The Indiana Publisher

Jessica Bricker News-Banner (Bluffton) Two grain mills operating locations in Wells County have had their licenses suspended temporarily by the Indiana State Department of Agriculture. Legal notices were published in Thursday's News-Banner notifying farmers of the suspensions for Agland Grain and Salamonie Mills. The notices were "to all customers intending to store, grain bank, deferred pricing or sell grain" as of March 3. "The Indiana Grain Buyers and Warehouse Licensing Agency has temporarily suspended Indiana grain buyer/ warehouse license(s)" issued to both mills, the notices read. During the suspensions, the facilities will be supervised by the ISDA director or a designated representative. The locations "may operate the facility, but shall not incur any additional obligations to producers," the notices read in part. This means the business is restricted in certain new purchase of grain. A senior ISDA official said Thursday that legally the department cannot comment on the reason for the suspensions but suspensions last at most 20 days. "Overall the end goal today is to work with the business owners, lift the suspension and have business return to normal. That's always the goal for our agency," the official said, adding later, "We're very hopeful for that." The facilities can submit to the ISDA "requests for approval of removal of any grain from the assets" of their facilities. "Any person owed grain and/or payment for the sale of grain" from the mills are to contact the ISDA. Specifically listed in Agland's notice were locations at 1136 Clark Ave. in Bluffton and 6025 N. Main St. in Uniondale. Specifically listed in Salamonie Mills' notice were locations at 156 Hale St. in Markle in Wells County; 525 N. Wayne St., Warren; 619 N. Main St., Warren; 10643 S. Hartford City Road, Warren; 10199 S. Wayne Road, Warren, and 1649N-200E, Huntington. "The IGBWLA's mission is to ensure the financial integrity of the grain marketing infrastruc- ture, while allowing the industry to be competitive, innovative and efficient," the ISDA website reads. "The agency has oversight of approximately 220 licensees that own more than 400 facilities." A request for comment from the facilities was not returned before press time. Public notice Continued from Page 1 State suspends licenses for two grain companies into local coverage. "We've been talking about getting away from meeting coverage ... to have something that's just kind of enterpris- ing like this," said News-Banner Publisher Doug Brown. "The best part of this was that I didn't ask her to do a story," Brown said. "She just picked it up and said, 'yes, this is newsworthy,' and just ran with it." The story was published on March 6 in the News-Banner and is included here. Brown said the piece is an example of how public notices can further serve readers. "Here's a good application for it," he said. For Bricker, the paper's notices are another tool to find and tell stories. "It's certainly a teaching lesson for me and other reporters to pay attention to those," she said. "I haven't really tapped into that resource until now. I think that it's important for the public to have access to that information," Bricker said. "It lets people know what's going on in their communities. It's really important." Page 12 March 2020 ment. The Sixers had played Gobert's Jazz five days earlier. "I don't think anybody could [have been] prepared," Woods said. "We don't have a guidebook on how to cover sports when sports aren't being played." Now that nearly every sports league has either canceled or indefinitely postponed its upcoming schedule, sports journalists will need to get creative. That's true from a giant like ESPN — which suddenly has a lot of empty slots on its broadcast schedule — down to a place like Evansville. There are certainly still stories to be produced about all these cancellations and their effects on communities. But the de-scheduling of a highly scheduled beat can also open up new possibilities. In Philadelphia, for instance, Woods said that without his reporters traveling for games, they have more time to explore the idea of starting a podcast. They have more time now to dive into stories they can't find time for during a regular season. "The biggest story for me is the guy who was dependent on the Sixers game tonight who won't be able to work — how does that affect him, and how does that impact his family?" he said. "So we're going to be on the ground. We're going to go to the bowling alley. We're going to go check out sports bars as well." Of course, there are plenty of other stories that need covering in a time of unprecedented shutdowns across American cities. Woods said one of his sports reporters has been loaned to the news team to help cover the pandemic; Reynolds said his reporters will likely do the same in his newsroom in the coming weeks. Across the Atlantic, Damian Dowd has a particular challenge. He's the editor of a weekly hyperlocal newspaper called the Inishowen Independent in the northwestern corner of Northern Ireland. The paper focuses heavily on local sports and the Gaelic Games, all of which have been suspended. Dowd's 64-page weekly is usually about 20 percent sports coverage, so now he has a dozen or more pages to fill. He said some of them will now have stories on helpful alternatives that families can take up to be outdoors and exercise while practicing social distance. Other outlets, like USA Today's fan-centered sports website For the Win, will lean more aggressively into covering what's left in professional sports — most obviously the NFL's free agency period that kicks into gear this week, editor Nate Scott said. Of his staff of nine full-time writers, he met with his NFL reporters on Friday and told them they'd have "more resources than usual" this time of year to explore story ideas they might have been sitting on. Michael Giarrusso is global sports editor for the Associated Press, which provides journalism to a wide range of outlets — from small newspapers to ESPN, from print to broadcast and around the world. The spree of cancellations last week was an editing challenge at times: "We had several occasions where I had to say that we have to stop filing so many separate stories and find a way to wrap this up for readers and customers in a way that's digestible because there's almost too much," he said. Giarrusso noted that newspapers used to printing box scores and other agate will likely just have to do without with no results to report. AP sports reporters will be expected to work on evergreen or longform stories — but AP customers will still rely on them for some stories. The uncertainty around this event does create a lot of questions and a lot of demand from readers, Giarrusso said. "If we find smart ways to be able to answer them, despite not having the regular access that we're used to, then sports journalism will be doing a great service to those readers," he said. Sports Continued from Page 6

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