Behind The Headlines

Making public information more available to the public

Several readers have asked recently about the databases we post on kentucky.com. These include salary databases for local and state public agencies and property records in Fayette County. Similar questions are likely to arise on Sunday, when we’ll post Jessamine County property records.

Why do we post this data?  First of all, it is public information. Any citizen can request data on public spending -- including public employees’ salaries -- by filing a request under Kentucky’s open records law.  Real estate data is available for inspection at county courthouses and, increasingly on county property valuation administrators’ Web sites.

One of the fundamental roles of newspapers historically has been to tell readers how elected officials spend money entrusted to them by the public. Journalists have for years used this public information to write stories about government budgets and spending -- and to report on officials who misuse tax money. We have used real estate data to report on market trends and to make sure property is fairly assessed for tax purposes.

Making this data available online in searchable databases increases public access to this public information. We think that’s a good thing.

Linda J. Johnson
Computer Assisted Reporting Coordinator

The body part in the reporter's car

It was one of the strangest phone calls I’ve taken as metro editor at the Herald-Leader — and I’ve taken plenty of odd phone calls over the years. The woman on the line was despondent because she said the county coroner had left her friend’s scalp in wooded area along Newtown Pike. The man had died there, apparently under accidental circumstances, and the coroner had removed the rest of the body several days earlier. But the woman said a piece of her friend’s scalp, including hair, had been left behind. Further, she said she couldn’t get the coroner’s office to come out and get it.

So I asked police reporter Steve Lannen to find out what was going on.

He made some calls, then left to meet the woman, Sherry Nimbach. When Steve called me back a few hours later, things got a little stranger. “I have a scalp in my car,” Steve told me. Steve was on his way to the coroner’s office to deliver the body part, which Nimbach had removed from the roadside a few days before, wrapped in a plastic bag and placed in her freezer. Steve had advised her to take the hair to the coroner, but she was too distraught to do so, and begged him to take the bag to the coroner’s office. Steve agreed to do so, and Coroner Gary Ginn later confirmed that the material was a chunk of the victim’s hair. Ginn also took responsibility for leaving the material behind in the ditch. (Read Steve's story, "Coroner gets dead man's hair.")

And thus a new chapter was added to the lore of the Herald-Leader newsroom — and a rather interesting ethical discussion was borne. The ethical conundrum was two-fold: Should a reporter accept proffered body parts? And, if a reporter does accept said body parts, has he become so tied up in the story that he can no longer objectively write it?

Opinions in the newsroom differed on these points, as is often the case in journalism. Here are a few of the viewpoints from those involved in the story:

Steve Lannen, the reporter:
Steve says that he first advised Sherry Nimbach to turn the material over to the coroner. “But for whatever reason – fear, grief, distrust of authorities or all three – Sherry Nimbach balked at taking a piece of her friend’s hair and scalp to the coroner’s office," Steve says. “She begged me to do it. I rolled my eyes and balked myself and again encouraged her to make the delivery. But her protests increased and I started feeling bad for her dead friend, Paul. If I were in the same situation, I imagine I’d like someone to reunite my remains. And, I guess I’m a sucker for tears.

“In my gut, I suppose I knew I was crossing some journalism ethics line, but I couldn’t think of anything better... I was on the front porch with a mourning woman, who I didn’t know, whose moods swung widely the past few hours I had been with her. Oh, and she had produced a scalp from her freezer. Were we just going to stand there with the trash bag indefinitely?

“Just do the right thing, I thought. ‘Oh, OK. I’ll do it for Paul,’ I said. ‘Oh, Thank you. You don’t know what a good thing you’re doing,’ she said.”

Assistant metro editor Dori Hjalmarson, who ultimately edited Steve’s story:
“Normally the ethical muses of journalism frown on reporters becoming characters in the news they are writing about. Herald-Leader reporters and editors go to great lengths to balance and separate our jobs and our personal lives. It’s our duty to tell stories through others’ voices, to present other points of view – not our own.

“So what should Steve have done when presented with human remains from a woman’s freezer?

“Refuse to take them? It’s the job of all citizens – even journalists – to report things like human body parts to police. Call police on the spot? That risks breaking the trust of a woman who confided in us – also journalistically unethical. Besides, that still makes Steve a character in the story. Comply and take the remains to the coroner? That’s what Steve did.

“Then how do we present the story to readers? We must write it for at least two reasons. It’s newsworthy: The county coroner, a publicly elected official, acknowledged that he’d made a mistake in leaving any remains behind. It’s a compelling story: You can imagine what a woman went through, keeping part of her friend in a freezer and believing no one would take her seriously.

“But Steve is part of the story now. Should he write the story in first person? No, he doesn’t have first-hand knowledge of most of the story – only a small part of it. Should he remove himself completely from the story? No, that would be dishonest. Should he refer to himself in the third person – ‘the reporter’? That, in my opinion, leaves open the question of whether he’s the writer or the actor – or both. It’s a common journalistic tool when we want to avoid ‘being part of the story,’ but it’s one I don’t really like because I think it can be misunderstood. Plus, it’s corny to refer to oneself in the third person.

“I was not the editor dealing with the reporter throughout the ordeal... I did read and edit the story after Steve had written it six hours later, and I wrestled with how to present Steve’s side of the story. I have come to this conclusion:

“I believe a different reporter should have taken over the reporting once the first reporter became part of the action. I believe a fair and objective observer is needed to tell a news story the right way, and anyone who is a character in the story should not be presented as objective. But it took a bit of hindsight for me to come to that conclusion, and other editors, including my boss, disagree with me. When we’re moving as fast as we do, and when a reporter asks you what he should do with the human remains in his car, things aren’t always neat and clean.”

Here’s my take:
As the editor who took the initial call and worked with Steve as he reported, I think he did the right thing. The remains belonged with the coroner, and Steve took them there straight-away. He didn’t have a whole lot of time to make a decision, and he was dealing with someone who was obviously distraught at the way her friend’s remains had been handled. The remains belonged at the coroner’s office, and Steve made sure they got there. His other choice would have been to call the police or the coroner, but that doesn’t affect his involvement in the story any less, and the outcome is the same.

Second, I don’t think it was necessary for someone else to write the story. Steve had interviewed all of the major players, including Sherry Nimbach and Gary Ginn. He had seen the spot where the remains were found, and he had seen the remains in the bag with his own eyes. He had the most information, and the best information, to write a detailed and clear story. He played a minimal role in the story, essentially acting as a delivery person. His involvement didn’t change the story line significantly, other than to ensure that the remains made it to where they belonged. Also, I don’t think his minimal role compromised his objectivity (I’m not sure someone can be pro or anti when body parts are concerned). And there was a practical issue: By the time Steve got back to the newsroom, it was Friday evening, and deadline was approaching. It would have been impractical for another reporter to retrace the threads of the story to produce as thorough an account as Steve could produce.

So Steve wrote the story. In retrospect, I think we should have done one thing differently: We should have run a sidebar with the story explaining the odd circumstances in more detail, and Steve’s role in the story. Unfortunately, that idea didn’t occur to me until the next morning.

So, consider this blog entry the sidebar that could have have run with the article. Sometimes, an unusual story merits a bit more explanation.

Peter Baniak
metro editor

Finding some peace at the crash site

As we stood in that quiet farm field — a place that now looks like so many other postcards of Bluegrass horse country — we kept reminding each other of the trauma that had happened there. “Can you believe that this is the spot where so many people died?” we kept saying.

Of course, we hadn’t forgotten. Standing where we were standing, it was impossible to forget. But it just seemed like we needed to say something.

On Wednesday, Herald-Leader chief photographer Charles Bertram, visuals editor Ron Garrison and I drove out to the farm field where Comair Flight 5191 crashed on a Sunday morning almost a year ago. Charles, who was one of the first photographers to shoot pictures at the scene days after the crash, was returning (with the farm owner's permission) to take photos of how the field had changed.

Ron and I had not been to the scene before, but — after a year of telling stories in words and visuals about the crash and its devastating toll — we both felt compelled to go.

I’m not sure what I was expecting from a place that spawned such terror and pain, a place where 49 people drew their last breath.

What I found was a peaceful hillside, the kind of rolling country and tree stands that define this region. As with all such things, nature has mostly retaken the place. Grass and weeds have covered the scars and scorch marks where the plane made impact. New foliage has already sprung from the wounds that the plane inflicted on trees. Two foals and a mare romped and played in paddocks not far from where the plane’s engines and fuselage came to rest.

These were all reassuring moments, spontaneous and life-affirming.

It would have been easy to mistake this for any other farm field. But every few minutes, a jet engine would rev as a plane prepared to take off on the Blue Grass Airport runway just a few hundred yards away. At one point, I admit, I held my breath as a plane turned toward the spot where we stood at the end of Runway 26, the airport’s short runway and the one mistakenly taken by the Comair plane. I exhaled when it completed the turn onto the main runway and took off flawlessly.

The planes aren’t the only reminder of what happened here.

A chunk of jagged metal remains deeply embedded in a gouge where the Comair plane’s wing first connected with a tree after speeding off the end of the runway. A bit of dark blue paint was pressed into another gouge on the tree next to it. Burns are still visible on the bark of the tree where the plane’s tail section came to rest. A few yellow flags — left from surveys of the crash scene — could be found in the underbrush. (The photo above, taken by Charles on Wednesday, looks back across the field. The trees in the center were the first clipped by the plane. Several other nearby trees that were leveled by the plane have been removed.)

But that was it.

The rest was crickets and weeds, horses and birds, the occasional morning glory poking out above the mowed grass. A typical Kentucky hillside on a sweltering August day.

It’s a place that many families of the Comair passengers will visit on Monday after private memorial services marking the one-year anniversary of the crash. It’s a place where I hope they can find some measure of peace after an impossibly difficult year.

***

This weekend, the Herald-Leader and other media will bring you words and pictures intended to honor the lives of the people who died on Comair 5191. For our part, we decided that after hundreds of stories on the subject, we had few new words to add. So we offered a chance for the families of the Comair passengers and crew a chance to express their feelings and thoughts in their own words.

With help from Hospice of the Bluegrass, we sent a letter to the families, offering them a chance (if they wanted one) to write their own memorials of those they lost. The memorials they submitted started appearing Wednesday on Kentucky.com. We’ll run a few each day on Kentucky.com through this weekend, then collect all the memorials together in a special tribute on Sunday (when the public memorial service will be held at Southland Christian Church). More of Charles' photos from the crash scene will also appear in Sunday's paper.

After a year of editing stories about the toll of this tragedy and the reasons behind it, I found myself deeply affected by the tributes written by the families. Many remembered their loved ones in poetry, or in very personal letters laced with happy memories and indescribable grief. Others thanked the community for its support, or wrote of the pain of the last year.
I thank the families for their continued candor and eloquence, and their willingness to share such beautiful and raw emotions with us and our readers at such a difficult time.

Peter Baniak
metro editor

Youth sports coverage makes almost everyone unhappy

There are many successful youth sports teams in central Kentucky (softball, baseball, AAU basketball, etc.), and each one is proud of its accomplishments. Fortunately, our area is filled with quality coaches and young athletes. Each time a team wins a city tournament, a city league regular season title, a traveling tournament or another of the many events held each summer, it provides that team with many memories.

The Herald-Leader generally shies away from covering youth sports. Typically, we begin covering teams and athletes at the prep level. There are many reasons for this. It is a natural starting point. Also, it is my feeling that we are a society that has blown sports out of proportion, and part of our job should be to help keep that in perspective and not go overboard with adulation of sports accomplishments at a young age.

Our Communities section has always been open to acknowledging local team accomplishments. But in Sports, we rarely cover youth basketball, football and soccer. We have made an exception for the 12-year-old Little League Baseball World Series. Traditionally, Little League recognizes the 12-year-old group as the premier age.

In past years, we have covered Lexington teams in the Cal Ripken World Series if the team reached the United States title game. If the team won that and reached the world championship game the next day, we covered that game. That required having a reporter on call to fly to Aberdeen, Md., the morning of the game.

For the first time this year, the Cal Ripken organization had two World Series sites. Upon checking into it, we learned that the organization was promoting its Aberdeen tournament as the premier event. It was the televised tournament and also the one that maintained a world title.

Cal Ripken also held another World Series tournament in Arkansas. It happened that different Lexington leagues sent a team to each one. We made the decision that if a Lexington team advanced deep into the tournament, we would cover the Aberdeen event because it was the one the Cal Ripken organization itself recognized as its premier event.

During both tournaments, we collected results from calls, Web sites and other papers to write roundups on how the local teams were doing. We knew that if the Southeastern team reached the Aberdeen finals, we were prepared to send a reporter. We found out Thursday night that the team had won and reporter Jen Smith took a plane out of Lexington on Friday morning to staff a 5:30 p.m. game.

Meanwhile, South Lexington won the tournament in Arkansas. The tournament was a national one without a world game. We gathered information from several sources and wrote a story that appeared at the top of the third page of the Sports section.

As it turned out, we covered only one game in Aberdeen. The Southeastern team lost in the U.S. title game. Because Cal Ripken had made this its premier event, and because we flew someone to Aberdeen, we played the story on the Sports front. Of course, because of deadlines, we had to decide where to play the story before the game was over.

Our decisions did not sit well with everyone. Some people with Southeastern were upset we only staffed the one game they lost. Those at South Lexington felt slighted because we staffed the Southeastern game. Some fans at another local league of another age, which also won a national event, accused us of favoring south Lexington teams. Then, of course, there were several local girls’ softball teams that played in a World Series.... 

It is great that our local teams are so successful. It certainly makes for an interesting summer.

Gene Abell
Sports Editor

Traveling the world to examine the World Equestrian Games

The Herald-Leader doesn’t often have a chance to send reporters on assignment to Europe. But when the city of Lexington was named host city of the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games, we knew we needed to get a reporter overseas to see how previous host cities had carried out the Games. We wanted to see what lessons Lexington could learn from places like Aachen, Germany, and Jerez, Spain — the last two World Games sites — and what challenges might lay ahead for the Bluegrass in the years before the Games arrive.

What does Lexington need to do to spruce up its downtown, and to lure visitors there? What kinds of facilities will it take to pull off such a massive event at the Horse Park? Can the airport, transit system and roads in Lexington handle the expected boom in visitors for the two-week Games? While we could do some reporting on these subjects over the phone from Kentucky, we knew we needed to get someone to Europe to look for answers on the ground.

Earlier this year, veteran Herald-Leader reporter Linda Blackford put together an application for a World Affairs Journalism Fellowship that we hoped would allow her to do just that. Linda’s application was accepted, and her findings from Europe will begin appearing Saturday in Kentucky.com and Sunday in the Herald-Leader. The series, "Ready for the World?", with wonderful photos and multimedia from photographer David Stephenson, will run over three days. The first will focus on Aachen, site of the 2006 Games. The second day looks at Jerez, which hosted the Games in 2002. The third day will focus the camera back on Lexington, and detail the challenges faced by the city, as seen through the lens of previous Games. Linda spent almost two weeks in Europe (half in Germany, half in Spain) reporting for the series; David was there for a week. Already, you can see a sneak peak video of what Linda and David (pictured above in Jerez) found on Kentucky.com.

The World Affairs Journalism Fellowships program is administered by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ). The fellowships are funded by a grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation in Oklahoma City. As the fellowships’ Web site states, the fellowships are “intended for experienced journalists and editors from America’s community-based daily newspapers. The goal is to give them an opportunity to establish the connections between local-regional issues and what is happening abroad. Fellows will conduct overseas research and then submit articles to their local papers in an effort to ‘internationalize’ America’s local press. The fellowships are founded on the belief that local news is not limited to one’s immediate community and that enterprising reporters and editors can find good international stories in their own backyards.” Up to 12 fellows are selected in the United States each year.

We’re thrilled that Linda won this fellowship, and that it gave the Herald-Leader an opportunity to dig more deeply into the impact of the World Equestrian Games. With the horse industry, Toyota and the University of Kentucky, Lexington has always had a strong network of international links. But the World Games will put the city in the international spotlight like never before. Rarely have we had such a potentially big internationally story in our own backyard.

As Linda observed when she returned from Europe: “The World Equestrian Games were developed in Europe; in terms of sport and civics, they are uniquely suited to European communities. That doesn’t mean Lexington can’t make them a huge success, it just means we will have to carefully and thoughtfully think about every aspect, from the footing for the horses, to having enough trees in downtown Lexington, to grasping the momentum for the long-term. Kentucky has a long history of passing up good opportunities; we shouldn’t let this one go.”

One other thing worth noting: While their work on this series will appear prominently on Kentucky.com for the next several days, it will also live on at the Herald-Leader's and Kentucky.com’s new page dedicated to the World Equestrian Games. This site will only continue to grow with stories and information between now and 2010. Already, you can find previous stories about the World Games, as well as the start of what will become a list of 2010 fascinating things about Kentucky that will inform visitors who come here for the Games. We’ve invited readers to submit their own ideas of items that should be on the list, which has been put togther by staff writer Andy Mead. Email us your ideas by clicking here. And keep an eye on the site as 2010 approaches.

Peter Baniak
metro editor

Bringing you the story from Fancy Farm

While it may not be quite as popular as basketball or horse racing, politics is one of the great spectator sports of Kentucky. And nowhere is it more exciting than at the annual picnic on the grounds of St. Jerome Catholic church in the tiny Graves County town of Fancy Farm.

The rhetoric was as spicy as the barbecue at the 127th annual Fancy Farm picnic on Aug. 4. More than 10,000 people from across Kentucky came to the far west end of the state to eat literally tons of barbecued pork and mutton, fried chicken, fresh vegetables and homemade pies.  After enjoying the buffet in the mercifully air-conditioned Knights of Columbus hall, many of them then crowded into and around an outdoor pavilion to cheer and jeer the speeches of candidates for statewide office.  Candidates' performances at Fancy Farm have been known to make or break their campaigns.

This year's picnic was special because of the hot governor’s race. The Herald-Leader's coverage was special, too, in part because of new online tools that allowed us to bring you more of the sights, sounds and news from the event.

The coverage was the work of Frankfort bureau chief John Stamper, political writer Ryan Alessi, Frankfort bureau veteran Jack Brammer, chief photographer Charles Bertram and  intern Megan Boehnke.  Editor Linda Austin and I also attended.

Our PolWatchers political blog, which has had more than 419,000 readers since it was launched last September, has become the best news source for Kentucky political junkies. It was the perfect vehicle for delivering rapid news updates and audio of the speeches on Fancy Farm weekend. 

The reporters began posting stories and audio Friday night, after Democrats and Republicans gathered for party events in Gilbertsville and Aurora. They continued the next morning after party breakfasts at two schools in Mayfield.

When the Fancy Farm picnic was over late Saturday afternoon, the staff set up shop in two motel rooms in Mayfield to post news stories and audio of the major candidates’ speeches to PolWatchers.  (That’s Stamper, left, and Brammer in the top photo, and Alessi in the other.) As Bertram was sending his photos to Lexington to be posted online and prepared for print, the reporters updated and retooled their stories for the next day’s paper.

As with basketball and horse racing, there’s no better source for Kentucky political news than the Herald-Leader.  So watch the newspaper each day – and PolWatchers constantly – for the latest developments.

Tom Eblen
Managing Editor

Former Herald-Leader reporter at the scene of bridge collapse in Minneapolis

Former Herald-Leader reporter Laura Yuen, who covered Georgetown and Lexington city hall a few years back, now lives in the Twin Cities area, where she reports for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Laura also lives about 1.5 miles from the scene of the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Laura and her fiance, Jesse Miller, sped to the scene after they heard about the disaster. Jesse got there by scooter, Laura rode her bike. They met at a pedestrian bridge near the scene of the collapse.

Laura and the rest of the staff at the Pioneer Press have obviously been extremely busy in the last few days, but she took a few moments this morning to check in with her former colleagues at the Herald-Leader.

Here are some of Laura's thoughts on what she saw:

"We joined thousands of people who gathered there to observe the catastrophe. The bridge is close to the University of Minnesota, and the Metrodome, as well as the largest Somali concentration in the state, so you can imagine the turnout. There were Twins fans and cyclists and neo-hippies and immigrants and biker dudes and transients and college students. It was kind of like an apartment fire alarm, when all your neighbors go out in their pajamas, and you think, 'Wow, I never realized all the different kinds of folks who live in this building.' I saw my neighborhood in a new light that night.

"It makes me sick to think of what the victims' final moments must have been like. If you've seen the video, the bridge is there one second and literally gone the next. Absolutely no time for people to adjust. I talked to two guys who got to the scene right after the bridge collapsed, and they saw motorists getting out of their cars, dazed and bloodied and sobbing, shocked by the enormity of what they just escaped.

"I can't tell you how many times we've crossed that bridge. I take it to go to the mall, the pet store, the Home Depot, basically for all my shopping needs. We're so lucky to be alive."

Here and below are some of the photos Laura sent along from the scene. All of the photos were taken by Jesse Miller.

Laura's colleagues and friends at the Herald-Leader are happy that she and Jesse are OK and grateful that she took a few moments to check in. Click here to see the St. Paul paper's coverage of the disaster.

Peter Baniak, metro editor