One of the things that irritated me most during my last few years in the newspaper business was the growing use of "From staff reports" on articles. I had a sports editor who was a big fan of pasting that little byline on anything that wasn't written by him or me.
The only problem with "From staff reports" is it's a lie. The byline is normally used on articles that the staff had absolutely nothing to do with. Most of the articles are press releases from schools or companies or people involved with charity events or fund raisers. I argued the use of the phrase "From staff reports" with some success. Of course, the minute I was no longer with The Carthage Press, it was suddenly plastered on nearly every story that the staff did not actually write.
Usually, the only contribution the staff makes to these stories is to change a little wording to conform with newspaper style or correct grammar, punctuation, spelling, or capitalization. Most of the time, the press releases run exactly as they were written.
One of those press releases was featured in the Sept. 14 Neosho Daily News. It apparently is a press release from Newton Learning, the summer school arm of Edison Schools. The Daily apparently added a little phrase, saying that information came "according to a report released by Newton Learning." I am not sure about that, however.
The report itself said East Newton students posted a 26 percent improvement in reading and a 34.1 percent improvement in mathematics during the summer school program, which was operated by Newton Learning this year.
Admittedly, the information came from a self-serving press release, but it appears once again that another area school is satisfied with its dealings with Edison. I haven't heard of East Newton, Sarcoxie, or McDonald County filing lawsuits against Edison. Only Diamond. This is only a guess, but could it be possible that having a lawyer at the helm might have convinced the Diamond R-4 Board of Education to try to gain an edge on Edison, not realizing that Edison has lawyers of its own. Just a supposition.
It seems strange that all of the other area schools just make money from Edison and don't need to sue the company.
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The Joplin Globe ran a series of interesting articles on O'Sullivan Industries Sunday. The main point, one which I have made in The Turner Report a few times, is that the board of directors of the formerly Lamar-based company decided to make Bob Parker the company's first million-dollar CEO while at the same time laying off 150 workers and making a costly move of its corporate headquarters from Lamar to Atlanta just to satisify Parker and the two other Hessions from Newell Rubbermaid that the board hired for the top executive positions. It was a well-researched report and included some excellent information on the salaries of the O'Sullivan officials in comparison to officials with similar companies.
I would like to see just how well Parker operated the Sharpie division of Newell Rubbermaid. There was some information, but not much. He had better be pretty good to be pulling down that kind of salary and benefits.
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In his weekly Cat News, Diamond R-4 Superintendent Mark Mayo notes the district is working to improve its middle school reading and writing MAP scores. Hmm, could it be that it wasn't such a wise decision to eliminate both the middle school reading and writing classes, two classes which had contributed to increased MAP scores the previous year. No, that would make too much sense.