Odds and Ends on a Monday

Busy news day as we get ready for election day on Tuesday ... so I'm working on more things at once than I can control. A few notes to pass along.

The local chapter of the Red Cross picked the worst night possible to honor some special people. Their annual "Acts of Courage" Awards are set for Tuesday night at a time when all local media will be chasing political stories and election results. The people the RC honors are all top-notch, but the available news crews to cover the awards will be slim to none.

Speaking of election night, I found out today that I won't be anchoring the 10 p.m. broadcast. Instead, Channel 3 is planning a special election broadcast beginning at 10 p.m. covering all of the local results along with the Presidential primaries. Since we share resources with Channel 3, there's no way to do two newscasts at once tomorrow night. Instead, I will be part of WKYC's broadcast with Akron-Canton area results.

The U of A now has three active web cams trained on the site of the new stadium. Check it out here. It should be a fun way to watch the construction progress as this project gets underway. The first kick-off is scheduled for the 09' season .. or about 18 months from now. Just how fast can we build a stadium anyway?

My apologies to those of you who endured part of my chuckle on the air last week. Not sure how "Cuyahoga" County became "Cuya-hoagie" County ... like it's a new sandwich or something. That's the beauty of live TV: once it's out of your mouth, there's no going back.

Yes .. Betsy Kling is pregnant. She announced it on the air a little over a week ago and is due this summer. A month ago I hinted that I had some exciting personal news but couldn't write about it yet because it wasn't my news to tell the public. I'm very happy for Betsy and her husband, Paul Thomas, who is a fellow reporter with WKYC.

I've been out of the office so much on the Cutts trial that I spent much of the day catching up on the zillion emails sitting here. Some of the notes I received contained great stories, but unfortunately I didn't open them in time because I was away at the courthouse. If you have a story for our Akron newsroom, make sure you copy your email to our assignment desk at akroncantonnews@wkyc.com so that someone other than me also gets it.

I think last week's Prince Harry story showed a positive side of the media that few ever acknowledge. Seems the major news organizations in Great Britain have known for months that the Harry was serving in Afghanistan but agreed not to report it. Some of the major US organizations also knew but were keeping silent. Obviously some Internet group failed to see the same benefit and published the information leading to Harry's return to his homeland. Still, the fact that so many others in the media were willing to put their country and a military unit's safety above their own drive for headlines is admirable .. but then again, who would ever report it?

Email from Jim in Hinckley: "Comet Rd buzzards are back! Flew over our house about 4P." The birds must not have gotten the word about this being a leap year :)