 In the spirit of Halloween, here’s a flashback to certainly one of the creepiest stories I’ve ever worked on: The Ancient Art of Exorcism. More recently, there’s this ghost story.
- Here’s LeRoy Standish’s version of the ghost hunting story in Sunday’s Daily Press.
- Carve online pumpkins. (Source.)
- Not at all Halloweeny, but frightening in a different way: a database of everyone’s driver’s licenses from around the country. Yes, yours is in there, too.
- I almost hesitate to pass along these sorts of polls, but here you go. Adults only, please. (Note the page is not safe for work and you’ll probably want to use a Hotmail or GMail address or something to avoid potential future spam.) (Source.)
- And for treats of an adult nature, check out Tiki Bar TV. (This time, it’s probably work safe, depending on what sort of sense of humor your boss has.) It’s also available as a podcast — hello, Video iPod! — but you can simply watch the Quicktime files on their site. If giggly drunken girls, lounge music and hammy acting are wrong, I don’t wanna be right.
Tracie Troha, the new Hesperia/county reporter for the Daily Press, has the story:
Planning Commissioner Todd Turoci announced on Wednesday he is dropping out of the race for the 59th Assembly District.
Turoci, 43, who announced his candidacy in July, said he decided to withdrawal from the campaign after realizing he would not be able to balance being a single parent and representing his constituents as an assemblyman.
“If I won I would be away from my children, who range in age from 7 to 13 years, for six years,” Turoci said. “I realized I couldn’t do both jobs effectively.”
Turoci’s departure leaves Anthony Adams of Hesperia and three Los Angeles County candidates in the race for the Republican nomination for the seat in the June 2006 primary.
Look for the Hesperia Star’s take on it, which will be framed somewhat differently, in the November 1 edition of the paper.
Due to space constraints, only two pictures accompanied the article about the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department’s new helicopters. Here are the rest:
Sultana High School from the air.
The Interstate 15/Main Street overpass picture in color (note the In-N-Out at the top). City officials are saying it’ll be fully open at long last on November 15.
Hesperia High School from the air.
The High Desert Primary Care shopping center, including the Hesperia Star, from the air.
Ray Pryke, the publisher of the Hesperia Resorter and other Valleywide Newspapers, has been ordered to pay $3 million dollars to the wife of San Bernardino County Sheriff Gary Penrod:
Citing “malicious and salacious” journalism, a Superior Court judge awarded more than $3 million in damages Friday in a libel lawsuit against newspaper publisher Raymond Pryke, owner of the Hesperia Resorter and Valleywide Newspapers.
Superior Court Judge Christopher J. Warner awarded psychologist Nancy K. Bohl $750,000 in actual damages and $750,000 in emotional damages for libelous articles. The judge awarded Bohl’s company, The Counseling Team, $500,000 in damages for past and future lost earnings. He also awarded Bohl $1 million in punitive damages plus $10,839.60 in costs, according to the judge’s written decision.
Bohl and The Counseling Team sued the Hesperia Resorter and Pryke for libel in connection with newspaper articles written by reporter Mark Gutglueck. The judge ruled that Gutglueck’s articles “demonstrate ‘malice’ and are capable of causing ‘severe emotional distress.’ ”
The newspaper articles accused Bohl, who is the wife of San Bernardino County Sheriff Gary Penrod, and her company of violating confidentiality in psycho-therapeutic relationships for the purpose of personal and financial gain.
“The accusations were bold print front page headlines,” wrote Warner in his decision. “Particularly malicious and salacious was ‘Sleeping with Penrod Pays Off.’ Mr. Pryke personally selected this headline, according to his deposition testimony.”
The lawsuit against Gutglueck was dismissed early in the case.
CJR Daily yesterday took aim at Freedom Communications, the company that owns both The Hesperia Star and The Daily Press.
Over the last couple days, at least seven of Freedom’s newspapers have run an identical unsigned editorial calling on Congress to uphold the president’s temporary repeal of the Bacon-Davis Act in the Gulf Coast.
Bacon-Davis, by way of some quick background, requires that contractors working on federally funded construction projects pay workers the prevailing wage in the area in which the projects are taking place. Under the president’s plan, contractors in the Gulf region will be able to pay workers less — far less, if the market bears.
We were alerted to the identical op-eds by an item on the Facing South blog, and in looking into it ourselves, dug up a few more examples of the chain running the same editorial in its papers.
The piece so far has run in the Appeal-Democrat of Marysville-Yuba City, California; the Daily News of Jacksonville, North Carolina; the Free Press of Kinston, North Carolina and at least four other papers, according to a quick — and admittedly incomplete — scan of the pieces Freedom’s papers made available online.
It’s noteworthy that all of the editorials are unsigned, and there is nothing in them to suggest that they came from corporate HQ (or wherever they originated), which, logically, would lead readers to believe that they were written by the local editorial staff. Obviously, they weren’t.
Now, this isn’t a capital crime, but when homogenized product is being pumped to so many communities scattered across the nation, it does speak to the larger issue of media consolidation. In this case, what appears to be the company line is being toed by newspapers from California to North Carolina, with readers none the wiser.
It does not appear that it has run in either the Star or the Daily Press.
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