Wedding shows and integrity fees
An Ogden self-promotion and conflict-of-interest update
How is a wedding show front page news?
It isn’t unless local Ogden papers are the sponsor in which case it gets front page coverage before and after even if it has next-to-zero news value. From the front pages of local papers:
Sunday August 5
Thursday August 16
Still Time To Register for Brides, Brunch & Bands Wedding Show Sunday in St. Clairsville
(Note – this article didn't even require much of a rewrite - it has major sections that are word-for-word from the first one.)
Yesterday
As I speculated last year, the front-page coverage may be part of the enticement to get vendors involved by giving them “free” publicity. No matter how you cover it, however, it’s not news.
Not giving up on an integrity fee
Our local papers are still pushing an integrity fee for WV sports wagering without disclosing that Ogden Newspaper owner Bob Nutting stands to make millions if one were put in place. On this morning’s front page is an AP article:
Colleges Want Integrity Fees
This is an interesting headline since almost every other news source that ran this Associated Press article used the default AP headline which better reflects the article's coverage:
Colleges mull pushing for share of legal wagering proceeds
(It seems to me that “mulling” and “wanting” are not quite the same thing.)
And of course, the Intelligencer, by publishing such articles (as well as editorials) without disclosing their owner’s potential monetary gains in the millions, creates a major conflict of interest. They also miss the irony that, in pushing the fee, they’re supporting something for sports that may be foreign to them: integrity.
