Behind The Headlines

Changes in Saturday lifestyles sections

To our readers:

On Saturday, you’ll notice a difference in The Herald-Leader. Two lifestyles sections – Inside/Out and Faith + Values – have become one.

No longer will we be publishing separate sections for home and garden information and religion and values news.

What was a six-page and a four-page section will now become a 10-page section. Inside/Out content will begin on page 1. Faith + Values content begins on page 10.

The change has more to do with the production of the newspaper than the content. We hope you’ll like what you see.

- Sally Scherer, lifestyles editor

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

Name that country: Burma or Myanmar?

Burma/Myanmar is in the news these days, and the Herald-Leader has grappled with which name to use.

Institutions that use the name “Myanmar” include The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Washington bureau of The McClatchy Company, owner of the Herald-Leader. These sources use phrases such as “Myanmar, formerly known as Burma” or “Myanmar, also known as Burma.” The United Nations also includes “Myanmar” as a member state, not Burma. The Web site of Myanmar’s embassy in Washington includes this statement: “Anyhow, since the United Nations has recognized Myanmar by her original name, it is the obligation of all the U.N. member countries to accept it, whether they approve it or not.”

On the other hand, “Burma” is the term used by the U.S. government — including President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Department of State — and the BBC. It is also used by the protesting Buddhist monks who are the focus of much of the current news.

The European Union recognizes an official name of “Union of Myanmar” but almost always uses “Burma/Myanmar” on Web sites discussing relations with the country.

The Herald-Leader has a traditional principle of calling people by the names they apply to themselves. That’s why we use “African-American” if that is a source’s stated preference, even though our default term is “black” for groups or for individual people whose preference isn’t known, and this is why our default term is “gay,” not “homosexual.” (On the other hand, even though many anti-abortionists call themselves “pro-life,” we do not use that label; our stylebook notes that “it implies the other side is inherently anti-life, which can be debated.”) The Herald-Leader is also leading the way as part of the small minority of newspapers that bother to apply accent marks such as é and ñ, in an effort to correctly spell the names of our increasingly multicultural readership.

It’s hard to apply the principle of “what do the people call themselves” with regard to Burma/Myanmar, since a significant portion of the country’s common populace and exiles are at odds with its military government. Here’s some background from The CIA World Factbook: “Since 1989 the military authorities in Burma have promoted the name Myanmar as a conventional name for their state; this decision was not approved by any sitting legislature in Burma, and the U.S. government did not adopt the name.”

Herald-Leader Editor Linda Austin, Managing Editor Tom Eblen and I conferred and decided to go with Burma as our default. This means a bit of extra work for our copy editors, who must remember to change the wording in wire stories. But in addition to being part of the world of journalism, the Herald-Leader is part of the United States, and it seems strange that so many newspapers are in effect bypassing their own government to establish relations with an unrecognized regime.

Brian Throckmorton
Copy Chief

Reaction to story of a death on a park bench

When a man died on a Woodland Park bench in July, we carried a brief in our Around Kentucky round-up the next day. It noted that the death occurred during the Woodland Jubilee concert, but it didn't have the man's name, or anything about his cause of death. Often in the day-to-day grind of journalism, the story would have ended there. But in this case, the short item sparked a conversation between Features Editor Sally Scherer and reporter Amy Wilson. They wondered who the man was, how he died, and they contemplated the contradiction between his death and the otherwise festive atmosphere in the park. Many times, the best stories emerge from simple questions like these.

They passed on their idea to staff writer Linda Blackford, who began making calls to piece together the story of this otherwise anonymous death. Linda's emotional story, Alcoholic anonymous, ran on the front page Sunday. Judging by the response Linda has received, the compelling story of the life and death of Donald Bowling touched a chord with readers, many of whom have also  been affected by alcohol abuse. I wanted to share excerpts from some of those emails:

“Thank you for such a moving story ‘Alcoholic anonymous.’ I have seen so many people, including my mother, battle this horrific disease. Thank you again for making people stop and think. This was a man, an abused child, a brother, a father. He was, most important of all, a human being who lived in our midst and was sick, alone, troubled, and because of you-not forgotten.”

“Like many other Lexingtonians I sat and enjoyed the music that night in Woodland Park. Not long after I arrived at the park and spread out my blanket I noticed a scrappy older man sitting in the shade not 30 ft. from our spot.  We ate our fried chicken, drank a couple beers and carried on like everything was fine.  I don’t feel guilty or selfish for not acknowledging the man.  He was sitting Indian style in the grass nodding his head to the sounds of the banjo and fiddle, just like everyone else.  When my girlfriend and I began to throw Frisbee he kept an eye on us.  He seemed to be impressed with our skills and perhaps wanted to join the game.  After a short while he moved on and he never crossed my mind again.  Reading your story of his life and unfortunate death brings to the surface feelings I normally don’t experience.  The plight of homeless and alcoholic people in the US is perhaps the most significant problem facing our society. Yet, we turn our heads, regularly, to the obvious problem instead of facing it head on.  If one person would’ve asked that man if he was OK or offered him some food, he may be alive today. Next time I hope I act differently when confronted with someone who obviously is worse off than I am.”

“I was very touched by your article in last Sundays paper, about the man that died on the park bench. I am reminded  of a proverb, if not for the grace of god walks i.i can remember very well waking up all sorts of places in my long struggle with alcohol. I could have died the same way alone amongst many.but by the grace of god one night I heeded that small still voice and lay' ed down my tormenter. it was one week before 9/11/2001,and while the rest of America dealt with the demons of terrorism, I dealt with my own inner demons. Since that time I have gotten my ged married gotten a good job and recently started college. All through the grace and love of a loving creator who saw fit to use the useless. Thank you for a tribute to a man who died amongst many whom no one was even aware of, they need to know it could have been them, except for the grace of God.”

“Wow. What a wonderful article. You have done a huge service to this man's memory with your tribute-eulogy. Thank you.”

“Certainly a poignant & tragic story. A young man dies on a park bench while no more than 50 yards away people are enjoying music, picnicking and having fun. I’ve certainly seen homeless guys passed out in parks before and I don't go near them. I’ve often seen them in that benched, shady area at Woodland.  Maybe volunteers from the Hope Center (or a similar organization) could routinely check known ‘crash sites’ for addicts, alcoholics, etc. Police could do this duty, but likely this would just discourage drunks and addicts from frequenting such areas.”

“This article provides a great deal of information about both Mr. Bowling and the resources available in the Lexington area for persons afflicted as he was. The article is written beautifully and respectfully of a subject which seldom receives either such treatment and of a person who likely received little such consideration in life.  Other than from the article Mr. Bowling was not known to me but it is likely your writing is a comfort to those who did know and love him. For what it might mean to you, please accept my thanks for your sensitive handling of the topic and my regards for your talent.”

“I would just like to applaud your front page story in the Sunday paper.  I am a recovering addict myself so I can truly relate to this story  and my heart goes out to Donald and his family.  I will be saving this article so that I can try to help other addicts and alcoholics understand what their fate could very well be if they do not do everything they can to get help with their addictions.  I would like to be able to email this story to some of those friends that need to have their lives put into perspective because I fear that their fate may not be much different from Donald’s if they do not seek professional help with their addictions... I believe that you have really done a wonderful thing by raising the general public’s awareness about people like Donald who they otherwise may continue to ignore. While I would not wish his situation on anyone  if something happens like this to someone else  I pray that they  will not ignore and overlook another person who might have been saved if  someone had just shown some concern for their fellow human being.”

Let us know what you thought of the story by emailing Linda or me.

Peter Baniak

metro editor

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