School district now realizes when it’s breaking the law

I’ll give ’em this.

The Washoe County School District is getting better at recognizing when it is breaking the state’s open-meeting law.

As reported in the Reno Gazette-Journal this morning by Trevon Milliard, one of the district’s subcommittees acted on a controversial health-care plan even though the meeting agenda was vague.

The school board has been in hot water all year for being incapable of reading NRS 241, which, as I’ve said before, becomes complicated only if you’re trying to avoid the public knowing what you’re doing.

Anyway, the subcommittee is not made up of professional politicians — apparently one of the excuses for not being familiar with the law — and when a lawyer pointed out the deficient agenda, the district quickly said it would schedule a do-over (aka ‘corrective action.’)

This incremental improvement seems to be the result of hiring an extra attorney for the school district whose sole job is to understand Chapter 241. That’s progress, I guess.

I supported the change to the open-meeting law that allows for corrective actions. It was the practical result, anyway, of an investigation that found a board had violated the law and must void its decision. Previously, it would be ordered by the attorney general to conduct a new meeting. Now, it can do that on its own.

However, that’s not to excuse repeat offenders. There’s still a very important general provision in the statute about trying to skirt the intent of the law. If it had been the school board itself, a three-peat offender, then it would warrant sanctions.

And finally, it does make you wonder if reading comprehension is a requirement of school officials these days.

New management seminar scheduled

What You Need to Know About Overtime and Independent Contractor Laws and Regulations 

Friday, October 16
2:00 – 3:00 p.m. EDT

Do you find yourself scratching your head when it comes to labor laws and regulations for independent contractors? Join Michael Zinser for this informative webinar to gain a better understanding of these important labor issues.

In this session, Zinser will cover:

• The U.S. Department of Labor’s proposed rule to increase salary thresholds to make overtime exemptions more difficult.
• The National Labor Relations Board’s war on independent contractors.
• The U.S. Department of Labor’s new guidance memo attacking independent contractor status under the Federal Wage and Hour Law.

This session is beneficial for managers interested in better understanding wage and labor legal issues.

Edited with BlogPad Pro

Slow down there, Labor Department

National Newspaper Association Urges US Department of Labor

to Slow Down on Overtime Rule Hikes

 

The National Newspaper Association today called on the US Department of Labor (DOL) to scale back its aggressive push to raise salary thresholds for exempt workers under the Fair Labor Standards Act. DOL has said it wants to more than double in a single year the salary basis by which professional, creative and administrative white collar workers are qualified as exempt.

NNA President John Edgecombe Jr., publisher of The Nebraska Signal, Geneva, NE, said NNA newspapers had expressed alarm at DOL’s surprisingly steep increase. Though many companies agreed that it was time to adjust the salary basis, he said, they thought the expectation for companies to increase the base from $23,660 to more than $50,440 a year—a 113 percent increase in one leap– was a threat to many community newspapers’ viability. 

“This proposal would be a particular problem for rural and small town newspapers, where local economies dictate different expectations for middle-class professional incomes than in large cities. And for newspapers, the newsrooms will suffer. Today editors can schedule their time to cover important stories as needed and have the flexibility to take time off when family and personal needs demand. Under this proposal, unless the company had the unusual ability to meet the new thresholds, this flexibility would be gone,” he said. “Members tell the effect on our industry would be huge.”

NNA told DOL:

“NNA supports an appropriate adjustment of the exempt worker salary threshold. But escalating the threshold salary beyond a small business’s capacity to pay salaried professional workers means our industry and others would experience a dramatic loss of professional staff. Whether a newspaper’s professionals wish to be on the hourly clock or not, the newspaper’s inability to achieve a high threshold salary for them means these workers will lose status, control over their time and the ability to cover the news in the manner their professional judgment compels them to do.”   

The Labor Department has not increased the threshold for exempt workers since 2004. It began its deliberation over a change when President Obama ordered the agency in 2014 to consider whether the salary basis was too low. 

“It is remarkable for an agency to do nothing for a decade and then expect businesses to somehow catch up to an adjustment in a single year,” Edgecombe said. “The agency has approached the issue without considering the limited abilities of small businesses to absorb radical changes over a short period. For newspapers, NNA’s surveys indicate there would be job losses and unfortunate curtailment of some news coverage so businesses could comply with the new rule. We cannot imagine that is what the agency really wants. We are hoping reason will prevail.” 

NNA has also joined with Partnership to Protect Workplace Opportunities in its comments, which similarly urged DOL to take a more reasoned approach to the increases. 

 

NNA’s comments are available at www.nnaweb.org.

Edited with BlogPad Pro

Journalists learn not to be intimidated

Journalists learn early on not to be intimidated.

It’s necessary to almost any beat.

Sportswriters deal with coaches and athletes who are used to getting their own way. Business tycoons often are taken aback by anyone who questions them.

Police, attorneys and judges frequently use intimidation in their line of work, and crime reporters can’t be afraid to challenge them.

Even on the entertainment beat, reporters deal with egotistic celebrities and publicity machines. I imagine even restaurant reviewers and food columnists have had to face down a celebrity chef now and then.

Certainly, the political beat has its share of intimidating figures. Even the office itself — president, senator, governor — can be daunting to some people, let alone the person who occupies it.

But it’s not just whether a reporter can hold his own in the face of intimidation, it’s whether he can do so while maintaining professionalism and composure when the heat begins to rise.

I watched with interest the confrontation yesterday between Univision anchor Jorge Ramos and presidential candidate Donald Trump to see how each man handled it.

Let’s be clear — it was a confrontation. There was no ‘screaming,’ as Trump claimed several times, but Ramos was persistent.

I’m biased on the side of the journalist, though some think Ramos was out of line. There’s a bit of history behind this, which is informative.

Trump was dismissive — “Sit down.” — and Ramos wasn’t following protocol. But having a security guard remove him from the press conference shows me that Trump didn’t want to deal with it.

On the other hand, Ramos was intent in being confrontational and thus made himself the story — something journalists aren’t normally inclined to do. The Vox explainer linked above does a good job of exploring the difference.

But I don’t think it’s about a Latino TV anchor (despite the finger-pointing incident afterward).

From my experience, being involved in confrontations and seeing them at various news scenes, Ramos did a good job of remaining calm and professional.

The question was so long and involved that it became an editorial opinion on its own, but it was legitimate. I wish more reporters would pin down candidates on issues with a one-word question: How?

I’ve seen plenty of press conferences where the politician wanted to talk about one thing and the reporters asked about something else. And fellow reporters have a responsibility, in my opinion, to follow up when a politician avoids a question.

The reporters at this Trump conference in Iowa did ask about his treatment of Ramos. And, Ramos was allowed back in to ask his question.

Ultimately, everybody got something.

Trump showed his disdain for the press and for Univision in particular. That’s the kind of shoot-from-the-hip honesty his supporters are eating up, as evidenced by the guy pointing his finger at Ramos in the hallway.

Ramos made his point about the implausibility of Trump’s immigration plan and, eventually, got answers to his question. And if he wasn’t already the best-known Latino news anchor in the country, he is today.

We got to see how Trump handles pressure — with disdain, intimidation and a security guard. Also, that he was able to reverse course within a few minutes and calmly respond to Ramos.

EPA releases records at 10:30 pm Friday

I guess you could call it standard operating procedure. 

When there is bad news, announce it late Friday afternoon. 

That’s in the playbook of every sleazy, dishonest flack in the PR universe. 

So what does it say about the EPA that it ended its foot-dragging on records about the Animas River spill at 10:30 p.m. Friday?

Does it say the EPA is guilty, embarrassed, incompetent, untrustworthy and toxically bureaucratic?

That’s certainly the message I got. 

Oh, and the documents were redacted. So it’s actually worse than we know. 

  

Cry me a river

Listening to KUNR while driving to work this morning, I was sympathetic to a story about a YouTube video entrepreneur whose work is being plagiarized on Facebook.

After all, internet audiences often are built on the content of others. Some of the most-trafficked sites in the world, such as reddit, Facebook and Twitter, rely primarily on copy-paste or links to stuff created elsewhere, and secondarily on commentary provided by users.

YouTube is one of few popular sites that actually pays people who create original works.

I didn’t catch the name of the video-maker interviewed on the Public Radio newscast, but a quick search for ‘Facebook steals YouTube video’ turned up a good number of posts the last couple of years, including this recent one.

To quote its author, Hank Green: “Facebook says it’s now streaming more video than YouTube. To be able to make that claim, all they had to do was cheat, lie, and steal.”

All this is quite familiar to me and anyone else from the past 20 years of the newspaper industry. Our content may not have built the internet, but it made the internet worth reading. And, largely, still does.

We endured all the dinosaur jokes and the chastisements about how we just didn’t get it. Legacy media, they called us, with the same tone some people say classic rock. Old news.

‘We’re driving your traffic!’ they exclaimed. ‘We’re making money for you by sending people to your sites!’

Bullshit. They were stealing our work.

I recall several years ago when a popular site complained they weren’t posting a photo of some spectacular incident in China — I think it was a huge chain-reaction traffic accident in the middle of nowhere — because the Associated Press owned the rights to the photo.

The site mocked AP for its backward-thinking, last-century approach to copyright law.

I scoffed.

First, the site could simply have paid AP to use the photo. Thousands of outlets do that every day.

Second, the reason AP had that photo was no accident. It has reporters, photographers, correspondents, editors, offices and members all over the world.

For almost 170 years, when something newsworthy happened, the Associated Press found a way to cover and distribute the news. It took hard work.

Now, of course, wondrous technology has made it possible for any of us to do a simple Google search to get the news — which, I suspect, still mostly originates with some organization that is a member of AP.

In the radio interview, the YouTube entrepreneur estimated he had lost perhaps $20,000 when a video he created went viral on Facebook instead of his own YouTube channel.

Imagine, if you will, the typical reporter who spends his or her day working a breaking local news story — I’m thinking, for example, the mine spill into the Animas River a couple of weeks ago above Durango, Colo., — that ends up going worldwide.

How many clicks do you think that reporter’s work generated?

When ranching and journalism become art

At the Nevada State Museum last night, Anna Fallini Berg talked about the life her family has lived for 150 years on a ranch east of Tonopah.

Then she gestured at the photos hanging on white gallery walls around her. There it was, her daily life distilled into iconic scenes of a working ranch.

The exhibit is called “Ranching in the High Desert: Five generations, one family” and will be available for a year in the Carson City museum. It features the photos of Jeff Scheid, a Las Vegas Review-Journal photojournalist, and tells the story of the Fallini family from Giovanni of 1864 to Giovanni of today.

Jeff Scheid poses at Nevada State Museum next to a photo of him taken by his wife, Jenny.

Scheid’s photos, in black and white, capture the West the way the work gets done, a mix of time-tested practicality that ranges from broad-brimmed hats to a  cattle-herding helicopter.

It’s journalism taken to the level of art.

The photos tell most of the story, but not all. For that, take the time to read Jennifer Robison’s report to trace the history of the ranch and the legal trouble that put it into the news.

Then visit the museum to see the high-quality prints and take the time to appreciate a way of life that has endured for 150 years in Nevada.

 

 

 

How to watch the Fox debate

I’ve never seen a debate quite like the scrum coming up Thursday evening on Fox News, but I’ve moderated and covered enough candidate forums to have an idea what to look for.
1. Who answers the question?
Candidates typically want to stay ‘on message’ and have pat answers to topics, regardless of the question being asked.
Is the candidate listening? Is he thinking on his feet? Or is he trying to just not mess up?

2. Who has the facts?
Opinions and ideas are one thing, but they needed to be supported by some kind of evidence. And it needs to stand up to the fact-checkers.

3. Who looks comfortable?
By this time, these candidates should all be relaxed in front of cameras. Sometimes, though, politicians unaccustomed to speaking in front of anything but a friendly crowd start to sweat.

4. Does he have a sense of humor?
This is dangerous water for candidates to tread, because nothing is worse than a joke that falls flat. But it does show they have their wits about them, if they can respond in the moment.

5. Can they separate themselves from the rest?
Too often, candidates of one party — especially on a national stage — sound so similar they fail to distinguish themselves. All will be trying — will any succeed?

6. Are they trying to win, or just trying not to lose?
This roundup comes so early in the process, no one can be declared a winner afterward. But someone certainly could be a loser. The better strategy probably is to survive to debate another day.

However, what we’re trying to do here is assess the leadership qualities of people who want to be our leader. And, on a good day, the leader of the free world.

I want to see if they have the right stuff. I want to hear if they sound presidential. I want to know, in a roomful of experienced rivals, if they can take charge.

As much as anything, I want to find out if they can think for themselves — or are they spouting the lines given them by their campaign advisers and parroting the opinions most popular in the polls.

Debates like this are derided as ‘reality TV,’ the scripted creation that has almost nothing to do with reality. I’ll be trying to see through the melodrama and get a glimpse of a potential president.

What the heck. Maybe Fox will use my poll to decide who gets to appear.

 

‘Yellow journalism’ in Nevada?

On Tuesday’s episode of Nevada Newsmakers, former university regent Howard Rosenberg was asked about recent criticism of Chancellor Dan Klaich.

After a few comments in defense of the university chancellor, who has been under fire recently, Rosenberg turned to what he sees as the problem.

“What really bothers me is the newspapers,” Rosenberg told host Sam Shad (at about the 22:40 mark in the video). “We don’t have newspapers anymore. We have people that have opinions that publish them in the newspapers.

“Up here, we have what I call yellow journalism. Down there, I don’t know what you’d call it. But they get something and hold onto it. And, boy, this is going to sell newspapers because we can really attack.”

Shad didn’t follow up on Rosenberg’s remarks, but there wasn’t a need. The knee-jerk reaction of most politicians when confronted with criticism is to blame the media, and Rosenberg proved to be no exception.

He didn’t address any of the issues, dispute any of the facts or shed any light on the three controversies involving the university system.

But I was curious about Rosenberg’s accusation that newspapers in Nevada are guilty of yellow journalism.

Of course, everyone is entitled to express his opinion. As a panelist on Nevada Newsmakers, Rosenberg is expected to voice his — the stronger the better, I suppose, as presumably strongly voiced opinions help attract viewers to television talk shows.

Yellow journalism, in case you are unfamiliar with the term, is a pejorative expressed when people criticize newspapers for being sensational, unprofessional or unethical. It dates to a time when newspapers competed against each other and typically used huge, scary headlines and blew crime news out of proportion with the idea of, yes, selling newspapers.

I have a hard time believing, though, that anything written about Nevada’s educational system would qualify as yellow journalism.

If that’s what sells newspapers these days, then I am woefully out of touch.

Or, perhaps Rosenberg is correct and newspapers have taken to sensationalizing stories about education as an attempt to make money. That would explain the state of the industry.

But, no.

I think the professor’s irritation is personal because, in addition to being a university regent at the time that board broke Nevada’s open meeting law, he has been criticized heavily “up here” as a member of the Washoe County school board that has broken Nevada’s open meeting law more than once.

I need to point out to Mr. Rosenberg that we do, indeed, still have newspapers in Nevada. They’re doing their job: holding public officials accountable, reporting to the public what they need to know, and expressing opinions — yes, the First Amendment allows them to do that too — about the quality of education in Nevada.

If we didn’t have newspapers, as he suggests, then we wouldn’t have to worry about any of that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why so many fake news stories? $$$s

Sure seems to be a lot of fake news around.

I’m not talking about the Onion, or other parody sites who are trying to be funny. I’m talking about wrong, false, outrageous ‘news’ passed from link to link, Facebook post to Facebook post, email to email.

This YouTube video presents a plausible explanation: political click-bait farms.

As the narrator points out, it isn’t so much about politics as it is about money.

The idea is that people on the far right and far left will tumble for just about anything that seems to confirm their fringe beliefs. Therefore, if you create a story that rivals the World Weekly News for its implausibility — yet has that kernel of something they are hoping is true, just to prove a point — then they will click on it.

Once they have, they can be targeted by the great internet marketing machine.

While this is annoying in the consumer sense, it is potentially devastating in the consequences for democracy.

Increasingly, the internet — with its vast potential to inform from thousands, if not millions, of sources — is becoming an echo chamber. Whatever you type into a search engine or click in a news feed is recorded, remembered and fed back to you.

If your shop for bird seed, you will see advertisements for bird seed, news about bird seed and connections to like-minded bird-feeding people. If you shop for a BB gun, then you will get similar results aimed at BB-gun enthusiasts.

And if you shop for both seed and BBs for the purpose of attracting birds to your back yard so you can shoot them, then I imagine you will eventually find a forum of people who enthusiastically share your hobby.

Our political discourse is weighted on both ends of the spectrum by people who prefer not to know, or even consider, the opposite point of view. They have no interest in compromise, conciliation or consensus.

They are convinced they are right, and that belief is reinforced every day by what they read, largely because they prefer nothing intrude on the silo in which they’ve encased their opinions.

That may always have been true, to an extent. But from the evidence presented in the video above, it seems a new, cynical, greedy motive has emerged — truth be damned — to make it so much easier, and perhaps without people even realizing it’s happening.