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Seven Days

Wednesday, February 26
The Metropolitan Drug Commission releases a study that shows that many middle- and high-school students who drink alcohol get it from their parents. Parents hope the commission doesn't study where kids pick up other bad habits, such as smoking, cussing, and overeating.

Thursday, February 27
The News-Sentinel reports that the Knoxville Empowerment Zone Cultural Heritage Tourism Initiative is funding a $73,335 study on ways to draw visitors to town by using local and cultural attractions. The new study brings to 50 the number of studies being done on Knoxville right now, and raises the possibility that the city could organize the nation's only Museum of Consultant Studies.

Friday, February 28
Knox County reveals its plans to relieve jail overcrowding temporarily by shifting maximum-security inmates out of the downtown jail. In a welcome change in county sentiment, it does not propose housing the violent felons in Mayor Ashe's garage.

Saturday, March 1
The Vol men's basketball team drops its fourth straight after winning five in a row in the SEC. Hey, after beating two top-25 teams in a week, they didn't have any more to prove. Just ask them.

Sunday, March 2
The Lady Vols conclude a perfect, 14-0 SEC basketball season. Why not let 'em fill in for the men this Saturday at Vandy?

Tuesday, March 4
A shoe store in the mall formerly known as East Town had to close temporarily because of a persistent odor. Some said the aroma smelled like a sewer. Others suggested patrons be asked to check their socks at the door.
The Associated Press reports the Monday dismissal of charges against a former Montgomery County commissioner who'd been accused of transporting untaxed liquor from Kentucky into Tennessee. Ah, for the days when the running of 'shine went the other direction.

Knoxville Found

(Click photo for larger image)

What is this? Every week in "Knoxville Found," we'll print the photo of a local curiosity. If you're the first person to correctly identify this oddity, you'll win a special prize plucked from the desk of the editor (keep in mind that the editor hasn't cleaned his desk in five years). E-mail your guesses, or send 'em to "Knoxville Found" c/o Metro Pulse, 505 Market St., Suite 300, Knoxville, TN 37902.

Last Week's Photo:
Obviously, at one time or another, some of our readers have found themselves in deep doo-doo. We surmise this because so many of them had no trouble identifying last week's Knoxville Found, the so-called "poo-flags" dotting the lawn next to the parking lot near the intersection of Gay and State streets. Charles Primm of the University of Tennessee Media Relations office was first to wave the tell-tale flag of victory over the poo-markers, so to speak, and so he is this week's Knoxville Found winner. To acknowledge Charles' keen powers of observation (or perhaps just his ordinary sense of smell), we award him Chitra Banjeree Divakaruni's The Unknown Errors of Our Lives, which we hope does not include not looking where we step on the 100 block of Gay Street.

Meet Your City
A calendar of upcoming public meetings you should attend

JAMES WHITE PARKWAY TASK FORCE
Thursday, March 6
6 p.m.
Massey Electric
3636 Martin Mill Pike (off Chapman Hwy.)
Public input meeting on design issues.

MAYORAL CANDIDATE DEBATE
Monday, March 10
7-9 p.m.
O'Connor Senior Citizens Center
611 Winona St.
Madeline Rogero and Bill Haslam will debate, moderated by Shirley Nash-Pitts. The public is invited.

NINE COUNTIES. ONE VISION
Thursday, March 13
7 p.m.
Roane State Community College Theatre
276 Patton Lane, Harriman
Quarterly steering committee meeting. Representatives of 23 task forces will present reports. The public is invited to attend.

Start the Presses
School newspapers: a comeback struggle

Two years ago, Farragut High School had more than 2,000 students, a great football team, a Spanish honor society, an astronomy club, a computer club, and dozens of other student organizations. But it had no newspaper; the Crow's Nest had ceased publication sometime around 1998 due to lack of student and administrative interest. Finally, Farragut's curriculum principal assigned teacher Carrie Buffat the task of bringing journalism back to East Tennessee's largest high school.

She's done a pretty good job to this point. Farragut has a new paper called The Anchor, and things are on the upswing. "I've got a staff of 22 people, and we come out with a 12-page tabloid six times a year," Buffat says proudly. "The first time we did it, the layout and design was pretty rough. But we're getting better."

Farragut isn't the only high school that appears to be making an effort to end a dark period for local high-school journalism. Over the years, Knox County's high schools have been told to put more emphasis on standardized test scores; on security; on character education; on foreign languages; on reading, writing, and arithmetic. But few people stopped to consider the things that are being de-emphasized. And one thing that certainly has been de-emphasized was the high school newspaper.

That's too bad, says UT journalism professor Bonnie Hufford, who has directed the Tennessee High School Press Association for the last 18 years. She says newspapers are good for the morale of a high school. "It's something that kids and parents look forward to reading," she says. They also teach skills such as writing, re-writing, and interviewing which students can use for the rest of their lives, whether they intend to go into journalism or not. "A high-school newspaper helps students learn more about their school and about their world, and it helps teachers and administrators learn more what the students are thinking," she says.

But Hufford says the last few years have been tough ones for high-school papers in Tennessee. Her association has about half as many members (100) as it had about 15 years ago. "As schools have gotten into more of a budget crunch, they have to cut back on what they consider to be unnecessary frills and extras, and newspapers are one of those things."

Knox County Schools doesn't keep up with which high schools have a paper and which ones don't, which means you have to call each individual institution to find out.

Carter and Bearden currently have no paper. Gibbs brought back the Eagle Examiner a couple of years ago after a period of dormancy similar to the one at Farragut. South Doyle High School's Phoenix dropped out of existence after its sponsor went on maternity leave; a teacher named Stephanie Crichton is trying to bring the paper back from the ashes this semester with the help of school sponsor TVA. Karns puts out a paper called the Courier, but it's being sponsored by the fourth teacher in the last five years, according to current sponsor Amy Jennings. West went through a dormant period a few years ago, but now has a good student publication called the West Wind.

Meanwhile, Central High School has managed to continuously produce a paper during the last decade called The Scratching Post, sponsored by teacher Skip McMillan. Powell High School has always had a great paper called The Panther Prowl and continues to do so, thanks to a faculty member there named Janie Cassell. "It's the most stressful class that I teach but it is also the most rewarding because it gives the kids a chance to work in somewhat of a real-world situation," she says. "And they are so proud of themselves when they send the paper to the printer."

Teachers face numerous obstacles as they try to work with students to produce a high-school newspaper. Few of them have any experience in journalism or much knowledge of how to sell ads, lay out a paper, or deal with a printer. Many are junior faculty members who were assigned newspaper duty because no one else wanted to do it. Many also say it's not as easy to get kids excited about school activities as it used to be.

Jeff Graves, one of the assistant principals at Carter, says he would love to see his school have a student paper. He says part of the problem is that so many of the students have part-time jobs. "Journalism is one example of the type of thing that has taken the backburner, and that's really unfortunate," Graves says. "Things have really changed over the years. When I was in school, we didn't feel the need to have a job after school. But I'd say that 50 to 60 percent of our kids over 16 have part-time jobs so that they can have a car.

"I spoke to a student the other day who said he spends about $3,500 in car insurance. Now just imagine how much he has to work to pay for that, plus the cost of having the car to begin with."

Another reason some schools don't have a paper is because their curriculum doesn't include a journalism class. Students at Farragut and at Powell can receive credit for two classes called Journalism 1 and Journalism 2. But students at many other schools have no journalism elective and have to produce a high school paper as an extra-curricular activity. "It is up to the principal to decide whether a school has a journalism class, and some of them decide that they would rather have another type of class in English or writing rather than have journalism," says John Whaley, language arts coordinator for Knox County Schools. Principals are also well aware that they are being judged by students' scores on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) tests. Needless to say, the TCAP tests don't require students to write a pyramid-style news story.

The other obstacle, of course, is the cost of producing a high-school paper. Printing costs haven't gone down during the last few years, and many newspaper sponsors say they can't afford the computers and programs needed to lay one out properly. Meanwhile, many principals frown on the idea of students leaving campus in the middle of the day to sell ads. "We haven't made enough money from ad sales or selling the paper, so we've had to have fundraisers to help pay for the cost: things like selling wrapping paper or school coupon books," says Sheila Cooper, who sponsors the Gibbs Eagle Examiner. "A few years ago, I was able to buy a digital camera with some money we raised, but it was a lot of work."

The cost of producing a high-school paper would be dramatically decreased if any of the schools put their papers on the Internet. But Metro Pulse could not find anyone at a local high school or with Knox County Schools who has seriously considered the idea of a high-school newspaper website. "It might make a lot of sense for us to do it on the Internet, but I have no idea how we could do it if we wanted to do it," says Caroline McKinney, who sponsors West High School's West Wind. "Right now, the only computers that we have are a lot of really old Macs, and it would be pretty difficult to do that without better equipment and a few students who really knew how to do that."

One reason high-school newspapers went through a period of decline after the 1980s was a U.S. Supreme Court ruling known as the Hazelwood decision. In 1988, the high court ruled that a public-high-school newspaper is not a "forum for public expression" for students and that a school administrator can censor a paper if he or she determines that there is a "reasonable educational justification."

All of this may make it seem as if high-school teachers and students have insurmountable odds against them as they try to restart newspapers that ceased publication in the 1990s. But faculty members such as Cassell believe that what they do is too important to give up on. "It's important that kids learn to read about the world, because that's one of the things they learn from working on a high school newspaper," she says. "It worries me that we are raising a generation of kids who aren't going to read a newspaper and aren't going to value it."

Then there is the occasional story that makes it worthwhile, such as a recent one out of Fulton High School, an urban campus with about 900 students. It's been several years since Fulton had a school newspaper. But a few months ago, a group of students approached Stefanie White, who sponsors the yearbook there, and asked her if she would agree to work with them to bring back the paper. "I agreed, and you should have seen the looks on their faces," says White. "They were like, 'really?'"

White says that the students—about half a dozen of them—have been meeting before and after school during the last few weeks working on their first issue. The Quill, as it is called, should be out in a few weeks.

—Bill Carey

Coonhunter's Castle
A legend's home is up for sale

On Gaston Avenue, in the tree-shaded old North Hills neighborhood, there's a nice-sized prewar house, one-and-a-half floors, on a hilltop. The stone-front place with the steep roof offers a fine view of the rolling mountains of Sevier County, miles to the southeast. The house is for sale, as the sign out front indicates.

It's four bedrooms, two baths, with 2,250 square feet; full basement, fireplace, two-car detached garage. Appraised at anywhere from $90,000 to 135,000, it sounds like a bargain, neighbors.

You wouldn't expect anything less of the longtime home of millionaire grocer, politician, broadcaster, publisher, and music promoter Cas Walker. The Sevier County native, proudly unencumbered by a high-school education, moved to Knoxville in the early '20s and made a fortune in his chain of Cas Walker groceries. In his unprecedented 30-year tenure on Knoxville City Council he was, for two brief spells, acting mayor.

Reviled as a demagogue by generations of progressive politicians, he was loved by country musicians from Dolly Parton to Jimmy Martin. As grocer-broadcaster on radio and television, he became an important impresario of country and bluegrass. He launched dozens of successful careers from the '30s through the '60s, and famously tried to end some; his footnote in rock 'n' roll history is that he fired the Everly Brothers from his show in 1956.

One of Knoxville's most successful businessmen of the 20th century, he lived for more than half a century in this pretty-good house in this unpretentious workingman's neighborhood a mile east of the Broadway Shopping Center. He surely savored this view of the mountains where he was born. He died here, at age 96, about four and a half years ago.

Call the number on the sign and you'll get the office of attorney Ralph Harwell, Walker's attorney in his later years, who's handling his estate. Even after Walker's long illness and the dissolution of his stores in the '80s, the estate was valued at about $1.7 million. The main beneficiaries were his two grandsons, the Gaylor brothers, one of whom died last year.

Harwell says an admirer of Walker's had purchased the house not long after Walker's death and made improvements, including hanging new wallpaper. "They tore up the awful-looking carpet and found nice hardwood floors underneath." Ultimately, though, the renovators weren't able to keep up with the payments. The house reverted to the estate.

One of the house's distinctive features is a "floor safe" in the bedroom closet. "It was empty when we found it," Harwell says, "but I'm sure that's where he kept his grocery receipts."

There is, so far, no mention of an H-1 historic-zoning overlay.

—Jack Neely