Poynter Online - Tuesday Edition: Lost Children on the Beach

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Here is a story I have never seen before, even though I live in a beach community. The Baltimore Sun discovered that up to 100 children a day get lost on the 10-mile stretch of beach around Ocean City. That means 2,000 kids get lost every summer there. It makes me wonder what you could find by talking to your local beach patrol. I suspect even crowded lakes and swimming spots would have stories. The Sun's story includes this passage:

Longtime members of the Ocean City beach patrol can look at a stretch of shore and tell whether conditions are ripe for losing children. The worst time is in late July and August, on scorching days when the beach is crowded, the sideways current is strong and high tide hits early, causing families to spread their towels farther back on the sand. Once the water retreats and the powerful current nudges swimmers up the coast, Mommy and Daddy are that much harder to see.

So the children drift.

Lost-kid scenarios also change with the demographics of the beach. In the southernmost part, popular with day-trippers and motel occupants, unaccompanied kids are often turned over to the guards before their parents know they're gone. In the wealthier northern end, where condos are owned and families tend to keep tabs on the neighborhood urchins, it's usually the parents who make first contact with the beach patrol.

No matter the section of the beach, fathers have worse track records than mothers.

"Fathers can tell you about every bikini on the beach, but they don't know where their kid is," says Capt. Butch Arbin, head of the beach patrol. "Some of them forget they even have kids."

Foreclosed and Rotting

A residual effect of the wave of home foreclosures nationwide is that once a home is foreclosed upon, especially by an out-of-state lender, the house may be abandoned and left to rot. And plenty of them are. The Modesto (Calif.) Bee found that 2,500 homes have been repossessed in the Northern San Joaquin Valley in this year alone. What's more, after foreclosure, it often can be difficult for officials to determine who owns the property in order to force them to clean it up.

What to Do About Harry?

Al's Morning Meeting - Harry Potter: To Spoil or Not to Spoil

Bob Steele and Al Tompkins discuss what journalists covering the release of Harry Potter should consider when writing reviews of the book this week.

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This weekend, and maybe before, you journos will have to make a decision about how much to reveal about the new Harry Potter book. Will you reveal who dies and who lives? Will you host forums that allow readers to talk about who dies and who lives?

I asked Poynter ethics guru Dr. Bob Steele to help us think through what to do. Click here to listen to our 90 second podcast.

Smaller Cotton Crop, Gins in Trouble

With farmers planting so much corn to cash in on the ethanol craze, cotton gins in Louisiana are wondering if they can keep operating. This year, there will be fewer acres of cotton than at any time in more than 30 years. Look at this chart from the USDA and you will see it is true for all sections of cotton country in America. Some areas will plant a third to a fourth less cotton this year. Here is a story from the Monroe (LA) News Star. A smaller cotton crop will almost certainly mean higher cotton prices. Cottonseed has risen from about $110 per ton last year to $155 per ton this year.

What Journos Need to Know About the NFL's 45-Second Rule

Lordy I am getting sick of the NFL, the Olympics, the NCAA and all the other organizations that pay journalists for publicity, suck up tax dollars for their stadiums and then slap impossible restrictions on coverage. The Wall Street Journal explains the new 45-second rule, which will guide how much audio and video television/radio stations and newspapers may put on the Web. See this passage:

Media web sites reporting on NFL players and coaches are now limited to 45 seconds per day of audio and video shot on NFL property. That includes the team facilities where reporters spend much of the six days between games watching coaches hold forth, interviewing players and reporting on the doings of the practice fields.

That's not 45 seconds per subject -- it's total. Interview a quarterback, two running backs, a wide receiver and throw in the coach's comments and you've got about nine seconds for each of them. After 24 hours the audio and video have to come down. And segments have to link back to NFL.com and team sites.

Frank Hawkins, the NFL's senior vice president of business affairs, notes that credential rules dating back to 1995 forbid "game information" (which included interviews) from being put online, with an exception for TV stations simulcasting online. He says the NFL didn't begin focusing on the issue until a couple of years ago, when Web video began to mature, and crafted the current policy in response to a newspaper's request.

The 45-second policy, he says, is "technically a liberalization of what had been in effect before then," though he adds that "I realize it's not universally perceived as liberalization."

Indeed it isn't. Sports reporters have protested, and two journalists' groups -- the Associated Press Sports Editors and the American Society of Newspaper Editors -- have been working with the NFL in an attempt to liberalize (or, if you prefer, further liberalize) the policy. So far, their efforts have resulted in such helpful clarifications as the 45 seconds not including the interviewer's questions.

You HAVE to click on this link to watch a Houston Chronicle video that demonstrates how interviews of the future might go.

And here is an interesting twist. If the NFL is going to try to be so controlling, the new rules may just backfire. There is nothing to stop journalists from going after interviews away from team staff, at charity events or away from the stadium. The NFL has no control over how much of that you can use. So team members may find themselves being stalked at hotels, restaurants and golfing events.

See this blog for more thoughts on that. Eventually, it may be the players and coaches who have to complain enough to relax the rules. Once they see what a five second soundbite sounds like, they won't like it.

Scorching Week in Iraq/Afghanistan

You think it is hot where you live this week? Look at what our soldiers are enduring. Every day will be over 100 in Baghdad this week and parts of Afghanistan are looking at 110-degree days this week. See this story from Stars and Stripes.

Want $1K? Buy A Hybrid in Illinois

Starting this week, the State of Illinois is offering $1,000 to Illinois residents who use Illinois banks to finance hybrid car purchases. Add to that a federal tax credit for hybrid cars. What's this all about? The Chicago Sun-Times reports.

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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 on the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.