Texas Happenings 2007, No. 8
Week of April 16, 2007TEXAS HapPENINGS is a biweekly advisory to AP member editors on upcoming stories or projects of special interest and a source of news about other AP developments.
WILLIAMS NAMED ARIZONA, NEW MEXICO COB
Michelle Williams, assistant chief of bureau for The Associated Press in Texas, has been named chief of bureau for Arizona and New Mexico.
Williams will be based in Phoenix and oversee news and business operations for the AP in Arizona and New Mexico. She has been serving as interim chief of bureau for the two states since mid-February. She succeeds Linda Weinandt.
Williams has been with the AP since 1989, beginning as an editorial assistant in the Nashville, Tenn., bureau. As a reporter in Milwaukee, she covered the arrest and trial of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
She has served as a correspondent in Chattanooga, Tenn., a supervisory correspondent in San Diego and news editor for the AP in Tennessee and Texas.
REGIONAL APSE CONVENTION SET FOR MAY 13-14
A chat with Nolan Ryan, tickets to the Round Rock Express’ game with the Portland Beavers and an awards program are just some of the events planned for this year’s regional Associated Press Sports Editors convention.
Mark the date of May 13-14. Sunday’s events will take place at the Dell Diamond in Round Rock. Monday’s events will be at the Austin American-Statesman in Austin.
Watch for a full agenda and a sign-up sheet soon.
LOOKING AHEAD:
The string of small cities that make up the Rio Grande Valley may one day be linked by light rail that would bring public transportation to the Valley's ever-expanding universities, shopping centers, and tourist spots.
State Rep. Armando Martinez, D-Weslaco, said he got the idea after riding on Dallas' light rail.
"I started thinking about the doctors' visits for people without cars, the congestion on freeways, the fact that we can no longer expand our highway system in the Valley," he said. The Valley could be the next in a list of places that are building or have recently built light rail systems. A Roma-to-Brownsville track would be about 120 miles long.
AP Correspondent Lynn Brezosky looks at the rail issue in a story slugged BC-TX--Valley Rail moving in advance for weekend use.
Also in the Texas Weekend Enterprise report:
SATURDAY-SUNDAY:
GAMES-VISTA'S VISUALS
DALLAS - From the cinematic quality in the action game "Gears of War" to the nearly photorealistic racer "MotorStorm," video game graphics have come a long way since the bouncing blocks of "Pong." A new breed of visually striking games promises to light up computer screens with even sharper, more lifelike graphics than ever before. But unlike the popular "Gears of War" or "MotorStorm," they won't be debuting on the new PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 consoles. By Technology Writer Matt Slagle.
AP Photo/video planned.
MONDAY:
PLASTIC BODIES
DALLAS - Stace Owens has no intention of leaving this world when he dies. He plans to stick around for decades, preserved in plastic and displayed in a museum or medical school. The 33-year-old real estate agent from Dallas is among more than 7,000 people who have agreed to donate their bodies for plastination, a process in which body fluids are replaced by liquid plastic. The plastic hardens, leaving tissues intact and allowing bodies to be displayed in their natural color. The process was made popular by Gunther von Hagens' "Body Worlds," a controversial anatomy exhibit that puts real human specimens on show. By Thomas Peipert.
AP Photos. AP Video.
SHIELD LAW APPROVED IN STATE SENATE COMMITTEE
Efforts to pass a shield law for journalists in Texas has been approved by the Senate Jurisprudence Committee. It next goes before the full Senate.
The proposal calls for journalists to be protected from being forced to testify or disclose confidential sources.
It establishes specific tests for a judge to use to determine whether a journalist's information is essential as evidence in a civil or criminal case.
The proposal is opposed by prosecutors and other who say it is overly broad and existing law provides the opportunity for journalists to protect their sources.
A journalist is defined in the proposal as someone who gathers news for a “substantial portion” of his or her livelihood.
MEMBER EXCHANGE PROGRAM CONTRIBUTIONS IN TEXAS
Bill Begley’s heart-wrenching story for the Kerrville Daily Times on the widow of former pro football player and Marine Ralph Heywood is just one of many member features that have moved on Texas wires as part of the AP Member Exchange.
Suzie Heywood talked of caring for her husband as his health declined, their marriage and her future efforts to help call attention to the plight of old football players.
Other recent member exchanges included Sarah Moore’s story for the Beaumont Enterprise on a woman who works to rehabilitate injured animals, Rick Smith’s story for the San Angelo Standard-Times on a granite sculptor, Laura B. Martinez’s story for The Brownsville Herald on a widow’s quest to have a street named for a slain soldier, Denise Adams’ story for the Fort Bend Herald on the questions surrounding the burial site of Deaf Smith, Sidney Levesque’s story for the Abilene Reporter-News on a woman learning to speak in her 70s and Christine S. Diamond of the Lufkin Daily News on a dig in the Davy Crockett National Forest.
If you have stories to offer for member exchanges, please e-mail them to lfranklin@ap.org. If you have a question about whether we might be interested in the story, please call the AP and ask for the supervisor at 1-800-442-7189.
JUDGE DISMISSES SUBPOENAS FOR EDITORS
Lawyers for The Monitor successfully challenged subpoenas issued for two of the newspaper’s editors.
A judge dismissed the subpoenas earlier this month for Editor Steve Fagan and Managing Editor Marcia Caltabiano-Ponce. They had been ordered to appear over an editorial that called for a judge to recuse himself from a case involving another judge.
Attorney Rex Lynch argued that an editorial amounted to a layperson’s opinion and shouldn’t be introduced as evidence. He said the subpoenas compromised the First Amendment.
"If every time you write an editorial you get called to the stand it's going to have a chilling effect on the First Amendment," he said.
SPECIAL EDITIONS:
The special edition package on summer fun/outdoors will move May 2.
AP PAGE-READY BASEBALL IS BACK
Just like the boys of summer, AP Page-Ready: Baseball is back. While the season is under way, it’s not too late to sign up.
With AP Page-Ready: Baseball, you get AP baseball agate in a page-ready module, saving you time and money every night. AP Page-Ready: Baseball offers clear value for newspapers in time saved and in appeal to readers and advertisers. It frees sports desks from the labor-intensive task of assembling baseball agate. The service is delivered via the Web and is available in Quark XPress and Adobe InDesign formats, which allow for editing. New to the line-up this year is a PDF file nightly for publication on your Web site.
AP also provides detailed pitching matchups, expanded box scores, weekly team and player statistics and the Glantz-Culver Line with daily odds for baseball sports pages.
If you’re interested in this service, please contact AP Chief of Bureau Dale Leach in Dallas at 1-800-442-7189 and 972-991-2100.
AP TRAVEL ONLINE HELPS READERS WITH VACATIONS, TRAVEL PLANS
Your readers are thinking about spring travel and summer vacations. Provide coverage that attracts readers and advertisers with AP Travel Online’s expanded coverage of destinations, trends and travel news.
Offered as a hosted service or an XML feed, AP Travel Online delivers a comprehensive suite of travel resources. Coming soon: trips to Europe, an amusement park preview package, whitewater rafting and lots more.
Travel Online takes a global focus with an emphasis on timely features. Columns on subjects like travel with kids and adventure travel appeal to a variety of reader demographics.
Other features include a weekly review of travel guidebooks called “By the Book;” and a travelogue called “Dispatches” on quirky events around the world.
For more information, contact AP Chief of Bureau Dale Leach at 1-800-442-7189 or 972-991-2100.
TAKE SOME TIME FOR AP EXCHANGE TRAINING
AP plans to phase out YourAP this year and replace the service with AP Exchange, the new web-based view of all your AP content.
Now is the time to contact AP to book training on AP Exchange for your newsroom.
Simply email talkback@ap.org to book a 60-minute online training session.
This session will provide editors and reporters with all they need to know to become AP Exchange experts. They'll be able to search for locally relevant news in the new AP database and build custom feeds that will deliver relevant news in less time.
As well, don't forget our regularly scheduled School of Search online training which takes place every Thursday at 11 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. ET. RSVP for these sessions at talkback@ap.org
Questions: Dwayne Desaulniers, (212) 621-1745, ddesaulniers@ap.org
APPLAUSE PLEASE:
RALPH LANGER, former editor and executive vice president of The Dallas Morning News, received the Open Door Award from the Fort Worth Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
DARREN BARBEE of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram won First Amendment awards from the Fort Worth Chapter of SPJ for use of public records for general news and investigative news.
LINDA CAMPBELL of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram won a First Amendment award for opinion writing or commentary.
TODD BENSMAN of the San Antonio Express-News won a First Amendment award for “opening the books.”
DEATHS:
LINDA FRADKIN, food columnist for The Galveston County Daily News, died April 16. Fradkin had been undergoing treatment for leukemia.
ON THE MOVE:
CHRIS COBLER, a former editor of the Greeley (Colo.) Tribune, has been named editor of the Victoria Advocate. Cobler is a graduate of the University of Kansas. He worked at the Topeka Capital Journal in Kansas, the Colorado Springs Gazette, the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D., the Fort Collins Coloradoan and the Denton Record-Chronicle in Texas.
He succeeds Scot Walker, who is resigning to move closer to family.
INDUSTRY NEWS
The AP Industry News summary is now available on the new AP Exchange system, a free system offering you Web-based access to the AP report. On AP Exchange, media industry news items will be available immediately, rather than transmitted once a week. For more on AP Exchange you can visit www.ap.org/apexchange.
If you do not have AP Exchange access yet, please contact AP Texas Chief of Bureau Dale Leach.
An AP Exchange account will permit you to access and search industry news, along with all your AP text, photo and graphics services. Until an AP Exchange account is created for you, we can add you to an e-mail list for distribution of media industry news items as soon as they arrive. If you would like to be added to the distribution list, please send your request by e-mail to talkback(at)ap.org.
If you’ve got news to share for TEXAS HapPENINGS, please send the material to Linda Franklin at lfranklin@ap.org.
