Hoosier State Press Association - The Indiana Publisher - Better Newspaper Contest
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/96748
Division 6 Best General Commentary/Category 4 First place Frank Gray, The Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne) Comments: This is what column writing should be. Small, little ���what ifs��� and ���ever notices��� succinctly written. Second place Erika Smith, The Indianapolis Star Comments: Nice work in humanizing your topics. Third place Tracy Warner, The Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne) Comments: Authoritative work. Crew suspended in safety lapse Frank Gray The Journal Gazette In 1932, a man named Charles Ebbets took a photograph of 11 men perched on an I-beam 69 stories above the streets of New York, eating their lunch. Beneath their feet you can see the city���s skyline. Today, 80 years later, the photo is still a sensation. If you���re afraid of heights, it still sends little ripples of pain up and down your body. baseball game. Sitting with their legs dangling over the edge like that was a violation of Occupational Safety and Health Administra�� tion rules, we were told. must be a guardrail 4 feet high with a midrail to protect against falls. The workers were on their own time, eating lunch, but they were on the construction site, and they were clearly in the wrong, Vondron said. Action had to be taken. Vondron had no idea that it had even happened, until the photo appeared. He said he was eating lunch in a trailer nearby. Had the workers been sitting on buckets behind the two cables that formed the guardrail they would have been perfectly all right. But they stuck their legs under the lower cable. Vondron���s worry is that the company could be fined by OSHA for a safety violation. The agency, he said, can take action based on a photograph. According to OSHA, any time you are working more than 4 feet above-ground there For complete story, see www.hspafoundation.org Click on ���Contests.��� In front of the men was a cable that is meant to serve as the lower rung of a guardrail at the edge of the construction project. As photos go it was nice, but unbeknownst to the photographer, it generated unintended consequences. Tuesday morning, the men in the photograph were suspended, off the job for a week, we���re told. Chris Benninghoff, South Bend Tribune Comments: Emotional topics, well-written, with strong advocacy and calls to those in power to make change. Exactly as it should be. On Tuesday, The Journal Gazette ran a front page photograph of some construction workers doing something similar. It was a timid version of Ebbets��� classic photo, showing a handful of workers building the mixed-use Harrison project next to Parkview Field. They were dangling their legs over the edge of an I-beam that held up a floor, eating their lunch while they watched a TinCaps Third place Appalling policy Best Editorial Writer/Category 5 First place Tracy Warner, The Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne) Comments: Fine example of standing up for sunshine. No punches pulled. This writer is guaranteed to generate lots of reader feedback. Second place Doug Ross, The Times (Munster) Comments: Approachable writing with strong opinions. This is perhaps the best entry in terms of advocating on topics of prime interest to the local readers. Well-done. Best Business/Economic News Coverage/ Category 6 First place Messy math J.K. Wall, Indianapolis Business Journal Comments: J.K. Wall���s story offers a clear explanation of the health care law and the calculations employers will be making in the coming years. The illustrations using average companies and employees were helpful. Second place The surreal day the bank failed Sherry Slater, The Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne) Comments: Most people have no idea what happens when a bank fails. Sherry Slater���s story takes them right inside the bank and looks at the impact a bank failure has on a community. Third place ���Tech���s big bang��� Chris O���Malley, Indianapolis Business Journal Comments: Chris O���Malley���s story is a good illustration of the tentacles one successful company can send out into the community. It���s thorough and offers a great deal of detail. The graphic is a good addition. Tracy Warner The Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne) Purdue University���s choice of a 64-year-old educator to lead IPFW offers damning evidence that the university���s mandatory retirement policy for its top officials is antiquated and discriminatory. In selecting Vicky Carwein, the chancellor search committee and Purdue officials appear to have rightly judged the candidates on their skills, experience and outlook and did not discriminate because of her age. This is, of course, how it should be. We spoke to Randy Vondron, superintendent for the construction site. He was reluctant to talk much and clearly a little upset. Yet she is replacing Michael Wartell, the longtime chancellor who was forced to retire because he turned 65. Carwein, however, will not face the mandatory retirement when she turns 65. Purdue���s policy forces retirement at 65 if the executive has been on the job at least two years and qualifies for the minimum retirement benefit. tax dollars ��� is left with an unconscionable and arbitrary policy that has the effect of saying Wartell is too old to be chancellor but Carwein is not. And the university has exacerbated the already bad policy by applying it unevenly, waiving mandatory retirement for some but not for others. Carwein won���t reach the point of being vested for minimum retirement for several years. Purdue board members conveniently do not apply the policy to themselves, and some are over 65, including Thomas Spurgeon (Class of ���61), who introduced Carwein at IPFW on Tuesday. So Purdue ��� a public university supported with your Purdue should eliminate this appalling policy. Messy math: Employers consider dropping health coverage J.K. Wall Indianapolis Business Journal The scribbling started in March 2010. Immediately after the passage of the health care reform law that month, many employers scribbled back-of the-napkin calculations for how much they could save if they dropped health insurance coverage and instead paid the $2,000 per worker fine for doing so. But the real scribbling is yet to come ��� and a lot more complicated. When health insurance exchanges start up in 2014, employers will actually have the option of turning those scribblings into action. The question of the moment is, how many employers drop coverage? Several sophisticated studies by Rand Corp., the Congressional Budget Office and others have generally answered, not many. But last month, 30 percent of employers surveyed by McKinsey & Co. said they ���definitely��� or ���probably��� would drop coverage at some time after 2014. So IBJ did its own back-ofthe-napkin calculation, for an average small company paying average wages to its averageincome family workers. What we found is this: Companies that drop insurance coverage could, without spending any more money than they are now, give workers an 11-percent raise or else help them save as much as $2,000 per year buying health coverage in one of the exchanges. Employees buying single coverage would not fare as well, likely spending $1,000 more for health coverage in the exchanges compared with what they pay now through employer plans. Those projections are based on numerous assumptions that could fail to prove out. And even if they do come about, employers could still shun the exchanges if employees perceive them as unattractive. The exchanges will be online marketplaces for health insurance, created and regulated by state governments or, if a state chooses, the federal government. ���Employers might drop coverage if health exchanges are up and operating successfully, if the company���s access to a healthy, productive work force is not adversely impaired, and if dropping employer-sponsored insurance does not put an employer at a competitive disadvantage to their direct competitors,��� wrote Paul Keckley, executive director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, in a June 27 report. Some observers, however, think financial straits will push employers ��� particularly small ones ��� to use the exchanges no For complete story, see www.hspafoundation.org Click on ���Contests.��� Page 59