Police Blotter of the Day: Darth Vader. Robbing a bank. On a bike.
Really, there’s nothing else you need to know, other than that it was in Toledo, Ohio:
Full story (WNWO-TV of Toledo, Ohio)
Police Blotter of the Day: Cop twice uses Taser on mom at Mississippi middle school
A police officer working as a school resource officer in northern Mississippi twice stunned the mother of a Guntown Middle School pupil with a Taser during a heated argument at the school Wednesday morning.
The woman — identified as Michele Lee Eaton, 39, of Saltillo, about 15 miles north of Tupelo — was arrested on disorderly conduct, public profanity and other charges.
Guntown is where Adam Mayes, who allegedly killed a Tennessee woman and one of her daughters before killing himself earlier this month, was spotted on a convenience store surveillance camera.
Full story (M. Alex Johnson/msnbc.com)
Police Blotter of the Day: Driver throws hammer at motorist yakking on cellphone
The man called 911 and reported he was just passed by a car driven by a 44-year-old Waterloo man who suddenly stopped his car in the middle of the roadway, forcing the caller to stop in the roadway, at which point the man in the car began waving a hammer at the other man yelling “get off the phone,” he then allegedly threw the hammer at the caller. …
“These types of conflicts can easily go bad and are best left to authorities,” stated Sheriff Todd Nehls.
Full report (Dodge County, Wis., Sheriff’s Department via WMTV-TV)
In re the frumious beer bet
Update [May 9, 8:10 p.m. ET]: Now you can even buy a Bandersnatch Cummerbund T-shirt.
Original post: I worked there seven years, but it took this to finally get my name in The Washington Post.
In re Bandersnatch Cummerbund controversy (Lisa de Moraes/The Washington Post)
Police Blotter of the Day: So drunk he didn’t know he’d been run over by a train
That’s some Night Train hangover.
Thomas J. Boersma apparently passed out on the Canadian Pacific railroad tracks just east of Forest Grove Drive. The conductor of the 76 car freight train said he saw a person laying on the gravel and resting his back on a rail. As the eastbound train approached the conductor said the man did not turn around. The train hit Boersma about three-tenths of a mile east of Forest Grove Drive. …
Police were contacted at about 3:30 a.m. and eventually found Boersma, who was wearing camouflage. Boersma was conscious but was not aware he had just been hit by a train, the police report said. Though Boersma suffered severe injuries to his buttocks and left arm he refused medical treatment, was agitated and combative, the report said.
Full story (Lake Country Reporter of Hartland, Wis.)
Can you scientifically quantify social media opinion?
This should explain why I haven’t had time to post here in quite a while:
Over at msnbc.com, we’ve started publishing charts tracking what people are saying about the major Republican presidential candidates on Twitter and Facebook. Here’s today’s chart for Mitt Romney, for example, examining what was said yesterday:
You can find the charts, updated every week, for Romney here, for Rick Santorum here, for Newt Gingrich here and for Ron Paul here.
Read the rest of this entry »
The challenge of being a young journalist
I envy the newly minted journalists entering our profession today. The tools at their disposal are so much more powerful that they were when I broke in 28 years ago at The Macon Telegraph in Georgia, which were: A notepad. And a pen.
But there’s one thing I wouldn’t trade from that era for all the avenues open to today’s younger journalists: the privilege of learning my craft in relative obscurity.
At The Telegraph, the circulation was a shade under 50,000. That was about the largest number of people I could reach. Today’s young journalist can immediately reach an audience that encompasses anyone in the world with an Internet connection.
That must be terrifying.
I’m reminded of this by the outrage that greeted the publication of a headline on ESPN.com over the weekend. It used an ethnic slur on a story about the New York Knicks’ out-of-nowhere star, Jeremy Lin, the first American-born player of Chinese descent to play in the NBA.
Human editors matter, or: Pat Buchanan, call your lawyers!
Google likes to generate a “quote of the day” atop some of its news searches. It doesn’t always work out well.
Because I was doing a story that involved Adolf Hitler, I of course did a news search for “hitler” to see who else might be reporting the story. This is what I got:
