| October 1999 (Download in PDF Format) |
| MDDC Membership Survey Will Target Participation in Committees,
Workshops In the next few weeks, publishers of all 145 newspapers in the MDDC Press Association will be personally interviewed regarding involvement in the organization, focusing mainly on committee participation and education workshops. |
| Pension Project Goes Statewide As part of its continuing effort to improve access to public records, the MDDC Press Association is going statewide with a project aimed at disclosure of the public pension amounts due to Maryland legislators. |
| Publishers Need Approval to Put
Freelance Work in Database Publishers can’t include work by freelance writers in their electronic databases without the writers’ permission, an appeals court ruled in late September. |
| Profile: Fran Mears Fran has been AP bureau chief for Maryland and Delaware since September 1997. She joined The Associated Press in 1982 in Indianapolis and was a general assignment reporter, legislative reporter and news editor before becoming assistant bureau chief in Kansas City in 1992. Fran also worked briefly at AP’s Broadcast News Center in Washington. Before AP, she worked as a copy editor for The Indianapolis News, a section editor for The Clearwater (Fla.) Sun and a general assignment reporter for The New Castle (Ind.) Courier-Times. Fran left AP briefly in the early ’90s to work in PR, "but I learned quickly that news is where I belong." |
| MDDC and 27 Other Associations Join
AdNet America The Maryland-Delaware-District of Columbia Press Association, together with 27 other press associations across America, has officially joined AdNet America, an interstate newspaper advertising placement service. |
| Legal
Appeals Courts Rules For
Public Access to Health Information The Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene lost its effort to persuade the Maryland Court of Special Appeals that almost every piece of information it collects in the name of "public health" should be exempted from the Public Information Act in Maryland. In a decision dated September 9, the court held that the department is not permitted to lump "almost any investigative step taken in response to a report of food-borne illness" under a Health Code requirement that "research and studies" records be held in confidence. |
| Advertising Department Update Tough to Swallow… The advertising session at the Summer Convention proved to be an eye opening experience for many ad directors and publishers in attendance. Steve Wishnow, former director of sales promotion and marketing for Hecht’s/Strawbridges, lent his experience and insight on how newspapers can access major retailers and position their publications for consideration. |
| Warning: Move May Be Afoot to
Undo Health Information Decision In the never-ending battle to maintain open access to public information, victories seldom are complete. That could be the situation again following the recent Maryland Court of Special Appeals decision in the food poisoning case involving the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. |
Text Navigation Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association |