InkBlots

No, that W, or whatever they’re calling it these days. Wyatt Emmerich just celebrated his 50th, in case you missed it.

A grant from the Mississippi Press Association Education Foundation will support the University of Southern Mississippi School of Mass Communication and Journalism’s efforts to prepare its students for technological changes in the field.

Gareth Clary, a longtime resident of Jackson County and a 25-year veteran of the Mobile Press-Register, has been named editor of Pascagoula’s Mississippi Press…Former Mississippi newspaperman Ken Jones has been named regional general manager for a cluster of Arkansas publications.

The DeSoto Times has reached an agreement to purchase the DeSoto County Tribune along with the Home Market magazine, Click magazine and the newspaper’s Web site from Jackson-based Emmerich Newspapers.

The deal was announced this week in the pages of the Times, a thrice-weekly newspaper based in Hernando. The Tribune publishes weekly on Thursday. It was purchased in 2001 by Emmerich from founder Doug Jones.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

We’re a few steps behind on this one. A change in format from SAU Broadsheet to “King Tab” was announced three weeks ago and enacted during the first pub week of August for the Hattiesburg-based Lamar Times and Petal News.

If recommendations unveiled last week from the state’s Tax Study Commission are approved, not only will Mississippians pay more for a pack of cigarettes, but also to have your family pet sheared, your car towed or your nails done. Oh, and newspapers may cost more, too.

Joshua Cogswell, outgoing managing editor at The Rankin Ledger, explains the consolidation of the thrice-weekly publication into two weekly editions. The paper announced two weeks ago it was shuttering its Flowood office and moving operations to The Clarion-Ledger HQ.

RELATED:

• Gannett cutting 1,000 jobs company-wide

The Sun Herald has taken the wraps off of a new design for its Website. The old design looked a lot like this, a site for sister newspaper The Miami Herald. Both are owned by McClatchy.

The New SH site is also apparently part of a corporate redo of McClatchy online products, with subtle differences in each market.

Clay McFerrin, editor and publisher of the Charleston Sun Sentinel, has had his name spread across newspapers from Boston to Britain to Italy as the world’s press has been enthralled with the one-vehicle accident that seriously injured actor and native Mississippian Morgan Freeman and a friend early Monday.

• Good ole AP
• The Boston Globe
• Italy’s Agenzia Giornalistica
• Britain’s The Guardian
• And, an Inkblots first (and likely last): Access Hollywood.

The Clarion-Ledger has to eliminate 20 positions, Publisher Larry Whitaker wrote to staff in a memo posted on Romenseko. Whitaker cites the slowdown in print and online advertising as the reason for the move.

MORE:

• Read the publisher’s memo
• Rankin Ledger closes Flowood office; economy blamed
• Gannett takes $2.8 billion write-down in goodwill