RELATED RESOURCES

Like Al's ideas? Hear more in our broadcast and online seminars. Sign up to receive Al's Morning Meeting by e-mail: * Click here (sent Monday-Friday at 7 a.m.) Buy Al's book, "Aim for the Heart" (Poynter receives a small cut as an Amazon affiliate).

TV folks looking for May sweeps projects should consider this one from The Orange County (Calif.) Register. It is a great story on how restraining orders so often fail to protect the people they are intended to protect.

The paper found that California's complex system vary from county to county. Look at this summary of The Register's findings to give you an idea of what you might look for in your state/county/city:

An Orange County Register survey of all 58 California counties, and interviews with judges, law-enforcement officials, victims of domestic violence and their advocates revealed systemic problems, clerical glitches and judicial inconsistencies.

Among the findings:

• Eleven counties... require the person requesting a restraining order to give advance notice to the person from whom they are seeking protection. Such a warning can inflame an already combustible relationship, or help abusers avoid being served with the order.
• Almost one-third of restraining orders issued in civil or Family Law Courts are listed as unserved, making them invalid. An order cannot be enforced until it is served.
• Hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of restraining orders are not entered into a state database used by police to verify and enforce active restraining orders, despite a state law requiring entry within one business day. Without a record of the order, police can be left powerless to arrest violators -- and victims left without protection.
• None of the state's counties enforces a law prohibiting individuals under a restraining order from owning or buying guns, or ensures that firearms are surrendered as required.

When the pieces are in place, and the system operates exactly as it should, restraining orders act like stop signs. They are not a guarantee of safety. Instead they are legal barriers designed to keep people from doing harm.

There are about 260,000 active restraining orders in California. About 147,000 are criminal protective orders -- issued when domestic violence cases are prosecuted or as a condition of probation. The remaining 113,000 are issued in civil or Family Court when a petitioner demonstrates "reasonable proof" of domestic violence.

In the majority of cases, these restraining orders serve their purpose, offering protection that allows victims to escape abusive relationships. However, in a significant number of cases, the system falters and the barriers can be easily punctured. In early February, for example, the state database showed more than 40,000 civil and criminal restraining orders were not served.

That means at least one in every seven restraining orders issued in California was useless -- and victims were counting on protection they did not have. The rate of unserved restraining orders rises to one in three when only civil orders are taken into account.

School Chiefs Cashing In

The Buffalo (N.Y.) News probed behind the salaries of local school superintendents to find the sweet deals they are getting on everything from accrued sick leave to paid-up life insurance plans. One superintendent has accumulated more than $216,000 in vacation and sick-time benefits that will be paid out in cash when he retires.

Another superintendent will get $5,000 in moving benefits when she retires.

True Stories of Night Hunters

The Mobile (Ala.) Register included a nice piece on conservation officers, the folks who hunt down hunters who illegally shoot game at night. Since November, one pair of Alabama officers has made 60 arrests for night hunting.

What the Energy Auditor Sees

I have been meaning to pass along this wonderful piece from the St. Paul, Minn. Pioneer Press' Molly Millett, about couples who fight over where to set the household thermostat. It turns out that energy auditors get a good glimpse into marriages when they are called in to help couples get a handle on their energy bills.

Aeroseek

Over the years, I have seen a lot of flight-tracker maps, but this is the coolest one yet. Put in an airline or flight number, and you can track, in real time with real live data, any commercial aircraft. This is a significantly more detailed tracker than you are used to. This one has great news applications, I think.
 

The Aging Wood Industry

My father was a timber man. None of his sons wanted to follow in his tracks. I certainly had no interest in working that hard for a living. I see in The (Eugene, Ore.) Register-Guard newspaper that I am not alone. The timber industry is aging, and wood companies are facing a crisis.

The paper said:

The logging and mill jobs that have sustained families in Oregon for decades no longer hold the allure for young people that they once did. [...]

That's a troubling trend for an industry in decline. Employment in the wood products industry, including paper manufacturing and logging, declined 28 percent in Lane County -- a loss of 3,014 jobs -- from 1990 to 2000, according to a new report by the Lane Workforce Partnership. Employment is expected to further decline by 5.7 percent -- a loss of 290 jobs -- from 2004 to 2014, the report said.

At the same time, the average age of workers in wood products is increasing. So when openings created by retiring workers are factored in, wood products will have 1,021 openings to fill from 2004 to 2014, the report projects.

"There's clearly an acknowledgment at the management level that there's a pending crisis," said Eric Hansen, professor of forest products marketing at Oregon State University's College of Forestry.

"If you look at a company like Weyerhaeuser, the senior management team across the board is quite old, and there will be a huge transition," Hansen said.

"The larger companies clearly have a lot of succession planning going on," he said. "It's not so clear whether the smaller companies, even though they recognize the problem, are acting on it.

Is This What You Want Your College (Or Future Employer) to Know About You?

The Reading (Pa.) Eagle has a story about how school administrators are scouring Facebook.com to see what students are up to. They often find pictures from drunken frat parties or worse. The paper warns that those kinds of pictures can haunt students long after school.

Similar things are happening at colleges around the country. The University of Notre Dame's Observer has a similar story. And so did the Contra Costa (Calif.) Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Tarentum, Pa. Valley News Dispatch. The University of Nevada's newspaper, The Nevada Sagebrush, ran an editorial on Facebook this week.