TUESDAY, MAY 15, 2007
Tuesday Edition: Hook, Line and Stinker
They used to
hang horse thieves. I suspect the modern-day equivalent to horse thievery is
cheating at a fishing tournament. It is
spring fishing season -- so these kinds of cases are popping up around the
country.
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.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
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.
Posted at 12:46:06 AM
E-mail this item |
Add/View Feedback (1) |
QuickLink this item: A123086
Al's Morning Meeting Archive
MAIN
|
Back to Top
