All Things Considered has a story, Small Paper Uses Profits to Train New Reporters [text & audio], about the newspaper in the town of Anniston, Alabama that gives some hope for the future of journalism.

When his daughter decided she didn’t want to get involved in the newspaper business, the publisher of The Anniston Star decided to forgo multi-million dollar offers for the paper and change it into a “teaching newspaper”, along the lines of a teaching hospital. A non-profit foundation was created by the publisher, and the University of Alabama supplies the students as Knight Community Journalism Fellows.

I linked to the Star when they were fighting with the Department of Defense over the incineration of chemical weapons at the Anniston Army Deport.

This isn’t a glorified student newspaper, it continues its role as the local newspaper for Anniston, while the students learn their job by working as “residents” under the oversight of their professors and the professional staff.

The Republicans aren’t ready for prime time, they just can’t lead a government.

JEB Bush and the Republicans have been trying to dismantle the public schools in the state of Florida for years. JEB’s A+ Schools is designed to show how dysfunctional the school system is so that it can be crushed and public funding be given to private schools.

The voters in Florida keep passing constitutional amendments to stop him and improve the system.

The Miami Herald reports on the latest battle in the article: School vouchers killed by one vote; senate majority leader asked to resign. Robert at Interstate 4 Jamming covers the basics in his article on what happened, so I’ll provide some background.

[Read more →]

On NPR’s Day to Day they ran a piece on the May Day immigration demonstrations and featured Congressman John Hostettler [R-Indiana].

Mr. Hostettler came on as “Mr. Law N. Order”. John really likes the laws of this country…well, most laws. He’s not really fond of laws about wandering around with a loaded 9mm Glock pistol in your carry-on bag.

IOKIYAR