It’s been a bit like musical chairs (I thought that a friendlier image than whack-a-mole) filling one of the seats on the LPA board.
Secretary-Treasurer David Francis recently resigned from the board, following the sale of the Times-Picayune to Georges Media/The Advocate. Board member Christina Pierce (Daily Iberian/New Iberia) was voted to fill David’s spot, but that left Christina’s board seat vacant. So, the board elected Clarice Touhey, senior group publisher for Gatehouse Media’s publications in Louisiana.
But last week Clarice advised she was resigning from the board, after being named publisher of the Beaumont Enterprise and president of the Texas Community Group for Hearst newspapers.
Luckily the board had a qualified, capable, experienced and willing prospect for this vacant board seat, and elected Steve Colwell to fill this unexpired term.
Steve is the General Manager of Natchitoches Times Newspapers in Natchitoches, Louisiana. He’s a graduate of Northwestern State University where he majored in Journalism. Steve’s been involved with a number of Louisiana newspapers and he’s been active with LPA for many years, serving on committees and on the board, including serving as LPA’s president for 2000-2001.
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When most think about legal issues that affect newspapers, they think of issues related to libel or open meetings or public records.
But there are important legal issues that affect a newspaper’s ad department, as LPA’s General Counsel Scott Sternberg conveyed to LPA members in a recent, “Advertising and the Law” webinar.
Twenty-five member operations signed up for this informative and interesting program.
Among the issues Scott covered:
- Rates allowed for public notice and legal ads;
- Warning to make sure you own images used in ads you build or that your advertisers confirm they own images in their ads and indemnify you from any claims related to their ads;
- A reminder a newspaper is responsible for the content of the ads it publishes, so it’s not just the newsroom that needs to be concerned about libel;
- Overview of rules related to advertising and gambling;
- Notice there are laws against “disparagement of agricultural products;”
- Instructions about paid-for-by lines in political ads, rules about rates newspapers can charge for political ads and a Political Advertisement Agreement that Scott recommended newspapers have completed by all who place political ads.
It’s not as good as having heard Scott when he offered his overview on each issue, but Scott’s PowerPoint slides from the webinar and the Political Advertisement Agreement are posted in the members-only section of LPA’s website, under Members/Members Only/Member Resources/The Ad Dept. & The Law
I got positive feedback from a number of participants after the webinar who said they found a lot of good information in what Scott presented.
We’re looking at other webinars where members can spend an hour learning about some issue related to most any aspect of today’s newspapering. If you have ideas or requests, email them to me at will@lapress.com so we can consider them for future efforts.
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Don’t forget you need a username and password to access the members-only section of LPA’s website. A username and password have been set up for each member publisher and the publisher can then share that username and password with responsible employees who he or she thinks should have access to this information. Individual usernames and passwords for individual employees are not issued, but instead the system is that designated employees share the same, getting them from their publisher.
If you have questions or issues with your username or password for LPA’s site, please contact Mike Rood at LPA at mike@lapress.com or call him at 225-344-9309 ext. 106.
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Available in the members-only area of LPA’s website is the Law Guide, which was updated in the fall of 2018. You can find rules about public notices, open meetings, and all sorts of issues with which Louisiana newspapers regularly contend. If you have not done so in a while, or if you have employees who have never reviewed pertinent sections, it is worth taking time to have appropriate staffers review relevant portions of the Law Guide.
For example, a member newspaper had an issue a few weeks ago with a recreation “advisory group” meeting regularly to discuss issues related to a public recreation district. Advisory group members were appointed by the district and were assigned to come up with ideas related to a number of issues the district was facing.
The committees were not posting or publicizing any agendas and were not allowing the public or press to attend their meetings.
When challenged, their excuse was they were not a public body but only an advisory group.
But you can easily find the rules for public meetings in the section titled “Appendix A—Louisiana’s Open Meetings Law.”
And it clearly says, “Public body” includes “…policy making, advisory, or administrative functions, including any committee or subcommittee….”
The law says, “It is essential to the maintenance of a democratic society that public business be performed in an open and public manner and that citizens be advised of and aware of the performance of public officials and the deliberations and decisions that go into the making of public policy.”
I underlined the wording above to call it to your attention.
If you and your staff know the law about open meetings, public records, executive sessions, paid-for-by lines in political ads, what are the rules for charging for public notice/legal ads, etc., you’ll be prepared to avoid or respond to a problem.
Spend a little time with the Law Guide. Look up the rules related to public meetings when there’s an issue, such as are an advisory’s group’s meetings’ public?
You likely know the quote, “Knowledge is power,” generally attributed to Sir Francis Bacon.
LPA’s Law Guide is a great resource that will help you make more powerful arguments of your position when faced with some of the goofy explanations you’ll hear about why an action that is clearly a violation of the open meetings law (or others) is OK.
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The LSU Libraries and the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication are leading an effort to digitize The Daily Reveille’s archives.
The Reveille is LSU’s student newspaper. Many of those working with Louisiana newspapers who attended LSU did work that appeared in The Reveille.
The paper was first published in the late 1800s. Its pages provided LSU students reports about campus news, but also significant national and international events such as wars, the civil rights movement, desegregation, 9/11 and more.
Supporters are attempting to raise $100,000 for this effort. They’ve started the process of digitizing past issues, which will be available online.
You can contribute to this effort by sending a check to The LSU Foundation/Reveille Digitization at 3796 Nicholson Dr., Baton Rouge, La. 70802.
If they get lucky and raise more than is necessary, any extra funds will go towards the Student Media Development Fund, and not a new locker room for LSU athletes (if you don’t know what that’s about, you must not read the sports pages).
Back in the day, I did some reporting for The Reveille and later worked on it as a news editor … and no, it wasn’t before the invention of the printing press. It’ll be fun for some of us old staffers, much less for any former student, to look back at The Reveille from our days at LSU and be reminded of what the world, or at least the world around the campus, was like in those days.
Consider supporting this effort, please.
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Will Chapman is the executive director of LPA. He worked in the newspaper industry, at various times in most every aspect of the business. He’s a past president of LPA following his father and grandfather who also held that office. Email him at will@lapress.com, or call him at 225-344-9309 (ext 108).