Spring is journalism’s awards season, as our peers in professional organizations across the country look at our best work and see how it compares. So far, the Herald-Leader is doing pretty well.
Sports columnist John Clay placed second in the annual U.S. Basketball Writers Association contest, behind the Washington Post’s John Feinstein. The Society of American Business Editors and Writers chose two winners in the project reporting category (small papers) of its prestigious contest — and both of them were ours. SABEW’s award went to “Wrong Side of the Track,” by Janet Patton and “Win, Lose or Draw,” by Bill Estep and John Stamper, which looked at effectiveness and accountability in Kentucky’s economic development efforts. Earlier this year, "Wrong Side of the Track" won Patton her second Eclipse Award from the National Thoroughbred Racing Association.
We had three winners in the Associated Press Sports Editors competition. Sports columnist Mark Story placed second in the projects category,for his three-part narrative about Lexington minister Whit Chriswell’s fall and rise, and third in column writing among papers with circulation between 100,000 to 250,000. Janet Patton won an honorable mention in the investigative category for papers of all sizes for "Wrong Side of the Track." David Stephenson was named Sports Photographer of the Year for 2005 by the Kentucky News Photographers Association, which also named the Herald-Leader the Newspaper of the Year for the ninth out of the past 10 years. And we won two awards in the Society for News Design competition. The first was for special coverage of a single subject, in this case the Kentucky Derby. Section fronts and pages included in the entry were designed by Brian Simms, Dennis Varney, Randy Medema, Marilyn Cecil and former employees Jason Moon and Kenny Monteith. The second honor was for the Derby posters designed by Moon and Monteith depicting the new and improved Churchill Downs. The poster photograph was taken by Mark Cornelison.
Tom Eblen
Managing Editor
It’s official. This week, we agreed to publish a new cookbook by Herald-Leader Food Writer Sharon Thompson, filled with her favorite recipes from around Kentucky. The hardcover book, to be called Flavors of Kentucky, like Sharon’s popular recipe webpage, will be published by McClanahan Publishing, a Kentucky company specializing in regional cookbooks. Herald-Leader designers and photographers will work with Sharon to make the project visually engaging, and Assistant Managing Editor Kim Parson will oversee the staff’s efforts. The book will be available for pre-orders at the Herald-Leader-sponsored Bluegrass Festival of Books on April 29 at Lexington Center. Sharon intends to travel around the state to promote it.
Sharon’s book follows the publication last fall of another Herald-Leader book project, Dr. Thomas Clark’s Kentucky Treasures. This book showcased 11 places that the late historian thought everyone should visit to have a full appreciation for Kentucky. With photos by Charles Bertram and David Stephenson and text by reporter Jim Warren, the book was a Holiday sensation at Joseph Beth Booksellers, selling more than 1,000 copies in the first few weeks. Managing Editor Tom Eblen ran the project, which benefited from the talents of designer Janet Shedd and many other staff members.
Book projects like these do more than offer a diversion from the daily grind of putting out a newspaper. They seem to have a larger positive effect on newsroom morale. They give individual staffers a chance to exercise their creative muscle and display their work to a different and discerning audience. And they give us all something to celebrate. As daily newspaper journalists, we get used to furiously putting out a product every day, knowing that within hours it will end up in the recycling bin. Books are more permanent. And it is heartening to realize that our words and images have a broader market and a longer shelf life than we might have expected.
Marilyn Thompson
Editor
As Lexmark marks its 15th anniversary today, readers may have noticed we have recently stepped up our coverage of Lexington’s only Fortune 500 company. We have given our newest reporter Scott Sloan, a graduate of UK, where he earned an MBA, the task of making Lexmark part of his coverage. In addition to reading every Lexmark story published by the Herald-Leader and poring through the company’s financial filings, Scott landed an interview with Lexmark CEO Paul Curlander, which you can read in this morning’s Herald-Leader and listen to extended excerpts of that interview on our web site, Kentucky.com. Our more intensive coverage of Lexmark, along with enhanced coverage of Toyota, small business, personal finance and economic development, just to name a few, is part of our effort to bring you more depth and breadth of the business landscape in Kentucky. If you have ideas to share, I would love to hear from you. You can get in touch with me at (859) 231-3236 or twethall@herald-leader.com
Todd Wethall
Business Editor
The anti-war rally that drew about 100 protesters to Lexington’s Triangle Park yesterday also had a lone counter-protester, who used a bullhorn to occasionally taunt the crowd and recite a list of battles from the Revolutionary War to Iraq. He later e-mailed newspaper editors to complain that the reporter wouldn’t interview him after he declined to identify himself. That, he said, was evidence of "bias," or the reporter having an "agenda."
Reporter Andy Mead mentioned the counter-protester in his story. But he didn’t interview the man because he knew that any quotes he gathered would not be published. Why? Because the Herald-Leader has a "bias" against publishing information without giving readers the source, by name.
We occasionally publish wire stories from elsewhere that attribute information to unidentified sources. Most of those come from Washington, where officials are notoriously reluctant to attach their names to information — sometimes for good reasons, often not.
But for staff-written copy, the Herald-Leader requires full disclosure of the source of information or quotations. There are exceptions, such as some situations when full identification would identify a victim of sexual abuse. But those exceptions are rare. That’s because we think readers are better served when they know exactly where information is coming from and whom is being quoted. Only then can readers make good decisions about whether information is credible.
Tom Eblen
Managing Editor
Newspaper staffs are morphing into a new and improved providers of news and information. Through our websites, the world of pictures and words are being enhanced with the addition of sound. This 
new multimedia content provides a richer, more rewarding experience for the viewer.
The Herald-Leader’s coverage of the Boys Sweet 16 last week officially set in motion a new and improved style of storytelling. For the first time, we provided readers with the sights, the sounds and the story of each tournament game, all bundled together in a neat multimedia package.
Truth be told, it was an experiment to see if we could actually pull it off. Producing slide shows with natural sound and voice-over game recaps requires planning, teamwork, technical know-how, creative ability and — in this case — the stamina to produce 16 shows over a four-day period.
We assembled a team to tackle this project, which consisted of photographers, an online reporter and a multimedia producer. Reporter Todd Van Campen helped gather sound and provided a voice-over recap of each game. The producer, Helena Hau, also gathered natural sound and combined the sound and photos into a less than 2-minute audiovisual game review.
The experiment was a success. What made this effort different than our other multimedia projects is that it was produced on-site at a live event on deadline.
You can expect to see and hear more stories told in this fashion as our photographers and reporters embrace the Web’s storytelling opportunities.
Ron Garrison
Visuals Editor
You may have noticed an unusual tagline under Janet Patton’s front-page story Saturday about Kentucky Rep. Ed Whitfield’s congressional efforts to win health benefits for jockeys and other horse 
industry workers. The story proclaimed that it was from the “Herald-Leader Washington Bureau.” As many of you know, the Herald-Leader has not had a reporter in Washington for several years, and it has been one of my goals as editor to reopen the newspaper’s Washington bureau. Budget constraints over the past two years have made that impossible.
But Janet’s recent decision to move to Washington with her husband, reporter John Cheves, has given us the opportunity to at least have a part-time presence in Washington. Working from a desk in Knight-Ridder’s Washington bureau, Janet has been making contact with congressional offices and federal agencies that handle issues of special interest to Kentucky. She left for Washington with a long list of ideas that we would like to see her pursue, stories that we believe will enhance our coverage. Please e-mail Janet your ideas and comments.
If we are lucky, Janet’s part-time gig will evolve into a permanent position. McClatchy, which recently bought the Herald-Leader and many other Knight Ridder properties, has a tradition of strong regional coverage from Washington. We intend to press the case with our new owners that coverage from Washington is a necessity for any respectable paper of the Herald-Leader’s size.
Meanwhile, Janet’s husband intends to be in Washington for a while. John is currently on leave from the Herald-Leader doing a project for the Center for Investigative Reporting. Recently, he learned that he has been selected for the 2006-2007 class of the Congressional Fellowship program run by the American Political Science Association. We wish him the best.
Marilyn Thompson
Editor
Culture reporter Jamie Gumbrecht has a fascinating story in Sunday’s paper you won’t want to miss. It explores a youth lifestyle known as "straight edge." Straight edgers dress distinctively and often get together at self-organized concerts by hard-core bands. The straight-edge lifestyle eschews tobacco, alcohol, recreational drugs and promiscuous sex — but can occasionally turn violent. For the most part, Jamie found, those in Lexington’s straight edge scene are normal kids who just want to fit into a group. (Some who adopted straight edge as teens have continued it into their early 20s.)
What makes this story noteworthy is that it’s about a segment of the community usually not seen in the newspaper — and certainly not in a piece with this much depth and insight. Jamie, 23, spent several months attending hard-core concerts, talking with straight edgers and trying to figure out what they’re all about. "They’re interesting people who had a lot of great things to say,” Jamie said. “They’re misunderstood, and I hope this (story) will open some understanding."
Tom Eblen
Managing Editor
A reader asked a good question while commenting on Marilyn Thompson’s last post: "How is the diversity in your newsroom compared with the diversity of the community? Are your percentages of minorities in the newsroom similar to the percentages here in Lexington?"
About 18 percent of the residents of Lexington, and 10 percent of the residents of the Herald-Leader’s entire 75-county circulation area, are racial or ethnic minorities. With the departure of assistant metro editor Monica Richardson, the Herald-Leader news and editorial staff’s minority representation will be 10.2 percent (13 of 128 people). That isn’t enough; our goal is to reflect Lexington’s makeup.
Tom Eblen
Managing Editor
This has been a tumultuous week at the Herald-Leader, with news breaking Monday that the newspaper would be sold along with 20 other Knight Ridder properties to the much-smaller McClatchy chain. Most staffers were elated to see a resolution after months of uncertainly. But the paper has been deeply wounded by the corporate turmoil, a fact underscored today by the departure of one of our most promising young editors, assistant metro editor Monica Richardson.
Monica is leaving us to go to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, one of several Herald-Leader staffers lured to the Cox-owned newspapers during a period when we had no idea who would own the Herald-Leader and what impact a change in ownership might have on the editorial product. No one can blame her for leaving. That is a natural course for ambitious young editors who want their resumes to reflect their abilities to handle larger responsibilities in bigger newspaper markets.
But Monica’s departure leaves a void in Lexington that we quickly realized we must take steps to fill. Monica was a champion of diversity, both in our coverage and in the composition of our staff. In better times, she helped us attract minority candidates to the newspaper, skillfully working as a recruiter at national journalism conventions. In her last comments to a meeting this week of Herald-Leader editors, she urged us to find a person of color to replace her, convinced that a newspaper is a better product if it truly reflects the diversity of its community.
Last week, assistant metro editor Risa Brim agreed to help us recover from the loss of Monica by serving in a new role as diversity editor. Risa will work with all news departments at the newspaper to monitor their coverage of Lexington’s ethnic communities and to suggest story and photo ideas. She intends to try to build relationships with Lexington’s minority leaders and to invite their feedback about our performance. Risa, who already serves as the coordinator of our summer intern program, will also help us with minority recruiting. With the Herald-Leader’s future now more certain, we hope that we can build a talent bank of promising minority job candidates who will see Lexington as a place to develop their journalistic skills.
If you have thoughts or concerns about diversity in our coverage, please send along a note to Risa at rbrim@herald-leader.com. Risa and I will be working together closely to try to improve our performance in this critical area.
Marilyn Thompson
Editor
The Sweet Sixteen is taking place in Rupp Arena this week, always a special time of year for Kentuckians. The Herald-Leader, as always, has a team of reporters and photographers covering the event. But this year we’ve added some special coverage on Kentucky.com
Mike Fields, known around the state for his unmatched coverage of high school sports, has jumped into cyberspace. Mike is blogging throughout the tournament offering the kind of coverage and insight that only he can provide as the game are played. If can’t get out to the games, this is a great way to keep up with the action as it’s happening.
We’re also offering multimedia coverage of the tournament online for the first time. We’re producing photo slide shows of every game, accompanied by audio that provides sounds from the arena and a highlights report of each game by online reporter Todd Van Campen.
Mike Johnson
Deputy Managing Editor
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