Arkansas Publisher Weekly: August 5, 2021

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Paxton gives employees, exemployees notice of data breach

Guest Column: Preparing for problems

Arkansas Press Association

Publisher Weekly

By Kevin Slimp

Vol. 16 | No. 31 | Thursday, August 5, 2021 | Serving Press and State Since 1873

Jacksonville’s Leader, Kron take top investigative prize again For the Leader and reporter Rick Kron, the City of Jacksonville is the I.F. Stone Award that keeps on giving.

The newspaper and Kron picked up their second consecutive I.F. Stone Award in 2021 for their continuing in-depth reporting of city government in Jacksonville. The award is presented by the Arkansas Press Association annually to recognize the best investigative reporting work in the state.

A year ago, Kron and two colleagues earned the honor for reporting on the aftermath of a secret meeting among Jacksonville city officials.

This year, Kron received the award for his investigation into an ongoing improper payroll scheme and sketchy financial dealings within the Jacksonville Police Department.

Kron used the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act to uncover years of records related to the pay scheme and to learn about some messy bookkeeping by the city’s former police chief. As a result of Kron’s reporting, the state Division of Legislative Audit and Pulaski County Sheriff’s Department are reviewing the former chief’s actions.

Kron said he heard about the irregularities within the police department from a local citizen.

Readers learned through his reporting that the former chief had paid more than $4 million in extra money in salaries within the department.

Apparently, the chief was upset about how the city handled holiday pay for officers, so he for years had allocated additional money to pad officer salaries.

“The police chief thought what they (the city) was doing was wrong, so he was correcting their pay,” Kron said.

The former chief never acknowledged any wrongdoing, and he was a Jacksonville City Continued on Page 2

Jacksonville’s Leader, Kron take top investigative prize again

Continued from Page 1

Council member at the time the articles were published. A short time after that, he resigned from the city council and moved out of the city limits, though he has said publicly the Leader’s reporting didn’t influence his decision.

In addition to the $4 million in extra pay for officers, Kron estimated another $4 million in public funds is unaccounted for because of shoddy bookkeeping within the police department.

The Leader’s repeat I.F. Stone Award selection was made by out-of-state judges who reviewed all investigative reporting entries in this year’s Arkansas Press Association Better Newspaper Editorial Contest. The judges said this about Kron’s work: “Through FOIA requests, tough questions, and unflinching reporting, the local press exposed both the misuse of millions of tax dollars and the mind-boggling arrogance of several city leaders.”

Kron made more than a dozen FOIA requests during his reporting, using his time in the evenings to peruse thousands of documents and make phone calls to sources. Like other Leader reporters, Kron works part-time for the newspaper. His day job is as a fifth grade teacher at Cato Elementary School in Sherwood.

“I have two callings, teaching and journalism,” Kron said. “Journalism relaxes me from the teaching and teaching relaxes me from the journalism.”

He praised his colleagues, too, for their tenacity and help on the project.

Rick Kron

“We’ve got a great group of veteran reporters, and they’re folks who know how to dig and don’t mind digging,” he said. “We’re a community newspaper. We work with the community, and we don’t believe journalism is dead.”

Kron is optimistic about the Leader’s chances for a “three-peat,” since he’s currently investigating how Jacksonville administers its federal grants. The newspaper has cultivated enough sources within City Hall to always have a lead, he added.

“We just fell into it,” he said of the newspaper’s investigative work, “And once we fell into it, it’s been a bottomless pit, you might say.

Every time you turn around, it’s something else.

The I.F. Stone Award is named for the late I.F. Stone, an American investigative journalist known for his tenacity. With the award, Kron received a $100 cash prize.

“I was tickled pink and totally surprised to win it twice in a row,” he said. “It’s kind of nice to beat the big boys.”

Greene named editor in Batesville, Heber Springs Paxton Media has promoted Sara Greene to the position of editor of the Batesville Daily Guard and Sun-Times in Heber Springs, the newspapers announced this week.

Greene takes over for Bruce Guthrie, the newspapers’ former general manager who recently relocated to Georgia.

Greene, an Arkansas native, joined the Daily Guard in September 2020 as a general assignment reporter.

She previously was a reporter for the Van Buren County Democrat in Clinton and she worked in the promotions department at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. She’s also written for newspapers in Jacksonville, North Little Rock and Searcy.

A graduate of the University of Central Arkansas, she was a student clerk for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and was a relocation program manager for the Army’s 10th Area Support Group in Okinawa, Japan.

She told readers she would “do her best to curate a blend” of local news, including coverage of municipal meetings, civic group events, features, crime and school news. She encouraged readers of both newspapers to Sara Greene submit story ideas and news tips to the newspapers’ email addresses.

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August 5, 2021

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Paxton gives employees, ex-employees notice of data breach A newspaper group with multiple properties in Arkansas provided notice to current and former employees last week about a data breach that “potentially compromised” personal and financial information, according to a report in Arkansas Business.

Paxton Media Group informed individuals who were possibly at risk of having their data lost or stolen in a letter, and it has also posted information about the breach on its newspaper websites. Paxton, which owns 120 newspapers in 14 states, operates the Jonesboro Sun, the Paragould Daily Press, the Batesville Daily Guard, the Newport Independent, The Evening Times in Marion, the Courier in Russellville, the Daily Citizen in Searcy, the Times Dispatch in Walnut Ridge, the Van Buren County Democrat in Clinton, the Log Cabin Democrat in Conway and the Sun-Times in Heber Springs.

According to a notice received by those affected and reported by Arkansas Business, Paxton in the spring discovered suspicious activity on its computer network and learned through an investigation that someone had hacked into their system between Feb. 26 and March 20 of this year.

The company said in its letter that the type of information that could have been compromised varied for different individuals, but that “the scope of the information potentially includes individuals’ name, date of birth, Social Security number, driver’s license number or state ID number, financial account and/or routing number, health insurance information, taxpayer identification numbers, and credit card numbers and/or expiration dates.”

Paxton said it was offering affected employees 12 months of free access to credit monitoring services. It has also reported the breach to state regulators and the three major credit reporting agencies.

Paxton’s website notice can be viewed at https://www.heraldpalladium.com/site/info/notice_of_data_privacy_event.html. ¯¯¯¯

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August 5, 2021

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Democrat-Gazette’s Lockwood named religion editor Frank Lockwood has been named the religion editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the newspaper announced Sunday.

Lockwood had been Washington, D.C., correspondent for the newspaper since 2015.

“I covered two presidential elections, two impeachments, four State of the Union addresses and one insurrection,” Lockwood said in the newspaper’s article about his job change. “I was in the House chamber (Jan. 6) when they broke the windows and tried to smash down the doors. I saw every bit of it with my own eyes. That’s something I’ll never forget.”

Lockwood joined the Democrat-Gazette in 2006, as religion editor. He was named supervisor of the newspaper’s Washington bureau reporter in 2009, and in 2012, he became supervisor of the newspaper’s three state Capitol bureau reporters as well. His tenure as religion editor ended in 2012.

Lockwood had been located in Washington, while his wife, local attorney Aimie Lockwood, had remained in Little Rock. He said he was looking forward to being in Arkansas full-time.

Lockwood is an Oregon native. He’s a graduate of Harvard and has a law degree from the University of Idaho.

Before joining the Democrat-Gazette, he was a reporter for newspapers in Idaho and Kentucky and communications director for Idaho Gov. Phil Batt.

Star Herald offices relocating

Frank Lockwood

“Let the people know the facts and the country will be safe.”

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The Pocahontas Star Herald is relocating to new offices in Pocahontas following its acquisition by New Jersey-based CherryRoad Media.

T-shirts are $20 each.

The newspaper offices are moving from the old post office building downtown to 2479 N. Thomasville Avenue in Pocahontas. The new location is the former site of Bloomington Florists.

The phone number and mailing address for the newspaper remain the same. The phone number is (870) 686-6400, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 608, Pocahontas AR 72455.

The Star Herald had been in its previous location at the old post office downtown since February 1988.

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New house ads available from the Revelance Project A new promotional advertisement produced by The Relevance Project is now available for use by Arkansas Press Association member newspapers.

That advertisement and more than a dozen others that use relevant and up-to-date statistics to prove the effectiveness of newspapers can be downloaded at relevanceproject.net under the Revenue Resource tab.

The newest ad is part of the project’s “The Election Season” series. It can be downloaded in both print and digital formats.

The ad tells readers that the reputation of newspapers is “the difference,” and it uses data taken from a 2021 survey by the Pew Research Center.

According to the Relevance Project, the well-earned relevance and reputation of a news organization combine to become a top factor with readers and viewers when they decide whether a new story is trustworthy. The “Our Reputation” promotion allows newspapers to proclaim “count on us” when covering politics and government.

The Relevance Project staked out election coverage to help advertising staff secure political ads because newspapers do a better job of labeling and presenting these types of messages. The Election Series also salutes journalists for digging out the truth and facts during sometimes complicated and intense political races.

Guest Column: Preparing for Problems

By Kevin Slimp Assuming COVID-19 doesn’t rear its ugly head over the next few weeks in such a way that groups curtail travel and inperson meetings, I will be making my first trip to speak at a newspaper convention since March 2020. Interestingly, I will be returning to the place where I last appeared at a live conference just days before last year’s lockdown began.

Frankly, I’m excited.

The big question on my mind is, “What should I speak about in Des Moines?”

While the pandemic effectively shut down speaking opportunities for a few months, by late fall 2020, groups were assembling online, virtual conferences.

Negating the necessity to travel, I found myself speaking at sometimes four or five newspaper conventions in a week.

Sometimes, I would speak at two on the same day. Having appeared virtually to so many groups, there’s a danger that folks have heard my most popular topics at one of these virtual meetings.

Again, I ask myself, “What should I speak about in Des Moines.” Thankfully, coming up with new topics is a skill I perfected long ago. After considerable thought, I suggested a list of topics to cover during my two days in Des Moines. My favorite is, “Help! I Don’t Know What to Do About this Problem!”

I’m not sure if it’s a series of coincidences or if newspapers are just a lot busier than they’ve been for a while. Whatever the reason, I’ve fielded considerably more calls about deadline-defying problems at papers over the past few weeks. I’m not talking about your run-of-the-mill issues.

It seems that almost daily, a publisher has called with an issue that was going to force their paper to miss deadline. Some

Arkansas Publisher Weekly

have even worried about – heaven forbid – running a day late.

So, I will be speaking – at least for an hour – about fixing problems, which brings me to my bit of advice for this column. While most recent calls about problems have forced me to scratch my head before coming up with a solution, we can limit issues that pose threats to our deadlines.

Here are a few: ·Take advantage of training opportunities: Whether in-person or online, be aware of seminars, classes, and webinars offered by associations and other groups. Even the smallest papers will benefit from regular training. Before the pandemic, dozens of small community papers throughout the U.S. and Canada would invite me to work with their staff every two or three years. During the pandemic, this number increased as folks realized it was easier and less expensive to get training designed specifically for their needs. ·Keep hardware and software up to date: With the advent of Adobe’s Creative Cloud software, it has become more common for newspapers and other designers to have the latest version of production software.

In addition, we must make certain other software applications not related to production haven’t become outdated. I’ve noticed newspapers have gotten better at keeping hardware up to date. I can remember a time not too long ago when it was common to visit newspapers using computers that had been in use ten years or more. It’s obvious we’ve learned that “time is money.” Not only will updated software and hardware speed production, but I’ll be receiving fewer frantic calls from papers in fear of missing deadlines.

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·Stay on top of news related to technology: Who knows what new program or gadget will improve our ability to get our papers out? Hold regular conversations at staff meetings about technology. What needs updating? What isn’t working? What have you heard about that could help our paper?

I received an email today from a former student who has attended dozens of my classes over the years. She wanted me to know that something she learned in my class a few years ago kept her paper from a “near-death experience” this week.

Information is a powerful thing. Be aware of what is working well – and what isn’t working well – at your operation and take steps now that might just save your paper in the future.

In Memory of Max Heath Most readers have heard by now of the passing of Max Heath. Max and I became quick friends when I entered the speaking world, and very few folks in the newspaper and magazine worlds are unfamiliar with his work. I got to know the humorous side of Max, whose dry wit often left me in stitches.

My favorite Max Heath quote happened five or six years ago, as we stood in the vendors’ area of a convention in Denver while a famous speaker was in the next room giving a keynote. I asked Max if he was going in to hear the speaker. His response: “Kevin, I’ve heard the wind blow before.” I cracked up because Max was so right.

Every time you mail your publication at a discounted rate, be sure to thank Max Heath.

August 5, 2021