Al's Morning Meeting

Don't snicker -- this is serious stuff. Big bass tournaments involve thousands of dollars in prize money. And the St. Louis Post-Dispatch tells the sordid story of a man who dared to cheat:

Competitive fishing -- a race to see who brings in the greatest total weight of fish -- began to catch on in the 1960s. National circuits formed. Now tournaments are broadcast on television. Professional fishermen look like NASCAR drivers, with shirts and hats covered in sponsorship patches. The top pro circuit, the Wal-Mart FLW tour, offers $9.5 million in prizes annually. Dozens of smaller tournaments promise bass boats and up to $40,000 in prizes per tournament.

But with the competition comes cheating. Fishermen have been caught using frozen fish, fish hidden in secret compartments, fish tied to hidden lines. Last week, a Kentucky man received a suspended sentence for hiding bass in a submerged fish basket. He and his partner, who also was charged, won a $30,000 bass boat at a championship on Lake Barkley, Ky.

Even the smallest tournaments are on guard. They use lie detectors to ask winners whether their catches were made that day.

Fishing blogs like this one from South Dakota make it seem as though cheating is rampant.

Tournaments routinely use lie detectors. Sometimes the polygraph machine is set up in a trailer right there on the tournament grounds. Here is a bulletin board entry from a guy who says he was cheated out of a $2,500 fishing-tournament prize a few weeks ago because he failed a polygraph test.

Will Harry Die?

J.K. Rowling yesterday asked those who might be in the know not to reveal who dies in the newest Harry Potter book coming out July 21. She has said that two major characters will die in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows." The question is what journalists will do once they have advance copies or leaks about the book. Fan sites are threatening a revolt if somebody leaks the information.

Monday, Rowling said:

Some, perhaps, will read this and take the view that all publicity is good publicity, that spoilers are part of hype, and that I am trying to protect sales rather than my readership. However, spoilers won't stop people buying the book, they never have -- all it will do is diminish their pleasure in the book.

There will always be sad individuals who get their kicks from ruining other people's fun, but while sites like Leaky take such an active stance against them, we may yet win. Even if the biggest secret gets out -- even if somebody discovers the Giant Squid is actually the world's largest Animagus, which rises from the lake at the eleventh hour, transforms into Godric Gryffindor and ... well, I wouldn't like to spoil it.

More than 300 million copies have sold of the previous six Potter books. "Deathly Hallows" has more than 1 million pre-orders on Amazon.com alone. I wonder what your newsroom plans to do even after the book comes out. How will you handle the secrets of the book in the first day or even the first week?

The End of Webcasting Radio?

Wired is predicting the doom of radio stations webcasting their signals. As I have told you on Al's Morning Meeting, new royalty rules will force radio stations to pony up big bucks to play music online. Wired says the only two salvations could come from an emergency federal judge's order or congressional action -- neither of which appears likely. By the end of the year, online radio could be kaput.

Al's Morning Multimedia

Today's multimedia project comes from The Daily (Lafayette, La.) Advertiser. It investigated every criminal and driving record of a Lafayette Parish school bus driver, both in their personal vehicles and in their buses, to review school bus accident reports for the last two years. The paper said it wanted to take a "hard look at how the school system responds to accidents and other driving and criminal infractions by its bus drivers."

After the paper learned that driver after driver had a horrible record, it built a searchable database online so anybody could enter a driver's name and pull up his or her driving history. (Note from Al: I just entered the common name "Smith" into the database randomly. I was amazed by the results.)

The investigation found:

The investigation revealed that the school system lacks policies for handling bus drivers who speed, wreck, steal or drink while driving in their personal vehicles and buses.

And, the system doesn't have clear policies governing how it hires, disciplines and terminates bus drivers.

Driving records of the 308 bus drivers in their personal vehicles and buses show:

• At least 144 drivers, or 47 percent, have at least one driving or criminal offense.

• Eight were cited for operating a vehicle while intoxicated, three in the past 10 years.

• At least 41 were ticketed for wrecks involving heavy damages.

• At least 24 have three or more citations.

• One driver was cited in five wrecks.

• At least 51 were ticketed for careless operation, 18 of them involving heavy damage to a vehicle.

In addition, one driver was ticketed twice for having no child restraints in her personal car and several more were faulted for rear-ending other buses and passing stopped school buses.

Some drivers also broke the law in other ways, racking up at least 20 criminal offenses.

Click here for a treasure trove of school bus resources I pointed to awhile back.

Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.