Kudos to John Green

Adoped Hoosier (and best-selling author) John Green does the right thing when he discovers a popular quote attributed to him actually came from a fan.

Read about it here.

No Trash Pickup, Again

According to the Mayor's Office, Indy's Department of Public Works is cancelling residential trash, heavy trash and curbside recycling collection tomorrow (19 February) due to extreme cold. This cancellation applies to all DPW trash routes and all trash routes serviced by contracted trash collectors.

The City will make a determination on Thursday as to whether affected residents will have trash picked up a slide schedule or will receive double pickup next week.

This Indianapolis Observer, who has just spent a week in Quebec, Canada, wonders why "extreme cold" stops trash pickup in Indianapolis when it proceeds on schedule in the frozen North (which is much colder and snowier than Indy). What's the problem here?

Yet Another Shooting

This Indianapolis observer is astounded at Tim Swarens' response to the shooting of a 9-year-old on an Indianapolis street.

"Buy Girl Scout cookies," he advises in The Indianapolis Star.

OK, so buying Girl Scout cookies is always a good thing (this writer has been addicted to Thin Mints for years), but, seriously?

Does one have to point out the obvious? Violence won't be reduced by increased cookie sales.

Purdue Fish Fry in Indy

If you want to attend Saturday's Purdue Ag Alumni Fish Fry, you'd better hurry.

Tickets are available only by advance sale.

It starts at 11:20 a.m. in the Blue Ribbon Pavilion at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, 1202 East 38th Street, Indianapolis. Dr. W. Dwight Armstrong, chief executive officer of the National FFA Organization and the National FFA Foundation, will present the keynote address.

Sponsored by the Agricultural Alumni Association, this is an alumni gathering and networking event for Purdue agriculture friends and family; industry leaders also attend.

Indiana Guv Kills Propaganda Outlet

The headline at the Daily Beast this afternoon says it all: "Indiana Guv Kills Propaganda Outlet."

No more plans to provide content for local media. Now, if only local media would up their game....

Pence's Putin Moment

It surprised this Indianapolis Observer how quickly Gov. Pence walked back his decision to set up a government owned and operated news source, JustIN, as content supplier for Hoosier media. The ridicule from commentators across the country continues to roll in, however.

It's really sad that the poor excuses for journalists we have left in the state no longer perform their watchdog function. (Can anyone imagine what Harrison Ullman would have done with this ham-handed attempt to manage the news?)

One uncharitable thought: Pence leaked the JustIN trial balloon as cover for his backtrack on expanding Medicaid for low-income Hoosiers. He wanted to redirect conservative Republican gaze from his healthcare coverage decision.

Nothing to see here. Move along, folks.

Indiana's Incipient Pravda

The Atlantic has now weighed in on Pence's new propaganda machine:

"Should politicians be in the news business? Sure, Pence needs to be able to communicate what the state is doing, but communication and reporting are different matters. It's unclear what the cost of the project will be to taxpayers, though the Star says the combined salaries of its employees will be about $100,000. More importantly, it's an obvious threat to the notion of a free press. State-sponsored journalism is generally the province of authoritarian states—think Pravda or Xinhua. If the government is pushing out information with newspaper-style coverage that looks like the standard press but is actually government ventriloquism, will readers be able to tell the difference?" writes David A. Graham.

"There's every reason to believe that government propaganda presented under the guise of reporting could fool readers just as easily [as hoaxes on the internet]. It would be even more pernicious if Indiana press outlets opted to run pre-written news stories alongside standard reportage, giving the state a chance to co-opt the free press' authority."

Update:
And, from The Daily Beast:
"Q: When does the conservative governor of a majority-Republican state start to resemble an old-line Communist apparatchik?
A: When he uses taxpayer money to fund government-approved “journalism” to compete with privately-owned, independent news outlets."