Arkansas Publisher Weekly: April 21, 2022

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Brownfield returns to Malvern Daily Record as editor in chief

Arkansas Press Association

Publisher Weekly

Guest Column:

The importance of proofreading

By John Foust

Vol.17 | No. 16 | Thursday, April 21, 2022 | Serving Press and State Since 1873

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1: APA staff Ashley Kemp Wimberley, Terri Cobb, Neil McConnell, Bridget Clay and Rebecca McGraw at the event. 2: Day of Debates was sponsored by Arkansas Farm Bureau, the Electrical Cooperatives of Arkansas and the Arkansas Hospital Association. 3: Twist Creative Studios handled the sound and AV. A recording of the event will be available in a few days. 4: Tom, the security guard, had an easy day’s work, as everything went very smoothly.

Last chance to enter APA Better Newspaper Editorial Contest This weekend is your last chance to pull your clippings and photographs for submission to the 2022 APA Better Newspaper Editorial Contest. The deadline for submitting entries is end of day Monday, April 25. The contest is open to employees and freelancers of APA member newspapers, with work published

in the 2021 calendar year eligible to win.

The annual competition gives the APA an opportunity to honor the best work of its member newspapers, and offers bragging rights to winners in numerous categories including news stories, sports, humor, headline-writing general

interest, community coverage, design and photography.

This year a new category, Best Digital Presence & Audience Engagement, has been added so that member newspapers can showcase social media accounts and podcasts in addition to their websites.

Continued on Page 4

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4 1: Gubernatorial candidates Ricky Dale Harrington, Jr., Jay Martin, Doc Washburn, Rus Russell, Supha Xayprasith-Mays and Chris Jones prepare to debate. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Tony Bland did not attend. 2: Day of Debates was held at Union Station in Little Rock. Moderators Roby Brock and Rex Nelson chat with APA Immediate Past President Rusty Turner, Michelle Gates Roberts and APA board member Kelly Freudensprung during a break in the action. 3: Attorney General candidates Jesse Gibson and Leon Jones, Jr. Lt. Governor Tim Griffin did not attend. 4: Arkansas Secretary of State candidates Josh Price, Secretary of State John Thurston, Anna Beth Gorman and Eddie Joe Williams.

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April 21, 2022

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8 5: Anna Beth Gorman and Josh Price wait to draw for seat position prior to their debate. 6: Roby Brock of Talk Business & Politics moderated the Lt. Governor and Attorney General debates. 7: Lt. Governor candidates Dr. Greg Bledsoe, Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, Kelly Ross Krout, Doyle Webb, Sen. Jason Rapert, Judge Joseph Wood, Chris Bequette and Frank Gilbert took the stage first. 8: Lt. Governor candidates draw for seat position and the order of opening and closing comments.

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April 21, 2022

Last chance to enter APA Better Newspaper Editorial Contest Continued from Page 1

HURRY For a full list of categories and to enter the contest, visit newspapercontest.com/ Contests/ArkansasPressAssociation. aspx. If you have any questions please email Terri Cobb at terri@arkansaspress. org or call (501) 374-1500.

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Entries will be judged by a panel of journalists from the Wisconsin Newspaper Association. Awards will be presented at the conclusion of the 2022 Tri-State Convention at the Sheraton Downtown Memphis on June 25.

Brownfield returns to Malvern Daily Record as editor in chief Lance Brownfield has returned to the Malvern Daily Record in the role of editor in chief. He most recently worked as the editor in chief of the Oracle: Community Edition in Arkadelphia, and previously was opinion editor for the OCE and a sportswriter for the Malvern Daily Record. Before that, he was a freelance journalist.

Brownfield replaces Pete Tubbs in the role of editor. “This is now the second time that I’ve taken over where Pete Tubbs leaves off,” said Brownfield in an editorial announcing his new position. “He was the first editor-in-chief of the Oracle: Community Edition, and my predecessor at MDR. Things have changed in the time I’ve been away, both in Malvern and at the Malvern Daily Record. But, I couldn’t be happier to be back.”

Brownfield is currently finishing a bachelor’s degree program. “The team here at MDR have been gracious enough to work with me on my schedule to allow me to finish my degree,” said Brownsfield in his editorial. “I’m currently studying innovative media at Henderson State University and expect to graduate in December. Because of this, I will not be working every single day at MDR, but I will be greatly assisted by former MDR Editor-in-Chief Sarah Perry, who is now the managing editor of our sister paper, The Saline Courier.”

Said Brownfield, “I consider it a real privilege to be entrusted with this position and I pray that I live up to the standard set by those who filled it before me.”

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April 21, 2022

Randolph County Heritage Museum receives sponsorship The Randolph County Heritage Museum recently received a sponsorship from Dr. Pat Carroll, DDS and the Lesmeister Guesthouse to support its “Pocahontas Star Herald and Newspapers of Randolph County” exhibit.

“The museum is grateful for Dr. Carroll’s generous donation, and happy for his sponsorship of the newspaper exhibit,” said director Rodney Harris.

The Randolph County Heritage Museum recently launched a fundraising drive to fund the museum’s expansion. The museum, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with no paid staff, has outgrown its current space and has plans to expand into the second floor of its historic home on the court square in downtown Pocahontas.

The Pocahontas Star Herald originated in the 1800s as The Herald, one of the earliest newspapers published in Randolph County. The Herald consolidated with the Pocahontas Star in about 1906 to form the newspaper that still publishes today.

“Web scraping” not illegal, appeals court says “Scraping”, the practice of using a program or web tool to gather publicly accessible data from websites, is not illegal, according to a landmark ruling by the U.S. Ninth Circuit of Appeals on Monday.

The ruling is the latest in a long-running legal battle brought by LinkedIn against a rival company which scraped personal information from LinkedIn users’ public profiles. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court last year but was sent back to the Ninth Circuit for the original appeals court for review.

In its second ruling on Monday, the Ninth Circuit reaffirmed its original decision and found that collecting data that is publicly accessible on the internet is not hacking as defined by the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986.

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Web scraping extracts a site’s underlying HTML code and, with it, any data stored in a database.

The case was originally brought by LinkedIn against Hiq Labs, a company that uses public data to analyze employee attrition. LinkedIn said the mass scraping of LinkedIn user profiles was against its terms of service and amounted to hacking, putting Hiq in violation of the CFAA. LinkedIn first lost the case against Hiq in 2019 after the Ninth Circuit found that the CFAA does not bar anyone from using a program to collect data that is already publicly accessible.

The Ninth Circuit said it relied on a Supreme Court decision from last June, when the U.S. top court took a look at the CFAA. In its ruling, the Supreme Court narrowed what constitutes a hacking violation of the

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CFAA as those who gain unauthorized access to a computer system, rather than a broader interpretation of exceeding existing authorization.

The Supreme Court said in its decision that when a computer or website’s information is publicly accessible, no authorization is required. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday ruled that “the concept of ‘without authorization’ does not apply to public websites.”

The decision is a major win for journalists, archivists, academics and researchers who use tools such as bots to masscollect, or “scrape”, non-copyrighted information that is publicly accessible on the internet.

LinkedIn has vowed to continue to fight the ruling.

April 21, 2022

Continued from Page 3

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2 1: Rex Nelson of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette moderated the Secretary of State and Gubernatorial debates. 2: Moderator Roby Brock of Talk Business & Politics visits with Jesse Gibson and Leon James, Jr. prior to the Attorney General debate. Brock also moderated the Lt. Governor debate earlier in the day.

THANK YOU to our sponsors

Guest Column: The importance of proofreading

By John Foust Proofreading is one of the most important skills in the advertising world. While anybody with a sense of humor can appreciate a harmless blooper (one of my favorites is the sign that read, “Ears pierced while you wait”), no advertiser wants to run an ad with a mistake. Many an ad campaign has been damaged by typographical errors, inappropriate illustrations and inaccurate information.

I remember receiving an email promoting a Zoom meeting that seemed interesting.

However, the copy put a stop to any thoughts I had of registering. The date of the event was listed as March 9 in the headline, and as March 2 in the body copy.

To make matters even more confusing, the email was sent during the first week of April. What are the chances that anyone made the effort to contact the advertiser to find out the real date? Slim and none. (And like the old saying, Slim just left town.)

Proofreading would have prevented that problem.

Early in my ad agency days, I designed a logo for a development company.

When the printing was completed, I enthusiastically drove to their out-of-town office, my backseat loaded with boxes of letterheads, envelopes and business cards. My excitement faded as soon as

Arkansas Publisher Weekly

my client pointed out that one digit in their address was incorrect; what appeared as a 9 should have been a 7. The only way to handle the mistake was to offer to reprint everything at my expense.

hand. Or what about the photo flopped so it would face in the direction? The problem was subjects ended up with t-shirts backwards letters.

Proofreading would have prevented that costly lesson.

Advertisers may have approved each one of those ideas. But that doesn’t mean they happily accepted responsibility for the mistakes. It would have been better to present them with proofing copies that were as close to perfect as possible.

Then there was the half-page furniture ad with “Store Name Here” at the bottom.

Obviously, a manufacturer had provided the ad to local merchants who were supposed to insert their individual logos.

In addition to being a glaring error, that probably cost that particular dealer some co-op money. Proofreading would have prevented that, too.

Typos can be sneaky. For example, take a look at this four-line headline.

DON’T MISS OUR BIGGEST SALE OF OF THE YEAR

that was opposite that the featuring

The point of all this is simple: (1) Proofread everything before it is published. (2) If possible, ask someone else to proofread it. (3) Then check it one more time for good measure.

Speaking of measuring, this seems like a good time to quote carpentry’s famous slogan: “Measure twice, cut once.” (c) Copyright 2022 by John Foust. All rights reserved.

The word “of” appears twice. Because we read at a glance and jump to conclusions in a fraction of a second, it’s easy to miss important details.

Proofreading shouldn’t end with typography. Consider the photo of the fashion model who posed in a national ad, wearing a baseball glove on the wrong

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John Foust has conducted training programs for thousands of newspaper advertising professionals. Many ad departments are using his training videos to save time and get quick results from in-house training. Email for information: john@johnfoust.com

April 21, 2022