they're following up with a correction.

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Speaking of corrections, we should report that one of the people who commented on an earlier post had mentioned that photographer Rob Edwards had been let go. That apparently is not the case, at least for now.

While we did not originate the comment, Herald-Press Watch regrets the error and we have removed the comment.

OK, that's one thing we've gotten wrong.

Everything else is correct. Which is really sad.

Sounds good, but it's wrong

Can Herald-Press writer Drew Stone PLEASE stop calling it the "Good Samaritan" helicopter?

It's called the Parkview Samaritan helicopter. It's written right on the side of the helicopter.
These pilots do wonderful work. The least you could do is get their name correct.

Here's the official Parkview website:

http://www.parkview.com/HealthServices/SamaritanFlightProgram/Pages/default.aspx


If you don't know the name of something, or even have a question, look it up or call someone who knows.

Your source for local news

We had an important story break in Huntington County Friday. In a second round of layoffs of city employees, six firefighters were let go, and one of Huntington's three fire stations was forced to close.

The Herald-Press ran a crawl on their "Breaking News" saying that six firefighters lost their jobs. A short story online told readers the same thing, mentioned nothing about the fire station closing, and told readers to check in on Sunday to get the full story.

The Huntington County TAB was all over the story. The TAB and editor Cindy Klepper covered the Board of Works meeting in the morning and had a fully-detailed story online before 2 p.m. There was also a breaking story on the Journal-Gazette online that included the important information that a fire station was closing.

The people at the TAB knew how important the story was, and used all the tools at their disposal to get the information out to the public.

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UPDATE:
Late Friday, the Herald-Press did post a full story online on the firefighters being laid off, perhaps due to the fact that the TAB already had the story online.
But apparently H-P writer Drew Stone never read the TAB story, because Stone has incorrect information in his story.
Stone said that the downtown Huntington fore station would close. That was initally the case, but after the meeting the decision was changed to close the Condit Street station.
Stone never followed up on his story. Makes you wonder if they'll check their facts before sending the story to press for Sunday's paper.
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The TAB is beating the Herald-Press on not only breaking news, but regular news as well. The TAB uses its online vehicle to get news out on time, all the more important at this time of instant news.

They are also whipping the Herald-Press in sports coverage. Because of the ridiculous 5 p.m. deadlines at the Herald-Press, there are no sports stories getting into the paper on time. By the time the stories of the opening basketball games at Huntington University hit the H-P, they were two days late.

That's no fault of sports editor Sean Giggy; he's doing the best he can under circumstances that are out of his control.

But the TAB had the HU stories online quickly. Sure, they only rewrote the press release sent by HU, but timing is everything. Anyone wanting to know what happened in the contest knew about it from the TAB 24 hours before in appeared in the Herald-Press.

For that matter, online readers can get sports news from Huntington North's Yahoo-based Viking Connection or on HuntingtonFreePress.com before they can in the Herald-Press.

It's hard to know what print subscribers are getting for their money from the Herald-Press, let alone those who pay an online fee? Why pay for an online product that is out of date by the time it appears.

Even the "Breaking News" crawl is a joke. When Gov. Daniels was here for the reopening of a local business, the breaking news ran a one-liner that the governor was coming. Two days after Gov. Daniels had been here and gone, the crawl was still broadcasting that the governor was coming to Huntington.

If you're going to use the Breaking News crawl, really take advantage of it.

Paxton Media can't figure out how to properly use the Herald-Press print newspaper, and they haven't figured out how to use the online news product, either.

The Numbers Game

We finally found something interesting to read in the Herald-Press.

In Thursday's edition (p.2), the paper finally printed its Statement of Ownership, a form required by all periodicals to file stating circulation figures.

Over the past year, the Paxton-held Herald-Press has been promoting its circulation as 6,500 during the week and 7,000 on Sundays. As we noted in an earlier post here, those numbers were highly dubious. our guess was somewhere in the 4,000s, and with Thursday's document, we were proven correct.

Current paid distribution is listed as 4,221. That number represents a 25 percent decrease in circulation since Paxton took over ownership of the Herald-Press.
Even in an industry that is struggling to keep readership, that is a huge number, especially in a small town, where readership has been generally less impacted than in major metro papers.

Now that advertisers know the true number of readers they are reaching, how many will be willing to continue paying the prices they are now, considering they are only getting to only three-fourths of the numbers they were told they were reaching?

Just one other note on the statement. The name of the publisher listed for the Herald-Press was not Andy Eads, who has the title of publisher. The name on the form was Neal Ronquist, the uber-overlord who oversees all five papers in Paxton's Central Indiana Group. Makes you wonder what Andy Eads' real role might be?

It's been easy to take shots at the Herald-Press, considering all the troubles they've had in the last year or so.

True, they've turned over an entire new staff, replacing a highly-experienced group with one that has virtually no experience, from the editor on down. We get frustrated with the inexperience, because we'd like our newspaper to give us the information we need. We want the reporters to go out and get the story, rather than wait for someone just to give it to them. There's no leadership, and no one who really knows how to gather the news.
We don't want our news two days late. By the time a story arrives in the Herald-Press, it's already old news. It's been in the Fort Wayne papers or on TV. Sports stories are the same way. In a time of instant news, running stories two days old is unacceptable.

But we also have some sympathy for the editorial staff. While they make their share of basic journalistic errors and omissions, they've also been hamstrung by the bizarre conditions thrust upon them by Paxton management.

Paxton's paradoxical way of running newspapers is the major reason for the precipitous decline of the Herald-Press. No paper, regardless of the experience of the staff, could endure under those conditions. Ridiculously early deadlines don't allow for timely reporting. Misguided priorities on coverage take away from the basic tenets of journalism. Flawed business models exchange a quick profit for long-term failure.

Paxton's mission is not to provide news to the community, but to squeeze out whatever cash they can get before dropping the local business either as a shell of what it was, or leaving it to fail altogether.

While not officialy a public utility, local newspapers are seen as a public trust, a vehicle to tie the community together. The newspaper informs, it acts as a watchdog of the community. Without a newspaper to inform, the main form of information becomes rumor and word of mouth. Fewer people are engaged in the processes that drive a community. Who knows where that apathy leads?

We know people who once were once quite involved in community activities who dropped the paper and now rarely take part in local events. This is not an isolated situation.

This is what Paxton has done to our community.