Now that we have been written up alongside other political bloggers in Alabama, we decided to add a section to the Locust Fork News page called “Alabama Political Roundup,” where we will be watching the press in Alabama to see how well they perform in covering the upcoming elections. We also added another section called “Columns of Note,” where we will be watching the newspaper columnists in the state to see how much effort they put into their work in the coming months.

Dana Beyerle

There are times when I think Tommy Stevenson at the Tuscaloosa News is the best editorial columnist left in this state since the passing of Birmingham Post-Herald reporter and columnist Ted Bryant. I always enjoyed running into Stevenson at Jazzfest and the Maple Leaf bar on Oak Street in New Orleans every year in my old neighborhood. Maybe one of these days he will have something to say about this blog, since I know he gets my e-mails and surely reads it from time to time.

I used to work alongside Mobile Register editorial page editor Francis Coleman back in the 1980s, when she was a correspondent for the Baldwin Register out of Foley and I worked for Gulf Coast Newspapers out of Gulf Shores. She is a good reporter, a decent writer and a nice person - although I used to beat her on a regular basis on big stories.

She made fun of me one time for the motor drive on my old Olympus 35 mm camera at the new City Hall in Orange Beach. I wonder what she thinks of the photos I take now with my new Nikon D50? Maybe one of these days she will return one of my e-mails.

As for Dana Beyerle, the Montgomery correspondent for the three New York Times-owned newspapers in Tuscaloosa, Florence and Gadsden, he has always been generous with the Reporter’s Notebooks when I show up in Montgomery free-lancing. He was misidentified as a female PR person in the New York Times obituary of George C. Wallace a few years back, a correction I had to call in myself to Howell Raines’ assistant in New York.

It will be fun to talk about the press on this blog from time to time - in the interest of letting the public get to know them better.

Tags: LocustFork.Net in the News

This entry was posted on Monday, January 9th, 2006 at 12:10 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.