Less than a month after his arrest in an Internet sex sting, former O'Sullivan Industries official Gary Blankenship is back on the computer again.
Sources at O'Sullivan Industries indicate that Blankenship has e-mailed many of his former co-workers to tell them that he is innocent of the charges that have been filed against him and asking them not to believe what they have been reading about him in newspapers or seeing and hearing about him on television.
Apparently, Blankenship has been sending the e-mails from a relative's computer. His own company laptop was taken as evidence when he was arrested and reportedly contained disturbing images that contributed to his arrest on eight charges of possession of child pornography.
Despite Blankenship's immediate resignation from his position at O'Sullivan Industries, the Blankenship affair has been another black mark on a company reputation that had suffered locally during the past few months with the move of its corporate headquarters to Atlanta, Ga., and the removal or resignation of members of the O'Sullivan family, as well as many other top officials who had been with O'Sullivan for two or three decades.
Not all O'Sullivan officials were caught by surprise by the information of the secrets that were reportedly contained on Blankenship's company computer. After other employees had discovered that Blankenship apparently had been using the computer to download images that should not have been on there, the information was reportedly sent to higher-ups in the company, who took no action against Blankenship.
During a time when members of O'Sullivan Industries' founding family and other officials who helped make the company into a success were being shown the door, the new top officials, all transplants from Newell Rubbermaid, apparently decided that Blankenship was one person whom they wanted to keep on the O'Sullivan team.
Blankenship resigned late last month shortly after he was arrested in one of Diamond police officer Jim Murray's internet sex stings. Murray posed as a 13-year-old girl and set up a meeting with the 55-year-old Blankenship in Blankenship's home town of Neosho. Blankenship reportedly also used a webcam to allow the "teenage girl" to see him gratifying myself.
His preliminary hearing on the eight possession of child pornography charges as well as one count each of enticing a child and promoting obscene material to a minor, is scheduled for April 4 in Newton County Circuit Court.
Blankenship is free on $100,000 bond. He will be represented by prominent Springfield trial attorney Dee Wampler.
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Broadcasting and Cable magazine reports that Cox Communications employees in Abilene and San Angelo, Texas, went just a little further than the Cable One employees in Joplin in handing out rabbit-ear antennas so their customers could continue to receive programming from a Nexstar station that was pulled off the cable company's lineup at the end of December.
"Employees were costumed in cute little bunny ears and t-shirts with the logo 'Got Ears?' One employee in each system donned a full bunny outfit to greet subscribers." Cox's Abilene franchise handed out 800 antennas, according to the article, while the San Angelo franchise distributed 2,800.
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While Cox says it has lost 1,000 subscribers in those Texas communities since the end of December, the number in Joplin has reportedly been about 800 and it is not clear how many of those are due to the Nexstar situation and how many are simply normal churn.
Reportedly advertising for the Nexstar stations in the Missouri and Texas markets is down some, but not nearly as much as had been predicted by many observers.
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The joint legislative committee trying to work out a solution to problems with Missouri's public education funding was scheduled to meet again tonight. The committee members included Rep. Kevin Wilson, R-Neosho.
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Earlier this week in The Turner Report, I mentioned the Lamar Democrat's use of a Democratic Party press release in its Saturday edition that talked of Bubs Hohulin being illegally awarded the contract for the Lamar license office. I initially read the news release, which was never described as such on the Democrat's website, for which you can find a link elsewhere on this page. My copy of the actual newspaper arrived in the mailbox today and I was shocked to discover that this press release was bannered across the top of page one.
The public was probably aware that the information was a press release since it so obviously was written by someone with the Democratic party, but that information should have been provided by the Democrat editor.
It seems reminiscent of 1990 when Hohulin was first elected to the Missouri House of Representatives. At that time, the Democrat ran no articles about the young Iantha farmer who was trying to upset longtime Democratic incumbent Jerry Burch. After all, Burch was a state powerhouse who was rumored to be thinking of a run for lieutenant governor. The only articles in the Democrat that year up until the election were page-one stories about Burch. Only after Hohulin's grass roots campaign knocked off the heavily-favored Burch did the Democrat began running anything about Hohulin.
As with the 1990 coverage of the state representative campaign, Saturday's Democrat did not feature any press release from Hohulin or from any representative of Governor Matt Blunt or of the Missouri Republican Party.
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Once again, the new media has come up with a scoop that has been picked up on by the traditional media. Today's Springfield News-Leader carried a story on Doug Wead, the former friend of President Bush who released a number of private conversations he taped with the president when Bush was governor of Texas. Wead spent many years in Springfield as an author, Amway distributor, and Assemblies of God minister. That was also featured on Missourinet today, but I read it over the weekend on former News-Leader reporter Ron Davis' blog, Chatter at http://homepage.mac.com/rondavis/iblog/index.html
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U-Haul of Phoenix, Ariz., reports that Fayetteville, Ark., is the number one top growth city in the United States with 10.3 percent more families moving to the city than leaving, according to today's Arkansas Business.