Local news coming this weekend

Here's what The Star's metro staff is working to bring you over Labor Day weekend:

• Saturday kicks off a four-day look at labor unions in Alabama and the South. Star Assistant Metro Editor Mary Jo Shafer completed this series as a her final project for the Knight Community Journalism masters program taught at The Star by the University of Alabama. When she was done we hired her, and we're glad to be able to run this series. It examines the decline of unions in the South, a place where they were never all that strong to begin with, and how unions fit - or don't - into the state's changing industrial economy.

• Labor Day weekend also means the return of college football. Knowing this is one of our state's most important annual rituals, we'll have staff writers Andy Johns and Sara Polsky in Tuscaloosa and Auburn, respectively (while yours truly is in Montgomery with JSU), to see just how happy fans are now that the season's finally here. That's in addition to the coverage of action between the sidelines from our award-winning sports staff. You can follow progress up to the minute at our new college sports blogs for Alabama, Auburn and JSU.

• If you're not passionate about football, maybe sci-fi, fantasy, and comic books are more your thing. If so, staff writer Dan Whisenhunt, who also writes the video-game column Pushing Buttons, is over in Atlanta at the annual Dragon Con convention. Dan's updating us all on the action through his new Pushing Buttons blog.

• Calhoun County's oldest house, what's now known as the Davis Farm in Oxford, has some new neighbors - the Oxford Exchange shopping center. That, and its location adjacent to busy Interstate 20, have ramped up pressure to develop the property for commercial use. Its owners have it up for sale, listed at $20 million. Oxford beat writer Todd South explores the house's history, and the potential for another shopping center versus a historical park
  

There'll be full papers all weekend long. Be sure to check us out when you're not watching the game or grilling something up on the holiday.

Coming Saturday on the editorial page

The Star's editorial board is addressing this week's news about Anniston's 2008 proposed budget -- a budget that contains no cuts and several other items of interest:

It didn’t warrant front-page news in The Star on Thursday when reporter Dan Whisenhunt wrote about the City of Anniston’s $32 million budget proposal for the coming year. To reuse the optimistic words of George Monk, the city manager: “My hope is the proposal is fairly vanilla.”
Monk may get his wish, though you can never count out acrimony and surprise when dealing with Anniston’s council.

Syndicated columnist Joe Galloway is, as usual, weighing in on the week it was involving the Iraq War and President Bush:

This week we saw two President Bushes in action. In a news conference in Canada, he acknowledged that while security has improved somewhat thanks to the surge, the Iraqis have made little progress toward meeting the benchmarks. Two days later, speaking at the national VFW convention in Kansas City, the president spoke at length about the need to stay the course in Iraq indefinitely.

We'll also have our normal fare of letters to the editor.

Riley on stage at The Star

Gov. Bob Riley was in town Thursday -- he was plugging the East Alabama Action Commission -- and was gracious enough to stop by The Star for a somewhat impromptu editorial board meeting. As usual, it was worth the price of admission.

Whether you're a D or R, a Riley supporter or not, say this much about him: He's comfortable speaking about our state. Our meeting was off the record, so we'll honor that and not post here was said there; how's that for journalistic (or blogging) ethics? But trust us -- it was entertaining and enlightening. We're glad he stopped by.

As someone said as the gov'ner was leaving, Riley could sell the promise of Alabama to people in Germany (or elsewhere in Europe) more than he can sell the promise of Alabama to people in parts of his own state. That's a compliment, and a testiment to his record of international industrial recruitment. And it's true, too.

Hopefully he'll come back soon.

Star photographers hit the gridiron

Star photographer Bill Wilson kicks off the '07 football season for the photo dept tonight as he shoots the Saks at Welborn game. Friday, chief photographer Trent Penny will shoot the Weaver/Jacksonville match. Steve Gross will be at the Sidney Lanier/Anniston game. Bill Wilson has the East Coweta (Ga.)/Oxford game. And I'll be in the valley shooting the Oneonta/Alexandria season-opener.

Saturday I'll follow the Gamecocks to Montgomery for the Alabama State game. Penny will cover the Bama game and Gross will shoot Auburn.

Look for all the great action photos in the paper and in photo galleries online.

Local news coming Friday

Here's what the metro staff is working to bring you in tomorrow's paper:

• The long wait is nearly over. Football season has finally arrived. High school action is kicking off Thursday night between Wellborn and Saks, with a full slate of games Friday. Check annistonstar.com for full coverage Friday and Saturday.

• There's sure to be a strange feeling in the air at one football venue tomorrow night: Lou Scales Stadium, where for the first time in more than two decades, Larry Ginn will not be coaching the Alexandria Valley Cubs. Features Editor Laura Tutor explores what it is about Alexandria that makes that fact matter so much.

• Staff writer Matt Kasper visits Eagle's Landing, a drug- and alcohol-abuse recovery center near Jacksonville, where women learn to change their lives by being accountable to themselves and to each other.
  

Coming Friday on the editorial/op-ed pages

The Star's editorial board is weighing in Friday on two widely different-but-important issues -- the effect of the Southern drought and the effect of air and water pollution in China.

On the drought, The Star's edit board writes:

In years past much has been written about the family farm and how it must be saved. The family farm is an endangered species, made that way by the rise of agribusiness and the governmental policies that promote bigness. But of all the farmers hurt by this summer’s drought, the family farmer has been hurt worse, for those folks have fewer resources to survive the hard times nature has handed them.
This legislation will help. It needs to pass.

On China's pollution and its relation to America's environment, The Star's board writes:

Clearly, we have not done everything we can to protect our environment. It’s too easy to cite similar instances in the United States which industries have polluted waterways and our air, where cancer rates have been linked to industrial carcinogens, where Americans have suffered and died because of environmental mismanagement.
China displays the importance of governmental and environmental watchdogs and the need for requiring our politicians to make these issues a priority. Anything less is deadly and unacceptable. Just ask the Chinese people.

On the op-ed page, I'm taking a stab at the Anniston-Oxford football that's not being played this year because of the shootings that have taken place at past games:

But we owe it to ourselves and to the students of both schools — students who, like the county’s residents as a whole, may have heard the occasional bigot slather this incident in the hue of their racial dogma — to use this game as proof that Calhoun County’s largest cities can coexist in some form of harmony. And it’s absolutely incomprehensible to me that Oxford and Anniston, rivals forever linked by miles of common borders, can’t come together once a year without violence and fear.

And Paul Rilling, The Star's media critic, is curious if we're doing the right thing by limiting the number of stories that begin on our front page:

In an era of smaller pages and shrinking space, is The Star making the best use of its front page, with so much duplication of stories, out front and inside?

We'll have much more. Check it out Friday.

Belly up to the grill

It's steak day at The Star's newsroom. And the eatin's good.

Next Thursday -- grilled pizza day!

The Bird is the Word

It's actually "Bird's Word". That's our new title to the same old high school football pick 'em contest.

Nick Birdsong (of the Tampa, Fla., Birdsongs) is running it now. Back by popular demand/request from you, the loyal reader, we've brought back the staff picks.

Teams from Woodland to Cedar Bluff longed for it. I think some just longed to laugh at Al Muskewitz's off-the-wall picks. While it never quite worked (with respect to wins and losses) there was a formula.

1. Pick the local team.
2. If it's two local teams, pick the home team.

Proving that even a leopard (or just a really old dog) can change his spots, Musky went against his old plan. He's got Oneonta over Alexandria, Sidney Lanier over Anniston, and Jacksonville Christian picking up a road win over ASD.

Pick up a copy of Thursday's Star and check out our staff's lineup of picks (found on 6C).

Coming Thursday on the editorial/op-ed pages

The Star's editorial board is weighing in Thursday on Maryland's decision to release Arthur Bremer, who shot Gov. George Wallace in 1972, and Attorney General Troy King's political manuevering:

Some will wonder if justice has been done (by Bremer's release). There are those who believe that had it not been Wallace that Bremer shot he would have been released long ago. And there are those who are concerned, as was Wallace son-in-law and former Supreme Court Justice Mark Kennedy, “that someone who has committed a crime like this is actually going to walk free.”
The important point to remember, however, is that Wallace forgave Bremer and also credited the shooting for changing his life spiritually for the better.
And, as Gov. Bob Riley noted, “If Gov. Wallace could forgive him (then) the rest of us can.”
But apparently Attorney General Troy King can’t.

On the op-ed page, syndicated columnist Thomas Friedman is taking on the Sunni tribes in Iraq:

Warning! This important shift by the Sunni tribes could come unglued if the Shiite-led Iraqi government doesn’t start providing government services — water, fuel and electricity — to the Sunni areas the tribes have retaken.
It could also come apart because, well, this is Iraq. As one U.S. general said to me of the Sunni tribes, “They still hate us. They just hate al-Qaida even more right now and they hate the Persians even more than them. But they could turn their guns back on us anytime.”

We also have our normal fare of letters to the editor and a collection of international-based political cartoons on the op-ed page.

Tuesday's top online reads

1. A Valley Cubs legend steps down: Larry Ginn resigns as Alexandria football coach by Nick Birdsong and Rip Donovan (New stories on the coach's resignation drew about four times the typical number of online readers.)

2. Dog-attack victim remains in critical condition in Birmingham bv Nick Cenegy

3. Alabama Power responds to PSC inquiry on tree issue by Matt Kasper

(My)Spacing out

If, like millions of people around the world, you're a user of the social networking site MySpace, you can now find The Star there.

We set up a MySpace profile for the paper in June, and have been biding our time since. Now we're finally making ourselves available to other users. Anyone who stops by our profile can find a list of stories we think they'd be interested in, with links to the paper's Web site. We'll also use the profile to send users to our blogs, including this one, and other content.

We looked around first at what other papers have done with MySapce, including The Albuquerque (N.M.) Tribune and The Richmond (Ind.) Palladium-Item, and a host of alternative weeklies. Like those papers, we're hoping to connect with younger people for whom the daily newspaper, or even the paper's Web site, isn't a daily habit.

Local news coming Wednesday

Here's what the metro staff is working on for Wednesday's Star:

• With 9,000-or-so college students pouring back into Jacksonville this week, education writer Steve Ivey takes a look at Jacksonville State University's standings in the recent U.S. News & World Report college rankings. JSU falls middle-of-the-pack among its peers in Alabama, but university officials, and many other critics, say the rankings don't mean all that much.

• Larry Ginn, longtime Alexandria High School football and basketball coach, announced his resignation yesterday, citing his recent diagnosis with skin cancer. Star sports writer Nick Birdsong is working to find out how the Valley Cubs are preparing to begin their first season in 20 years without Ginn; they face Oneonta at home on Friday night.

• Calhoun and Talladega counties are part of a pilot program to create electronic records and case management systems for Medicaid. Capitol correspondent Markeshia Ricks explores what the $3.7 million project will mean for patients.

We're also planning to carry coverage from our sister paper, The Daily Home, on Talladega's city election results. And as always, there's much more where that came from. Check us out online or in print for all the latest stories.

Coming Wednesday on the editorial/op-ed pages

We've got a double dose of Hurricane Katrina offerings on Wednesday.

The first is from The Star's editorial on the two-year anniversary of the horrible storm:

Paint the best picture you can, spin the facts however you will, but no one — even the Gulf Coast Business Council — is completely happy with where we are now or with what has been done to get us there.

The second is from op-ed columnist Hardy Jackson, who's weekly column dives deep into a different side of the anniversary:

But it ain’t just Louisiana that's still being affected.
For sheer lunacy, go down to Dauphin Island.
Back in 2000, well before Katrina, the western end of the island already was washing away. To stop it, local leaders took a combination of state and (mostly) federal money and built a $1 million sand berm. Dauphin’s own wall.
Two years later, tropical storm Isidore washed that away.
And what did they learn from this experience?
Apparently nothing.

The Star's editorial board is also weighing in on a new project that may begin next year or two at Anniston's incinerator:

Critics of the incineration project, which there are many, may have a field day with Anniston’s agreement to bring another mission to our facility. But Tim Garrett, the Anniston site manager, and others at the Anniston facility have given us no indication in years past that they would do anything but protect the safety and performance of our incinerator. The decision to test this machine in Anniston seems to be one made with diligence and common sense.

We're also giving a short opinion piece on the career of Alexandria High School football coach Larry Ginn, who is retiring after a long and successful career:

It’s unfortunate that health concerns have forced Ginn to step down as Alexandria’s football coach. He is a legend of Calhoun County sports, long ago joining a distinguished group of this county’s all-time football coaches that includes Alexandria’s Lou Scales, Oxford’s Bill Burgess and Anniston’s Bill Farrell.

We'll also have our normal selection of letters to the editor, syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts' column and follow-up coverage of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' resignation.

Monday's top online reads

1. Social Security move is canceled by Dan Whisenhunt

2. Oxford councilwoman wants to bring back city’s inactive beautification board by Todd South

Oddity: Trent Penny's excellent photo essay Santa Claus is Coming to Town generated a fair amount of online traffic Monday. Maybe somebody's got the Christmas spirit early this year.

Seeing Katrina

More on Katrina anniversary that was noted in previous post:
Just my opinion, but watching Spike Lee's documentary When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts has really served as a cruel reminder of our national tragedy two years back.

Hardy Jackson and Hurricane Katrina

Hardy Jackson, one of The Star's op-ed columnists and the owner of a deep appreciation of the U.S. Gulf Coast, has written a wonderful column on Wednesday's two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. We'll publish it on Wednesday's op-ed page.

As usual, his take is particularly Hardy-ish ... Certainly worth the read.

I'll try to post an excerpt later today when I get to the office.

The weekend's top online reads

FRIDAY
1. Teacher accused of selling marijuana: Saks educator, spouse arrested by Andy Johns

2. Board fires Felton: Frazier named interim superintendent by Steve Ivey

3. Four pit bulls attack Anniston woman by Andy Johns

SATURDAY
1. Employees charged with stealing money by Dan Whisenhunt

2. Woman hospitalized after pit bull attack by Andy Johns and Nick Cenegy

SUNDAY
1. A city's bones by Todd South

2. Rumble on Noble takes over downtown Anniston by Todd South

From Russia with java

Commentary Editor Phillip Tutor dropped by my office first thing this morning and made quite the observation.
"I know this is supposed to be the 'Red Star,' but why does the editor of the Anniston Star have Russian writing on his coffee cup?"
"Hmm, I don't know," said the editor. "I got it from a doughnut shop in Oxford."
We may never convince the conspiracy buffs, but the real story is fascinating:

Dazbog Coffee is the realization of the American dream by two immigrants of the former Soviet Union, Anatoly and Leonid Yuffa. The dream that is now Dazbog began on a bitter, cold night among the cobblestone streets of Leningrad. The Yuffa family fled Russia to embark on a new and better life of freedom, democracy and opportunity. Their journey is the legacy of Dazbog Coffee. By bringing the richness of the Russian heritage and traditions to their quest for roasting only the finest quality Arabica beans from coffee estates around the world. Anatoly and Leonid have found a way to honor the past and enjoy the present in a rich-tasting cup of coffee. This is the Dazbog way. A way that applauds free expression by bringing out the unique flavor of every bean. A way that celebrates life itself in each and every cup.

UPDATE: The Oxford shop with the cool coffee cups is LaMar's Donuts in Oxford.

Rumble on Noble coverage

Click over to The Star's new music blog, Off The Record, for photo coverage (from the second row, I might add) of last night's Rumble on Noble shows.

If you're a Star subscriber, you can click here for reporter Todd South's coverage of the entire Rumble event.

Coming Sunday in the Insight section

Don't forget ... The Star's Insight section is featuring a collection of drawings from refugee children in Darfur and Sudan. It's a compelling look at the effect of war on children. (I've blogged a little about these drawings in an earlier post.) We've moved some pages around so that the drawings can be in color, too.

Check it out Sunday.