Jackson Free Press

Try Christmas Bonuses?
As if having charges dropped against the woman who allegedly stayed in the house with their beaten-to-death young relative wasn't bad enough, the family of Heather Spencer was hit with a March 26 Clarion-Ledger article that was riddled with errors, including one of the most chilling fashion. Ledger reporter Nicklaus Lovelady actually gave the last name of the victim to the mother of George Bell, who has admitted to bludgeoning Spencer to death last year, referring to Robbie Bell as "Robbie Spencer."

The eerie name stayed on the Ledger's site for hours—and is in the print edition until the paper rots—with readers complaining below the story and begging the Ledger to fix the name out of respect.

"[S]omebody PLEASE get this changed online immediately. Surely one does not have to be the victim of such gross negligence to see the insane horror that such an oversight can inflict. My God people! Please be sensitive and change this immediately!" wrote one reader at 10:49 a.m. Wednesday.

By mid-day, the change was finally made, but with no correction or apology immediately attached to the story. However, other errors were not fixed then, including a reference to the Mississippi attorney general as "U.S. District Attorney Jim Hood."

"Who proofs these stories?" another reader wrote in response. Someone who doesn't give a damn, we'd guess.

READ the Fine Print
Even as bleak news plagues the media industry, showing sharp readership drops for Gannett Corp. newspapers, The Clarion-Ledger is trying to pull a sleight of hand in the metro to convince readers (and advertisers) that business is hunky-dory.

The newspaper did a 2007 market study to determine its own readership and, get this—"79 percent of the adults in Hinds, Madison and Rankin counties read The Clarion-Ledger publications each week," according to an online ad.

You're kidding: A couple hundred thousand people read The Clarion-Led—no, wait. Clarion-Ledger publications. NOT just The Clarion-Ledger. Two years ago, the paper reported it had 22,000 readers in Jackson, and their statewide readership is under 100,000. They're talking about all those little freebie rags, filled with fund-raising pics and expensive real-estate ads, that they throw around for free, including into people's yards.

One wonders: How do you READ VIP Jackson, anyway? Does picking it up and doing the two-second thumb-through to see if some drunken picture of yourself showed up qualify as READing? Do the people who go out into their yards and pick up The Northeast Ledger and hurl it into the recycling bin count as READers? And what about all the free Ledger rags that sit in those mostly empty TDN boxes? Are they READ, too? And what about Weekend sections that get into the boxes too late on Friday for people to actually plan something to do over the weekend? READ, too?

We did enjoy seeing the results of the Ledger 2007 Market Study that they faxed to some of our advertisers, though. It seems that the paper with a statewide circulation of 90-something thousand found that this little alternative newspaper they love to hate has 64,332 readers in the Jackson metro.

And, yes, that's just our one paper that hasn't split itself into a million pieces to obscure the fact that people aren't READing us. Because they are.

Error Riddled Crusade
In his crusade against Attorney General Jim Hood, right-wing Y'all Politics blogger Alan Lange doesn't always bother to read the words in front of his face. To wit, his bylined March 27 "feature article"—which is actually a blog posting with some links—with the headline, "AG Jim Hood Engages in "Me-too" Criminal Prosecution of Beef Plant ..."

He starts his blog posting with this statement of fact: "Today, Jim Hood has decided to amend his January 2007 complaint against the Facilities Group to include state criminal charges of fraud."

Down below, however, readers start to point out to Lange that there was no language in Hood's press release to indicate that he was filing criminal charges—it is a civil lawsuit, which is a wee different from a criminal case, and the language of the statement clearly shows that.

It is a civil lawsuit that was originally filed in 2007, and now is amended "to include claims of fraud against the Facility Group," due to recent revelations. To boot, the complaint itself, which Lange linked to, says "civil action" right on the front page.

Despite the clear language of the press release, Lange re-cast facts into his own narrative, which led the top of his right-wing politics blog, and had not been corrected as of mid-day March 26.

One reader accused Lange of purposefully posting false information: "Alan obviously read all the documents, yet he chose to post false information in order to further his agenda. He should be ashamed."

Lange has long gunned for Hood, but we think it is entirely possible that he just did not comprehend what he was reading. Legal documents are complicated, after all.