Thursday, December 13, 2007

Ohio attorney general is probably reading this post

For those of us in Missouri who have watched the Herculean efforts by some in Governor Matt Blunt's administration to bury or destroy troublesome e-mails, href="http://www.vindy.com/content/local_regional/290480177859905.php">a
story out of theYoungstown Vindicator in Ohio should show how the system should work.
Attorney General Marc Dann's policy goes even further than the one recommended by Gov. Blunt recently. According to the article, Dann requires that any private e-mail accounts "that are used to conduct public business" are subject to disclosure.

The Vindicator article noted that most of Dann's e-mails that the newspaper checked were either to or from his chief of administration and policy, former Joplin Globe Editor Ed Simpson, and that Dann has set up a Google alert to tell him whenever his name is mentioned in a blog:

Dann was apparently amused when he forwarded a post to Simpson from a blog run by a middle school teacher and former newspaper editor and publisher in Joplin, Mo. Dann received the blog post from his "Google alert" set-up. Simpson quit his job as editor of The Joplin Globe to work for Dann. The blog post states if Simpson "was looking for a new job with plenty of challenges when he left Missouri ... he should be a happy man."

Dann added: "It's good to be loved" as a personal comment.


Thanks for the promotion, but thankfully for the world of newspaper journalism, I never served as a publisher.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Randy,
It looks like the legislature set a terrible precident last year by exusing the days missed because of the ice storm. Some of the private schools in the area were open Wednesday this week once the roads were clear and the power was on. Not the public schools, though. Are we now to expect the public schools to find every excuse to cancel school, as long as it is weather related, because they know they can be excused by the legislature and not have to make up the days? I wish there was some way I could send my kids to private school where the focus is on completing the learning in the curriculum rather than just getting through the school year as easily (for the teachers and administration) as possible.

Anonymous said...

I mean "excusing."

Anonymous said...

In defense of the Joplin schools, the power to 3 or 4 schools was not restored until friday (so I heard) if this is true that is why they were out. You can't have a few go and not all, that would be confusing. My children go to Webb City and we were back in school thursday, even before we had power at home. The private school we used to send them to was out all week, they did not have power either.