Thursday, November 19, 2009

Famous front pages


The Free Press front page is now drawing readers in Washington D.C.

We know certain members of our congressional delegation get the newspaper in their offices but The Free Press front page is also wired electronically every night to the Newseum, a new multi-hundred million dollar museum of newspaper and media history.

We've been doing this since last January as have hundreds of other newspapers around the country.

The Newseum is located on Pennsylvania Avenue between Congress and the White House. At last count, there were 818 front pages from 77 countries displayed every day.

You can look at them here

Roy McCabe of Madelia was at the Newseum on Nov. 6, and low and behold he saw the front page of The Free Press as the representative paper from Minnesota displayed on the outside of their building. Each day, they pick one paper from each state to display.

Roy sent us a picture, and we thank him.

A few months ago, The Free Press front page also showed up behind CNN's John King on his Sunday morning talk show. He also was hosting the show at the Newseum and had a rotation of front pages behind him.

I haven't been to the Newseum yet, but I've heard its fabulous, 14 exhibit galleries, 15 theaters, interactive news exhibits in 250,000 square feet.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Businesses inducted into Hall of Fame

Greater Mankato Business Hall of Fame winners this year have astounding records of not only business success but draw that success from their constant attention to customer service and business relationships.

Schmidt Siding and Window estimates that they have served over 40,000 customers over their 60 years in business and have never had a complaint filed with the Better Business Bureau. That's unheard of in the home construction and contracting business where disputes occur just as a course of business. But it's clear Schmidt has done an excellent job of making everything right by the customer.

The company estimates 38 percent of its business is repeat customers, another impressive statistic.

Someone did raise an issue with the BBB on a Schmidt ad claiming that they were the number one contractor for their kind of business in Mankato, and when the BBB saw Schmidt's documentation of the numerous industry awards it won, they said, yes, no problem, you can call yourself No. 1.

Schmidt President Dale Brenke likened building the Schmidt business to building a cathedral, one generation builds the foundation, the next generation ads to that and others join in until the cathedral is completed.

Gary Schmidt sold his interest in the business a few years ago to employees Jim Hockert and Steve Beetch, but is still part of the Schmidt team that accepted the award.

After 60 years in business, the Schmidt company has built quite a cathedral.

Weir Insurance

The James R. Weir Insurance Agency also had a great story of a family business that grew for some 40 years.

The Weir agency was also inducted into the Greater Mankato Business Hall of Fame. Founder James Weir started the agency in 1969 with a few business associates. "We came to town and didn't have one policy," he told The Free Press. "Now the business is huge."

His son Jay Weir and son-in-law Mike Donohoe now run the business. Jay recalls coming back from college graduation in 1986, sitting down in his father's office and waiting for instructions on his new job.

His father plopped a phone book down in front of him and told him to "start making relationships" and pointed to the clock, saying "we don't watch the clock in this business."

Said Jay: "23 years later, I know exactly what that means."

Mike Donohoe thanked the Mankato community for all their patronage and, like many others on this night, described Mankato as a great place to live and do business.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Great stories at business awards event

Terrific stories emerged in pieces at the Greater Mankato Growth awards banquet Tuesday night.

Many award recipients had their own unique tale of how the business got started, a light moment or a poignant realization.

A few examples:

MSU students in a service project showed up at a local school to help a teacher and watched a 5-year-old student drink a full gallon of milk. When they asked why they drank the whole gallon, the kid says because they were "hungry." That point helped motivate the Campus Kitchens project that brings meals from cafeterias to Mankato's needy. MSU's Engagement Office was recognized for the business/education partnership award.

MRCI CEO Pam Year won the Hap Halligan service award, and had this anecdote about her first experience in Mankato 45 years ago as a college student. A kindly gentlemen helped her find MSU's lower campus as she was a lost small-town Iowa girl in the big city. That initial kindness of residents lead her to think she could stay in this place.

Robyn James, 25, won the young professional award. Her start to helping people in Mankato: She came up with the idea of putting red, white and blue ribbons on lockers of students at Mankato West after 9/11. Anyone who wanted to talk about 9/11, would take the ribbons off and give it to someone.

John Daley won the CVB volunteer of the year award. His favorite activity: visiting elderly at Laurel's Edge assisted living. He's been a volunteer with the chamber Cavaliers for years.

Shirley Piepho was also honored as volunteer of the year for her tireless work with MSU and Vikings training camp. While the monitore flashed a picture of her and Jared Allen, she told of the dues she's had to pay with Vikings camp. Mike Tice joked with her and "stuck me under his armpit." "That was my agony," she joked. "I earned my pay."

Pub 500 owner Tom Frederick also had a good Vikings story. Seems defensive lineman 300 plus pound Kevin Williams came in and sat at a table with a reserved sign. A Pub 500 waiter joked he would not make Williams move. When the rest of the Vikings defense showed up, the Pub employeed quipped. "I see you've brought reinforcements."

The Sports Institute took honors as a top emerging business, and co-owner Shane Bowyer recounted the advice of his 1,000 plus-win father, Dean, longtime coach of MSU baseball.

It's not the wins. It's the development of the players, the young people.

Part 2 continues Wednesday. Look for it in this blog.

What's the deal with these widgets?

As a reader of The Free Press Web site, you might notice we have created some "rolling marquees" for our blogs.

They're also known as widgets, and can even be downloaded to your own Web site.

We borrowed the idea from a sister paper in North Andover, Mass., just outside of Boston, but the tool itself, can be found at a free site called "widgetbox.com"

We wanted to dress up our blogs and get them more prominent play on the Web site. So now, they're easy to find and they're easy to read. The widgets update as soon as a new blog posting is filed.

They're broken down into two main categories of blogs: Free Press sports blogs that include blogs on baseball, hockey, fishing and fitness and The Free Press variety blogs that include blogs on entertainment, education, campus life and the blog you are reading as well as a blog from Free Press photographers John Cross and Pat Christman writing about their craft.

You can still look up blogs by individual writers by going to our "blogs" link at the top menu bar of our homepage.

We're also using our scrolling widget tool to provide a national news feed that is automatically updated any time big news breaks. It's from Google news but contains dispatches from The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and even Fox News.

The scrolling widgets have already driven our blog traffic through the roof with great readership.

It's just another innovation to make our Web site reader friendly.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Kasota verdict draws more fire

We once again suspended the story comments function on our Web site on the Kasota shooting case grand jury decision.

A grand jury found there was not enough evidence to charge Le Sueur County Sheriff's deputy Todd Waldron with murder, intentional or not, in the shooting death of Tyler Heilman.

That people were angered at this verdict was no surprise. When that anger turns into speech, we have to put some limits on what can be said on our story comment system on our Web site. It's not that we don't understand the anger, we just find that it's a discussion that will never be resolved.

It does more harm than good. With some of the comments I saw, civility was thrown out the window.

Law enforcement and a certain number of the general public will agree the ruling was just. Heilman's friends, and a certain number of the public, will call the ruling unjust.

We've taken some heavy criticism from law enforcement on how we played the issue, favoring Heilman. But we've had just as much criticism, if not more, saying we are not asking tough questions of police and we're somehow slanting stories to favor law enforcement.

Whenever we have both sides of a case like this calling us unfair, it usually means, we were very fair. I believe we were, and while I am always willing to listen to criticism, I don't see another way we could have reported the fact and the emotion surrounding the issue.

When one caller asked why we weren't asking tough questions of in their words "cops who kill" I said we do. It's just you can't print what someone doesn't say. Law enforcement and the prosecutors decided against holding a press conference with their key witnesses.

I wouldn't expect them to.

They have promised to offer more information to explain the jury verdict in a few weeks. We'll be there, and we'll be responsibly reporting the case and the facts

Marathon should be fun

Greater Mankato Convention and Visitors Bureau today announced that Mankato would be hosting the first Mankato Marathon next October, and it should fill the tourist attraction void left when the Nature Valley Grand Prix bike race put the brakes on a Mankato location.

It should be fun to see a hoped for 1,000 runners taking on the hills and valleys of Mankato.

The date is Oct. 23 and the course, to be finalized in January, will include Mankato parks, trails and City Center. As a certified marathon it will be one of the last races for people to qualify for the Boston Marathon.

Hy Vee has taken the lead role in sponsoring the event, but more are needed as are some 250 volunteers. To find out more, go to www.mankatomarathon.com

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Can leaders make something happen?

I just got back from beautiful Grand Rapids, Minn., after spending a week with 23 other people from the Mankato area who have positions of leadership in their organizations.

It was a program fully paid for and sponsored by the Blandin Founation, a group that has an endowment of $400 million and a goal of improving communities in greater Minnesota and rural areas.

Our goal was to learn how to mobilize a community to solve common problems. It's easier said then done, and of course, the role of a newspaper editor is different than the role of say, someone at Greater Mankato Growth. I'm charged with more of the gathering of information and framing the issues than actually mobilizing people at meetings and other events.

Still, lots to contemplate. The group was fairly enthusiastic about the greater Mankato area as a place to live, raise family, have fun. But there were several fairly significant problems discussed as well.

The group will be gathering more information on the issue of young girls in our region who, according to a major survey, have lots of feelings of hopelessness, even suicidal thoughts.

Another group will look to define more clearly the issue of childhood obesity and what can be done locally about that.

And a third group will try to understand and move forward on getting more people of color and diverse ethnic backgrounds to become part of decisionmaking groups in local institutions.

The meeting of 24 people from such different institutions, half women, half men, was sort of an amazing event. Our trainers pointed out it may be the last time all of us are in a room together for one-hour, much less five days.

There's got to be some good that comes from that.