Behind The Headlines

TV Book Is Changing

Starting May 18, the TV Book will have 16 pages, instead of 20.
The biggest change combines weekday listings for 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. to two facing pages and condenses movie listings by merging them with Night Owl listings, which cover highlights of movies and specials from 1 a.m. to 6 a.m.
Also, you can always access complete local TV listings on kentucky.com.
In the next few months, the Herald-Leader hopes to make available a monthly TV magazine to subscribers who request it for a nominal fee. The glossy magazine of more than 200 pages would include features, profiles, daily grids, local programming, puzzles and additional listings for sports, movies, specials and late-night programming.
Stay tuned for details.
In the meantime, if you want to discuss the current TV Book or the possibility of this new monthly TV magazine, please contact Tom Isaac at (859) 231-3475.

Linda Austin
Editor

Attacks on reporter Jerry Tipton unwarranted

I have received several calls and e-mails today from folks upset at Herald-Leader basketball writer Jerry Tipton.

First, let me say that Jerry Tipton is one of the most respected college basketball writers in America, with a demonstrated record of excellence in reporting and writing on the University of Kentucky basketball team. He has covered UK basketball since the 1981-82 season and is a member of the U. S. Basketball Writers Association Hall of Fame. He is knowledgeable, thorough and aggressive, as journalists should be, but also a fair reporter committed to telling all sides of a story.

In this instance, it appears that certain misinformation or misunderstandings are being spread about interviews Jerry conducted with the parents of two UK recruits. I have listened to the podcasts that appear to be sparking this misinformation. I have also reviewed Jerry’s interviews with those parents. I went through Jerry’s notes of his conversation with Robyn Curry, mother of recruit Vinny Zollo, question by question. I listened to the tape of Jerry’s approximately 30-minute interview with Howard Avery, father of recruit Michael Avery. In both cases, Jerry’s interviews with the parents were conducted in an appropriate and professional fashion.

It is important to understand that Jerry does not work for the University of Kentucky, nor is he a recruiter for the university. His job is to report the news, and sometimes that includes asking tough, serious -- but fair -- questions of newsmakers. That is what occurred in these cases.

In both cases, Jerry asked parents about the phenomenon of players committing as early as the eighth or ninth grade. Given the context of the recruiting frenzy that surrounds top prospects, this is an obvious question to pose to young recruits’ parents. With Mr. Avery, Jerry asked about the injuries UK suffered last season that some have linked to Coach Billy Gillispie’s tough practices. This is not a new issue, and it’s one that has been written about and commented on extensively in the press, the Internet and elsewhere. After Ms. Curry mentioned her concerns about the methods of her son’s high school coach, Jerry asked her about Coach Gillispie’s widely reported “tough love” style of coaching. Again, both are logical questions to ask of a recent recruit to the university.

In each case, Jerry also discussed with the parents – and his stories reflected – the reasons for their sons’ commitment to UK, what they liked about the university and the coach, and why they chose to commit so early. In other words, they discussed many issues about committing to UK – many of those would be characterized as positive issues; some were more critical. It’s important to cover both to produce a balanced report that puts news in the appropriate context.

Jerry did not ask about any rumors alluded to in the podcasts, nor did he comment on Lexington as a place to live. Unprompted, Ms. Curry mentioned that she had heard things about Coach Gillispie. As Jerry reported in his story, “When asked to elaborate, she said, ‘I didn’t hear directly. But I heard he [Gillispie] was arrogant. I saw none of that. He was very down to earth.’” I reviewed a later conversation that Jerry had with Ms. Curry, who confirmed that Jerry did not speak in a negative manner about Lexington. Jerry also called back Mr. Avery, who acknowledged that the injury question made him uncomfortable but that it was not Mr. Avery’s place to pass judgment on whether it was appropriate.

In both cases, Jerry’s questions to the parents stuck to what occurs on the basketball court, and what happens when young men are recruited to play high-profile sports. Again, these questions are entirely appropriate, as were the stories published after those interviews. Read the stories here and here.

We welcome reader comments and hope that you continue to bring any concerns, issues or compliments to our attention regarding our reporting on UK basketball or other subjects.

Linda Austin
Editor

Another horse is fatally injured; should you see it?

For the second time in a week, photos of a horse fatally injured in a sporting event have presented themselves for publication. And as before, again after much discussion, I have decided to share them with you.

On Saturday, Eight Belles collapsed with two broken ankles after finishing second in the Kentucky Derby and was euthanized on the spot.
The previous Saturday, two horses fell while jumping on the cross-country course at the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event and were put down.

While the initial response was more negative, readers who have contacted me in recent days have generally been supportive of the decision to publish the photos of the accidents at Rolex.

Horse lover Jack Martin of Lexington wrote: "The safety of the sport is a clear and present issue. Perhaps seeing the horror on the front page will somehow cause an outcry that will create a mandate to make it safer."

Comments such as Martin's influenced my choice to publish photos of the breakdown of Eight Belles. Her death follows the ultimately fatal injury of Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro in the Preakness almost two years ago. Early results from an ongoing survey for The Jockey Club found that about 2 horses die for every 1,000 starts on dirt tracks and about 1.5 die per 1,000 starts on synthetic tracks.

Some readers commented that they didn't need to see the images to know that equine sports can be dangerous. Action News 36 photographer Lauren Ashe wrote: "I feel, as a fellow photojournalist and horse enthusiast, that showing a picture of an animal fatally injuring itself is about the same as showing a picture of a bullet entering someone’s head. What exactly does printing this accomplish?"

Ashe's comment reminded me of Eddie Adams' photo of a South Vietnamese colonel executing a Communist Viet Cong prisoner. The picture, which shows the exact moment the bullet enters the prisoner's head, earned Adams a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 and is credited with helping turn American public opinion against the Vietnam War.

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, and images can move people more readily than words alone. So, again on the front page Tuesday, there are photos of horses injured at sporting events. More graphic photos of Eight Belles are inside the paper and in a slide show online; both carry a warning that the content may be upsetting.

As before, I invite your comments on the publication of these images.

Linda Austin
Editor

Reaction mixed to photos of eventing accident

My inbox and voicemail have been full with comments from readers on the publication of photos on the front page Tuesday of an accident at the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event. (Here is the story.)

On Saturday, the fall on the cross-country course at the Kentucky Horse Park left rider Laine Ashker in critical condition and resulted in the death of her horse, Frodo Baggins. The two photographs, at right, by freelance photographer Ron Curtis, showed the two just as they encountered the Flower Basket jump and then as they began to tumble over it.

Of the more than 70 responses to my editor's note with the photos requesting comments, more objected to than supported my decision to print them. Those who disagreed described them as in poor taste, too graphic, insensitive to the rider and her family, and insufficiently supportive of eventing and the horse industry.

Gwen Starstrom of Georgetown said such horrific photos should not be printed. "We can all well imagine what transpired from the descriptions in the newspaper. Shame on you," she wrote.

Ladd Bovey of Lexington agreed, writing: "Publishing a photo of horse and rider plunging to the death of the horse had all of the subtlety of showing a picture of someone's pet dog being run over."

On the other hand, Marsha Dance of Berry, Ky., wrote: "You were right in showing pictures of the horses falling at the Rolex cross-country....It is past time for everyone involved in horse competitions to wake up and quit making excuses and start thinking about safety first....They keep trying to make the jumps harder and harder all the time, with no thought to the fact that there are limits to what a horse can do. ...I think if all these riders, trainers and officials really, REALLY cared about horses as they should they would not push them into such dangers. I feel the cross-country event should be stopped or else taken back to what it was in the beginning."

Dan Weldy of Lexington, who witnessed the accident, wrote: "Laine Ashker lay motionless on the ground, and I believed at that moment that I just witnessed someone losing her life. Many of us at the scene were in tears. As Frodo Baggins struggled to get to his feet, I think we all knew that he would not survive this accident. This photo brings to light the incredible dangers inherent to the sport. Perhaps it will lead to changes that will make cross-country eventing safer for horse and rider and less frightening for spectators."

On Tuesday afternoon, two leaders of the eventing world called for a safety summit on the sport on June 7-8 in Lexington. You can read the letter from David O’Connor, president of the United States Equestrian Federation, and Kevin Baumgardner, president of the United States Eventing Association, here.

If you'd like to comment, please e-mail me or call 859-231-3221. Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate your taking the time to share your views.

Linda Austin, Editor

What happened to Doonesbury?

We've gotten some calls and emails this morning from readers who missed Doonesbury in today's comics.

Fear not, Doonesbury fans. The strip will be back.

Here's the scoop: Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau is taking off three months. Beginning March 31, we’re running Daddy’s Home in its place. It will run for five weeks. Beginning May 5, the comic strip Lio will run for the remaining six weeks of Trudeau’s vacation.

As for those who need a Doonesbury fix: In Sunday's Opinions and Ideas section, Doonesbury "flashbacks" will run for the duration of Trudeau's time off.

Sally Scherer and Peter Baniak

A bunny sacrificed in the name of 'Sally Forth'

I think it’s fair to say that the recent change on our daily comics pages has created more reader response than anything else the paper has written or reported in the past six months. We’ve received emails, snail mails, phone calls and we’ve even had a couple of readers who stopped by the newsroom to speak to someone in person. Many readers enjoyed some of the comics we’ve been running for years. Many readers are, shall I say, less than thrilled about some of the newer comics we’re running.

One reader, in a recent letter that was accompanied by an earless chocolate Easter bunny, said this:

"To whom it may concern:

Last year your newspaper modified the comics. Among the changes decided upon was the removal of “Sally Forth.” I fervently hope this decision was influenced by excessive ink fumes and NOT indicative of an absolute dearth of appreciation from intelligent humor among your editorial board.
I had contemplated protests, boycotts, and letters of the editor in response to your decision. In truth, lingering dissatisfaction with your choices provided about 10 percent of my decision not to subscribe to the Herald-Leader (poverty provided the other ninety percent). However, not even depriving your paper of my business was enough to assuage my injured feelings. I wanted to make a statement.
In case you have forgotten, one of the running gags in Sally Forth was the mother’s obsession with chocolate Easter rabbits. Each year she purchased a large chocolate bunny for her daughter, and each year she was unable to resist the temptation to bite off the ears before putting it in her daughter’s basket. Easter is close upon us now. I could not resist the obvious and appropriate response.
Therefore, in honor of a good comic, in honor of a good joke, and in honor of everyone you have deprived of a lot of laughs this past year, I send you the enclosed gift: A single chocolate rabbit …. A la Sally Forth.

Yours unsubscribed,
Robert Pratt"

Thanks for writing, Mr Pratt. It’s the best letter about the comics change that we’ve received.

Sally Scherer

New site for moms in the Bluegrass launches Thursday

We know how valuable every minute is to a mom. So, we launch a new Web site called BluegrassMoms on Thursday that will be worthy of your attention because it will help you through your week.

No one knows the mom experience like another mom.

No one knows how to mother better than other moms.

Use BluegrassMoms to connect with others like you, share advice or offer tips. Use each other to figure out what works and what doesn't in all the roles you wear.

And take time to laugh or relax while trading stories about your children or exchanging viewpoints on some of the major issues affecting your lives.

This site was built for users to control. Moms can discuss any topic in our discussion boards, share family photos and find fun activities. To help keep the site secure, registration is required.

Chief among the site’s offerings are blogs by other moms who work in and outside the home while they care for or about young and grown children.

Heather Chapman, who regularly writes about and for moms on her Mother Tongue blog on Kentucky.com, is joined by four other featured bloggers, all Kentuckians. Read and get to know Jan Ross, Jessica Frye, Tanya Tyler and Sarah Yadon. Pediatricians and mothers Rachel McGuffey, Kandi Waddles, Andrea Meadows and Kimberly Hudson will offer their unique perspectives and cover health topics of interest to moms.

You can also:
• Post pictures in private or public galleries, including in our Parents' Pride galleries highlighting children's achievements.
• Find links to a searchable calendar with entertainment and mom-related events.
• Use our resource directory to find links to recreation, child-care referrals and more.
• Go to our forums to trade information on the best sources of lessons or products.
• Stay on top of the latest parenting news.

Those most active in posting photos or comments on discussion boards and blogs each month will win a $50 gift card usable nearly anywhere.

Moms also can register to win more than five hours of spa services, including a European facial, full-body Swedish massage, manicure, pedicure, shampoo and blow-dry style, cosmetic application and catered lunch.

It's a rare mom who can get every thing done and every want answered, so keep your sanity by reaching out to other moms on BluegrassMoms.

UPDATE: As sometimes happen with technology, the Web address BluegrassMoms.com is not working for some users. We are addressing the problem. Meanwhile, use our links here, the large link off the Kentucky.com homepage or type mom.kentucky.com in the address bar. Soon you will be able to use mom.kentucky.com and BluegrassMoms.com to access the site.

Online team

New markets information in Business Monday

Please check out page 3 of Business Monday each week. We have added expanded trading information on 45 stocks for companies either based in Kentucky or with strong Kentucky ties. In the overall market, we list the stocks with the best one-year records: 25 each from large caps, mids caps and small caps. We also have the 25 best mutual funds for one-year return. And we offer tips on particular stocks and funds from researchers who use a different strategy each week to screen stocks and funds.

We're interested in your response to our new markets coverage on Mondays. To comment, please contact Jim Niemi or call 859-231-3216.

As always, you can get current markets information, including setting up your own portfolio to track, at www.kentucky.com/business.

Linda Austin
Editor

Dennis the Menace – and currency exchange rates – are back

We made some changes in the comics and the stock pages of the paper recently, and we heard from some of you that you aren’t happy with them. At last count, we had received 545 complaints about the changes in the comics. Among them, more people complained about the dropping of Dennis the Menace than anything else.

So, we have returned Dennis to the paper, but in the pages of the Classifieds section. You’ll find him there Monday through Saturday. The other comics we dropped remain online at www.kentucky.com/comics. We’ll be evaluating soon whether to continue to bring you those comics online, depending on what sort of viewership they are getting. We welcome your comments on the comics at comics@herald-leader.com or 859-231-1368.

The changes in the comics pages came after a summer of auditioning new comics and inviting you to vote by paper ballot or online for your favorites among the new comics and our existing comics. More than 4,000 votes were received, and we were guided by your responses in selecting which comics to keep and which ones to add.

On the stocks pages, we have restored currency exchange rates, Chicago futures, metals and petroleum prices. Prices for gold, silver, natural gas and crude oil are on the first page of business news in the line of arrows across the very top of that page.

We have also added back in several individual stocks or mutual funds that you requested.

We offer up-to-date stock prices online at www.kentucky.com/business, where you can also set up and track your portfolio. We will be offering additional data on stocks and mutual funds soon in the Business Monday section.

If you have comments on our financial coverage, please call Jim Niemi at 859-231-3216 or e-mail jniemi@herald-leader.com.

Thanks for letting us know what you think!

Linda Austin
Editor

We do not ban "Merry Christmas"

Contrary to what’s been discussed on local radio and repeated in e-mails to several of us at the Herald-Leader, we do not have a policy banning “Merry Christmas” from ads on our pages.

What we do have is an anti-discrimination policy, dictated by state and federal laws, that prevents us from accepting ads in the help wanted and real estate sections of the Classifieds section that specify that someone of only a particular religion, ethnic group, race or gender should respond to the ad. That’s why -- out of an abundance of caution -- we have not accepted ads for employment or real estate that say, “Merry Christmas.” A job applicant or apartment hunter might construe that as saying the job or apartment is for Christians only.

If you want to take out an ad in another part of the paper – not in help wanted or real estate – and wish someone “Merry Christmas,” “Happy Kwanzaa” or “Happy Hanukkah,” we’ll be happy to print it.

Linda Austin
Editor

More information on cattle, crops, petroleum, metals

In response to readers’ requests, we have added tables for cash petroleum and metals in the Herald-Leader, and have picked up pricing from the Chicago Board of Trade for cattle, feeder cattle, corn and soybeans. You’ll find the tables in the middle of the next page, just above the stocks and mutual funds listings.

We are also continuing to add individual stocks and mutual funds, as space permits.

If you want us to add a stock or fund, please phone business editor Jim Niemi at (859) 231-3216 or e-mail jniemi@herald-leader.com.

Jim Niemi

Dawn's story exemplifies heartbreaking reality of drug abuse

Mary Meehan and David Stephenson were aware of many things that were going on in Dawn Nicole Smith’s life as they followed her through Drug Court. But not everything.

Not the incest. Not the continuing drug use.

There were long periods of time when Dawn was unavailable to them. She never told them she was still using drugs and getting around the drug tests. Nor did they know that her stepfather was paying her – sometimes with money, sometimes with drugs – for sex. Not until she reported it to police.

Drug court case workers didn’t know either.

If anything, Dawn’s story shows how even someone who is given every opportunity and who says she wants to get off drugs may still fail.

If someone were to sail through drug court, fulfilling all the requirements without complications, they could be out within 18 months. David and Mary were looking in on Dawn’s life for more than 3 1/2 years – through the birth of two children, allegations of abuse, and incest.

It was not easy for them to watch her self-destruct. They worried about her. They worried about her children. But their job was simply to tell her story.

Dawn never asked for anything from them.

Now, Dawn has lost her children, her home, virtually everything that has meaning in her life. Her story shows the absolutely unyielding nature of the drug problem our society faces. This story may make you feel that you want to turn away -- or throw up your hands at the seeming hopelessness of ever making headway on the problem.

As you read it, Dawn’s story may seem extraordinary in its heartbreaking reality.

Sadly, it is not.

What's new on our comics pages?

If you turn to today’s comics pages, you’ll notice some changes.

Some comics are missing. Some new ones are there instead. And all the comics on the page are bigger!

It’s our new comics lineup, the result of the first complete reassessment and revamping of the comics in nearly a decade.

We have dropped 10 comics, including one, The Quigmans, that was only in Friday’s paper.

The rest that are gone are:

Apartment 3-G
Cathy
Dennis the Menace
Marmaduke
Mary Worth
Pardon My Planet
Sally Forth
Slylock Fox
Ziggy

With reader input, we have added nine comics:

Baby Blues
Between Friends
Cul de Sac
F Minus
Mother Goose & Grimm
Mutts
Non Sequitur
Red and Rover
Speed Bump

Last spring, a few comics lovers in the newsroom told Editor Linda Austin that the comics pages had become stagnant. She agreed, and she told them to form a committee and do something about it.

The committee was just getting started when both Johnny Hart and Brant Parker died within days of each other in April. The committee decided that that was an appropriate time to discontinue B.C. and Wizard of Id. Hart created B.C., and he was the writer and Parker was the illustrator of Wizard of Id.

So before the complete comics survey, the committee ran a reader mini-survey to choose successors to those two strips. Get Fuzzy was the clear winner, but there was no clear second-place strip, so we decided to leave that space open to audition new strips as part of our larger survey.

The committee created a ballot so readers could vote online or by mail. Voters were asked to list as many as five comics they loved and five that they loathed, and to pick no more than two potential replacement strips from the 24 we auditioned over the summer.

About 4,000 readers responded.

The survey was unscientific, and we knew that many people would vote only once, while others would vote multiple times. Still, the survey gave us a pretty good idea which comics were the most popular.

Most voters simply voted, but others included heartfelt letters or copies of their own favorite comics, or they wrote short notes on the ballot itself. We read them all. And thank you for sending samples of other comics to consider.

The most common theme of those letters and notes was that the comics were too small. Over the years, as the pages of the Herald-Leader and other newspapers have gotten smaller, so have the comics.

Well, the committee decided to change that. The strips are roughly 10 percent larger than they were last week. We think you’ll notice the difference.

As for the survey itself, it probably will surprise no one that the most popular comic was For Better or for Worse. Nearly 56 percent of voters listed it among the comics they loved. In our last full comics survey, in 1998, 65 percent of voters listed For Better or For Worse among their favorites.

This time, Zits was second, with 52 percent, followed by Pickles, Blondie and Dilbert. The other top vote-getters were Beetle Bailey, Doonesbury, Family Circus and Garfield.

Here are some answers to other questions you might have about the comics changes:

Question: What have you done to my comics?

Answer: The Herald-Leader has assessed and revamped the comics pages for the first time in nearly a decade.

We asked readers to list the comics they loved most and hated most, and we used the responses as a starting point.

We decided to drop some of the comics that were the least popular, some that received relatively few votes in either the “love” or the “hate” category, and a couple that we decided were no longer carrying their weight.

We also redesigned the comics pages, and we were able to make all the strips — and the crossword puzzle — roughly 10 percent bigger.

Q: Why are you dumping my favorite comic?

A: The first eternal truth of the comics page is that any change in the lineup is going to anger readers, and the number of angry readers is proportional to the number of comics changes. Yet, our comics committee felt strongly that our lineup needed freshening.

Q: How did you choose the new comics?

A: Our committee sorted through samples of dozens of comics, including some that have been around for a decade or more and a few that are brand-new. We narrowed the list to 24, and we began auditions during the summer, running each one for at least two weeks at a time on the comics pages. Samples also were available online.

Once the poll was completed, we used the results as a guide to help us choose new comics — a total of nine.

The second eternal truth of the comics page is the rule of familiarity: In a comics poll, the leading vote-getters will be the well-established comics — partly because they’re consistently good, partly because they’re familiar to most readers. In our poll, Non Sequitur and Mother Goose & Grimm received by far the most votes in the audition. Both of them have run for years in our Sunday comics.

So we added those two strips daily and three other leading vote-getters — Baby Blues, Between Friends, Mutts — but we also took note of some newer strips that polled well considering that most people had never seen them. They are Red and Rover, Cul de Sac, F Minus and Speed Bump.

Q: How many people voted?

A: We received 4,289 ballots. Given that some people voted more than once, we estimate that 4,000 people voted.

Q: Will the Sunday comics change?

A: Yes. Starting Sunday, the comics will largely reflect the new daily comics. Fox Trot, which became a Sunday-only comic in January, has been dropped. Opus, another Sunday-only strip, will remain.

Q: Why won’t you bring back B.C. and/or The Wizard of Id?

A: Our comics ballot included write-in space for readers to vote for a favored comic that wasn’t on our list of 24 candidates. The committee planned to consider any write-in comic that had a groundswell of support.

That groundswell never happened. The leading write-in candidates, B.C. and Peanuts, received barely more than 100 votes, and The Wizard of Id didn’t even receive that many.

Q: How long will this new comics lineup last?

A: We don’t know. If an originating cartoonist dies or retires, we are likely to discontinue that comic. Also, we will pay attention to reader feedback and our instincts in any decision to drop or add a comic strip.

Q: Where can I find the comics you dropped?

A: You can find most of the dropped comics on www.kentucky.com/comics for at least the next month.

Q: Whom can I talk to about the changes?

A: You can Angela Allen at (859) 231-3214, or leave a message at (859) 231-1368 or e-mail comics@herald-leader.com.

How the drug court story was reported

Starting today, we are bringing you a story so disturbing that it sometimes will be hard to read. It was even harder to report.

For "A New Dawn? A Kentucky mother's struggle through drug court," two Herald-Leader journalists spent 3½ years following Dawn Nicole Smith, whose addiction to prescription painkillers landed her in Fayette County Drug Court.

Sobriety requires an individual to act. While getting to the point of change isn't pretty, the most shocking parts of Dawn's life are routinely echoed in Kentucky's drug courts, jails and prisons - and, briefly, in the Herald-Leader and other news media. Most often, they are reported in the sterile context of a few paragraphs about an arrest or, sometimes, a death. That language dulls the true horror of an addict's life and the effect addiction has on family members. This series goes much deeper, chronicling the despair of a struggling soul.

So how did we get here?

In January 2003, photographer David Stephenson took pictures at one of Fayette County Drug Court's regular graduation ceremonies. At the ceremony, pictures of participants were flashed on a large screen. The "before" pictures were poorly lit, police mug shots, most of dead-eyed people with despair on their faces. The "after" photos were, mostly, a collection of smiling faces so changed it was sometimes hard to recognize them. Intrigued by the transformations, Stephenson wanted to show you how someone gets from one place in life to the other.

In fall 2003, he and reporter Mary Meehan began talking with Fayette County Drug Court officials and Judge Mary Noble, its founder, explaining their goal and providing samples of their work. After about six months, the Administrative Office of the Courts, which oversees Kentucky's drug courts, gave its approval for a reporting project. Meehan and Stephenson were to be given unlimited access to one willing drug court participant, including his or her court appearances and records, which usually are closed to the public. No other drug court participants could be photographed or identified without their permission. (Most declined.)

As caseworkers interviewed potential participants for drug court, they also asked whether they would like to be the focus of the Herald-Leader story. Several agreed. Dawn Nicole Smith, 21, was ultimately chosen because she had three children, which the journalists hoped might encourage her to work toward recovery.

The reporter and photographer made it clear to Dawn and the court that they were not there to enforce drug court rules, but just to observe her life. No agreements were made to keep anything off limits, or "off the record."  The paper did agree not to publish anything until Dawn completed drug court. As it turns out, Dawn had a near record-setting tenure in the program, which usually takes about a year and a half.

The journalists spent hundreds of hours with Dawn - both in and out of court. Meehan reviewed hundreds of court documents, interviewed dozens of people and researched dozens of reports on drug court, addiction and substance abuse. Stephenson shot 8,093 photos and recorded more than 10 hours of audio.

In the newspaper, the six-day series - "A New Dawn? A Kentucky mother's struggle through drug court" -- requires 18 inside pages. Online, the six multimedia presentations total 15 minutes and include 130 photos, plus audio from Dawn and original music by a local hip-hop group, the CunninLynguists.

Dawn told the journalists from the beginning that she wanted to share her story if it might help others. Her life has been open to the reporter and photographer since March 2004. All of the highs and lows would eventually be exposed.  Even when some members of her family pressured Dawn to withdraw from the story, she stuck with it. In the beginning, the journalists had no idea of the family dynamics that would complicate Dawn's journey.

And while many sad and disturbing things ultimately took place, the two never saw Dawn break the law - except for not restraining her children in car seats. Dawn's extended family was under review by drug court staff, including home visits, most of the time. State social workers were called to investigate the family several times independently but found no reason to take action. Meehan and Stephenson had frequent discussions between themselves and with editors about what to do if they witnessed something that needed to be reported to authorities. If Dawn's children had appeared to be at risk, they would have been bound, like all citizens, to report it to the state. And they wouldn't have hesitated to do so.

Casual readers might dismiss Dawn as being apart from the mainstream. But she is somebody's daughter. Somebody's mother. Somebody's wife. And, in a state with educational challenges and a high incidence of substance abuse, she's closer to mainstream than some readers might like to admit.

That fact was reinforced over the years as the journalists told others what they were working on. Many had loved ones who had been taken by drugs down a dark road much like Dawn's. Some never came back.

Sharon Walsh
Enterprise Editor

Coming next Sunday: A Kentucky mother's struggle through drug court

Coming Sunday, Oct. 14, the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com will bring you a special report: "A New Dawn? A Kentucky mother's struggle through drug court." Four years in the making, it was a tough story to report, and it will be a disturbing story to read and view.

At 21, Dawn Nicole Smith has three kids she adores, a husband who's leaving her and a gut-wrenching addiction to painkillers. In March 2004, she was sentenced to treatment - not time - for forging prescriptions and ordered to Fayette County Drug Court. Since then, with her and the court's permission, Herald-Leader reporter Mary Meehan and photographer David Stephenson have followed her struggle to stay clean.

So, why are we telling you about Dawn?

Newspapers frequently write about addiction. It is evident in every crime log, every brief about a DUI and nearly every family story with a tragic ending. But rarely do they reveal such an intimate portrait.
Almost everyone knows someone touched by substance abuse. As the stories report, in Kentucky alone, 375,000 need treatment. Because of stagnant funding, only 1 in 12 will get help.

The stories also point out that substance abuse is a leading cause of death. It is a factor in at least half of the domestic violence, child abuse and property crimes committed. Research has found that the most promising - if imperfect - counter to these crime statistics is drug court. Kentucky has invested $56 million in drug courts, which will serve every Kentucky county by year-end.

The journalists spent hundreds of hours with Dawn - both in and out of court. Meehan reviewed hundreds of court documents, interviewed dozens of people and researched dozens of reports on drug court, addiction and substance abuse. Stephenson shot 8,093 photos and recorded more than 10 hours of audio.

The two became so familiar to Dawn and her family that even some of Dawn's most intimate family moments were witnessed and recorded. Dawn, despite pressure from her family, insisted she wanted her story told if it might help someone else.

The result is an unvarnished look at just how intractable a problem addiction is. In Fayette County, only two out of five addicts sentenced to drug court manage to stay clean. It illustrates the special challenges faced by mothers who are addicts and the effect their addiction has on families.

In the newspaper, the six-part series requires 18 inside pages. Online, the six multimedia presentations total 15 minutes and include 130 photos, plus audio from Dawn and original music by a local hip-hop group, the CunninLynguists.

I invite you to check out the series in the paper Oct. 14-15, 17, 19-21 and online at Kentucky.com. If you want to do something to help those in Kentucky imprisoned by the demons of addiction, I urge you to stay tuned until the last chapter in the series, on Oct. 21. We will have a list of ways that you, your church or community group can get involved.

We hope that while it's hard to look at Dawn's story, it will also be hard to look away.

Linda Austin
Editor