We’re nearly a month old, and already surpassed our first milestone — 100 posts on the site. It happened over the weekend with some really great local items — Bob Sokoler’s fascinating video from Actors’ Lobster Feast, Kirk Kandle’s account of moving an entire home by bike, with video. I keep adding interesting contributors, so keep coming back to the site to see what’s new.
Gabe, Part 1: Hope you saw the piece on the Cards’ Peyton Siva (the hero of that double overtime win at Connecticut Saturday) by our new sportswriter, Gabe Duverge. I’m looking forward to getting a student’s perspective on sports — and for something you won’t get listening to all that noise in sports talk radio. Gabe went to Manual High, and was one of the student journalists hired by WLKY-TV a few years ago in that short-lived experiment in which the station hired student journalists to cover high school games. He’s a Pike, too, along with my son Josh at U of L.
Gabe, Part 2: As Cindy Lamb reported here over the weekend, Louisville Public Media’s Donovan Reynolds made a smart hire by promoting Gabe Bullard as the news director at WFPL-FM. Gabe’s proven himself as a solid reporter and blogger — his new challenge is to manage a news operation.
Johnson’s Ethics Definition: Council member Dan Johnson is one of the reasons the Metro Council’s majority caucus is having such trouble dealing with the media, because he thinks it’s OK to accept U of L game tickets from Insight (because he really likes to go to games, and it won’t affect how he votes, just ask him). And because he says things like this, as reported by LEO’s Phillip Bailey: “Ethics is if you take somebody’s money who wants you to do a certain action from your campaign. Beyond that I don’t think there should be any violation.”
Our Favorite, Kelsey: Kentucky Monthly magazine can’t keep a secret. Word leaked out over the weekend that in its April issue, the mag will name WHAS-TV’s Kelsey Starks its “Favorite TV Personality.” The Owensboro native went to UK and has a masters from Northwestern, and c0-anchors the station’s morning newscasts.
Not My Idols: Tomorrow Fox41 announces the final 24 in its Fox in the Morning Idol competition, in hopes of winning a Smart Car. Which means that if you watch a newscast, you have to watch the bad Karaoke singers during endless promos and accept the station’s reporting of its competition as news.
What’s Billy Doing?: Billy Reed’s pretty busy these days, and is getting loads of attention for his “Conversations with Champions” interview series at Georgetown College. Tomorrow he interviews Jim Host for the series, to be aired later on KET. Next month it’s Tom Hammond. Billy is speaking to the downtown Rotary on Thursday.
Angie TV: Angie Fenton may be the city’s busiest journalist — managing editor at the Voice, regular on WAVE’s 725 Live, red carpet hostess for Churchill Downs — but this week she leaves for Haiti for a series of stories that will air on WHAS-TV. Just in time for sweeps.
Kentuckians Getting Smarter?: I doubt it, but they’re not throwing their money away on the Lottery in the numbers officials expected. Which doesn’t mean you won’t end up behind some dude buying cigarettes and lottery tickets the next time you have to go to the counter at Thornton’s.
State Session Starts: But nothing’s going to happen, because politicians are busy worrying about the May primary. And Gov. Beshear has just given up on doing something about gambling, instead putting his energy into a bill that would raise the dropout age to 18. But it’s likely he won’t even get that one passed. And don’t get your hopes up for a statewide smoking ban.
