KBOI-TV

Chris Nettleton is the new Sports Director. He previously worked at stations in Minnesota, Tennessee and Iowa.  Stephanie Smith is the new morning news show co-anchor.  She came from KLEW.

Idaho Public Television

Greg Hahn, formerly an editor for the Idaho Statesman, is the new Producer/Reporter/Host for Idaho Reports.  Melanie Corry, Associate Producer for Dialogue, departs to work for the PBS station in Redding, Calif.

KNIN-TV

New arrivals include Roland Beres, weekday anchor, who was working in Madison, Wisconsin and previously had worked at KTVB; Tamara Jolee, sports and field reporter, who was working in Dallas, Texas; Michael Lopez, video journalist, who came from South Florida; and Jennifer Auh, video journalist, who came from KTVE in Monroe, Louisiana.

KTVB-TV

New arrivals include Jenna Jordan, morning producer, from University of Colorado at Boulder; Andrea Lutz, nightside reporter, from KAJ, Missoula; Jay Tust, sports reporter/anchor from KLEW, Lewiston; Julia Dodson, senior morning producer from WXIN, Indianapolis; and Adrea Young, nightside assignment editor/digital media producer, from KOIN, Portland, Ore.
Departures include former news director Jim Gilchriest to WAVY, Hampton Roads, Virginia; nightside reporter Nishi Gupta, who took a job at Global TV in Toronto;  morning producer Kelly Fisk; nightside assignment editor Nick Lambert; nightside photographer Trevor Loucks; and sports anchor/reporter Zach Wolken.

KTRV-TV

New arrivals include morning news anchor Jonathan Martinez, who came from Las Vegas. Judy Alley is the new weekend news anchor/reporter. She came from Los Angeles. Brian Staudinger is a new video journalist.  He was previously an editor and left to work for a cruise line before returning. Carl Rippe is a new weekend weatherperson.  He came from west Texas.

Former weekend anchor Mike Vogel left to start his own Web company.  Adam Bartelmay, former weekday anchor, left for a public relations position with the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce.

KIFI/KIDK-TV

New reporter Caleb James came from the University of Colorado, Boulder, as did new reporter Kylie Bearse; new reporter/weekend producer Jamie Ostroff came from Miami, and new weekday producer Paul Riley arrives from BYU Idaho. New overnight producer Jake Copp hails from the University of Wisconsin.

Troy Campbell, a reporter, moved to a station in El Paso, Texas.  Tammy Harmer, weekend anchor/reporter, left the industry. Brandon Aisle, executive producer, left to become executive producer at KKTV in Colorado Springs.

KPVI-TV

Former morning anchor/producer Stuart Summers left for a position at ISU. Diana Nguyen, who was a reporter, left the business.

Haley Smith is the new morning anchor/producer.  She came from BYU. Sasha Zimmerman, who came from BYU Idaho, is the new reporter.

KMVT-TV

Diane Dean is the new weekday anchor, arriving from Texas. Also from Texas is new reporter Aimee Burnett. Former reporter Rachael Giffoni left for the CBS station in Fort Myers, Fla.

KLEW-TV

Nate Keuster is the new News Director.  He came from Boise, as did Matt Johnson, the new Sports Director. New reporter Cindy Cha arrives from Honolulu, Hawaii. Stephanie Smith departed to become the morning anchor on KBOI-TV.

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BOISE WEEKLY

After eight years of hard work at Boise Weekly, Arts and Entertainment Editor Amy Atkins has left to pursue life outside of the newsroom. Staff Writer Tara Morgan was named to fill Atkins’ shoes as A&E editor, while Sheree Whiteley, Andrew Crisp and Stephen Foster joined the editorial staff in various reporting positions.

IDAHO MOUNTAIN EXPRESS

Sabina Dana Plasse, former arts and events editor, left to pursue other writing opportunities and new projects in the valley. Jennifer Liebrum will be taking over as the new arts and events editor.

TWIN FALLS TIMES-NEWS

Julie Wootton has joined the Times-News as an education reporter. She was formerly with the Elko (Nev.) Daily Free Press. Features reporter Melissa Davlin has joined the editorial board.

IDAHO STATESMAN

Mike Jung is the new president and publisher. He is the former publisher of the Santa Cruz (Calif.) Sentinel, and before that worked for the San Jose Mercury News and Florida Today.

IDAHO STATE JOURNAL

Former teacher and newspaper editor Michael H. O’Donnell has joined the Idaho State Journal staff as assistant managing editor. O’Donnell will continue to write his Sunday column for the paper in addition to his new duties.

IDAHO FALLS POST    REGISTER

Ruth Brown is the new cops and courts reporter for the Post Register. Brown comes to Idaho Falls from the Capital Journal in Pierre, S.D., where she covered state government, city council, and courts in two counties as well as the police beat. Brown replaces Rachel Cook, who took a job at the Bakersfield Californian as a breaking news reporter.

IDAHO PRESS-TRIBUNE

Charlotte Wiemerslage is the new local editor; she’s a recent BSU grad, former managing editor of the BSU Arbiter, and a graduate of Eagle High School. Holly Beech, a Northwest Nazarene University grad, former editor of the college paper, and graduate of Skyview High School in Nampa, is a new business reporter.

Nate Green signs on as education reporter; he’s a former reporter for the Laramie Daily Boomerang in Laramie, Wyo. and also teaches English at the college level. John Funk is the new night reporter; he worked for the Herald Journal in Logan, Utah. New photographer Adam Eschbach is a recent graduate of the University of Montana.

Name: Kelsey Jacobson

Press Club position: Board member of the IPC Southwest Chapter

Job: Senior Digital Media Producer for KTVB.COM.  I really like the new media side of journalism.  I love writing for the web, designing new web pages, graphics, and I really enjoy the social media aspect of it all.  With how fast everything changes in the new media world, it’s hard to say where my career will take me!

Education: I graduated magna cum laude from the University of North Dakota in 2007 with a degree in Communication.  But my experience in broadcast journalism dates back to high school.  I began working in television running cameras, teleprompter, audio, and chyron at an ABC affiliate in 2002.  While working at WDAZ-TV, I worked my way up, eventually producing newscasts, reporting, shooting and editing my own stories.  Once I graduated from college I moved out to Boise.  September marked my four year anniversary at KTVB, while October marked my nine year anniversary in the news industry.

Honors/Achievements: In 2008, I was honored to be producing KTVB’s Today’s Morning News when it was awarded an Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.  Since I’ve joined the web team, we were also honored with a national Edward R. Murrow Award.  Those are huge honors that I’m very proud to be a part of.

What do you love about your job? I love the fast pace of the news industry.  I get a rush producing breaking news, and I feel a great sense of pride when I see a story through from start to finish.  In news, you get to learn a little about a lot of things and every day is different.  In this last year, my job allowed me to visit a new city every day for two weeks during our Live Tour.  One day I was exploring Ponderosa Park in McCall, and the next I found myself driving through Hells Canyon taking pictures.  It was an incredible experience.  KTVB has given me the opportunity to do what I love, learn, and grow as a producer, writer, photographer, and graphic designer.  Day-to-day, keeping up with current events, surfing other news web sites, utilizing social media, and discovering new tools are things that I do whether I’m at work or not.  You know you have found a great job when you are doing things at work that you enjoy doing in your free time.

About Idaho? Idaho is an outdoor adventurist’s dream!  I love camping, hiking, waterskiing, snow skiing, exploring hot springs, and just being outdoors in general.  I don’t know of any other place where you can actually water ski in the morning and then go up the mountain in the afternoon to snow ski.  I actually did that last year … in February.  Crazy?  Yes.  But that is definitely not something I would be able to do where I came from in North Dakota.  Idaho has so much to offer and I am always finding new places to explore and new things to try.

Where did you grow up? I grew up in Grand Forks, North Dakota, where the average temperature is … freezing.  When I first moved to Idaho, I wore flip flops all year long and the only time I put on a coat was to go skiing in the mountains.  People thought I was crazy.  But having come from a place where the temperature drops to 40 degrees below, I feel like anything above zero is balmy.

Interests/Pastimes: Since working as the Senior Digital Media Producer here at KTVB, I’ve had the opportunity to get out from in front of the computer and go out into the community to take pictures for the web site.  I’ve always loved photography, but I didn’t realize how much I enjoyed it until now.  Other things I enjoy are traveling, camping, skiing, football Sundays, and craft beer.

Surprising skill: One surprising skill I have is the ability to hurt myself doing pretty much anything.  I fall walking up the stairs, I trip over myself just walking down a hallway.  In April, I had surgery after tearing my ACL on the ski hill.  The first time my doctor told me I could ride a bike after my surgery, I went over the handlebars and found myself in the emergency room getting six stitches in my chin.  This is a surprising skill I have yet to find a use for.

Other involvements: I’m currently involved in Make-A-Wish as a wish granter.  I’m teaming up with a good friend of mine, who happens to be a competitor, to grant wishes to children with life-threatening medical conditions.  Stacey Skrysak from KTRV and I are a wish granting team.  We are still working together to grant our first wish, and were recently assigned our second.

Bucket list: I am grateful to have been able to accomplish quite a few things on my bucket list like skydiving and swimming with dolphins.  A few things I have left to do are camp on a beach, go on a long road trip with no real destination, and learn to play the Cheers theme song on the piano.

Interviewed by Betsy Russell

By Betsy Russell

An Idaho judge has issued a significant court decision finding that the personnel records of former University of Idaho Professor Ernesto Bustamante – who took his own life after shooting to death graduate student Katy Benoit – must be released under the Idaho Public Records Law.

The Idaho Press Club joined with media organizations across the state, including the Lewiston  Tribune, Moscow-Pullman Daily News, Idaho Statesman, The Spokesman-

Review,  The Associated Press and KXLY-TV, to go to court for access to the Bustamante records, which include tens of thousands of emails, and we won. It was a unique court case, in part because the university, though on the other side of the case, essentially joined with the news media outlets in seeking the court ruling. The university won’t appeal, and the ruling now sets precedent for such cases in Idaho in the future.

“This provides us with what we sought: a clear path forward,” University of Idaho general counsel Kent Nelson said of the ruling. “It has always been the university’s intention to be as open and transparent as the law allows in this matter.”

The legal question was whether the disclosure exemption in the public records law for most personnel records of a public official still applies after the official dies. The media argued that it doesn’t – in part because the law allows the release of those records with the public official’s written consent.

“The definition of ‘public official’ is not inclusive of a deceased person whether or not that person passed away weeks ago or one hundred years ago,” wrote Lewiston attorney Charles Brown in a brief submitted to the court. “For a court to expand the concept of ‘public official’ to all deceased former public officials would have a broad and dramatic impact for generations to come without the consequences having been thought through as to the impact on history, research, and other unintended consequences, and the public’s right to know and understand how public institutions such as the University handle situations which involve the safety and well-being of their students, and not just a concern for the personnel files of a deceased and deadly ex-public official.”

2^nd District Judge John Stegner ruled, however, that the law’s reference to personnel records of a “former public official” can include those who are dead, meaning Bustamante is considered a “former public official” under the law. However, he held, “The statute is silent regarding what happens upon the death of a former public official. … This court is therefore called upon to resolve the statute’s ambiguity.”

It would be an “overly restrictive interpretation” to find that all former public officials’ personnel records are secret forever, including after their deaths, Stegner wrote, especially “given the espoused statutory preference that ‘all public records in Idaho are open at all reasonable times for inspection except as otherwise expressly provided by statute.’ … Forever sealing records that could have been disclosed had the official consented, is contrary to the Idaho Public Records Act’s presumption that records be open for inspection.”

Instead, the judge found that a balancing test must be applied, to weigh the public’s need to know against the need to maintain confidentiality of the personnel records. In this case, he held, the balance clearly tipped to the public.

“Here, the public’s need to know clearly outweighs whatever right to privacy exists,” Stegner wrote. “Bustamante engaged in behavior that resulted in Benoit lodging a complaint against him. The public needs to know, in as much detail as possible, how the University responded to that complaint and whether its response was appropriate under the circumstances. Bustamante, by doing what he did, has little, if any, right to maintain the privacy of his personnel records. Accordingly, before personnel records of a deceased public employee may be released, a court must conduct a balancing test to determine whether the public’s interest outweighs the former public official’s right to privacy.”

The law’s exemption for personnel records notes that even within personnel records, certain items must remain open for public inspection, including employment history, classification, pay grade and step, longevity, gross salary and salary history, status, workplace and employing agency. All other personnel records can be released with the employee’s written consent.

The ruling is especially significant because it reinforces the central premise of Idaho’s public records law – that public records are open. The exemption for personnel records doesn’t outweigh that basic premise when the public’s right to know outweighs the interest in privacy.

Betsy Russell is a Boise-based reporter for The Spokesman-Review, and is the president of the Idaho Press Club.

BOISE – Leaves weren’t the only things changing across the Treasure Valley landscape this fall — the local television landscape was undergoing a dramatic shift of its own.

The month of September saw an unprecedented number of changes to each of the local stations that produce news – with changes to nearly every station’s lineup.

Local television has seen a major expansion of its available news product over the last 12 years or so. On any given weekday in 1999 just three channels presented a total of nine hours of local news.  Today viewers have access to more than 19 hours across seven stations: KTVB, 24/7, KIVI, KNIN, KTRV, KBOI and KYUU.

KNIN

The most heavily-promoted changes came to KNIN-TV channel 9.  The station, which started life as a Home Shopping Club affiliate, continued its evolution to a top-tier network affiliate. Now known as Fox 9, the Journal Broadcast Group-owned outlet traded low-rated CW programming for well-known shows like House, American Idol and Glee.

It also restructured its

commitment to news programming. Once famously known as “Idaho’s No-News Channel,” KNIN added a 30-minute nightly news program in 2009 at 9 p.m. when it was acquired by Journal Broadcast Group – which also owns local ABC affiliate KIVI.  The show was anchored by KIVI’s talent and grew out of Journal’s deal with the Federal Communications Commitment to merge the two stations.

With the move from CW to Fox on September 1st, a glossy new hour-long newscast premiered, anchored by a separate team. Texas native Tamara Jolee had been paired with former KTVB morning anchor Roland Beres for the show.  The station later replaced Jolee with KIVI anchor Michelle Edmonds. While the show shares a set (brand new), graphics (also new) and reporting team (partly new) with KIVI, some unique-to-KNIN features are mixed in to help the show stand apart.

KTRV

After losing the Fox affiliation to KNIN, KTRV spent the summer fashioning a new program lineup.  The station now calls itself 12KTRV and is playing up the moniker “Idaho Independent TV.”

KTRV added an hour of morning news from 8-9 a.m. – giving it a three-hour block that starts at 6 a.m.  Weekend anchor Bri Eggers moved to mornings and the station has added live segments in the early morning hours.

In place of Fox shows in prime-time, channel 12 now runs syndicated repeats of 30 Rock and Law & Order Criminal Intent leading into its established 9 p.m. newscast.

The station also is running Friday Football Live, a weekly high school football matchup produced in association with Impact Radio Group.

KBOI

The third partner in the television Do-Si-Do is KBOI and co-owned station KYUU.  Digital channel 2.2 had been home to a classic sitcom service known as Retro TV – but after KNIN dropped CW programming, KYUU remade itself as a full affiliate of the network.

Like KNIN, KYUU had a fledgling 9 p.m. newscast – but also took the new affiliation as a chance to beef up its presence in the time slot.  Former KBOI morning anchor Trina Cobbley produces and appears alongside reporter Alana Brophy for the 30-minute show, which features traditional local news headlines and weather with lifestyle segments and entertainment news.

On its main CBS affiliate, KBOI launched a new morning show known as AM Extra with former sports director J Bates and market newcomer Stephanie Smith. Much like its 9 pm cousin, the new morning show is going outside the traditional local news formula by adding personality and lifestyle segments to the steady diet of news, weather and traffic.

KIVI

Channel 6 has rehired some of the staff lost during a round of layoffs in 2010. It also shares a new set with KNIN and introduced new graphics and music to complete the look. Market veteran Bob Anthony returned to the station for his second tour of duty as weekend weather anchor at channel 6, after spending several years at KTVB followed by time out of TV news.

KTVB

No major changes at KTVB – though the station (disclosure: my employer) is putting added emphasis on the live newscasts on its digital station, now known as Idaho’s Very Own 24/7.  The 6:30 p.m. newscast has been revamped, and a number of features added to the morning news at 7 a.m.

Don Day, Internet sales and product manager for KTVB News Group, is a former Idaho Press Club state board member.

Idaho’s Boise State Public Radio is at the center of a national initiative to expand and improve reporting on state government and how it affects people and communities – through both broadcast and online reporting.

Two new full-time reporters have been hired and started in mid-September as part of  StateImpact Idaho. It’s one of eight StateImpact projects launched in collaboration with National Public Radio; the others are in Florida, Indiana, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Texas.

“StateImpact is launching at a time when investments in local media are shrinking or have disappeared all together,” said Margaret Low Smith, NPR’s interim Senior Vice President for News. “StateImpact will deliver first class accountability reporting at the local level. This vital reporting is nowhere to be found in dozens of cities and towns across America, and we want to fill that void.”

In Boise, that means Emilie Ritter Saunders, the former Capitol Bureau Chief for Montana Public Radio who spearheaded that station’s foray into the digital world and was a senior fellow for NPR’s Economic Training Project, and Molly Messick, a former reporter and host at Wyoming Public Radio, have joined the newsroom staff. Their focus is Idaho’s economy, and how state governmental actions affect it.

“StateImpact Idaho is a project dedicated to asking and answering big questions,” said Messick, the project’s broadcast reporter, who will specialize in in-depth radio stories. “We aim to help our audience understand the broad and perhaps unexpected effects of incremental policy decisions.  We also want to give listeners a more comprehensive view of the state’s economic situation.  We want people to be at the heart of these stories, so that at no time do we talk about policy and the troubled economy, without thinking about how both play out and affect people in their daily lives.”

Ritter Saunders, who is Boise State Public Radio’s first digital reporter, said, “A few months from now I see StateImpact Idaho being the go-to statewide resource for economic news. People will have StateImpact Idaho bookmarked as a must-read daily news site.  We’re in the process of building a tool that will be a hub for learning about state government policies that impact business and the economy, and a place to find real-life stories of how Idahoans are coping with a ‘post-recession’ economy.”

The two-reporter team will break down key economic terms and ideas, the budget and much more.  Those stories will be told using the best platform available from multi-media to on-air. All of the content can be found on the StateImpact Idaho website: http://stateimpact.npr.org/idaho/. The project also is on Facebook and Twitter.

It’s part of a local-national journalism collaborative designed to build on the best of local and state reporting at NPR member stations across the nation by focusing on how governmental decisions affect citizens in such areas as education, healthcare, business, the environment, energy and jobs. StateImpact will eventually put reporters on the ground in all 50 states to serve public radio’s growing audience of 34 million listeners, and tens of millions more online and on mobile.

Several foundations, corporations and individual donors have made philanthropic contributions to NPR and partner stations in support of StateImpact. These grants fund the planning and launch phases, and have made it possible for NPR to staff an eight-member StateImpact desk to run the project, which is starting with a two-year pilot in the eight states. NPR is working with partner stations to seek additional funding for the overall initiative and local and regional matching funds.

NPR will invite applications from additional stations and states to join the project in the coming months.

Both Ritter Saunders and Messick say they’re glad to be in Boise and to continue reporting in the West.

Ritter Saunders said she’s excited to be part of “a news organization that is embracing new reporting initiatives.  It’s energizing to work in a newsroom where quality is paramount and we’re able to put a human face on economic stories.”

Sadie Babits is the news director at Boise State Radio and a member of the Press Club board.