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Shine a Light
When David Hunter's column didn't appear in the News-Sentinel Tuesday morning like it has every week for years, his fans started calling the paper to find out what was wrong. He's on vacation, some were allegedly told.
But word got around via email that Hunter's column for this week was killed because it was critical of Mayor Victor Ashe.
Randy Tyree, one of Ashe's opponents in this year's election, says that Hunter called him for comment for the column. "I gave him a couple of quotes. What David was asking me about was the politicization of uniform bodies, which Victor continues to do."
The column apparently examined Ashe's alleged practice of asking firefighters and police officers to sign a petition in favor of his re-election—and punishing those who don't. The column was supposed to run this week, Tyree says.
Who killed Hunter's column and why they did it is something only insiders at the Sentinel probably know. "I did submit [a column]. I'm not on vacation," Hunter says. He would not say what the column is about or why it didn't run, referring questions to his editors.
Hoyt Canady, the editorial page editor, merely says, "You'll have to talk to the editor."
Editor Harry Moskos—a well-known Ashe cheerleader—did not return a call from Metro Pulse. Moskos ran his own column about the Mayor on June 20, which began, "The endorsement Mayor Victor Ashe received from nearly two-thirds of the city's firefighters should be considered more than routine support of an incumbent officeholder by a group of city employees." The column went on to praise the mayor for his management of the department.
The Sentinel's editorial motto is "Give light and the people will find their own way."
WHITE BOY ABANDONED FOR A FEW HOURS (oh, and two black children died)
We don't mean to keep harping on the News-Sentinel, but it was hard to imagine what the hell editors were thinking when they put together last Thursday's (July 22) paper. The lead story on the front page (illustrated with a four-column color photograph) was about a 5-year-old white boy who was accidentally left behind by his day care center when it took children on a swimming field trip. Alarming to most parents certainly, but not exactly front page news, especially since the boy was unharmed. But the placement of the story became much more disturbing when you turned to page four and read that two black children died and two others, along with their grandmother, were in serious condition after a house fire in Lonsdale. Splattering personal tragedies (or near tragedies) on the front page doesn't make a great newspaper, but given the placement of these stories, you have to wonder who in the community editors identify more with. Maybe they should re-read their own voluminous race relations series from last year.
Save the Carp!
More signs of site preparation for the convention center on the World's Fair Park are about to be seen. The old Court of Flags will be biting the dust and the shallow lake known (somewhat pretentiously) as the Waters of the World will be drained, begging an interesting question:
What's going to happen to the gabillion fish and the gaggle of ducks who live there?
We posed the question to Public Building Authority head Mike Edwards, who hastened to note that the fish are "mostly carp." Edwards said PBA has enlisted the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency to figure out what is to become of the fish and ducks who must be moved out. Edwards said there are "several options," one of which is relocating the fish to Ft. Loudoun Lake. He was not forthcoming with duck options, which sounded to this suspicious ear like impending fowl play. Will the ducks get lucky?
Stay tuned.
Favorite Son
The Super Chamber folks were stylin' and profilin' Monday when they took the entire County Commission out to lunch. Relations between the Chamber and the Commission (which holds the purse string attached to a pretty sizey chunk of Chamber change, appropriation-wise) have been somewhat strained since the birth of the Chamber Partnership, as it prefers to be called. If Super Chamberman Tom Ingram thought he was making a little free-lunch headway with the county guys, Diane Jordan disabused him of that notion with her first question:
"Are you going bankrupt?"
Her second one wasn't much better:
"Are you going to leave and run a presidential campaign?"
Ingram just barely got his denials out when Commission jokester Mark Cawood, a Democrat whose Commission duties forced him to decline the opportunity to attend the day's functions for Al Gore, weighed in to tweak Ingram over his longtime association with perennial presidential candidate Lamar Alexander:
"I talked to Al and he said you weren't in the running," Cawood told Ingram.
Stuck in Costa Rica With Powell Station on My Mind
Phone calls were flying back and forth between Powell and Costa Rica recently when medical technology mogul Pete DeBusk made a whirlwind trip to check on DeRoyal Industries' plant there (the one that produces electrical thermistor wire sets and sensors for temperature monitoring). DeBusk, a man so smart that his inventions were the foundation for one of the most successful Knox-based businesses ever, somehow took off with an expired passport, and almost became a long-term visitor when officials of that tropical paradise were considering not letting him out of the country.
Nice Guys Finish...First?
We kinda sorta knew him way back when, and we were just positive he'd make it big: Terry Hummel, former Knoxvillian and ex-Whittle-ite, has just been named publisher of Rolling Stone. Hummel joined Whittle in 1987 and worked his way up to president of sales for Channel One, the stick-more-ads-in-schools TV network for high school students. More importantly, he had the reputation of being the nicest guy in marketing, an unusual attribute. We wish him a sincere congrats.
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