TWN0413 - The Washington Newspaper April 2013

TWN

THE WASHINGTON NEWSPAPER

TAKE AIM FOR BNC How to enter, new rules, PAGE 5 Ben Watanabe/South Whidbey Record, Langley

Vol. 98, No. 4 April 2013

Journal of the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association and Allied Daily Newspapers of Washington • www.wnpa.com

It’s official: Legislative Day is April 11 M

embers of Allied Daily Newspapers of Washington and Washington Newspaper Publishers Association will gather at the State Capitol in Olympia on Thursday, April 11 for Legislative Day 2013.

The date is later than usual, but the importance of your participation is unchanged.

The day’s activities begin in

Conference Room ABC in the John A. Cherberg Building (the Senate office building).

Rowland Thompson, executive director of Allied, will open with a legislative briefing from 10 to 10:45 a.m.

We’ll hear remarks by the legislative leadership from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

During lunch, John Batiste, Chief of the Washington State

ON THE WEB

Legislative Day registration: www.wnpa.com/events Patrol, is scheduled to speak.

State elected officials begin speaking at 1 p.m., followed by additional legislative leaders and state government officials from 2:45 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

The day’s final events are a reception at the Temple of Justice at 4 p.m., hosted by Chief Justice Barbara Madsen, and dinner at the Governor’s Mansion at 5:30 p.m., hosted by Gov. and Mrs. Inslee.

Please bring current photo ID for entry to the mansion.

Registration is due Thursday, April 4. Register at www.wnpa. com/events and pay by credit

card online or download a registration form to mail with a check.

If you choose the mail-in option, please inform Mae Waldron of your plans by email also.

Please address any questions to Waldron at mwaldron@wnpa. com or (206) 634-3838 ext. 2.

Heather Clarke is the contact for Allied members, heather@ clarkecompany.net or (360) 628-8129.

VAULTING TO EXCELLENCE

Damian Mulinix/Chinook Observer, Long Beach

The judges said, ‘Wow... lines and curves at the perfect moment. A photo for the ages,’ and awarded first place for Sports Action Photo, Circulation Groups II-IV Combined, to Damian Mulinix of the Chinook Observer in Long Beach, in the 2012 Washington Better Newspaper Contest.

Icing Meltwater: AP wins in key copyright action Court: Reselling news excerpts from Web not a fair use Davis Wright Tremaine LLC

O

n March 21, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a sweeping decision in favor of Davis Wright Tremaine’s client, The Associated Press, in its copyright infringement suit against Meltwater News, an online

media monitoring service.

For years, Meltwater and other companies have maintained that content published and freely available on the Internet can be scraped, compiled, and commercially re-sold under the guise of fair use. This decision seriously undermines that proposition and recognizes that Meltwater cannot “free ride on the costly news gathering and coverage work performed by other organizations.”

AP filed suit against Meltwater in February 2012, accusing it of copyright infringement and

related claims. Meltwater is a commercial media-monitoring service that provides its paying customers with daily “News Reports” containing excerpts— include the headline and lede— from news articles scraped from the Internet on topics selected by the customer.

After a period of expedited discovery, the parties submitted summary judgment motions on Meltwater’s liability for copyright infringement. Meltwater argued that it operated as an Internet search engine, and

that its use of AP content was therefore protected by the fair use doctrine.

The court’s March 21 opinion resoundingly rejected that argument.

One of the significant legal questions presented by this case was whether Meltwater’s use of news content placed it in a line of precedents about traditional clipping services—which have not been treated by courts as a fair use—or whether it was more fairly considered a “search engine” akin to uses approved by

the Ninth Circuit in Perfect 10 v.

Amazon and Kelly v. Arriba.

In her 91-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Denise L. Cote carefully examined the nature of Meltwater’s use of news content in its Meltwater News service and found Meltwater to be “a classic news clipping service,” whose use of content was neither transformative nor fair.

As the Court noted, “Meltwater copies AP content in order to make money directly from the undiluted use of the See RULING, page 2

2

APRIL 2013

TWN

Goodbye to Booth Gardner, a good governor

B

ooth Gardner was not Washington’s greatest governor, but he was the one with the greatest heart. He was its most human, empathetic and interesting. At the age of 76, Pierce County’s Gardner, who served as governor from 1985 to 1993, died of Parkinson’s disease on March 15.

Gardner was the governor I knew best. Part of that came from the odd coincidence that he was one of the few people in Washington state closely connected to both my family, from Eastern Washington, and the family of my wife, Jennifer, from Seattle. Jennifer’s father Peter was Booth’s roommate for two years at Lakeside High School, and they kept in touch.

When Booth was elected to the Washington State Senate as a complete political unknown from Pierce County in 1970, he shared the back row of desks (reserved for freshmen) with my

father Bruce, who had been elected in 1968 from the sprawling Okanogan country.

Much later, after Gardner Scott Wilson surprised Publisher, the political The Port establishment Townsend by defeating Leader both popular Democrat Jim McDermott and incumbent Republican John Spellman in 1984 for the governor’s office, I was the Olympia bureau chief of theTacoma News Tribune, which prided itself both on its Olympia coverage and its tracking of Pierce County’s political sons, of whom Gardner was easily the most prominent.

In turn, as a representative of his hometown, he gave me and other TNT reporters special ac-

cess and tips — and also special hard stares when our reporting displeased him.

Gardner developed an ability to zero in on people on an empathetic, almost telepathic level, one by one, making a personal connection that stayed with both. He remembered names and circumstances. His linkages with untold hundreds of people were as personal and as direct as his gaze.

On the other hand, he hated industrial politics. He was almost shy on the stump. He hated to trade horses with legislators or lobbyists. In a world of massive egos and power trips, he was from a more understated planet. Nobody that I saw in my years of covering Washington politics could move through a room like Booth Gardner, charming and connecting with everyone in his path. He had a very personal charisma and intelligence.

Intelligence marked his initiatives as governor. Gardner was ahead of his time in implementing programs that took care of people but that also moved them beyond welfare into work. He hired Jules Sugarman, an architect of LBJ’s War on Poverty, to reform Washington’s welfare system so it encouraged job finding.

He launched the Basic Health Care program, championed early childhood education, supported the University of Washington and the rest of higher education, recognized Indian tribal sovereignty, championed gay rights, banned smoking in state workplaces and cleaned up waterways.

Two initiatives were probably his most controversial. One was his support of the Growth Management Act, which even today, more than 20 years later, generates teeth-gnashing from rapid growth advocates in rural counties such as Jefferson.

Gardner also made a brief run

toward a state income tax, but beat a hasty retreat in the face of the gathering odds.

Gardner gave himself a “B” for his tenure as governor. But that judgment was limited to a political tally. On a personal front he got an A+. The Wilsons, for example, will never forget that he canceled the Washington State Legislature for a day in 1991 so that he and a delegation of lawmakers could attend my father’s funeral in Omak.

He declined to run for a third term in 1993. A year later he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. In 2008 he championed Washington’s Death with Dignity initiative, which passed overwhelmingly. He also founded a Parkinson’s care center now named for him.

In the end, he indeed died with dignity, a decent man who proved you don’t have to sell your soul to politics to be a good governor of Washington state.

Looks like Sunshine Week’s mixed weather continues Officers: President: Bill Forhan, NCW Media, Leavenworth l First Vice President: Keven Graves, Whidbey News Group, Coupeville l Second Vice President: Lori Maxim, Sound Publishing l Past President: Jana Stoner, Northern Kittitas County Tribune, Cle Elum l Secretary: Bill Will, WNPA, Seattle Trustees: Mike Dillon, Pacific Publishing Co., Seattle l Josh Johnson, Liberty Lake Splash, Liberty Lake l Eric LaFontaine, Othello Outlook l Imbert Matthee, Waitsburg Times l Don Nelson, Methow Valley News, Twisp l Stephen McFadden, Ritzville-Adams County Journal l Fred Obee, Port Townsend Leader Staff: Executive Director: Bill Will l Editor/Manager of Member Services: Mae Waldron

T

he forecast for this year’s National “Sunshine Week,” March 10-16, which annually focuses on issues of freedom of information and transparency in government, was “partly cloudy, with some sun and some storms.”

On one hand, an Associated Press analysis released during the week found that the Obama administration in 2012 answered the highest number during his time in office of FOI requests for “government documents, emails, photographs and more, and it slightly reduced its backlog of requests from previous years.”

But the same analysis shows the administration more often cited legal provisions allowing the government to keep records or parts of its records secret, especially a rule intended to protect national security – though some say that may just mean there were more requests for those kinds of documents.

AP also said that officials were making more use of

RULING Officers: President: Rob Blethen, Walla Walla Union-Bulletin Treasurer: Christine Fossett, Chronicle, Centralia Board: Nathan Alford, Moscow-Pullman Daily News l Tyler Miller, Daily Record, Ellensburg l Heather Hernandez, Skagit Valley Herald, Mount Vernon l Dave Zeeck, News Tribune, Tacoma Executive Director: Rowland Thompson

THE WASHINGTON NEWSPAPER is the official publication of the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association. It is published monthly by WNPA, 12354 30th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98125, phone (206) 634-3838. Email: mwaldron@wnpa.com; URL: www.wnpa.com, in conjunction with Allied Daily Newspapers of Washington, P.O. Box 29, Olympia, WA 98507, (360) 943-9960.

Email: anewspaper@aol.com.

exceptions in FOI laws that protect the “behind-thescenes decision-making process.”

And the private National Security Gene Archive, Policinski vice president/ at George executive Washington director, University, First Amendment issued a report Center on March 11 noting that only about one-half of 90 agencies ordered by President Obama to upgrade their responses to information requests and foster overall openness have “actually made concrete changes in their FIOA procedures.”

So what is the impact on you or me?

Well, first it means that even though President Obama’s first act in office was to declare a new effort to make government more transparent, some things

have not changed.

If you write to a federal agency for information not generally available, it probably means at least as long a wait as in previous years and administrations – multiple years.

The AP report said that in 2012, “the government generally took longer to answer requests.

Some agencies, such as the Health and Human Services Department, took less time than the previous year to turn over files. But at the State Department, for example, even urgent requests submitted under a fast-track system covering breaking news or events where a person’s life was at stake took an average two years to wait for files.

And there’s a new bit of irony for those in the information business. Journalists have had to wait even longer for their freedom of information requests to be granted. AP said that “the rate at which the government granted so-called expedited processing, which moves an urgent

request to the front of the line for a speedy answer, fell from 24 percent in 2011 to 17 percent last year.” The CIA denied every such request last year, it said.

So in an era in which data is more easily accumulated, sorted, tracked, analyzed and accessed, the response times to our FOI requests remain firmly rooted in the days of paper, manila folders and file cabinets.

The lifeblood of a representative democracy is information, so that citizens can make informed decisions at the ballot box about policy, spending, performance and goals. For information to be useful, it needs to be accurate, complete and timely, particularly for financial data in times when budget battles seemingly are being fought every few months.

Some time ago, Obama also publicly renounced an earlier administration’s doctrine that became enshrined in the post-Sept.

11 attacks era. The president declared that the posture of

engines to scrape material from the Internet and provide it to consumers in response to their search requests does not immunize a defendant from the standards of conduct imposed by law through the Copyright Act, including the statutory embodiment of the fair use defense.”

The Court also rejected Meltwater’s additional defenses to copyright infringement based on implied license, estoppel, laches, and copyright misuse.

In support of its implied license defense, Meltwater had argued that by not employing robots. txt protocols to affirmatively block Meltwater—and requiring that its members and licensees do the same—AP had granted Meltwater an implied license to scrape and re-sell AP content published on the Internet, regardless of any copyright notices or terms of use explicitly limiting commercial use of AP content. The Court rejected this argument, noting that it would

impermissibly shift the burden to copyright holders to affirmatively police the use of their content, rather than requiring infringing parties to show that content was properly used.

The case generated substantial interest from amici, who recognized the potential impact of this decision on the media industry.

A consortium of news organizations—including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Gannett—filed an amicus brief in support of AP, while the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge submitted a brief in support of Meltwater.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association submitted an amicus brief, purportedly in support of neither party, asking the Court to take into account the effect of its ruling on the operation of “legitimate online services.”

In its decision, the Court acknowledged the important public interest issues at stake.

Noting a “strong public interest” in preserving efficient access to information that was complementary to—not in tension with—the important public interest in news reporting, the Court found that Meltwater’s unlicensed commercial use of AP content did not fit within this paradigm.

At the same time, the Court recognized the impact of unlicensed commercial use on the ability of news organizations like AP to continue their important societal role of informing the public: “Investigating and writing about newsworthy events occurring around the globe is an expensive undertaking and enforcement of the copyright laws permits AP to earn the revenue that underwrites that work. Permitting Meltwater to take the fruit of AP’s labor for its own profit, without compensating AP, injures AP’s ability to perform this essential function of democracy.”

See FIRST, page 4

from page 1

copyrighted material; this is the central feature of its business model and not an incidental consequence of the use to which it puts the copyrighted material.”

Furthermore, the Court found that Meltwater’s use harmed the market for AP’s content: “By refusing to pay a licensing fee to AP, Meltwater not only deprives AP of a licensing fee in an established market for AP’s work, but also cheapens the value of AP’s work by competing with companies that do pay a licensing fee to use AP content in the way that Meltwater does.”

The Court also repeatedly rejected Meltwater’s argument that its use of search technology renders its use transformative, asserting that “[e]xploitation of search engine technology to gather content does not answer the question of whether the business itself functions as a search engine.”

As the Court explained, “Using the mechanics of search

TWN

3

APRIL 2013

OPEN ACCESS & LEGAL ISSUES

Ruling halts release of TV agreements Port Angeles

Pierce County judge admits he prefers openness, however The News Tribune, Tacoma

T

he fees local broadcasters charge Click Cable TV’s roughly 22,000 subscribers are a trade secret that should not be made public — at least, not by his court.

That essentially is what Pierce County Superior Court Judge Ronald Culpepper decided March 15 by granting a preliminary injunction to block the city-owned cable network from releasing its so-called “retransmission consent agreements” to the News Tribune.

“I don’t really like this decision too much because I’m a great believer in the Public Records Act,” Culpepper said. “… But I also have concerns about the effects this could have on the Click Network” if the records in question were released.

The News Tribune plans to appeal Culpepper’s ruling to the Washington State Court of Appeals based on the public’s “right to know how its government operates,” said James Beck, an attorney for the newspaper.

“The Public Records Act states that the people do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know,” Beck added. “But unfortunately, this is exactly what happened when the public was denied the right to inspect a government contract.”

At issue is whether the fees KOMO, KING, KIRO and other local broadcasters charge Click — Washington’s only publicly owned cable network — constitute protected trade secrets, or whether they’re public contracts subject to disclosure under the state’s records act.

The newspaper sought copies of the fee agreements in February after Click and Fisher Communications — KOMO’s corporate owner — settled a new three-year fee deal.

The negotiations, which stalled for more than a month, led Fisher to pull six stations off Click during all of January. After a new deal was struck, the stations were restored, but neither Click nor KOMO provided details about the newly negotiated fees.

After the News Tribune requested the agreements, city attorneys for Click determined the documents were public records, but provided the newspaper only copies with all fee information blacked out. Four of the broadcasters later sued Click and the News Tribune to block full disclosure; a fifth broadcast company also intervened in the case.

March 15, the broadcasters’ lawyers argued the fee information constitutes a trade secret exempt from disclosure because such prices are routinely negotiated in secret industry-wide to protect corporate bargaining positions and consumers from pricing collusion.

If disclosed, they contended, public awareness of Tacoma’s fees could financially harm broadcasters and alternatively set a negotiating floor for retransmission fees nationwide,

driving up prices for consumers.

“The highest fee being paid by Click today will be the starting point,” said Duane Swinton, a lawyer who represented three of the companies.

Judith Endejan, Fisher’s attorney, added that if the fees became public, local broadcasters with agreements with Click likely would seek to raise their fees in the future, or avoid new contracts with the publicly owned network, leading Click to lose channels and customers and fall “into a downward death spiral.”

“That’s not just hyperbolic speculation,” Endejan added. “That’s the hard, cruel fact of the broadcast world.”

Beck countered that broadcasters who carried out such threats would violate federal anti-trust laws. He added the fees simply didn’t meet a trade secret threshold of being “novel” information.

“This isn’t a secret formula like WD-40,” Beck said. “There’s nothing novel about a government contract.”

Culpepper disagreed, ruling the “information has some value partly because it’s confidential.”

He added he harbored concerns “about the potential ripple effect” disclosure could cause on programming fees elsewhere and “the potential to damage Click.”

By granting the injunction, Culpepper said he sought to “maintain the status quo” until a court could permanently decide the issue.

“I look forward to the Court of Appeals’ decision,” he said.

Press Forward We applaud the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association’s commitment to advocating for community newspapers, freedom of the press and open government.

We are honored to continue serving as a resource in these valuable efforts.

Anchorage. Bellevue. Los Angeles. New York. Portland. San Francisco. Seattle. Shanghai. Washington, D.C. | dwt.com © 2012 Davis Wright Tremaine LLP. All rights reserved. 877.398.8417

mill workers out on strike

Negotiations to continue, paper firm and union say

Peninsula Daily News, Port Angeles

S

ome of the approximately 130 Nippon Paper Industries USA employees who walked off the job in late morning March 20 in Port Angeles will picket around the clock on a sidewalk near the closed plant, a top union official said.

Greg Pallesen, vice president of the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers, said about 130 workers in Local 155 voted unanimously to go on strike Wednesday, two days after Nippon imposed a contract that union members already had rejected.

But Nippon and the union also have agreed to attempt to restart their dialogue under the auspices of federal mediation.

John Minor, the union’s area representative, said mediation could occur as early as next week.

Bargaining for a new contract began 22 months ago.

The mill produces telephone-book paper; uncoated mechanical grades for catalogs, magazines and shoppers; and newsprint used by newspapers, including the Peninsula Daily News.

The declining paper market forced the company to make cost reductions that are contained in the new contract, Norlund said in an earlier interview.

4

Times efforts for children earn award King County Bar Bulletin

T

he Center of Children & Youth Justice recognized the Seattle Times and Sara Jean Green with the sixth annual Norm Maleng Advocate for Youth Award at a fundraiser for the center last month.

The award recognizes the newspaper’s efforts to raise awareness of child welfare, juvenile justice and child sextrafficking.

“The Seattle Times has gone above and beyond its responsibility to report on current events by editorializing successfully to bring about real change and improvement in the systems set up to protect vulnerable children and youth,” said retired Washington Supreme Court Justice Bobbe Bridge, founding president and CEO of the Center.

Justice Bridge heralded the Times’ multiple editorials supporting laws and policies to protect young women and men from being exploited by ruthless and manipulative pimps. Times editorials also have advocated for a new juvenile justice center in King County, for improved protections for children in the foster care system and for stronger provisions to rehabilitate juvenile offenders.

“Sara Jean Green also deserves special recognition for her in-depth reporting on child sex-trafficking, dispelling myths and stereotypes to educate our community about the victimization of young women and men forced into prostitution,” Justice Bridge added.

Named in honor of the late King County prosecuting attorney, the Norm Maleng award recognizes those who show exemplary leadership, dedication and commitment to the youth and families of Washington.

FIRST

from page 2

agencies toward FOI requests should return to “openuntil-closed,” instead of the opposite approach in the name of national security.

But a government “door” that opens, on average, two years after citizens knock on it means that those seeking information on public programs paid for by public funds are spending a long time waiting “in the cold” – and that’s not good for those in charge of our public policy or for democracy.

Gene Policinski is senior vice president and executive director of the First Amendment Center. Email him at gpolicinski@fac.org.

APRIL 2013

TWN

CALENDAR OF EVENTS April 11 Legislative Day

July 18

WNPA Board Meeting, Leavenworth

April 25 WNPA Board Meeting, Bellevue

Oct. 3

WNPA Board Meeting, Olympia

May 11

Better Newspaper Contest Entries due

Oct. 3-5 126th Annual Convention, Olympia

June 7

Tourism Special Section Entries due

Details: www.wnpa.com/events

CAREER MOVES n Veteran journalist Angelo Bruscas has been named editor of the North Coast News in Ocean Shores. Bruscas, who lives in Ocean Shores, has been a reporter for the Daily World in Aberdeen for more than two years and previously was a longtime Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter and editor. He succeeds Tom Scanlon. n Polly Shepherd, regional publisher for Auburn, Kent, Renton, Tukwila and Covington/Maple Valley/Black Diamond Reporter newspapers, has announced Carol Bower’s promotion to advertising sales manager of the Auburn Reporter.

Bower Carol Bower joined Sound Publishing in 2004 as an advertising sales representative in Kent. She was promoted in 2011 to the regional sales team covering the South Sound region. A Washington native, Bower has lived in the Kent and Renton area for the past 22 years. She has two teenage children. n Garrett Rudolph, 32, has assumed the duties of managing editor of the Omak-Okanogan County Chronicle. Rudolph grew up in Issaquah and in 2003 graduated from Western Washington University with a degree in English. Joining the Chronicle, he returned to his home state after five years as the sports editor of the Woodburn (Ore.) Independent. The Independent had been a sister publication of the Chronicle within Eagle Newspapers Inc. until it was sold this past February. Rudolph joins a newsroom that includes former managing editor Dee Camp and Sports Editor Al Camp. He succeeds Cary Rosenbaum. n Denis Law, mayor of Renton, was named president of the Sound Cities Association (SCA), which represents 35 cities in King County and is based

in Tukwila. Law is a former publisher of newspapers in King County and served as president of Washington Newspaper Publishers Association in 1994.

SCA, formerly known as the Suburban Cities Association, was established more than 40 years ago. It provides a voice for cities with under 150,000 residents in such areas as economic and community development, transportation, land use and other public-policy issues. n Leslie Kelly is the new editor of the Bremerton Reporter and the Central Kitsap Reporter in Silverdale. Publisher Sean McDonald made the announcement. Kelly has worked primarily for daily newspapers, including the Herald of Everett, the Seattle Times, and the Topeka (Kan.) Capital-Journal.

Her background also includes stints at Food Lifeline in Seattle, and in media relations and communications. She graduated from the School of Journalism at the University of Kansas. She has lived in Washington since 1990 and moved to the Kitsap Peninsula area this past summer, after her husband, Brian Kelly, was named editor of the Bainbridge Island Review. n The Seattle Times has promoted Janice Vallin to executive director of advertising, responsible for developing strategies to generate revenue on print, digital and mobile platforms.

Vallin joined Janice Vallin the Times as director of major and national advertising in 2011. Her career includes positions in advertising and sales, including retail sales director, at the Houston Chronicle, and as senior multimedia advertising director at the Austin AmericanStatesman. She graduated from Texas A&M with a degree in journalism, marketing and advertising.

named assistant editor of the Renton Reporter. His journalism career started in 1999 at the Community News, a weekly newspaper in upstate New York.

He then moved to Washington, joining the Puyallup Herald in 2003 and in 2005 accepting a position at the newly founded Bonney Lake Courier-Herald.

His career shifted to the Sumner and Kent Reporters before cycling back to Bonney Lake in 2010. Beckley has been interim editor of the Bonney Lake and Enumclaw newspapers since October 2012. He and his wife, Emily, live in north Renton. n Chris Peck is retiring as editor of the Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn., though he will continue to contribute to the newspaper’s editorial page. He joined the Appeal in 2002, when he replaced the retiring Angus McEachran. During Peck’s tenure, among the many projects that asserted freedom of information and the public’s right to know is a recently settled open-records suit against the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The settlement, reached this past February, provides for the release of photographs and records containing details about the late Ernest Withers’ work as a federal informant during the civil rights era. Before moving to Memphis, Peck held the Belo Distinguished Chair in Journalism at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and was the editor of the Spokesman-Review in Spokane.

He is a past president of the Associated Press Managing

Editors and the current secretary of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. n Ending a nearly 23-year career with Stephens Media, in February reporter Tommi Halvorsen Gatlin retired from the Vidette in Montesano. She had inklings of being a writer at age 9 and in high school, but only followed them to college after the eldest of her five children was attending Grays Harbor College. On her placement exams, she aced the English portion and bottomed out in math. But that didn’t stop her from being hired by the Daily World in Aberdeen. Her first position as society editor evolved into writing obituaries and then regular reporting. It included editing by then-editor and publisher John Hughes, who said “there’s no story she can’t write. And when it comes to copy editing, she is the absolute master of punctuation and grammar, including who vs. whom and that vs. which.

Whenever I need someone to take a critical final sniff at something I’m writing, I call Tommi.” In 2006 Halvorsen Gatlin filled in for a Vidette reporter who was on leave, and when that person declined to return, accepted the full-time position as her own. She plans do some freelance writing, continue her foreign mission work, and stay for a year in Norway, where her family has roots. She also has been hired by the McClearly School District as an educational assistance substitute.

Digital

Preservation Speaks

VOLUMES Protect and Share

Digitally preserve your newspapers and bound volumes

n Brian Beckley has been

FIND YOUR 25-HOUR DAY

My 50 years on 15 small publications can help you: • sell more ads & subs • simplify operations • avoid bricks through your window • start/improve your website

Jay Becker

Community Consulting

jaybecker@aol.com — (206) 790-9457

www.ArchiveInABox.com The newspaper archive scanning service from SmallTownPapersTM

TWN

APRIL 2013

Submit this year’s BNC entries beginning April 17 Contest entry deadline May 11

W

ho will win the trophy for Photographer of the Year, Sportswriter, News Writer, and Feature Writer of the Year?

Which ad will claim the Ad of the Year plaque?

What image will win the Miles Turnbull Photo of the Year Award?

The photographs on this page were part of the portfolio entered by Damian Mulinix of the Chinook Observer in Long Beach; he won the 2012 Photographer of the Year and the Turnbull award.

Your staff members can win only if they enter, so call a staff meeting, send your staff an email, or print out the page from wnpa.com/awards and put it as a reminder on the office bulletin board.

Remind them to select the best of their work published in print or online between April 2012 and March 2013, and enter it in the contest.

WNPA will again conduct the contest on betterbnc.com, produced by SmallTownPapers, a WNPA affiliate member based in Shelton.

Entries are due May 11, but you can start uploading entries on April 17.

Contest rules for each division of the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association’s 2013 Washington Better Newspaper Contest are posted at wnpa.com/ awards now.

Regular member newspapers in good standing are eligible to participate.

All entries will be judged by members of the Tennessee Press Association.

ON THE WEB

Submit entries: www.betterbnc.com Contest rules: www.wnpa.com/awards Web division entries was reduced by 50 percent to encourage participation, which was down by 50 percent last year compared to 2011.

Betterbnc.com and passwords Passwords are those selected last year on betterbnc.com. While logging in, you can reset your password with the Forgot Password function.

The Contestant Manager for each newspaper will have the same access and capabilities on betterbnc.com as last year, including setting up Authorized Entrants to submit entries.

While the Contestant Manager can see and edit all the newspaper’s entries and account information, Authorized Entrants can see and edit only the entries they submit themselves.

5

CONTEST PERIODS

Regular Contest: April 1, 2012 - March 31, 2013 Special Sections: June 1, 2012 - May 31, 2013

ENTRY FEES AND CREDITS • Fees are $6.50 per entry for Group I, $8.50 for Groups II & III, $9 for Group IV. • Web division entries are half price in 2013.

• Member newspapers that judged TPA’s contest last month will receive a credit against 2013 entry fees. A list of newspapers that earned credits ($50 or $75) is at wnpa.com/ awards.

IMPORTANT DATES April 6:................................................................................Rules online at wnpa.com/awards April 17:................................................................................... Betterbnc.com open for entries May 11:........................................................................ Deadline for submitting regular entries May 11:.................................................... Deadline for submitting General Excellence entries June 7:............................................Deadline for Tourism/Community Guide special sections Oct. 4:......................... Winners announced at BNC Awards Dinner, Red Lion Hotel, Olympia

General Excellence

All regular members can participate in General Excellence for free as part of regular member benefits. Enter all the issues produced during the weeks of Dec. 3 and Dec. 10, 2012. Entries are due on betterbnc.com on May 11. For each issue, upload your pdf to issuu.com, create a url and submit that as your entry.

WNPA plans to work with our General Excellence judges in Tennessee to ensure quality comments are provided.

Changes to regular categories

The Better Newspaper Contest Committee adjusted a few categories based on participation in recent years, as follows: • Advertising Division: The two categories for Best Ad for a Single Advertiser were revised so half-page ads are included with larger ads, creating a more balanced competition for the smaller ads.

• News Division: The Best Business Story category draws so many entries it was split into two, Best Business News and Best Business Feature.

• Photography Division: Because of low numbers of entries in each category, the blackand-white portrait, pictorial and feature categories were combined into one category, Best Feature Photograph, Black and White.

• Web Division: The Social Media category was discontinued for 2013, but all other categories were retained. The entry fee for

Damian Mulinix/Chinook Observer, Long Beach

For ‘The people vs. Brian Brush,’ Damian Mulinix won first place in the Photo Essay Category (black and white), Circulation Groups I-IV Combined. Judges wrote, ‘This riveting series of photos brings an artist’s sensibility to a crime reporter’s function. Without words, the full scope of a trial is conveyed.’ Six of the photos are displayed above.

6

APRIL 2013

TWN

Journal bids sad farewell to a printing stalwart Paper also announces new name

Mason County Journal, Shelton

W

hen he was 4, Kelly Riordan began spending time at the Shelton-Mason County Journal, where his mother Diane McMahan led the composing department. The week after Riordan graduated from Shelton High School in 1996, he was hired as the Journal’s press assistant, more commonly known as a “fly boy.”

Riordan has been the newspaper’s production manager since 1999, overseeing the printing on a 1968 Goss Community offset printing press.

“It’s like owning a vintage car,” he said. “It’s beautiful, and it’s fun to run, and it breaks down on you sometimes.”

In late January, Riordan and his crew — press operator Travis Miller and press assistant Mary Northover — fired up the press for its final in-house printing of the 127-year-old Journal.

The press will continue to print fliers, two high school newspapers and commercial materials, but starting with the Feb. 7 edition, the Journal is being printed by the Chronicle in Centralia.

“It was pretty sad,” Riordan said of operating the final Journal run on the press. “It was not a good feeling. A piece of your life is running out in front of you.”

The press used to churn out the high school newspapers for Shelton, North Mason, Tumwater, Olympia, North Thurston, Timberline and Elma, but now prints only the River Ridge High and Capital High papers, Riordan said.

“The downfall of the press has been the color capacity,” Riordan said.

The press was state of the art when it was moved into the Journal offices at 227 W. Cota St.

C

Gordon Weeks/Shelton-Mason County Journal

Journal production manager Kelly Riordan checks out the printing quality on the Jan. 31 issue, the last to be printed by the paper’s in-house press.

“This press has been a workhorse since 1972, since it was installed,” Riordan said.

Thomas Myers agrees. He was hired as the press operator in 1973, and served for 13 years.

“It was the top of the line,” he said.

Like Riordan, Myers grew up in the newspaper building.

His father, Thomas Myers Sr., was the linotype operator and mechanic from 1945 to 1960.

The operator of a linotype machine uses a 90-character keyboard that creates an entire line of metal type at once, hence the name.

Myers recalls that as a 10-year-old boy, he cleaned floors and bathrooms, and the roll-fed letterpress.

When he took over the press, “Nobody wanted to teach me,” Myers said. “There were kids

that worked there who showed me.”

The press steadily pumped out products. Myers recalls that the Wednesday lineup included the Journal, the Huckleberry Herald, and newspapers from Yelm-Nisqually, Tenino, Orting and Montesano. Tuesday was mostly devoted to printing advertising shoppers.

“When Henry Gay owned it, the press ran five days a week, eight hours a day … There was hardly time for maintenance, it ran so much,” said Myers, who owns and operates Thomas Printing next door to the Journal. Gay owned the newspaper from 1966 to 1999.

Riordan said the only major mechanical problems have been caused by operators, and Goss International has been good about carrying and finding

replacement parts.

“In my tenure here, we’ve never missed a paper,” he said.

The fast-moving machine has claimed only one human appendage. An employee experiencing a “slight moment of not paying attention” got his hand caught in the folder, in moving rollers spinning in the opposite direction.

“I had to remove him from the press,” Riordan recalled. The man lost about an inch of his right index finger.

The outsourcing of the printing of the Journal doesn’t mean Riordan is leaving, however.

He’ll continue to print other commercial works, and serve as editor, designer and columnist for the Journal’s magazine Outdoors NorthWest.

hanging its name from Shelton-Mason County Journal to Mason County Journal is one of several changes made concurrently with starting to print on the Chronicle’s press.

“We already cover all of Mason County, so the change in name more accurately reflects what we do,” Editor Adam Rudnick reported to readers in the Feb. 7 issue, the first printed on the narrow-web press under the new name.

Visually, the paper got an update, too. A new flag reflects the new name, and modernized fonts are easier to read and more attractive.

The new Journal also combined its former halfdozen or so sections into two. It consolidated coverage of all sporting events in the B section, which also includes legal notices, classifieds and a new Sudoku puzzle. Everything else--from business and education to government, obituaries and the opinion page--is in the A section.

On the retiring of the press, Rudnick wrote, “The press, a 1968 Goss Community offset printing press, has produced more than 2,500 issues of the Journal. It has served its purpose well and we’re sorry to see it go, but repairing and maintaining the hulking machine has become too expensive to make financial sense.”

PASSINGS

Former Post-Register publisher Lindberg dies at 84 Colorado native served Quincy as community leader

D

onald Walter Lindberg, former publisher of the Quincy Valley PostRegister, died March 20 at the age of 84.

He lived his early life in Colorado, where he was born in Holyoke on May 10, 1928

to Eric and Marjory (Coleman) Lindberg.

Lindberg graduated from Phillip County High Donald School in Lindberg Colorado in 1946 and attended the University of Colorado, where he enrolled in the ROTC program. After service in the U.S.

Navy, Lindberg graduated from college in journalism and business administration.

Early in his career, he worked at newspapers in Colorado and South Dakota, and then moved to Washington to join the staff at the Goldendale Sentinel.

In 1967 Lindberg bought the Quincy Post Register, its stationery store and print shop.

As a community leader, he was involved in many organiza-

tions in Quincy. He served as president of the Quincy Chamber of Commerce, which honored him with its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1993.

He was also president of the Quincy Rotary, played a role in the purchase of a grocery store building that was developed into the Quincy Community Center, and served on the City Council.

Lindberg is survived by his wife, Jean; son, Gary and

daughter, Karen Pearl; brother, Richard Lindberg; and grandson Dylan Pearl. He also is survived by step-children Cindy M. Sackett and David Pfost and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, contributions are suggested to the Shriner’s Hospital for Children’s Transportation Fund, Quincy First Presbyterian Church or Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research.

Ex-Tri-City Herald sports editor Hancock passes at 91 Tri-City Herald, Kennewick

H

ec Hancock, a longtime sports editor and columnist at the Tri-City Herald, died March 17 at Kadlec Regional Medical Center in Richland.

The Kennewick man was 91.

Hancock was born July 1, 1921, in Williamson, W.Va. He served in the Marines and was a major in the Air Force Reserve.

His son, Terry Hancock of Kennewick, said that his dad “always said he was one hot chick away from going to college at Washington State University.”

Hec Hancock had a scholarship to go to Pullman, but the girl talked him into going to the University of the Pacific, where he would eventually graduate.

The irony of not going to school at WSU was that he would eventually cover the

Cougars for the Tri-City Herald.

Oh, the girl? She was just a friend, said his son.

In the 1970s, Hec Hancock had been the sports information director at St. Mary’s College in California.

But his contract was on a year-to-year basis.

So in August 1973, he took a job offered by the Herald and moved his family to Kennewick, where he became the sports editor.

During the next 13 years, he would write numerous columns covering Mid-Columbia and Northwest sports.

He was at the first Seattle Seahawks game, knew everyone in the Pac-10, was good friends with former Miss Budweiser hydroplane owner Bernie Little and was a fan of horse racing.

He always had a front row seat in the press box during Cougar football Saturdays, where he would sit with his

good friend Harry Missildine, sports editor at the Spokane Chronicle.

In 1986, Hancock decided to semi-retire from full-time work at the Herald.

But during the next 20 years, he would still write the occasional column for the Herald.

He is survived by seven children and, as Terry said, “a gaggle of grandchildren.”

He also leaves behind a family of friends at the Herald.