Alabama Churches Receive Donations

A couple of churches over in West Alabama got a big boost in getting back to normal. As you probably know, seven weeks ago, two churches were burned to the ground (Galillee Baptist Church in Panola and Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church in Boligee) and two others were damaged. The fires were eventually ruled arson and three men were arrested in connection with the fires.

Today, the aforementioned churches were given a donation of $2,700 that will go toward rebuilding their churches. The money came from Alabama Gubernatorial Candidate Jim Phipps (Independant). He says that he hopes to be able to donate more in the months to come. In his words..."a half a million dollars to a million dollars in the next 30 to 60 to 90 days."

Pastor Bob Little of Galillee says his new building will cost approximately $125,000. He told me that they are about halfway to meeting that goal. Galillee is currently holding its services in a temporary trailer that was provided by the Southern Baptist Convention. He said he hopes that his church is rebuilt soon so that the trailer can be returned for other churches that are in need.

Morning Star received their temporary trailer this afternoon. A deacon of the church, Willie Wallace, told me that he hopes that their church will be rebuilt in about six months.

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Here's a glimpse into what you can expect tomorrow on Newscenter 11:
* I will be hitting I-59 South to Hattiesburg in order to bring back a story about Ageless Heroes. Two residents of our area will be honored as Mississippi Ageless Heroes at a luncheon tomorrow. Check out our news to find out who they are. I'll have more tomorrow on the blog about what the Ageless Heroes program is.
* There will be more. I promise. But I don't know too much more at this point in time. Be sure to watch at 5, 6, and 10.

Have a good night (or if you read this on Tuesday...Have a good day).

Vacation

Sorry for the lack of updates, I have been on vacation since Monday. I just got my home computer up and running yesterday, so now I'm able to post from home. I will be back at work on Monday, March 27. You can expect more then.

Stressful Slow Saturday

As promised earlier, here's my second update of the day. Today was a pretty slow day for us here at Newscenter 11. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't a bit stressful. It started off easy enough. As I mentioned earlier, I met with Walton Moore at the Rose Hill Cemetary. That story got put off because of the weather. Then I came back to work to begin working on what was supposed to become my story for the evening. Kourtney Clemons is an area soldier that is featured on the cover of a magazine right now. I was planning on talking with his family. Unfortunately, they weren't able to meet with us today. We will be doing the story tomorrow. At the mall, there were two stories that I was covering. A pet adoption and a blood drive. When I got back to the station to edit those, my tape was messing up. Nothing that I shot at the mall could be used. I went back out for the blood drive, but the pet adoption was already over by the time I got back.

Here's a glimpse into what we will be working on tomorrow:
* As I mentioned we will be talking with Kourtney Clemons' parents about him being on the cover of the magazine.
* The Jackson State Choir will be performing at St. Patrick's Catholic Church at 4 pm. We'll have some of their performance for you.
* It's day four of March Madness (day 5 if you count the play-in game). The field will be whittled down to the Sweet Sixteen. Speaking of the NCAA Tourney, my brackets aren't doing so hot. Right now I'm 26-16 and one of my final four teams is gone. I really thought that Hampton was going to not only win the play-in game, but really go deep in the Tournament. Just kidding. My final four: Duke, North Carolina, Boston College, and the now eliminated Kansas Jayhawks.

Wet Weekend Ahead

Well, it looks as if it will be a wet one. Hope you are still able to find something to keep your weekend fun.

The rain has already started to affect my day. I was planning to go out to the Rose Hill Cemetary in Meridian and do a story about the recent beautification project there. Three thousand flower bulbs have been planted and are now blooming. When I got there a little before ten, the rain was just starting to fall. We decided that we will put the story off for a couple of days until the rain goes away. You can expect to see that story on Newscenter 11 a little later in the week.

As for the rest of the day, it looks a little slow. I'm working on pulling together another story. Check out our 6 o'clock show tonight to find out if I was able to get a story finished.

I'll try to get another update on here later tonight. If you need to keep up with the weather, check out the Newscenter 11 Weather Blog or the Weather page on our website.

Stay dry and have a great weekend.

Coming up tonight

Hi everyone, I'm in with a quick update on what we're working on for tonight's newscast.
Mad Cow Disease and the Bird Flu are on the minds of a lot of people. Mad Cow is especially high priorities in light of the annoucement yesterday that it has been found in Alabama. There are a lot of cattle farmers in west Alabama, so this is a matter of high importance to them.

ABC News has just finished an investigative piece into the Bird Flu, and it appears that it is just a matter before that comes to our area. That's especially important for a lot of people in East and Central Mississippi. That's really the center of the poultry industry in the state, specifically places like Scott, Newton, and Neshoba Counties. Poultry farmers in those counties are having to take extra precautions to try to prevent the flu from hitting their farms. We have a couple of stories on that subject tonight.

We also have a story that has just come into to us from the Lauderdale County Sheriff's Department about the arrest of a couple of people on child molestation charges.

We're working on those stories, plus some news from the legislature. Should be an interesting couple of shows.

Kia Not Coming

It's been about a week since our last update. Yesterday, Meridian and Lauderdale County received some bad news. As expected, Kia announced that they were not going to build their plant at the Kewanee site. Instead, it will be located in West Point, Georgia. The president of the Lauderdale County Supervisors told me yesterday that the county is disappointed to not get the plant. However, he also said that he believes that the Kewanee site is still a good site for someone else to locate. He said that if nothing else, the fact that Kia said that Meridian was the front-runner (at least for a while), got Meridian's name out there for other future plants. Hitt says that the county is already promoting the Kewanee site for other prospective industries.

We are about to have our morning meeting. Wade will have an update a little later on about what you can expect on our newscasts tonight.

Church Arson Arrests

It's been a pretty long week, but it's my Friday so I'm off for the next couple of days. Of course I won't be able to do much on Thursday with the possible severe weather. Make sure you keep informed Thursday. There are a couple of very good ways to always have the most up-to-date information. Obviously, the best way is to keep watching WTOK. Additionally, check out the Newscenter 11 Weather Blog. Josh and his crew do a great job of keeping all the latest weather information on there, especially during times of severe weather.

If you haven't heard (which I highly doubt), three suspects have been taken into custody in the case of the Alabama Church Fires. Again this is one of those stories where we have more information than will fit in a minute and a half on television. I attended a press conference in Tuscaloosa this afternoon where Alabama Governor Bob Riley, ATF Agent in Charge Jim Cavanaugh, and others involved informed us of the latest in this case.

Let's start with the basics, some of this stuff has already been on the air. The three men are Benjamin N. Moseley (19, Birmingham), Russell L. DeBusk, Jr. (19, Hoover), and Matthew L. Cloyd (20, Indian Springs). Moseley and DeBusk were students at Birmingham-Southern and Cloyd attended UAB. They are charged in the following fires:

• 2/3/06 Rehobeth Baptist (Bibb County)
• 2/3/06 Ashby Baptist (Bibb County)
• 2/3/06 Old Union Baptist (Bibb County)
• 2/3/06 Pleasant Sabine Baptist (Bibb County)
• 2/3/06 Antioch Baptist (Bibb County)
• 2/7/06 Dancy Baptist (Pickens County)
• 2/7/06 Morning Star Missionary Baptist (Greene County)
• 2/7/06 Spring Valley Baptist (Sumter County)
• 2/7/06 Galillee Baptist (Sumter County)

A witness stated that he spoke with Cloyd on March 7. Cloyd told the witness that he and Moseley had done something stupid. He also told the witness that Moseley set a church on fire as a joke and it got out of hand. Investigators say that they started the fires in West Alabama to create a diversion.

One of the big breaks in the case came in the form of tire tracks. The imprints matched the tires on Cloyd's 4Runner. The tracks were found at six of the churches including the four in West Alabama. The early reports stated that a dark colored SUV (like a Pathfinder) was involved. The 4Runner that Cloyd was driving was dark green. It appears that these three were the only ones involved in the fires.

If you have any questions about the arrests or anything else regarding these church fires, send me an email or leave a comment. I'll do my best to answer any questions based on the information that I have.

Loose Caboose Festival

It's been several days since we've posted. I'll tell you just a little bit about my day. I started out heading West on I-20. Something I did a couple of times this week, this time I didn't go all the way to Jackson (a little about that in a minute). I stopped at exit 109 - Newton. The third annual Loose Caboose festival had taken over downtown. When I first saw this assignment, I didn't know what to think. I could only assume that it was a downtown festival similar to those in surrounding communities, but the name...it's just so...interesting. Well, when I finally caught up with Angie Burks from the Chamber of Commerce, I just had to know...Where did the name come from? Her answer: Outside of the old train depot (which is now the Chamber office), there is a lone caboose car sitting on the tracks. Makes sense to me.

Upon returning to the Queen City, I headed up to the public meeting regarding the building of a new low-income housing development. There has been a lot of opposition to the new developments, but none have met more conflict than the Meridale property just outside of the city limits. Hundreds of people showed up to voice their concern with this development.

Now, back to Jackson...On Tuesday and Thursday I went over to the Big House to take in a few games (oh, and work). Tuesday saw Newton take an easy win. Everything went pretty smooth in getting the highlights back. Thursday was a much different story. Let me preface this story by explaining how we get our highlights back from Jackson. I think Wade has touched on this to some extent. Most of the television stations in the state have a system to send video to other stations across a T1 line. It's pretty much like a video email and usually the quality is pretty good. It is called Clipmail. Well, we have been teaming up with WLBT to clipmail our highlights back.

Ok, now back to Thursday...It started out very well, until I got to the I-20/59 split. There was an electronic MDOT sign that read "I-20 closed at Jackson, expect long delays." Well, I was already running a little late, but I thought 'I can still make it by tip-off or shortly thereafter.' Nope. At the airport exit (in Brandon), I was forced to exit with no idea of where to go. I took Highway 80 into Jackson and found my way to the Coliseum. Just in time for Halftime. No problem, plenty of basketball to play. Well, I got my highlights shot, interviews done. Now I'm ready to edit. Well, almost...I stayed for the first quarter of the next game (Ripley vs. Collins). Those two teams aren't in our viewing area, but I shot it to send to WTVA and WDAM.

I get to WLBT and am ready to edit, so I patiently wait for an edit booth. I have five things to edit:

• Southeast highlights (for us)
• Southeast post-game (for us)
• Southeast highlights (a different set for WTVA)
• Ripley/Collins highlights (for WTVA)
• Ripley/Collins highlights (a different set for WDAM)

I get our SE highlights cut pretty quick. This is going to be a breeze. I get the tape out so that I can put down another countdown. And then the trouble started. My tape broke. Long story short: an engineer at WLBT was able to salvage my tape and tape it back together (ironically enough), after some clipmail problems I finally got everything sent by 6:00 or so, and time to head home. I-20 was still closed (an overturned tanker truck was the culprit), so my alternate route (and rush hour traffic) took me about 30-45 minutes out of the way.

Sorry for the long post, but it was hopefully a good one. That's for you to decide. I'm tired and ready to go home, so I'm not going to read back over this. Please excuse any spelling or grammatical errors. Thanks and have a great weekend.

(A few terms in this post will make their way into the TV News Glossary when I have a chance to update it...Just a reminder to check it out periodically as we try to keep it up to date by adding new terms when we think of new ones.)