This just in: "Insider Louisville to cease publishing on August 7."

Here's the e-mail.

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A message to our readers: Insider Louisville to cease publishing on Aug. 7, by Insider Louisville

Every story has a beginning, middle and end. Although Insider Louisville has had a great run with the help of key investors as a startup media outlet and then as a nonprofit news organization with foundation and individual donors, plus hundreds of sustaining members, the cost of operating has been too great to overcome.

It is a sad day for the Insider Louisville team as well as its dedicated board to report that the nonprofit’s last day of publication is Aug. 7, 2019.

Since 2010, Insider Louisville has become an integral daily must-read for thousands of newsletter subscribers and social media followers. Today, Insider has some 25,000 newsletter subscribers, nearly 40,000 Twitter followers, plus more than 55,000 on Facebook and Instagram, and 200,000-plus monthly readers.

Insider couldn’t have done any of it without loyal readers who pushed, prodded, provided tips and kept the organization honest.

Insider responded to a need in the community for informative, long-form investigative news – without a paywall. Hopefully, #loumedia will keep local and state officials honest and continue to push for much-needed transparency. It is no longer hyperbole to say that Democracy hangs in the balance. Louisville will have a much better future because of such dogged reporting.

Insider moved to a nonprofit model in a bold effort to become more sustainable to create even greater transparency in reporting and practices. The mission had always been to provide the essential service of reputable local journalism to the community, and leaders felt this transition would help relate that message in a more tangible way.

In doing so, Insider was part of a national movement in which hundreds of local nonprofit media organizations cropped up across the country as for-profit media companies closed or downsized dramatically. Insider leadership visited many of those organizations to benchmark the transition with the hope that ultimately readers would sustain a robust newsroom with the help of corporate sponsors and foundation support.

Out of the gate, advertising exceeded many of our peers, and foundations and corporate supporters came to our side. We were able to expand our newsroom.

Even more, Insider gained traction with individual and corporate donors that kept the nonprofit running even after a downsizing of top leaders in February. A streamlined team of six reporters and an editor, plus two dedicated community engagement specialists kept the news flowing and events running for as long as possible until this latest development. Regardless of what was happening within the organization, Insider doubled down on the backbone issues of our community: business, culture, education, government and health.

The editorial team of stalwart journalists — Boris Ladwig, Darla Carter, Joe Sonka, Kevin Gibson, Sara Havens, Olivia Krauth and Mickey Meece (and others before them) — was buttressed by an amazing group of contributors who made their mark with every profile, preview, review and feature.

Here is just some of the great reporting Insider provided to the community.

• Insider punched above its weight to report on the University of Louisville scandal in the early days.
• Insider pushed hard on the troubled operations of JCPS leading up to its settlement with the Kentucky Board of Education.
• Insider explored the existence of a secretive group of power brokers who were part of an organization called SCALA.
• Insider dove into the state’s effort to add work requirements to Medicaid.
• Insider explained the complicated relationship Passport had with a for-profit entity called Evolent well before the two agreed to a merger.
• Insider unraveled the complicated financial underpinnings of Jewish Hospital as its current owner looks to sell it.
• Insider covered bourbon as its own beat and reported beyond brand labels to feature the people and places that have helped build the industry in both tradition and innovation.

And so much more.

The Insider team is grateful to every single reader, member, sponsor and contributor for believing that quality local journalism matters. Insider stories were delivered to empower readers to be better citizens, inspired patrons and curiously engaged in our community.

InsiderLouisville.com will continue publishing until Aug. 7.

A reminder about the origins of a civic identifier: "The shouts of the New Albanians rent the air for the return of sweet daylight."

The following is a repeat of a previous installment of Shane's Excellent New Words, but because the topic arose on Twitter -- who is a New Albanian, and who is not -- now seems an ideal time to recall that we're all New Albanians, each and every one of us.

(As an intentionally obscure side note for most readers, allow me to observe that "maybe it is something you should have thought about during the settlement.")

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This week's words are familiar, with a chronological twist: New Albanian.

New Albanian

[noo al-bey-nee-uh n]

adjective

1. of or relating to New Albany, Indiana (as opposed to Old Albania, otherwise known as Shqipëri/Shqipëria), its inhabitants, or their psychology

noun

2. a native or citizen of New Albany, Indiana

For a very long time, we've been speculating as to exactly when New Albanian first was used as a descriptive term.

I've never been shy about my own recent part in popularizing the usage of New Albanian, which became the name of my business in 1994 (of which I'm no longer a part), but was used informally prior to the advent of the company name, often when we'd hoist steins while trying to answer the question, "What is a person from New Albany called?"

"New Albanyite" never seemed right, and New Albanian always was the logical choice. For so long as historical evidence was scant, I was delighted to claim credit, but today, thanks to local physician and city council member Al Knable, there is definitive proof that the use of the term New Albanian to describe a resident of this city extends at least as far back into the life and times of the settlement on the flood plain as the Eclipse of 1869.

It's from the Ledger, a Tribune forerunner. Note the multi-syllable words used in the header, among them obscuration, magnificence, manifestation and protuberances. If cannot be imagined that a newspaper editor today would view these words in any way apart from sheer unmitigated horror. In fact, the News and Tribune recoils in just such a manner, daily.

Thanks to Dr. Knable for making this major etymological contribution to our understanding of the city's history.

Attention, News & Tribune: "Politicos take liberties when it’s nobody’s job to hold them accountable."

"Those civic watchdogs make a difference to the bottom line."

Hence my recurring point. As newspapers like the News and Tribune become forever more oriented toward human interest stories and whatever bells and whistles impel web clicks, local government coverage devolves into stenography.

Straight up: The News and Tribune abdicates its civic watchdog role more often than not.

But you're saying wait -- this CityLab article is about newspapers that shut down; we still have half a local newspaper in New Albany

Maybe half. More like one-fourth. When the Tribune and Evening News merged, the main office was established in Jeffersonville, and I believe it's a foregone conclusion that the center of gravity shifted east with it.

Take solace. The return of the newspaper's cooking school, some sort of pet adoption scheme or even a Chalupa Walk surely lies just around the corner.

The Hidden Costs of Losing Your City's Newspaper, by Kriston Capps (CityLab)

Without watchdogs, government costs go up, according to new research.

When local newspapers shut their doors, communities lose out. People and their stories can’t find coverage. Politicos take liberties when it’s nobody’s job to hold them accountable. What the public doesn’t know winds up hurting them. The city feels poorer, politically and culturally.

According to a new working paper, local news deserts lose out financially, too. Cities where newspapers closed up shop saw increases in government costs as a result of the lack of scrutiny over local deals, say researchers who tracked the decline of local news outlets between 1996 and 2015.

Disruptions in local news coverage are soon followed by higher long-term borrowing costs for cities. Costs for bonds can rise as much as 11 basis points after the closure of a local newspaper—a finding that can’t be attributed to other underlying economic conditions, the authors say. Those civic watchdogs make a difference to the bottom line ...

"The pressure of online advertising (makes) your favorite local news site, and many others, a fresh hell that even Dante himself couldn’t have imagined."

One minute to read an article written at 3rd-grade level of comprehension, and two minutes to swat away the myriad advertising intrusions.

What could any of this possibly have to do with the demise of the American "democratic" experiment?

Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible? by Andrew Zaleski (CityLab)

The pop-up ads! The autoplaying videos!

Emily Goligoski ... has heard time and again from news readers about how they’re increasingly turned off by the presentation they’re offered by local newspapers’ websites.

The torments of these sites are well known: clunky navigation, slow page-loading times, browser-freezing autoplaying videos, a siege of annoying pop-up ads, and especially those grids of bottom-of-the-page “related content” ads hawking belly fat cures and fake headlines (what’s known as Internet chum).

Put another way: Why must newspaper websites suck so damn much?

In particular, why is the online presence of local papers so much vividly worse than other fare on the web—especially when these outlets are engaged in a desperate fight for readers and subscribers nationwide? Perhaps you recall the (in)famous cartoon drawn by Brad Colbow in 2011. Entitled “This is Why Your Newspaper is Dying,” it offered a cheeky but precise summation of several crimes against digital decency, from “Your content takes up less than 20% of the page” to “Linking to a random story in the middle of an article.”

If anything, the situation may have somehow gotten worse in the years since, and the quality gap between local newspaper sites and more sophisticated content purveyors has become even more stark ...

Gahan in eclipse, but what about the Solar Eclipse of August 7, 1869 as viewed in New Albany?

The Crashers during fireworks won't ever again be as awe-inspiring as this display.

Naming rights? They're a bitch -- and here's a reprise of NAC's "SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS" column from January 11, 2017.

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SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: "The shouts of the New Albanians rent the air for the return of sweet daylight."

Welcome to another installment of SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS, a regular Wednesday feature at NA Confidential.

Around this time each week, anguished wails begin seeping out of the bunker's ventilation ducts: Why all these newfangled words?

Why not the old, familiar, comforting words, the ones that sufficed during the glory days, in those simpler times before inexplicably naked greed kicked in like a bond-issue-percentage speedball, knocking you back into the turnbuckles but feeling oh so fine, and now, as the Great Elongated and Exasperated Obfuscator of comic book series fame (can Disney World be far behind?) you teach detailed principles of banking to bankers, at least when not otherwise occupied making healthy deposits into your own account?

Thankfully, even if one toils for the Peerless Leader (not to mention Peerless Faucet), a healthy vocabulary isn't about intimidation through erudition. No, not at all. Rather, it's about selecting the right word and using it correctly, whatever one's pay grade or station in life.

Even municipal corporate attorneys reaping handsome remuneration to suppress information and to squelch community dialogue can benefit from this enlightening expansion of personal horizons, and really, as we contemplate CPIs, IUDs and IOUs, all we really have is time -- and the opportunity to learn something, if we're so inclined.

This weeks words are familiar, with a chronological twist: New Albanian.

New Albanian

[noo al-bey-nee-uh n]

adjective

1. of or relating to New Albany (as opposed to Old Albania, otherwise known as Shqipëri/Shqipëria), its inhabitants, or their psychology

noun

2. a native or citizen of New Albany

For a very long time, we've been speculating as to exactly when New Albanian first was used as a descriptive term.

I've never been shy about my own recent part in popularizing the usage of New Albanian, which became the name of my business in 1994, but was used informally prior to the advent of the company name, often when we'd hoist steins while trying to answer the question, "What is a person from New Albany called?"

"New Albanyite" never seemed right, and New Albanian always was the logical choice. For so long as historical evidence was scant, I was delighted to claim credit, but today, thanks to local physician and city council member Al Knable, there is definitive proof that the use of the term New Albanian to describe a resident of this city extends at least as far back into the life and times of the settlement on the flood plain as the Eclipse of 1869.

It's from the Ledger, a Tribune forerunner. Note the multi-syllable words used in the header, among them obscuration, magnificence, manifestation and protuberances. If cannot be imagined that a newspaper editor today would view these words in any way apart from sheer unmitigated horror. In fact, the News and Tribune recoils in just such a manner, daily.

Thanks to Dr. Knable for making this major etymological contribution to our understanding of the city's history.

The Sacramento Valley Mirror: "I don’t see many small papers doing what we do."

Now THIS is what I'm talking about. Thanks to the Bookseller for the link. As he notes, we've both really needed this timely reminder of how things ought to work.

Granted, I can't link to something (The Sacramento Valley Mirror) that isn't on-line, but it's enough to know the district attorney and sheriff in Tim Crews' town seem annoyed at having to answer questions.

Boy, can we relate to such attitudes here in New Albany. Then again, our bunker-ensconced elected officials don't have a newspaper of any sort yapping at their heels.

There's a blog, of course, and this comment from the article hits the center of the target.

"It does get people talking, that’s for sure. Nobody will admit to reading it, but everybody seems to know what he writes."

I'm interested in hearing from readers who are or have been in the newspaper business. Why does it take a cranky country publisher/curmudgeon to be the exception to what should be the rule?

A few highlights ...

Meet the ‘cranky country publisher’ who files lawsuits instead of tweets, by Daniel Funke (Poynter)

At the Sacramento Valley Mirror, Tim Crews is everything.

He’s the founder, publisher, editor and owner. He reports, takes photos and sells ads. The newspaper is so small that he even helps deliver copies when it prints twice a week.

And you wouldn't know it by his blank email signature or no-nonsense tone, but Crews is also a controversial, bulldog investigator. He’s used open records to expose wrongdoing by public officials, penned countless editorials about various misdeeds and published long-form investigations about local government. But what people think of the plucky 73-year-old varies widely, from a noble bastion of watchdog journalism to a scandalous rabble-rouser who’s up to no good.

This:

Crews said he has been shot at, his office burgled, his building set on fire, his car's brakes weakened and his dog Kafka poisoned. In late March, Crews and reporter Larry Judkins were the subject of threatening phone calls and complaints after writing about a local homicide, according to a recent Reporters Without Borders (RSF) article. The Mirror publisher even sent the journalism advocacy organization a photo of a noose that was left in front of the newspaper's downtown Willows office in late April.

Just imagine:

In a time when many local papers have been decimated by cost-cutting and shrinking print ad budgets — merging, folding and compromising good journalism for clicks — the Mirror stands out. The 16-page broadsheet has become known for both its fight for open records access in California and its penchant for local gossip — despite having only a three-person full-time staff and a smattering of volunteers.

Because:

For Crews, the fight for press access and government transparency isn't a principled or glorious one. It's a way of life — one he’d like to keep up for another 10 years.

"You have to just stand up for yourself," he said. "If someone is messing with you, you have to fight back. It's just the American way."

This:

"So far as small papers are concerned, we’re a little unusual," Judkins said. "When people run out of other options, they often come to us with the hopes that maybe a little light — a little public exposure — will help whatever problems that they may have."

“If we don’t report it, who will?”

That's the question at the top of each copy of the Mirror, which has a surprising amount of influence in a town of a little more than 6,000 people.

Hey -- Bill Hanson, you of your former minister's weekly religious advocacy column -- Roger is tanned rested and ready:

The Mirror has one of the only Atheist columns in the country, and it doesn't charge for wedding photos or obituaries.

Investigative? Be still my throbbing heart.

"That kind of stuff that newspapers in the past always did, we still do. But on the other hand, we’re very much an investigative organ," Crews said. “People want to know what’s going on.”

"He’s really done a wonderful job of showing people what a newspaper can do when it really covers the news, and really goes beyond just covering the news — when it finds foul play or a lack of public access," Rebele said. "That's the kind of thing Tim does.”

Throwback?

Crews has no website. He doesn't tweet, isn't concerned about growing his digital audience and says the migration of newspapers to the internet is "ruinous." What he does have is a desire to seek out and report the truth, a record of improving his community and a substantial network of people who support him. And it's not limited to his mostly senior audience or old newspaper pals.

Teaching access. It's like an alien language, eh?

"Tim Crews has been probably our most successful mentor of interns when he takes one. All those interns come out of that experience with Tim just raving because they learn so much about public records and how to get access to meetings," he said. "In its own way, and for its own community, Tim Crews has done the same thing (as big newspapers). It's just that Tim's reach is not as great as the L.A. Times’ reach is."

But what about sports, sports and more sports?

"If you want to know what’s going on in Iraq, this is not the place to look," he said. "People in small towns deserve A1 journalism the same as everybody else."

Treat yourself. Follow the link, and read the whole article.

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: "The shouts of the New Albanians rent the air for the return of sweet daylight."

Welcome to another installment of SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS, a regular Wednesday feature at NA Confidential.

Around this time each week, anguished wails begin seeping out of the bunker's ventilation ducts: Why all these newfangled words?

Why not the old, familiar, comforting words, the ones that sufficed during the glory days, in those simpler times before inexplicably naked greed kicked in like a bond-issue-percentage speedball, knocking you back into the turnbuckles but feeling oh so fine, and now, as the Great Elongated and Exasperated Obfuscator of comic book series fame (can Disney World be far behind?) you teach detailed principles of banking to bankers, at least when not otherwise occupied making healthy deposits into your own account?

Thankfully, even if one toils for the Peerless Leader (not to mention Peerless Faucet), a healthy vocabulary isn't about intimidation through erudition. No, not at all. Rather, it's about selecting the right word and using it correctly, whatever one's pay grade or station in life.

Even municipal corporate attorneys reaping handsome remuneration to suppress information and to squelch community dialogue can benefit from this enlightening expansion of personal horizons, and really, as we contemplate CPIs, IUDs and IOUs, all we really have is time -- and the opportunity to learn something, if we're so inclined.

This weeks words are familiar, with a chronological twist: New Albanian.

New Albanian

[noo al-bey-nee-uh n]

adjective

1. of or relating to New Albany (as opposed to Old Albania, otherwise known as Shqipëri/Shqipëria), its inhabitants, or their psychology

noun

2. a native or citizen of New Albany

For a very long time, we've been speculating as to exactly when New Albanian first was used as a descriptive term.

I've never been shy about my own recent part in popularizing the usage of New Albanian, which became the name of my business in 1994, but was used informally prior to the advent of the company name, often when we'd hoist steins while trying to answer the question, "What is a person from New Albany called?"

"New Albanyite" never seemed right, and New Albanian always was the logical choice. For so long as historical evidence was scant, I was delighted to claim credit, but today, thanks to local physician and city council member Al Knable, there is definitive proof that the use of the term New Albanian to describe a resident of this city extends at least as far back into the life and times of the settlement on the flood plain as the Eclipse of 1869.

It's from the Ledger, a Tribune forerunner. Note the multi-syllable words used in the header, among them obscuration, magnificence, manifestation and protuberances. If cannot be imagined that a newspaper editor today would view these words in any way apart from sheer unmitigated horror. In fact, the News and Tribune recoils in just such a manner, daily.

Thanks to Dr. Knable for making this major etymological contribution to our understanding of the city's history.

"Chronicling America provides free access to millions of historic American newspaper pages."

1904: Little is known about the Ohio Valley Worker.

Thanks to M for the link. FREE access to MILLIONS of pages.

The time-wasting possibilities are endless, so we'd best get started.

Topics in Chronicling America (Library of Congress)

Chronicling America provides free access to millions of historic American newspaper pages. Listed here are topics widely covered in the American press of the time. We will be adding more topics on a regular basis. To find out what's new, sign up for Chronicling America’s weekly notification service, that highlights interesting content on the site and lets you know when new newspapers and topics are added. Users can use the icons at the lower-left side of the Chronicling America Web page to subscribe. If you would like to suggest other topics, use the Ask a Librarian contact form available on the Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room site. Dates show the approximate range of sample articles.

How Donald Duncan's second obituary came to be written.

Photo credit: New York Times.

First there was an obituary.

Donald W. Duncan, 79, Ex-Green Beret and Early Critic of Vietnam War, Is Dead, by Robert D. McFadden (NYT)

Mr. Duncan, who died in obscurity in 2009, wrote in 1966 of witnessing atrocities by American troops and helped organize antiwar protests.

The, a week later came the explanation. It sheds light into the editorial process at a newspaper (just imagine if ours attempted any such), and suggests that it's still possible to disappear in plain sight in places like ...

An Obituary Runs Seven Years After the Subject’s Death. What Happened?, by William McDonald

Obituaries editor William McDonald explains why The Times decided to remember a once-famous activist who had slipped into obscurity, seven years after his death.


... In sum, Mr. Duncan made an appreciable impact on the national discussion of the war; he had for a time been a newsmaker, and by The Times’s rule of thumb his death was thus newsworthy. The obituary ran online on May 6, and in the paper on May 8.

What was unusual about the obituary, however, was how belated it was. Mr. Duncan had died seven years earlier, on March 25, 2009. And therein lies a tale, about a life in which notoriety gave way to its flip side, obscurity, and about a journalistic decision in which one imperative of reporting — to be timely — deferred to a greater one: to simply get the story out.

 ... Madison, Indiana, where Donald Duncan's death notice appeared seven years ago.

Duncan's 2009 obituary in the Madison Courier.

The Chicago Defender: "American newspapers once stood for something more than a marketing plan."

My book of the month is The Defender: How The Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America, by Ethan Michaeli.

As foreign as the concept may be at present, the book is about standing up. You listening, Mr. Hanson?

New Book Highlights Historic Black Newspaper (NPR)

American newspapers once stood for something more than a marketing plan. The Chicago Defender was founded in the early 20th century to fight segregation in the South, build strong and lively African-American communities in the North and to root for the Chicago American Giants. It would become in many ways one of the most influential newspapers in the United States. The Defender could claim partial credit for the Great Migration north, the end of segregation in the U.S. military, the election of presidents, including Warren Harding, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy and encouraging the career of a young South Side legislator named Barack Obama. Ethan Michaeli, who was once a reporter for The Chicago Defender in the 1990s, has written a book "The Defender: How The Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America."

File under: "Inadvertent truth in journalism."

Associated Press in the Louisville Courier-Journal on June 8, 2015.

A Bully Called This Newspaper A Bird Cage Liner, And What Happened Next Is Incredible. Please read.

This is sufficiently depressing to stand on its own, sans comment. Thanks (well, maybe) to my mouthpiece for the link.

Print Is Down, and Now Out; Media Companies Spin Off Newspapers, to Uncertain Futures, by David Carr (NYT)

... The Nashville Scene noted that readers had to wait only one day to find out what the news of the future looks like: a Page 1 article in The Tennessean about Kroger, a grocery store and a major advertiser, lowering its prices.

If this is the future — attention news shoppers, Hormel Chili is on sale in Aisle 5 — what is underway may be a kind of mercy killing.

Days of rage at LEO Weekly, as non-readers remain precisely that.

I skip out of town for a few days, and all hell breaks loose at LEO. On a personal level, I'm a big fan of Sara Havens, and as usual, Kevin Gibson gets it right.

Opinion: LEO Weekly made a big mistake in jettisoning ‘The Bar Belle’, by Kevin Gibson (Insider Louisville)

Last Friday, on her 15th anniversary of working for the news magazine she loved, Sara was unceremoniously “let go.” As you’ve no doubt already heard, LEO was purchased by Aaron Yarmuth, son of founder John Yarmuth, for whom I worked all those years ago. The sale went through Friday, and the younger Yarmuth’s first order of business was to lay off four employees.

I’m not going to bash the new ownership; times are tough, Yarmuth had his reasons, and I suspect he found out he had fired Sara on her 15th anniversary after the fact. (I’m a benefit of the doubt kind of guy.) But I am going to say this about his decision: Good luck with that.

Apparently there was a fractious staff meeting -- at this juncture, "staff" being a somewhat nebulous concept.

LEO Weekly left with zero editorial employees after two remaining staffers walk out (Insider Louisville)

A source inside LEO Weekly says the publication’s two remaining full-time editorial staffers walked out following a meeting this morning with new owner Aaron Yarmuth.

We were in Duluth when the story began breaking, and our conclusion? Neither of us could remember the last time that LEO was a "must read," or something we grabbed as soon as it appeared at the coffee shop or pub. It's no reflection on Sara as editor, just recognition that for some years now, the publication has been average at best.

Since the demise of my beer column, at the very least.

I think that's a joke. In the interest of equal time, Aaron Yarmuth "broke" the silence last evening at the publication's Facebook page. Here it is, in its entirety.

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Breaking the silence.

Hello LEO readers and Louisvillians. While this is not my official introduction letter — which will be running in Wednesday’s issue — it is with a heavy heart, and great sincerity that I write on behalf of the staff and new management to explain what happened late last week.

First and foremost, I am terribly sorry to those LEO staffers who were not brought on to the new company. Contrary to what has been widely reported/misconstrued, is that the first act of new management was to fire staff. The truth is that it was the last act of SouthComm to let go of all of its employees.

My biggest personal regret is that I was not personally able to be with the people at LEO during the tumultuous afternoon.

That being said, last Friday, August 1st, was the third attempt at closing the deal. There was no nefarious attempt to avoid bad news on a Friday afternoon. In fact, my partner and I spent over 4 hours in my attorney’s office on Thursday the 31st, trying to close the deal so that we could have those conversations then. It unfortunately spilled over into Friday, and even still, I had every intention of meeting with the staff.

Finally, as the final transactions took multiple hours to execute, we had run into the early evening. I was away from the office doing everything I could, personally, to see the deal closed, and simultaneously, SouthComm had to begin notifying employees. Again, I am forever sorry that things transpired the way they did, but I was in a place where I had to make sure the deal was closed.

The worst came when I received a text notifying me that it was — to the day — the 15th anniversary for Sara Havens at LEO. I would like to think that had we known that, we could have avoided it. But as it turned out, it was unavoidable.

In sum, we had a press release ready, plans to do a story on our website, and I intended to be readily available to respond to questions, concerns, comments, et cetera — staff, media, and the public. By the time the process had begun, it was too late. Joe Sonka was on assignment at Fancy Farm, people had left for the weekend, and we did not even have access to certain LEO outlets until the deal was closed.

From there, we were not in a position to communicate until this morning. Unfortunately, due to some more pressing issues that arose this morning, I am sorry that this is the first moment I have had to relay this communication to the public — via our own channel.

The good news is, LEO will be going to print tomorrow evening, and come Wednesday morning it will be in the racks waiting for you — with a surprise, special guest commentator.

There will be a lot more to come on the staff changes, and our plans for the future of LEO. But as every President has reported, “The state of our publication is strong!”

Aaron Yarmuth

Caption contest.

I'm not sure why we bother ... SBAvanti63 always wins, and I never pay the prize (how many pints do I owe him by now? I swear I'm good for them), but here goes another one.

Fill in the white spots from left to right, with your theme being: Da Newspaper.

If it's a Gannett newspaper, that's gah-NET ...

... as in net irrelevance pursuant to the hurried abandonment of journalism in favor of pandering to a vanishing readership as a glorified advertising circular. If anything about this smells like the C-J's bridge envy, and its shameless advocacy of this region's all-time great transportation boondoggle, you're free to draw perfectly appropriate conclusions.

Cincinnati Enquirer abandoning city interests, by Randy A. Simes (UrbanCincy blog).

The answer to that may lie in the conversation I had with a content editor at the Enquirer three years ago where he said, “We tell the stories our readership wants to hear.” Encouraging right? The Enquirer does not care about providing fair/balanced news coverage, they care only about their bottom line and telling the story they feel their readers want to hear.

Charlie Brooker: "Newspapers are the biggest threat to the nation's mental wellbeing."

The United Kingdom, that is. It's classic Brit-write, with wonderful drug abuse analogies, and a topic often addressed here at NAC.

The most dangerous drug isn't meow meow. It isn't even alcohol ..., by Charlie Brooker (The Guardian).

... In its purest form, a newspaper consists of a collection of facts which, in controlled circumstances, can actively improve knowledge. Unfortunately, facts are expensive, so to save costs and drive up sales, unscrupulous dealers often "cut" the basic contents with cheaper material, such as wild opinion, bullshit, empty hysteria, reheated press releases, advertorial padding and photographs of Lady Gaga with her bum hanging out.

Radio Pyongyang is more transparent than this: Belated confirmation that Tucker is out, Grahn in at the Tribune.

(Don't forget Monday's essential Mencken: "Homo Neanderthalensis" (1925) ... or, fundamentals of the Open Air Museum.)

In early May, a reader of NA Confidential wrote a private e-mail noting that John Tucker was no longer publisher of the Tribune. The reader pointed to a Tribune web site listing that identified Jim Grahn as publisher.

I was very busy and sat on this for at least two weeks. Finally, on May 28, there was a chance to ask the question publicly:

Speaking of the Tribune, has anyone seen this odd revelation at the newspaper's website?

PUBLISHER: Jim Grahn jim.grahn(at)newsandtribune.com

The last reference to John Tucker came in March, according to the search mechanism, and his name appears nowhere in the "contact us" section. There is no staff listing in yesterday's newspaper. Clues, anyone?

Later that day, the Tribune’s Shea Van Hoy joined the conversation:

To answer your other question, John Tucker is still here. What you folks have noticed is a realignment of some duties, which we haven't made public yet. Something will be forthcoming.

Now, at long last, almost six weeks after the NAC reader first pointed it out, yesterday’s Tribune finally confirmed the news:

Grahn takes over Tribune top spot (June 22)

Jim Grahn has been named publisher of New Albany-based The Tribune, an award-winning daily newspaper serving readers across Floyd County.A veteran of newspapers for two decades, Grahn most recently served since 2005 as the advertising director of The Tribune and The Evening News of Jeffersonville. Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. owns both.

“New organizational and content changes will allow us to focus more intently on our individual counties,” Grahn said. “We want to make sure we provide the best service possible to our readers and advertisers while continuing our unsurpassed local news coverage.”

Grahn replaces John Tucker, who will remain publisher of The Evening News and its printing facility.

Am I the only one who finds both this time frame and the mode of information dissemination bothersome?

Note the word "replace" in yesterday's announcement. Seems to me that’s more than a mere “realignment” of duties, seeing as the original question referred specifically to John Tucker’s presence at the Tribune. He's not there, and would seem not to have been since early May at the latest.

Why the secrecy?

The Economist strikes again: “Vote for me, dimwit.”

I was introduced to The Economist in late 1980’s while working for a Louisville company that abstracted news articles for a then-embryonic (and today obsolete) CD-ROM reader’s guide.

Seldom has a weekly issue been missed since. Following is a succinct description of The Economist, as culled from Wikipedia:

The Economist is a weekly news and international affairs publication owned by "The Economist Newspaper Ltd" and edited in London. It has been in continuous publication since James Wilson established it in September 1843. As of 2006, its average circulation topped one million copies a week, about half of which are sold in North America. Consequently it is often seen as a transatlantic (as opposed to solely British) news source.

According to its contents page, the aim of The Economist is "to take part in a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress."

Subjects covered include international news, economics, politics, business, finance, science, technology and the arts. The publication is targeted at the high-end "prestige" segment of the market and counts among its audience influential business and government decision-makers.

It takes a strongly argued editorial stance on many issues, especially its support for free trade and fiscal conservatism; it can thus be considered as a magazine which practices advocacy journalism.

Although The Economist calls itself a newspaper and refers to its staff as correspondents, it is printed in magazine form on glossy paper, like a newsmagazine.

Having dispensed with proper introductions, we now proceed to a recent “Lexington” commentary in The Economist. It is the perfect segue to the fall election cycle.

Lexington: Vote for me, dimwit, from The Economist print edition (June 14, 2007):

ANYONE who follows an election campaign too closely will sometimes get the feeling that politicians think voters are idiots. A new book says they are. Or rather, Bryan Caplan, an economics professor at George Mason University, makes the slightly politer claim that voters systematically favour irrational policies. In a democracy, rational politicians give them what they (irrationally) want. In “The Myth of the Rational Voter”, Mr. Caplan explains why this happens, why it matters and what we can do about it …

… he identifies four biases that prompt voters systematically to demand policies that make them worse off. First, people do not understand how the pursuit of private profits often yields public benefits: they have an anti-market bias. Second, they underestimate the benefits of interactions with foreigners: they have an anti-foreign bias. Third, they equate prosperity with employment rather than production: Mr. Caplan calls this the “make-work bias”. Finally, they tend to think economic conditions are worse than they are, a bias towards pessimism.

"Unworthy, timid ignorance?"

"Voters systematically favour irrational policies?"

You'd be forgiven for thinking that The Economist was speaking of New Albany politics. Does Erika, our charming mock prof, read The Economist ... or The Trognonomist? I'm "voting" for the latter.

At any rate, please consider reading “Vote for me, dimwit” in its entirety, and discuss if you please. I'm going to work for a while.