Your former editor was quite cordial when we spoke about your reportorial error relating to the broader story just before the OIG report was released.

There were no follow-ups to my original report. The Darke County Job & Family Services had no more info to add. That agency was the topic of my report and all the info was quoted or pulled from their website. It’s called a local angle to a broader story. Besides, my former newspaper does not take dictation from out-of-town crackpots.

Things are great here in sunny South Gate, and I’ll guarantee it’s a lot more happening than Mason.

#6, A belated welcome to the blogosphere, Tammy.

As to your comment: This post is anything but “whining” — it’s bemoaning how poorly readers are being served, and shaking one’s head in amazement as people running the papers, which are after all businesses, for the most part refuse to acknowledge or do anything about what’s causing their revenues and profits to contract.

The comment issue you refer to is two-fold:
- Comments need to be moderated or handled through a registration system because I want to keep profanity off the site.
- I close comments off at most posts over a week old to give comment spammers fewer targets to aim at. If you’re tripped up by that, e-mail directly. K?

Before and since the advent of the Net, print media routinely has used biased selection to decided whose letters to the editor get in, and whose don’t. They still do, in part to make sure they have the last word. But now there is an alternative.

One loose end — thought you’d want to know that the OIG report on the Ohio data theft earlier this year said on Pages 2 and 8 that the stolen data device was not encrypted. Google “ohio oig report on data theft” (without quotes) to find it. Your former editor was advised; I don’t know if he corrected your report or not.

As for that “not good enough for a newspaper thing,” I would suggest you stay tuned.

Hope all is going well in South Gate, CA (where your blog profile says you are).

Tom Blumer of BizzyBlog ponders whatever happened to what was supposed to be the newspapers’ “killer app”:Many would decry this as the result of industry consolidation. But just because the businesses consolidated, it shouldnÂ’t necessarily have fol…

Re- reading it here the way you’ve showcased this piece from Froomkin reminds me of the kind of epic tug of war in teaching: on the one hand, teachers are often instructed that, as professionals, they need to retain a certain distance from their students, that if they get too close, the kids won’t respect them won’t learn to see them as authority figures.

On the other hand, some people want to direct the teachers (and some teachers prefer this as well) to be closer to students, to get to know them more personally (without creeping them out of course) because it’s believed that that will foster a relationship in which the teacher and student will feel more vested in one another and that “being vested” will give rise to a student caring about how they perform and a teacher caring more about a student’s individual needs.

I’ve said this before – I’ve met and am happy to say that I know several PD reporters, and I always coming away feeling like – they are good, so good. And then, when I see the paper, it just doesn’t meet my expectations. I don’t doubt that they all care – but I don’t know why the product doesn’t match the heart and talent of what these journalists, writers, reporters can produce. Sometimes they do it, sometimes they don’t.

And, to be fair, the ground is shifting underneath them. What is fair to expect? They’re for-profit – they are in the business of figuring it out.

But none of us should fool ourselves into thinking it’s an easy job.

They have lost touch. You might start by asking? How many reporters live in the community they cover? How many know a cop? The results could be astounding.