Busy day on tap. In addition to regular school classes and a pre-school meeting, Natural Disaster will practice tonight in Newtonia in preparation for our 4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 18, performance at the annual Newtonia Fall Festival. It will be our first performance in a couple of months and I am looking forward to it.
We seem to have lost a lot of the momentum we had going before the three girls left the group, but we've got a nice set of 25 songs from the 1950s and 1960s we will perform at Newtonia. Hope to see some of you there.
***
Diamond Town Forums, located at www.diamondtownforums.com , continues to grow. One nice thing is that other topics, as well as the ongoing school problems, are being discussed this time around. A student had some nice things to say about me in a couple of posts last night. (That's not the only reason I am plugging the site, however. People should have an avenue to express themselves and a source of information that is not thoroughly cleansed of all reality before they receive it.)
***
A 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 15, preliminary hearing is scheduled for Donald Peckham, 71, the Jubilee Christian minister from Sarcoxie, who is charged with two felony counts of statutory sodomy, in connection with incidents with young boys. A Joplin Globe report indicated many more incidents were reported during the time Peckham was a minister in Kansas churches decades ago.
***
Another presidential campaign and once again we are overloaded with trivia rather than a thorough examination of the issues. It does not matter what John Kerry did on a swift boat 35 years ago or what George W. Bush did or did not do in the National Guard three decades ago. What does matter is how they are going to keep American jobs from being shipped overseas, what they are going to do about health care, education, the war on terrorism, Iraq, and the other truly important issues that face America.
Unfortunately in an era in which campaigns are dominated by misleading 30-second (or less) commercials and media coverage of those commercials, any chance for real substance is virtually non-existent.
***
I was reminded during academic team practice after school yesterday that another anniversary of an important local event was overlooked by the media.
The list of trivia questions incorrectly listed Carl Hubble as the man for whom the Hubble Telescope was named. "King" Carl Hubbell as baseball fans know, was the ace screwball pitcher (that was the pitch he threw, not any indictment of his behavior) during the 1930s and 1940s.
In the 1934 All-Star Game, only the third one to be played, Hubbell struck out five consecutive batters who would all later be inducted into the Hall of Fame...Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Al Simmons, Jimmie Foxx, and Joe Cronin. This July marked the 70th anniversary of this feat, which only one other person, Pedro Martinez of the Boston Red Sox, has ever even come close to in seven decades.
Many baseball reference books list Hubbell's hometown as Carthage. He actually was born near Avilla. The local media misses on opportunities to educate, as well as illustrate current events, when it neglects the rich history of this area.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol and Vernon County Prosecuting Attorney's office are investigating the theft of close to $40,000 from the city of Nevada.
A state audit report issued Tuesday indicated receipts totaling $39,701 were collected between January 2002 and April 2004, but were never deposited.
Auditors said "the city does not track payments for various types of tax revenues to ensure all payments are properly received and recorded in the city's accounting records.
"As a result, cigarette and franchise taxes totalling $24,445 received by check were deposited into the city's bank account but were not recorded in the city's accounting records. These checks were substituted into the city's deposits and recorded cash receipts were not deposited, and (were) apparently misappropriated."
An additional $15,256 was apparently stolen from the city's pool and golf course, the audit said.
The audit is still in progress.
***
I suppose you can't blame prisoners for doing anything they can to try to gain their freedom, but too often courts end up ruling on the same thing over and over again.
Such is the case of Brent Londagin, 30, Joplin, whose effort to get his conviction tossed out by the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Southern District was rejected for a second time Aug. 26.
Londagin was convicted in 2003 after a Jasper County jury found him guilty of sodomizing a mentally retarded man at a Joplin nursing home. For the second time, he was appealing his conviction, claiming that he had an incompetent lawyer.
According to court records, Londagin was working as a life skills trainer at the Regional Center in Joplin from July to November of 1998, providing assitance to people with disabilities.
Court records indicate that Londagin's forcible attack on his victim caused him permanent damage, giving him a perforated colon and forcing the man to have a permanent colostomy.
During the trial, a Joplin Police detective testified that Londagin had admitted to sexually abusing the man. Londagin later claimed that he was pressured into making the statement. In his petition, he says his lawyer should have done more to impeach the detective's testimony.
***
A follow-up on yesterday's item about former Neosho Daily News Publisher Kenneth Cope's upcoming induction into the Missouri Press Foundation Hall of Fame. I received my copy of Missouri Press News last night and Cope's photo was on page one.
***
Another item in the magazine, in a column looking back at things that happened long ago at Missouri newspapers, indicated that this month marks the 50th anniversary of the end of Lamar's days of having two daily newspapers. The Lamar Leader sold out to the Democrat in 1954. The Democrat continued as a daily until 1981. For a time, it thrived as the smallest daily (I should say Lamar was the smallest town to have a daily) in Missouri. Those days came to an end after Boone Newspapers bought the paper from David Palmer in 1978 and appointed Tommy Wilson publisher in 1979. Wilson hired 22-year-old Dave Farnham to become the new editor later that year and the two proceeded to alienate most of the business community with a string of negative articles.
The problem reached the point where a group of businessmen enticed the publisher of the XChanger, a shopper fixture in Butler, to start XChanger2 in Lamar. The XChanger began winnowing away advertisers from the Democrat, including Lamar Supermarket.
Eventually Wilson and Farnham were sent packing, and Doug Davis, a long-time troubleshooter for the Boone company, was sent on a rescue mission to Lamar.
Davis immediately began stressing the positive, adding the Today in Barton County feature on page one of each day's paper, with different people contributing articles, including representatives of business, Community Betterment, and most memorably, the historical memories of Reba Young.
The number of pages had to be reduced, due to the lack of advertising and eventually there were many days when it was only four pages long. Davis finally had to cut publication from five days a week to one in early 1982.
I was brought in November 1982 to pump up the local content of the paper and I guess it must have worked. The newspaper was bumped back up to a twice-weekly midway through 1983 and there was even talk of publishing it three times a week shortly before I left for The Carthage Press in April of 1990.
Another trip down memory lane.
***
It has been an unpleasant trip down memory lane for Lord Conrad Black, former CEO of Hollinger International, the company which once owned The Neosho Daily News and The Carthage Press. His alleged siphoning of more than $400 million from his company again made headlines in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and other major newspapers over the weekend and early this week.
***
A Stockton lawyer may be sanctioned by the Missouri Supreme Court later this month.
According to court records, Thomas G. Pyle allegedly forged the signature of a client on a deposition and had his secretary notarize it as though it had been signed in her presence.
Pyle claims it was just a "minsterial error" according to court records and says he did not tell the notary how to do her job.

Back to work again. The Labor Day holiday has been restful and relaxing, but I am ready to get back to school.
***
A few short media items:
-KOAM-TV, Channel 7, is searching for a new evening anchor, according to an ad they placed on a national website. (No, I'm not scanning them looking for jobs, but for items like this.) The station is wanting someone with "great writing skills, experience producing and two years reporting or anchoring in a competitive environment." A college degree is required. I haven't watched Channel 7 enough to know who is leaving, but it seems as if Dowe Quick has been paired with a succession with much younger females over the years. It appears that the male anchor at each of the local TV stations earns the big bucks. That probably accounts for the longevity of anchors such as Quick and Jim Jackson.
-The Carthage Press is advertising for a sports editor. Michael Sudhalter left last month to take a sports position with a Moscow, Idaho, newspaper. The Press ad says whoever gets hired will have a "flexible schedule and assignments" and they will let "you choose the games and features that interest you and develop close ties with the community." You would think they would have this person cover the games and features that interest the readers. This probably means little or no coverage of middle school or JV sports and could mean problems for girls sports depending, of course, on who is hired.
-The Missouri Press Foundation has announced the next inductees into its Hall of Fame and among those will be former Neosho Daily News Publisher Kenneth Cope. Cope, whose son, Randy, is now publisher of the Daily, and a regional manager for Liberty Group Publishing, is now retired after spending his last few years in journalism as one of the top officials in LGP.
***
The Monett Times reports the Pierce City School District has upped the prices for attending high school sporting events to $4 for adults and $2 for students. This is because of the new conference it is in, the article said. The Diamond R-4 School District and school districts in Jasper, Golden City, Lockwood, and other area schools are also participating. No word whether any of these schools will at least offer discount season tickets. If not, parent with more than one children in athletics, or those who are interested in supporting school activities are going to end up spending hundreds of dollars each month.
***
I expect to be posting more items tonight.

Joplin R-8 Board of Education member Rodney Blaukat's letter to the editor in today's Joplin Globe accurately points out one of the major problems with the area's biggest newspaper.
Blaukat criticized the Globe for its characterization in a headline that R-8 MAP scores had "plateaued." In fact, the scores for the district were considerably higher than they were last year. That was the news, but that was not what the Globe emphasized. Though Globe editors made a page-one correction a couple of days afterward, it came nowhere near to erasing the damage that had already been done. In fact, it never even said what it was that was actually being corrected.
The furor over the MAP scores headlines is just the most recent in many such stories concerning The Globe. The Globe has a tendency to play up the negative stories or to give a negative slant to positive stories, while either burying positive stories on the back pages or not printing them at all.
I vividly remember the incident of six or seven years ago when some members of the Jasper High School volleyball team got into trouble after the Greenfield Tournament. Their dressing room was next to the area where Greenfield officials kept the supplies for their kitchen. A few of the girls stole some condiments (large containers of mustard, relish, and ketchup, if I recall) and used those items later that night to vandalize a teacher's home.
The girls were punished by school officials, though some did not feel they received a big enough punishment. One of the girls was the daughter of a school board member. Charges of favortism were leveled in the Jasper community.
Over a month later, the Globe reported the story. Now I would be the first to stay there is a legitimate reason to cover this type of story. A school board member may have misused his position to protect his daughter from facing the full consequences of what she had done. However, the Globe carried this story on page one of the paper, not on page one of an inside section, but on page one.
Remember, we are talking about an incident that occurred more than a month earlier, an incident in which the girls had been punished (even though perhaps not to the extent that some thought they should have been). No one was considering any type of legal action that might have made the story worthy of page one. Once again, it was the case of the Globe blowing a negative story way out of proportion.
It is a pattern that has been repeated time after time over the years. Take the Joplin R-8 School District, for example. Every day, positive newsworthy things are going on, things that would make intereseting reading. Innovative techniques are working in the classroom, as the MAP scores would indicate. Very rarely is anything written about these positive things. When they are mentioned, they are usually relegated to a space somewhere deep inside the paper and most times they are not even prominently displayed on that page.
My former managing editor at The Carthage Press, Neil Campbell, had a different take. When I was first hired as the Press's area reporter, my main beats were in Webb City, Jasper, and Sarcoxie. About a month after I began work, in late April of 1990, the entire four-man police force at Carterville quit. The story had already been run in The Globe and on the three local television stations, so it wasn't as if we had a story that no one else had. But I had not been covering Carterville. I looked at this as another case of a newspaper being willing to come in and spread negative news, without ever covering the positive.
I asked Neil if we could take a different approach. I suggested that we wait a couple of weeks until the controversy died down, then blanketing Carterville with coverage of their elementary school, their city business, their civic groups, and other positive happenings. This would offer us two advantages, I said. One, it would give me time to develop the sources I needed when a negative story did take place. Two, it would show the people of Carterville that we were willing to cover more than just their scandals and controversies. Neil agreed and that's exactly the approach we took.
It didn't take long before more controversy erupted in Carterville. The Press came up with stories on these events that other media outlets couldn't get and we did not receive any criticism of our coverage. If you are not willing to cover poiitive news, you have no business intruding upon a community to cover the negative.
The same thing happened when I covered the controversy surrounding the Sarcoxie Police Force in the late 1990s. Despite the fact that we ran numerous stories over that controversy, we received little criticism and none of that came from the regular public.
The Globe has a public relations problem in its own community and most of that relates back to its coverage of local news. There's an old canard of journalism that goes that positive news isn't news, that people only want to read about controversy. That has never been true and if today's newspapers want to survive they need to realize that and begin serving their communities.
Good stories are out there, but you won't find them unless you're looking for them.
***
On the other hand, though it is not a positive news story, credit has to be given to The Lamar Democrat for the way in which it covered the fire that destroyed the historic building on the square in which Strong's Corner Florist was located.
The Democrat used almost all of page one in its Wednesday edition and had multiple stories covering nearly all of the bases on this important event. The coverage was not overdone. When you have a subject in which the community is interested, you can't offer too much coverage. The Democrat was also able to get hold of powerful phorographs of the fire. It was a job well done.
I just wish the people at the Democrat would also realize that important community events, as well as tragedies, deserve this type of blanket coverage. It woudl have been nice to have seen more coverage of the Lamar Free Fair and a buildup, complete with historical references, to the Silver Tiger game. These events resonate with a large portion of the Democrat's readership. Thorough coverage would have been appreciated.
***
Now for a little bit of hypocrisy, let's move on to the bad news.
A Joplin doctor is being sued in the U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri for malpractice and wrongful death. According to court records, Blake A. Little, MD, allegedly made a misdiagnosis that resulted in the death of Joseph Natalini, Pittsburg, Kan. The case has been filed by Mr. Natalini's widow and their children.
Natalini was first treated by Dr. Litle in 1995, according to court documents. On June 28, 1995, he was treated for shortness of breath. On March 4, 1996, Natalini underwent a CT scan which revealed two small, noncalcified nodules on his lungs.
Natalini underwent a series of tests from that time through Feb. 17, 1997, the petition indicates. On that date, a chest x-ray was performed and the report was sent to Dr. Litle's office.
"(Litle) then failed follow up with Joseph Natalini's lung condition until July 1998," the petition says.
In August 1998, Natalini was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died on April 12, 2004.
His family says Litle failed to correctly diagnose the cancer, didn't recognize the symptoms, failed to have the proper biopsies done and failed to follow up after his CT scans and x-rays. If he had, they say, Natalini's condition might have been curable.
In the petition, the survivors say Litle indicated to them that Natalini's case "fell through the cracks."
Family members are asking for "fair and reasonable" damages, attorney fees, and costs.
***
A prime talking point of the Republicans during their recently concluded national convention was the full funding of the tax cuts that they have given to everyone over the past couple of years.
While they are so concerned about billionaires and millionaires receiving these tax cuts, they are about to let another group of people slip completely through the cracks. For the past two years, the nation's teachers have received a $250 tax break to partially repay them for the amount they spend on supplies and needs for their classrooms out of their own pockets. Even the people who pushed this tax break through two years ago, acknowledged that most teachers spend far in excess of that amount.
The tax break was only placed in effect for two years. It is about to run out and apparently no one is paying any attention or they don't care. This needs to be made permanent and that amount should be increased.
I know that I spend more than $250 a year for supplies and things for my students, and the amount I spend pales in comparison to the amount spent by nearly all elementary school teachers.
Let's worry about these people before we take care of the millionaires.
***
Sticking with education, Missourinet reports that the percentage of male teachers in classrooms is rapidly dropping. For each male teacher in Missouri, there are four females. In elementary schools, there are 12 female teachers for every male teacher.
That might not seem to be a reason to be overly concerned, but during the elementary and middle school years, these children need positive role models, especially those who do not have them at home. The problem is growing more and more each year as the number of single-parent homes increases, with the children usually living with their mothers.
The Missourineet articles points out two reasons for the problem:
"State education department figures show men are much more likely to teach in higher grades or fill administrative positions," and Kent King of the Missouri State Teachers Association says the primary reason more men are not inclined to become teachers is the bottom line. "Money, not motivation, is a big factor," King said.
***
The rapid elimination of everyone with the last name O'Sullivan from O'Sullivan Industries and the change of the company's corporate headquarters from Lamar to Atlanta has had Lamar residents asking the question, "How could this happen?" They want to know how Tom O'Sullivan Sr. could create a company then have his children and grandchildren forced out of it.
I don't know if this will help any, but Hoover's Inc, a highly-respected Austin, Texas, company that provides information to investors on companies across the United States, offers this capsule history of O'Sullivan Industries.
" 'Some assembly required' is an understatement at O'Sullivan Industries, one of the top makers of ready-to-assemble furniture in the U. S. The company designs and produces products for home offices (desks, work centers, bookcases) for electronic display (home entertainment centers, TV cabinets) and for home decor (dressers, pantries, microwave carts). Home office products account for more than half of O'Sullivan's sales, and its particleboard furniture is sold mostly by office superstores and mass merchandisers. Members of O'Sullivan's management own nearly 30 percent of the company; investment firm Bruckmann, Rosser, Sherrill and Co. owns the rest. Its preferred shares are publicly traded.
"OfficeMax (acquired by Boise Cascade in 2004) and Office Depot together account for nearly a third of O'Sullivan's sales, while Wal-Mart brings in about 12 percent. Pursuant to a licensing agreement with The Colemany Company (2003), O'Sullivan is creating a line of storage products that will bear the Coleman name. Chairman Danny O'Sullivan is joined at the company by brothers and SVPs Thomas Jr. and Michael.." I should note that this was written just prior to recent events.
"History- After attending a Fourth of July cookout at which his host complained about the difficulty of moving a so-called portable TV, Thomas O'Sullivan went to his machine shop and began making what might have been the first TV cart. Starting his company as O'Sullivan Industries in 1954 in St. Louis, he sold his idea to RCA and General Electric. O'Sullivan moved to Lamar, Missouri, in 1965, when it opened a plant there. In 1983, the company was acquired by Tandy, an electronics retailer. Thomas's son, Danny, succeeded him as president in 1986. Tandy spun off the company to the public in 1994. O'Sullivan family membets and personnel bought shares, but fell short of obtaining a controlling interest. Danny added CEO and chairman to his titles that year. The company also struck a licensing deal with Fisher-Price to make a line of infant and juvenile furniture in 1994. In 1995, rising prices for particleboard and packign materials hurt profits, which fell again the next year as one of its larger customers, Best Products, filed for bankruptcy. In response, O'Sullivan restructured, cutting jobs and streamlining its product line. It also, for the first time in company history, appointed an outsider as president in 1996: Rick Davidson, a former American Household (formerly Sunbeam) executive. In 1997, sales and profits were on the rebound, but another major customer, Montgomery Ward, filed for Chapter 11. In 1999, O'Sulivan was taken private in a $350 million deal by Bruckmann, Rosser, Sherrill & Co, and members of its management; however, its preferred shares still trade over the counter. Davidson was named CEO in 2000. Declining sales forced the company to close its Utah plant in 2001. Founder Thomas O'Sullivan Sr. passed away in March 2004 at the age of 82."
The report was obviously recent, since it included million-dollar CEO Bob Parker, formerly of Newell Rubbermaid, and his two former confederates at Rubbermaid, CFO Rick Walters and executive vice president Michael Orr.
***
About the only time you hear about court decisions is either when they reach the U. S. Supreme Court level or when they so outlandish (as in an appeals court decision that struck the words "under God' from the Pledge of Allegiance) that you have to take notice of it.
Unfortunately, that short-sided approach leaves the country not knowing of the many smaller decisions at lower courts that affect their freedoms. One such decision was handed down earlier this week by the U. S Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which includes Missouri.
An attempt by the Sioux Falls. S. D. School District to take away the First Amendment rights of elementary school teacher Barbara Wigg was rebuffed by the appellate court.
Ms. Wiggs challenged the school district's decision that kept her from participating in a Christian-based after-school program after school. She claimed that decision violated her First Amendment rights. The court agreed with her.
Wigg teaches second and third graders at Laura B. Anderson Elementary School and has taught in the district for the past 16 years. Ms. Wigg, accordindg to the court decision, is one of those teachers who arrives well before school begins and stays long after the final bell has rung.
She has also worked with Girl Scouts and has given private guitar and reading lessons after school. The school district has a policy which allows community organizations to use its facilities. They have to be non-profit and have liability insurance.
The Good News Club is an after-school club sponsored by Child Evangelism Fellowship. In 2002, the club asked for permission to meet at five schools in the district. Ms. Wigg attended the group's first meeting at Anderson on Dec. 15, 2002. Nine students, including a few from her class, attended. The students played a game, learned a Bible verse, and heard a Christian story, according to the court ruling.
A fellow faculty member complained about Ms. Wigg helping teach a Christian lesson. Principal Mary Peterson told her she could no longer do that since that could pbe perceived as the government establishing a religion, which is prohibited in the First Amendment.
Ms. Wigg made two efforts to appeal that decision and was turned down both times. She filed a complaint on Feb. 20, 2003 saying that the school district's policy violated her constitutional rights. The court ruled that the district could keep her from attending these meetings at Anderson Elementary, but she was free to attend them at other schools in the district. The school district appealed the decision.
The appellate court ruled, "We conclude that Wigg's participation in the after-school club constitutes private speech. Wigg's private speech does not put (the school district) at risk of violating the Establishment Clause. Wigg's speech did not occur during a school-sponsored event; she did not affiliate her views with (the school district) and (her lawyer) proposed a disclaimer explaining that any school district employees participating in the club were activing as private citizens and did not represent (the school district) in any manner."
The court said "no reasonable observer" would think her speech was a state endorsement of religion. "Even private speech occurring a school-related functions is constitutionally protected.therefore private speech occurring at non-school functions held on school grounds must necessarily be afforded those same protections."

The Neosho Daily News this week included a news release from Newton Learning, the summer school arm of Edison Schools, which indicates the company is taking partial credit for improved MAP scores for McDonald County.
Newton has been operating McDonald County's summer school for the past few years and has been raking in money for the district.
No lawsuits coming from that direction, apparently.
***
So much for good citizenship and responsibility from the networks and from our local television stations. All three networks have limited the Republican National Convention to about an hour a night, with no time at all on Monday. ABC pre-empted the convention on Monday to carry an exhibition NFL game (or as NFL officials like to call them pre-season). Last night, Channel 12 even pre-empted ABC's coverage of the convention to carry a Kansas City Chiefs exhibition football game. Then when the late news came on Channel 12, it began reporting about President Bush's speech, when it could have simply picked up ABC's feed and carried the remainder of it live.
Yes, the conventions are boring and totally scripted compared to the way they used to be in the past, but they are still an important part of American citizenship. We could do without such educational programming as "Fear Factor" and "The Drew Carey Show" to learn some of the things we need to know to make a responsible decision in November.
***
The ZAP (Zeros Aren't Permitted) program is now in place at South and more and more students have been zapped each time. The program not only stressed the importance of turning in assignments, but simply of meeting deadlines, something the students are going to have to do the rest of their lives. Amazingly, some students have not turned in a single paper during the first three weeks of school. Hopefully, this program will help them (it has worked wonders in other school districts) and we can help these kids along the road to becoming more productive and successful members of society.
If not, at least they aren't going to be zapped for the next three days as the Labor Day weekend starts for students (and teachers) later today.

It would be easy for me to point out the flaws in the taxpayer-financed www.diamondwildcats.org , the website Diamond R-4 School District Superintendent Mark Mayo had put on line last year to get his message across to district patrons. Of course, the district already had a website at the time, www.wildcatcentral.com , which Dr. Greg Smith had asked me to construct in the year 2000, but it had one thing Mayo did not want to deal with (me) and I was using it as an educational opportunity for my students and Mayo had another idea in mind. He told me during a meeting late in the 2002-2003 school year, "That's all fine and good (that students were helping with the website and turning it into a learning experience) but that's not what I'm interested in out of a district website. I want to be able to reach the people."
Of course, this conversation took place shortly after Mayo had been the target of tons of criticism on diamondforums.com, which has been resurrected this week as www.diamondtownforums.com
The "official" district website has its good points. It can provide basic information to the school district, and often does. Of course, it only puts a selected portion of the board minutes on line (none of the decisions made in closed session are included) and those are usually put on long after the meetings have actually taken place. Also, they don't appear to be archiving board minutes so you have to make sure you get the information when it is on the board minutes page or it will be gone the next time the page is updated.
The board agendas are not specific enough to help anyone who is interested in what is going to take place at the meeting.
That being said, the main reason I brought this up is that I noticed two of my former students have had their pictures added to the webpages and they couldn't have made better selections. Kristen Hicks is an excellent student and was the winner of the first two writing contests I put on at Diamond Middle School during her seventh and eighth grade years. Brittney Stevens transferred to Diamond late in the first semester of her eighth grade year and quickly made a difference in the school, becoming editor of the school newspaper that I sponsored and being appointed to a vacancy on the student council, which Renee Jones and I sponsored.
The two are symbols of people who are making the most of their school years and are greatly deserving of this honor.
It's a shame someone doesn't put them in charge of the content of those pages. Especially those self-serving CAT updates. You give those to Kristen or Brittney and I guarantee you the writing would improve 100 percent
***
Tonight is the traditional Silver Tiger football game at Lamar with age-old rivals Lamar and Nevada battling for that fabled traveling trophy.
I haven't seen this week's Democrat. It would be nice if there was a feature story or two about the Silver Tiger game. When the late, lamented Lamar Press was being published, our Sept. 12, 1996, issue featured several articles about the game. Historian Marvin VanGilder wrote about the 1940 game, which included a near-riot after a Lamar player was injured. A story Kelly Stahl wrote five years earlier in The Carthage Press about the 1968 game in which Bennie Reed accidentally tackled a cheerleader, was featured in thiat issue.
Other stories included my account of the 1978 game, the first Silver Tiger game I saw in which remnants of Coach Chuck Blaney's Dirty Thirty team went to Nevada and came back with Oscar. I reprinted an interview I did with Pete Ihm, who still had fond memories of the game even though he went on to play in the 1946 Cotton Bowl.
John Wagaman Jr.'s recollections of the 1948 game, Kelly Stahl's article on the 1991 contest, a listing of the winner and score of each game since its inception, and John Jungmann's preview of the upcoming 1996 game were prominently featured, as well as historic photos from earlier games.
Another chapter will be added to that history tonight. I know Chris Morrow, the Democrat sports editor, will do a good job of covering it. I just hope there is something in the paper to remind the people of the rivalry's grand history.
***
The 1998 sale of The Neosho Daily News, The Carthage Press, and other newspapers that belonged to American Publishing (a subsidiary of the Canadian company Hollinger) to the newly-formed Liberty Group Publishing marked the start of a long period in which Hollinger CEO Conrad Black looted his company coffers, according to a report filed with the federal Securities Exchange Commission earlier this week.
Most of American's community newspapers were sold to a California-based leveraged buyout firm, Leonard Green and Associates to $310 million with $31 million going toward a "non-compete" clause.
What was never explained is why Hollinger should have been paid a non-compete clause when it is almost impossible to start a newspaper in a small community which already has one and make it financially successful. One of the selling points for these newspapers, which Liberty is using now that it has them on the block, is that they have no competition.
Liberty officials appear to be lucky. As Hollinger continued to sell off the remainder of its community newspapers in the late 1990s and early this century, even more money went into these non-compete clauses, according to the report, and most of this money made its way into the personal bank accounts of Lord Black and two or three other high-ranking company officials. Buyers were also required to pay non-compete money to another publishing concern, which was totally owned by Lord Black and this handful of confederates.
The report indicates these robber barons took Hollinger for more than $400 million over the past five years.

The action is about to begin again.
According to www.neoshoforums.com , a new version of the old Diamond Forums is starting. Someone one else has the diamondforums.com domain name so the new address is www.diamondtownforums.com
Participation in the original Diamond Forums began slowly but soon took off with most of the posts directed at the ongoing situation in the school district.
Though R-4 Superintendent Mark Mayo claimed time after time that he read it once or twice, then never bothered with it again, it was pretty obvious that was not the case.
He made continued efforts to have the site shut down, threatening lawsuits, claiming that there were numerous incidents of libel (from what I read, most of the posts were opinion which is protected by the U. S. Constitution and none of the posts were libelous).
I would guess the new incarnation of Diamond Town Forums will probably meet with the same reaction from the superintendent. And to think that students in the Diamond R-4 School District are learning the meaning of the Constitution from teacher/coaches hired by this man.
***
It has been a long time since Hollinger, a Canadian company, owned The Neosho Daily News and The Carthage Press. From the articles in The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other media outlets yesterday, that is apparently a good thing.
Many people did not realize during the 1990s that the Daily's ownership was not located in the United States. Hollinger, the parent company, put all of its U. S. Newspapers under the umbrella name of American Publishing. Most of the newspapers were small, but a year or two before Liberty Group Publishing broke away from Hollinger, the company bought the Chicago Sun-Times.
According to the Wall Street Journal, a report was issued yesterday by a committee selected by Hollinger officials to determine the extent to which the company's former CEO, Lord Conrad Black, mismanaged Hollinger.
The report indicated that Black and another former company official, David Radler, "siphoned off more than $400 million in the course of seven years." Of course, all of this activity took place after the Daily and the Press were no longer in the Hollinger fold.
The report said Black spent $24,950 for "summer drinks" and $90,000 to refurbish his Rolls Royce. Also, $2,083 for exercise equipment, $2,463 for handbags, $3,530 for silverware for a corporate jet.
From the Journal article: "According to the report, a birthday party for Mrs. Black at New York's La Grenouille restaurant cost the company $42,870 and fed 80 guests, including Oscar DeLaRenta, Peter Jennings, Charlie Rose, Barbara Walters, and Ron Perlman."
The report also indicated that Black and Radler received $218.4 million between 1997 and 2003in "management fees," for things which should have been farmed out to actual managers. The purpose of these fees, the report concluded, was to offer Black and Radler far greater benefits than they would have received through traditional compensation packages.
There is no indication in the report whether the committee investigated the years prior to 1997 when The Neosho Daily and The Carthage Press would have been Hollinger newspapers.

The families of two drunk-driving victims have filed lawsuits against the drunk driver in Jasper County Circuit Court. The family members are also suing the owners of the Joplin bar where the man allegedly was drinking before the accident.
According to court records, two wrongful death lawsuits were filed Aug. 23 against Edward James Meerwald Jr., 51, Noel. Missouri Highway Patrol reports indicate that Meerwald was behind the wheel of a car that ran off 86 Highway and hit James Dodson, 69, Neosho, and his granddaughter, Jessica Mann, 7, as they were walking in Dodson's driveway. Dodson was pronounced dead at the scene. Miss Mann was flown to Freeman West Hospital where she died several hours later.
Meerwald, who is charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter, is being held in the Newton County Jail in lieu of $250,000 bond. He waived his formal arraignment Aug. 26, entering a not guilty plea. A pre-trial conference is scheduled for Sept. 16.
The lawsuits against Meerwald were filed by Dodson's widow, Betty Jean Dodson, and by Miss Mann's parents, Amy and Michael Mann. Also listed as a defendant in both lawsuits is Midwestern Music Company, Joplin, doing business as The Pub Bar, 904 South Main, Joplin. The agent listed for that company in the court records is Denia Kay Beason, Joplin.
The cases have been assigned to Jasper Circuit Court Judge William Carl Crawford.
On the same day the lawsuits were filed against Meerwald, his wife, Kyung Suk Meerwald, 44, filed for divorce, according to Newton County Circuit Court records. The case is listed as a dissolution with children.
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In a case that has flown under the media radar, a 1:30 p.m. Sept. 16 preliminary hearing has been scheduled for former Carthage R-9 Board of Education member and former Carthage Police officer Michael Lloyd Wells.
Wells is charged with one count of forcible rape, one count of sexual assault in the first degree, and two counts of incest.

I swear I didn't laugh when I read that the Diamond R-4 Board of Education had voted on a code of ethics at its August meeting.
That information was featured on www.diamondwildcats.org. the propaganda site for the R-4 School District. School boards are required to submit such codes to the State Ethics Commission, showing how they deal with conflicts of interest. Unfortunately, there are no laws to prevent the out rages that have been inflicted upon the Diamond community by the present board of education.
As usual, I will mention my own bias in this instance. As readers of this website and www.wildcatcentral.com know, I was rehired as a teacher in the Diamond district for the 2003-2004 school year, then just a scant few weeks before the school year started (and shortly after I rebuffed an attempt by Superintendent Mark Mayo to control the content of my website, I was put on an unpaid leave of absence. The only other who received such treatment was a counselor who Mayo had unsuccessfully tried to fire earlier in the school year. Then this past April, even though there was no doubt that I was not planning to return to Diamond, the board uselessly and unnecessarily voted not to rehire me for the 2004-2005 school year, then wasted taxpayer money by having both Mayo and Board President Dr. Wayne Webb send me letters (the one sent by Mayo was a more expensive registered letter) letting me know the board's decision. Mayo has also attempted to silence me by talking to my bosses in the Joplin R-8 School District telling them I have been shortchanging my students by continuing to write items about the Diamond schools.
All right. Now that my disclaimer is through, let's talk about ethics. In an earlier post, I mentioned the policy put into place by the Webb City R-7 School District last year, prohibiting board members' relatives from working for the school district.
It is obvious there is no such policy in Diamond. I received an e-mail message recently pointing out how deep and wide the connections with the board are. The board president's sister and brother-in-law are employed by the district, with the brother-in-law recently promoted to full-time status to replace a teacher who was let go, allegedly due to budget considerations.
Another board member has a wife who was recently promoted from library aide to middle school secretary. Another board member's wife serves as the school's librarian. It was only a few months ago that five of the seven board members had family members working for the school district.
Add to that the hiring of the superintendent's secretary's husband, who is purportedly making $40,000 a year, with duties that include mowing the grass, while there are veteran teachers who have not even cracked the $30,000 barrier.
Sadly,none of this is illegal. But don't talk to me about the ethics involved. Of course, they don't vote on measures that directly affect their relatives, but they vote on many things that indirectly affect them. And with so many conflicts of interest, how is a board member going to vote against another board member's relative when: 1. He or she has a relative to protect or 2. They still have to work with the other board member until at least the next election.
The question here is not whether these people are qualified for the positions they hold. I have no doubt they are. It doesn't matter. What matters is the perception that it's who you know and not your ability is going to land you a job. This is a stigma that attaches itself to both the board members and the relatives and it dramatically lessens the community's faith in the school system.
This is the kind of conflict of interest story the Joplin Globe or The Neosho Daily News needs to be working on. What is happening in the Diamond R-4 School District is nepotism at its worst.
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Natural Disaster, the 50s and 60s rock group I perform with, was back in action tonight with our first practice in the past couple of months. We are scheduled to be the final act to perform at the annual Newtonia Fall Festival Saturday, Sept. 18. I'll write more about that later.
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Since I recently criticized The Lamar Democrat for its failure to do a local story on the O'Sullivan situation, I feel obliged to mention that Editor Rayma Bekebrock Davis conducted an interview with an O'Sullivan official in last Wednesday's paper.
Unfortunately, the article still read like a press release and never went into some of the substantial matters raised here and in The Joplin Globe about the company's move of its corporate headquarters from Lamar to Atlanta. Nowhere it was mentioned that the three top O'Sullivan officials, including million-dollar CEO Bob Parker, were all hired in the past few months and all came from Newell Rubbermaid, which has its corporate headquarters in Atlanta.
Nowhere was it mentioned that O'Sullivan was taking advantage of Georgia tax breaks, which could pay big bucks to land the corporate headquarters. Nor was it mentioned that the tax breaks for moving 50 employees were approved by the state legislature two years ago to convince Newell Rubbermaid to move its quarters to Atlanta.
Nowhere was it mentioned the sweetheart deal Parker and his two Atlanta confederates received to take over O'Sullivan Industries.
A comprehensive news article does not have to be confrontational, but it should dig deep and at least ask, if not answer the questions readers want to know.
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The Saturday Democrat featured a page one story about the operation of the city swimming pool and little coverage, except for some uncaptioned photos, about the Lamar Fair. Where are the features? There are a lot of stories to tell about the Lamar Free Fair.
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A Saturday article in the New York Times on the new concept of cyberbullying was discussed in my communication arts classes Monday and will be the subject of the students' papers today.
It seems that students have been bullying each other through use of e-mail and instant messaging and most of the time parents are completely unaware that this is happening.
The Internet is a wonderful tool and serves many useful purposes, but it can also be a danger to young and old alike if misused. Apparently, this is one more thing parents need to be on the lookout for.

During my second stint as editor of The Newton County News, sometime early in 1982, I decided to write about the serious drug problems in Granby and in the East Newton R-6 School District.
I took a poll of parents, students, teachers, and district patrons asking how serious they thought the problem was. I expected the results would be shocking. They were even more shocking than I had anticipated.
People told me of drug dealers working the streets of Granby in broad daylight. When it came to East Newton students, the near consensus had it that nearly 60 percent had tried marijuana, the drug of choice at that time. Those taking the poll estimated that more than 90 percent had tried alcohol.
When my poll and the editorial that went with it hit the streets, it set off a firestorm. Apparently, the Granby Police began putting the heat on the dealers and they didn't like it a bit.
One night as I returned from covering a Granby City Council meeting, four young men were waiting in the alley by the Newton County News building. Two of them had baseball bats. One had a knife. The other one may have had a weapon, but I never saw it.
They let me know in no uncertain terms that they were not thrilled with what I had written (though it appeared none of them had actually read it). They were being hassled and they wanted it to stop. One of them said, "We're going to teach you a lesson." They were vicious, but they weren't very original.
Before they could begin supplying me with an education, I began talking quickly. The pressure wouldn't last for long, I said. The police were just putting on a show for the benefit of the public. I told them if the heat didn't die down in a few days, come on back down and they could beat me up.
As hard to believe as I find it now, looking back on that not so fond memory, they bought it and let me go. Sure enough, the pressure on the dealers didn't last long and it was business as usual on the streets of Granby within about two weeks.
My problems were far from over, however. When I made my rounds at East Newton High School the next week, I was told to leave. I wasn't welcome any more because I "was out to get the school." That wasn't true, of course. I had used considerable news space covering the positive things that went on in all three district school buildings.
The ban didn't last more than a few days, but my job didn't last much longer. The next week, high school officials took their own poll which indicated that only one percent of the students had ever used marijuana, while not more than 10 percent had ever even touched a drop of alcohol.
At the time, I had a cartoonist at the Newton County News named Scott White. His next (and final) cartoon showed two angelic-looking high school students (complete with halos over their heads) carrying ballots to a ballot box marked "drug poll." His caption read, "First Annual East Newton Naivity Pageant." Within two weeks, I was unemployed, though it was more because I wasn't very good at selling advertising (another part of the job) than because of my controversial writings.
As I discovered in later years, it didn't take a full-scale drug scandal to get on the wrong side of school officials. When I was at The Carthage Press, I made my rounds at an area school one Monday and discovered I was persona non grata. I had just completed running a series based on the school district reports cards that each district has to release by Dec. 1 each year. The articles had no commentary. I merely released just the basic information that each school had released.
One particular school had put its report card in its school calendar, a novel approach. I used just the information in the calendar. When I arrived at the high school, believe it or not, I was called into the principal's office (a place I was very familiar with from my days attending East Newton High School). The principal and the school newspaper advisor immediately began criticizing my lack of journalistic ethics. How could I write these stories, which mentioned the high school's low test scores without checking with them for a response?
I pointed out I was just using the information they had supplied. If they had put more information in the calendar I would have put it in my articles. Why didn't you do that, I asked.
"Nobody reads those things," the principal said. "Everybody sees it when it's in the paper." I probably should have been flattered.
Public officials like to have control over what information goes to the public. That's only natural. In this day and age, when new forms of media are starting all the time, it is harder and harder for these control freaks to limit the message that gets out to what they want it to say.
Web logs like this one and public message boards like www.neoshoforums.com and www.lamarmo.com, to name just two, offer the public new sources of information that have never been available before. The days of the public receiving only the information public officials and their carefully cultivated media friends supply are long since over.
I was reminded of that over the weekend when I read an item on Neosho Forums about their new site, www.neoshoschools.com It was mentioned that Neosho Superintendent Mark Mitchell will probably do his best to stop the site. That may be right. Any time you allow the public to have its say, some of them are going to say something that's going to hit you the wrong way. If a negative situation develops, you can't hide it by just keeping it away from the television stations and the daily newspaper as you could in the past.
Diamond R-4 Superintendent Mark Mayo tried that last year with Diamond Forums, claiming he never read what was posted on the site, while all the while he was threatening lawsuits and complaining about the content of the posts.
When Diamond Forums vanished, Mayo still had to contend with my Diamond school website, www.wildcatcentral.com , regular mentions on Neosho Forums and the oldest and still most potent of information sources...the community grapevine.
Mayo has tried to combat sources which don't agree with his company line by decrying them, threatening them (it is no secret that he attempted last year to have me fired from South, claiming with not one shred of evidence that I had to be shirking my duty toward the Joplin R-8 School District, because I kept publishing new information on Wildcat Central.), and using his own website, www.diamondwildcats.org to spread his carefully-tailored self-serving propaganda.
It is good that Mayo has this outlet. Maybe Mark Mitchell will develop a similar one at Neosho. The public should be able to receive information from a number of sources and be able to weigh the validity of those sources.
Thankfully, the day of small-town school, city, county officials and others totally manipulating the media to serve their own purposes is over. They may be able to do it with the traditional media (and most of the time do), but the public has access to other sources of information...and the willingness to use them.