Texas Happenings 2007, No. 10
Week of May 14, 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.
SLATER JOINING DALLAS AP FOR SUMMER
Grant Slater is joining The Associated Press staff in Dallas for the summer as part of the AP’s intern program.
Slater, a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, will begin his AP internship on June 4. He is currently completing an internship with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch where he has written on technology issues, politics, courts and the environment in a program called the Washington Center for Politics and Journalism.
He previously interned at The Oklahoman and Norman, Okla., radio station KGOU.
Slater holds bachelor’s degrees in journalism and Russian language. While at OU, he was managing editor of the Oklahoma Daily, the student newspaper.
LOOKING AHEAD
At first glance, the photographs seem simple. Images of a Dairy Queen in Bahrain, three daughters in Yemen holding up paper flowers made by their father, snow capped mountains in the Afghan countryside and nieces and nephews in Saudi Arabia holding up a photo of their uncle appear to have been taken at family gatherings or while on vacation.
The photographs were actually by a group of attorneys representing detainees at Guantanamo Bay. They were taken during trips attorneys made to the prisoners' home countries and capture images of them interacting with their clients' relatives or offer reminders of home in the form of landscapes or snapshots of the family home.
Eighty-eight of these photographs, which document the trust that grew between detainees held on terrorism charges and their attorneys, are on display for the first time at an exhibition called, "Guantanamo. Pictures From Home. Questions of Justice."
AP Writer Juan A. Lozano reports on the exhibit in a story slugged Guantanamo Photo Exhibit moving in advance for weekend editions.
Also in the Weekend Enterprise Report for Texas:
MONDAY:
BUILDING APARTMENTS
FORT WORTH - From Texas to California, the humble rental-apartment market is coming to life as developers bail out of the condo scene and renters get turned down for home loans. The real estate arm of the Perot family, veterans of industrial and office projects, found the conditions ripe to make its first solo foray into the apartment-construction business. By Business Writer David Koenig. Pursuing AP Photo.
APME CONFERENCE SET FOR WASHINGTON, D.C.
The early bird gets a $50 discount on registration for this fall’s annual conference of the Associated Press Managing Editors and AP Photo Managers.
The conference is set for Oct. 3-6 in Washington, D.C., the first time the organization has met in the nation’s capital.
Sign up before June 1 and you’ll save $50 on your conference registration. You can also take advantage of APME’s deeply discounted rate at the JW Marriott.
The conference will include ideas on reaching new audiences and retaining journalists of color. You’ll also be able to visit the Freedom Forum’s Newseum two weeks before it opens to the public as part of the opening day of the conference.
There will be curator-led tours, features and activities developed solely for APME members and a reception catered by Wolfgang Puck’s newest restaurant, The Source.
Sign up now and save $50 on your conference registration. To register for the conference go to https://www.123signup.com/register?id=qkknd or to learn more go to: https://www.123signup.com/event?id=qkknd
To take advantage of APME's discounted rate of $235 a night at the JW Marriott go to http://marriott.com/property/propertypage/wasjw?groupCode=apmapma&app=resvlink
Register now to ensure that you are in the APME block of rooms.
AP CEO TOM CURLEY DISCUSSES CO-OP STRATEGY
For the second consecutive year, the AP board has voted not to raise the rates for most AP services, AP CEO Tom Curley announced at the May 7 annual meeting. There will be no general assessment increase for 2008, although some premium services will have rate increases.
In addition, AP management later this year will present the board with options that by 2009 would introduce greater choice in services and pricing for member newspapers, Curley said.
Those changes are enabled by AP’s new technology infrastructure, he said. Existing services were built on technical limits of how AP could deliver content and were designed for single-purpose use by a traditional daily newspaper.
In addition, AP is developing an infrastructure to create a central database of member content that can handle member-to-member sharing of local content.
An audiocast of AP's May 7 annual meeting in New York, along with the text of Curley’s speech, is posted at http://www.ap.org/annual07/
NATIONAL WRITERS WORKSHOP THIS WEEKEND
It’s not too late to take advantage of another great journalism training session.
The third annual National Writers Workshop is to be held this weekend, May 19-20, in San Antonio.
The workshop will feature award-winning journalists and editors who will talk about how to improve writing, reporting, interviewing and editing.
There will be seminars on immigration, writing profiles, covering the Muslim community, investigative reporting, writing for the alternative press, covering the border, how to get a book published, online and multimedia.
Among the scheduled speakers for the event are Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute; Wayne Slater, political reporter for The Dallas Morning News; Eric Nalder, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and investigative reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer; Bill Minutaglio, author and journalist; and Michael Quintanilla, a senior features writer for the San Antonio Express-News.
The San Antonio Express-News and the Poynter Institute are sponsoring the event.
To register, go to www.newsu.org/nww. Cost is $95 for registration through May 18 or $105 at the door. Cost for students and teachers is $60 through May 18, or $70 at the door.
The conference site is La Quinta Inn and Suites, 303 Blum, in downtown San Antonio. Call 210-222-9181 to reserve your room. (And don't forget to mention National Writers Workshop to receive a discount.)
For further questions, contact Amy Dorsett, San Antonio Express-News, 210-250-3227, or e-mail her at adorsett@express-news.net.
MEMBER KUDOS
When a student fired a gun in a school in Los Fresnos, The Brownsville Herald kept the AP in mind as the story unfolded, providing on-cycle material about the suspected reason for the shooting.
The Killeen Daily Herald was there and shared it story with the AP on-cycle when the remains of a Fort Hood soldier were returned to the post.
The Denton Record Chronicle provided the story on-cycle when Denton County authorities arrested a man in the stabbing death of a Florida woman.
The Houston Chronicle shared the story on-cycle with its report that the U.S. Men’s Clay Court Championships would remain in Houston.
These are just a few of the latest examples of member help. If you have stories to offer, please e-mail them to dalcarbon@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.
CASH PRIZES TO BE AWARDED AT UNT’S MAYBORN CONFERENCE
Cash prizes and a book deal are possible for participants in the third annual University of North Texas Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Writers Conference of the Southwest.
Student scholarships also will be offered for the summer event.
Six cash prizes totaling $12,000 will be awarded and the best articles and essays will be reviewed for publication in a literary journal, The Dallas Morning News, Hearst Newspapers and Texas Monthly. The author of the best manuscript will be offered a provisional publishing contract with UNT Press.
Interested?
The deadline for submitting entries is June 15. One category is for reporting and research-based narratives that focus on people, places and events in the outside world. The second category is for personal essays and mini-memoirs.
Manuscript writers will compete for the provisional publishing contract and must submit a first chapter of no more than 25 pages and a narrative synopsis of each chapter.
Writers of the top 50 articles and essays and the top 20 manuscripts will participate in workshops with some of the nation’s top writers on July 27.
The conference continues through July 29.
Registration for the conference is $275. Students may register for $200 and educators for $225. Those submitting articles or essays will pay $30 more and manuscripts $60 more.
The Dallas Morning News is offering scholarships for high school and college minority students. General scholarships are also available for all high school and college students as well as educators.
The scholarships will cover registration for the conference and two nights at the hotel.
Applicants should fill out the form available at www.mayborninstitute.unt.edu. The scholarship application deadline is June 15.
The conference will be held at the Hilton DFW Lakes Executive Conference Center in Grapevine.
FOI AND THE LEGISLATURE
The Texas Legislature has passed a bill that would prevent the public from having access to the list of people who are licensed to carry a concealed handgun.
The bill sent to Gov. Rick Perry would require the Department of Public Safety to provide the information only to criminal justice agencies or the licensed holder.
SINGLETON SUCCEEDS OSBORN AS AP BOARD CHAIRMAN
W. Dean Singleton is the new chairman of The Associated Press board of directors. Singleton took over earlier this month from Burl Osborne, publisher emeritus of The Dallas Morning News.
Singleton is vice chairman and CEO of MediaNews Group Inc. He founded Denver-based MediaNews in 1983. It ranks as the fourth-largest newspaper company in the United States and, with its affiliated companies, publishes 57 daily newspapers and about 120 non-daily publications in 13 states. It also owns a CBS affiliate in Anchorage, Alaska, and four radio stations in Texas.
Singleton started out in newspapers at age 15 as a part-time reporter in his hometown of Graham, Texas.
STATE NEWS ONLINE KEEPS YOUR WEB SITE LOCAL AND FRESH
AP State News Online gives your Web site the full range of AP’s state news reports: politics, legislative and government news, business, sports, features and more.
With State News Online, breaking news from your state appears as it happens, and is updated quickly and accurately 24/7. Headline packages with up to 10 top items linked to a state’s top stories are updated six times an hour to provide readers with the most up-to-date news at a glance.
For more information, call Texas AP Chief of Bureau Dale Leach at 1-800-442-7189 and see www.ap.org/newspapers.
MULTIMEDIA INTERACTIVE NEWS REPORTS ENRICH ONLINE OFFERINGS
Enrich your Web report with interactives that give readers the variety and depth of information they seek on the Web, with AP’s Multimedia Interactive News Reports. AP’s interactives broadens your site’s content base with a variety of compelling photos, sharp graphics, timely audio and rich video from around the world. This rich content helps build traffic on your Web site.
Our package includes: Ten to 12 news interactives and photo/audio interactives each week, geared to the day’s news; daily photo galleries, a weekly photo gallery recapping the week in news; SportsWeek gallery of six to 12 photos compiled from the AP’s extensive sports photo coverage.
CHECK OUT ONLINE NEWSPAPER SERVICES AT NEW WEB SITE PAGE
For information about AP’s online newspaper services, check out www.ap.org/newspapers. Find out about online services, see links to sites using the services, and find links and contact information to the Online Newspaper team.
SPECIAL EDITIONS
The special edition package on weddings and winter brides will move June 5.
DEATHS
BILL WAGNER, who was executive editor of the San Antonio Evening News, has died at the age of 85 following a lengthy illness. The Evening News merged with the San Antonio Express in 1984 to create the San Antonio Express-News. At the time of his death, Wagner was editor of Texas’ monthly publication of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
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@ap.org.
If you’ve got news to share for TEXAS HapPENINGS, please send the material to Linda Franklin at lfranklin@ap.org.
PREVIOUS ISSUES:
• April 16, 2007
• April 30, 2007
