Why isn’t Demetria Kalodimos on the air Thursday and Friday?

She’s in Miami, at the national Investigative Reporters and Editors Convention… where she’s being honored with a national IRE award certificate! Photojournalist David Sussman was her partner on the project.

She won one of the nation’s highest investigative reporting awards for a series of stories that revealed a long-concealed practice of dumping radioactive waste at the Middle Point Landfill in Rutherford County.

Way to go!

   Stocking up for our one-week getaway, I’ve finally clued in to one of the baby-related consumer product conspiracies - one that Mrs. News Director has apparently been keen to for some time:

   The great Diaper Barrons have figured it out: the consumer is willing to pay a certain acceptable price for a “package” of diapers. Problem is - and I’ll skip the physics of the situation for you non-parents out there - as the baby/toddler grows up a little, the frequency of diaper changes declines a bit.

   Fewer diapers needed, but same “familiar” price.

   50 Pampers Cruisers “3″?  $10.27

   *40* Pampers Cruisers “4″? $10.27 !

   **30** Pampers Cruisers “5″? You guessed it: $10.27

   The Diaper Barrons are banking on my getting used to paying $10.27 for a “package” of diapers.

   Fortunately for them, it only took me two years to catch on.

   Yes, only in today’s short-attention span new-media world would this headline not be a joke.

   It’s not.

   Check out www.twitter.com. This is the next generation of social networking/info sharing.

   Basically, it’s a multiplatform “microblogging” site that delivers messages to a web application, web client, text messaging, e-mail, or any or all of the above.

   Because, you know, texting each other all day and hitting Facebook 200 times a day isn’t ADD enough.

   Anyway, get on Twitter, then “follow” WSMV.

   You’ll understand what I mean when you get there!

Since State Rep. Joe McCord clearly declined opportunity to comment to WSMV before, during, and after the airing of our story, I thought I’d reprint this AP story, which contains his response.

BC-TN-XGR–McCord-Smokin 1stLd-Writethru 05-07 0554

BC-TN-XGR–McCord-Smoking, 1st Ld-Writethru,0487

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — State Rep. Joe McCord acknowledged that

he and others have smoked in his legislative office suite, even

though smoking is prohibited at the state Capitol.

WSMV-TV in Nashville first reported that smoking was going on in

McCord’s office. It aired a video taken from outside the

Legislature’s War Memorial Building in which someone holding a

cigarette could be seen through a window.

“People have smoked in my office, and they are subject to

whatever punishment there may be for violations,” McCord told The

Knoxville News Sentinel. When asked if he had ever smoked in the

area he said yes.

Officials of the state Department of Labor and Workforce

Development, which enforces Tennessee’s smoking ban, have reviewed

the video, and “it clearly shows there could be a violation of the

law,” department spokeswoman Milissa Reierson said.

Ashtrays, an air purification system and a sandbag used to seal

the space below a door were all used inside a room in the suite

McCord shares with Rep. Parkey Strader, a Knoxville Republican

who’s been absent while undergoing treatment for cancer.

Reierson said that department procedure is to send an advisory

letter to the appropriate state official who oversees the building.

If a second violation occurs, there would then be a warning

letter, and, after a third violation, the building owner would be

subject to a $100 fine. An individual caught smoking after a

warning letter is subject to a $50 fine.

McCord was among lawmakers who voted for the 2006 measure that

banned smoking in government buildings. He voted against a

statewide ban on smoking in indoor workplaces in 2007.

McCord said he was concerned about the way WSMV reporter Jeremy

Finley and a videojournalist developed their story. McCord said

other legislators claimed they saw the pair enter the office suite

when no one was present, opening filing cabinet drawers while

inside.

According to the TV station’s report, 12 bottles of liquor were

found in one cabinet and were shown in a video. There is no

prohibition against storing alcoholic beverages at state

legislative offices, according to a 1982 attorney general’s

opinion.

Finley said the cabinet was in a conference room that is open to

the public.

“We consulted with our attorneys to make sure we were not

invading anybody’s personal space,” he said.

Reierson said only one business, a Nashville bowling lane, has

been fined $100 under the smoking ban law. No individual has been

fined the $50 fee.

Eleven state-owned buildings have received advisory letters

because of alleged violations, including the University of

Tennessee’s Neyland Stadium.

Rep. Brian Kelsey, R-Germantown, who complained on the House

floor last year that some colleagues he did not name were ignoring

the smoking ban, said Tuesday that he was “embarrassed that we

still have people flouting our state laws.”

——

Information from: The Knoxville News Sentinel, www.knoxnews.com

Stay logged on for a good test of blogging real news in real time today.

Go to Cara Kumari’s Blog from the state capitol around 11 a.m.

The Governor will be laying out some details of how he’ll cut $500 million from the state budget, and which jobs are at stake.

Cara will blog details from the briefing as she gets them!

Just go back one step to the blogs section of WSMV.Com

   Our opening season for our Surviving The Storm weather events went out in style in Clarksville.

   We were blown away at the size and enthusiasm out there. Rest of Middle Tennessee: consider that a challenge!

  We had more than 500 people, and boy, were they excited to be there. Big thanks to Andy and the gang at Austin Peay for making Clement Auditorium a great venue.

  WE’RE NOT FINISHED! WE’RE JUST TAKING A BREAK FOR A SHORT WHILE - THEN WE’LL BE COMING TO YOUR TOWN AS WELL. I PROMISE!!

   Work in news for almost two decades and you see some strange things. Some odd bedfellows. Some insane probabilities.

   As someone who supervises newscasts, I have to ask myself: what are the chances of one news day containing two stories about people stuffed in trunks?

   We had the terrible story about a violent fight between four teenagers in Nashville yesterday morning over a set of keys. At one point, the group forced a 15-year-old into a trunk, and at another point, enabled her escape by opening the hatch “to make sure she didn’t have a cell phone”. I am not making this up.

   Then there is the story so strange that I was convinced to travel beyond the technical boundaries of the Nashville TV market.

    In Crossville, a family transporting a large TV deduced that the TV wouldn’t fit in the trunk, so hey, put the TV in the back seat - and the TEENAGER in the trunk! A relative called 911, and an APB for the Trunk Teen ensued.

   As my boss likes to say: “Do not attempt to insert logic in a system not designed to accept it.”

   I couldn’t be more proud of the Channel 4 I-Team, in this case, Demetria Kalodimos and David Sussman.

   We just learned that their 2007 investigation on secret dumping of radioactive waste at the Middle Point Landfill in Murfreesboro earned the I-Team a regional Edward R Murrow Award for investigative reporting.

   Our region encompasses Tennessee, the Carolinas and Kentucky.

     This same investigation recently won an incredibly prestigious national IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors) award.

      In fact, congrats to all the Region 8 winners - even our esteemed colleagues across the street:

Television: Large Market
Investigative Reporting
WSMV-TV, Nashville, TN
Dangerous Dumping

Overall Excellence
WYFF-TV, Greenville, SC

Continuing Coverage
WCNC-TV, Charlotte, NC
Police Officers Killed

Feature: Hard News
WYFF-TV, Greenville, SC
THE BROTHERHOOD

Feature Reporting
WCNC-TV, Charlotte, NC
Camp CARE

Newscast
WYFF-TV, Greenville, SC
WYFF NEWS 4

News Documentary
WTVF-TV, Nashville, TN
Dishonorable Deceptions

News Series
WCNC-TV, Charlotte, NC
Something’s Fishy

Sports Reporting
WCNC-TV, Charlotte, NC
A League of Their Own

Spot News Coverage
WCNC-TV, Charlotte, NC
Parking Garage Collapse

Videography
WFMY-TV, Greensboro, NC
Life in the Piedmont

Website (broadcast-affiliated)
WRAL-TV, Raleigh, NC
WRAL.com

Writing
WLKY-TV, Louisville, KY
Inside the Ironman

   Our Channel 4 I-Team investigation focused on government employees, typically state employees, spending time - on your dime - playing around on the web.

   How do you track “personal” time on the web? And how do you know it came from state offices?

   We focused on Wikipedia, which, if you read blogs, you know is a sort-of communal encyclopedia that contains information guaranteed to be at least 86% true.

   Because it allows anyone to post anything about anyone, Wikipedia’s integrity is, to say the least, contentious. It has been the basis for a number of libel suits, and untold numbers of websites and counter-websites.

   In the evolution of the controversy surrounding Wikipedia, a 24-year-old graduate student named Virgil Griffith created “Wikiscanner,” a man on a crusade to track reputation “vandalism”.

   Wikiscanner, found at http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/, analyzes Wikipedia posts and tracks IP addresses.

   Griffith writes:

   We correlated posts to government IP-address ranges.

   We should note, it is nearly impossible to get more specific than “State of Tennessee” government offices, because IP addresses are closely guarded in this Patriot Act-ivated age.

   We found nearly 700 entries from state goverment range IP-addresses, things of vital Tennessee business like: 60 entries from one address about the Sigma Chi fraternity; the complete listing of lyrics to the “All In The Family” theme song (p.s. that long-elusive last line: “Gee, that old La Salle ran great”); and a new gel to prevent herpes.

  We also found 200-300 enties from Metro Nashville government I.P. addresses. The difference with city government: the city provides free wi-fi in places, and those locations are included within the IP address ranges. The mayor’s spokesperson suggests there’s no way to verify that the posts were from city workers as opposed to public wi-fi… which, by the exact same logic, means there’s no way to verify that the posts weren’t from city workers as opposed to public wi-fi.

   Web surfing and work collide tonight on Channel 4 News at 6 p.m.

   Reporter Jeremy Finley and Producer Don Mashburn of the Channel 4 I-Team have put together an interesting (and honestly, entertaining) investigation of public employees spending large amounts of time on the web.

   How do we know this? First, watch tonight at 6 p.m. Then, check back here later and I’ll have a little more insight on how we found what we found.

  And get back to work!