Inspiration can come from just about anywhere, this especially applies to stories that we run in the Wise County Messenger. I want to try relate the best that I can, through one story in particular. That would be one about Zachary Koa, titled; love’s long journey. (And here is part 2.)

I was working on another story with the writer from the newsroom, (Travis Measley), when we heard about Zachary from a bystander that knew we were from the paper. We obtained the contact information, and Travis started inquiring, after a couple of phone calls, he set up an appointment to meet Zachary, and the family.

Never knowing quite what to expect in story of this nature, you just have to feel your way out. For the most part the first meeting is generally just to get to know your subject, or in this case, the family, to try to figure out which direction you want to take the story, if there is one. As a photographer, my job is to create the visual interest for the story, so the initial visit is just about gathering that information myself, and for the writer as well. Sometimes I don’t even carry my camera on the first visit, so I’m a not distracting and can can get to know a subject.

On this particular day I did carry my camera in, which was a good thing because as it turned out Zachery and Malaki both loved the camera and it set a instant bond in motion. The look for inspiration was over, as I looked toward Travis we both knew that this was a story that we wanted to do, for no other reason than the sheer openness and love of this family, their willingness let us in to their life, and share their story.

After our first meeting in on the ride home, we were both truly inspired to do something great with this story.

Monday night, March 23, marked the 2009 Wise County Youth Fair Queens contest at the Decatur Civic Center, naming the 4-H, FFA and FCCLA Queens and runner-ups for this year’s Youth Fair. It was a fantastic competition and all the young women were very well-spoken, well-mannered and well-dressed. Each and every one of them deserved the crowns.

The 2009 winners were:

4-H Queen — Sydney Lawrence, Decatur 4-H

4-H Runner-Up — Jordann Warren, Alvord 4-H

FFA Queen — Jessica Heinze, Slidell FFA

FFA Runner-Up — Sierra Hardee, Boyd FFA

FCCLA Queen — Janie Foreman, Bridgeport FCCLA

FCCLA Runner-Up — Bridget Meyer, Paradise FCCLA

Congratulations to all the girls that competed!

I received an interesting phone call Thursday afternoon around 4 from Decatur Police Chief Rex Hoskins. He told me about the text message spreading like wildfire around the county and, apparently, points far beyond according to some e-mail replies I received after sending out a breaking news bulletin.

The message said that it was gang initiation night, and that gang members were planning to shoot and/or kill three people at a Wal-Mart. Many people locally obviously would think they were talking about the Decatur Wal-Mart, even though the original text message apparently did not specify which Wal-Mart.

I knew we needed to get the message out to people that it was a hoax, but I also knew some people would still avoid the business just in case there was an ounce of truth - even people who hadn’t received the original text message but did receive our news brief. The problem I had was naming the business - which is a victim in the none-too-funny hoax. Obviously, the text message would have a negative effect on business, even though I’m sure Wal-Mart is profitable enough to be able to withstand such a rumor.

It wasn’t a case of protecting an advertiser as some might think - Wal-Mart doesn’t advertise in community newspapers, at least none that I am aware of. And even if they did, it would not have an effect on news coverage.

After seeking the advice of a tenured Messenger employee here at the office, I decided to seek the middle ground and say the text message referred to a “retail store” and an officer would be stationed at “the local big box retailer mentioned in the text message.” If I had any belief that someone, even one person, might have been injured or killed by going to the store that night, I would not have hesitated to put the name in the news brief.

Of course, nothing happened Thursday night. I’ve been hearing about “gang initiation” rumors since I was in high school in the early 90s. I remember going to a football game in south Dallas in our school bus and being told not to put our arms out the window or yell anything because it was gang initiation night. I remember the bus pulling up to a red light and we’d all be looking at the people standing outside of a convenience store, wondering if they might be a gang member. It all seems really silly now.

There are reasons newspapers exist. One is to verify facts, or debunk rumors, presented to the public. We don’t always do a 100 percent accurate job - we are human like everyone else - but we have a duty nonetheless. It’s why it drives me crazy to receive e-mails with factually incorrect information spreading from e-mail account to e-mail account because people haven’t taken the time to verify the information. In a case like Thursday, it is even harder because people feel like they need to get the information out quickly because of the time frame involved.

The bottom line is we will continue striving to separate the fact from fiction.

When you’re talking with Paradise teacher Terri Fortenberry, it’s easy to forget she has cancer. To say she has a positive outlook is an understatement. There are no pity parties. There is no whining. Sure, she has down days and those where she just doesn’t feel well. But she chooses to focus on the good, even when it’s not easy.

I wrote a story on Terri for the Thursday, March 19, edition of the paper that focuses on the ways the community has reached out to her and her family. As I was writing, I soon realized that I wouldn’t have room in one article to list everything, but I wanted to mention a few more here because Terri is so appreciative of each and every thing done on her behalf.

After being diagnosed in 2008 with breast cancer for the second time, she began chemotherapy in January. Fellow intermediate school teacher Karla Moore put together a book called My Favorite Fortenberry Moment that is filled with stories by students about Mrs. Fortenberry.

“We wanted to do a kid-generated project, and I was always hearing ‘Mrs. Fort did this or Mrs. Fort did that,’” said Moore. “We wanted her to see how she’s touched their lives.”

At home Terri said her kitchen windows are covered with the cards sent to her and that she often reflects on those when she needs a lift. The high school Beta Club decorated her house for Christmas, and the Bridgeport Girls Booster Club have prepared weekly meals for Terri and her husband, Eddie, who is the varsity girls’ basketball coach in Bridgeport.

The Paradise Junior High Beta Club raised $288 for the American Cancer Society, and the Girls Who Care at the intermediate school raised $166 by selling valegrams – an idea they came up with on their own. The Bridgeport High School National Honor Society gave a gift of $200 to Terri personally.

An intermediate school prayer group that meets weekly invited Terri so they could say a special prayer of healing over her. One student even spent her Christmas money to buy Terri slippers to wear to her treatments.

She just found out that in December Paradise and Bridgeport will co-host a basketball tournament and donate $100 of each team’s entry fee to the American Cancer Society in her name.

The staff at Paradise Intermediate School wore pink in their staff photo in her honor, bought her several stylish hats and are constantly texting her words of encouragement. Terri can’t get a cell phone signal inside UT Southwestern Medical Center where she gets her treatments in Dallas, but somehow messages from her friends at school come through. In the midst of a lengthy treatment, she once received a photo of her friends holding pom poms and “cheering” for her.

And the list goes on.

Terri said it’s easy to get worried or stressed on the way to a treatment, but once she’s there her mind is at ease. “You can feel people thinking about you and praying for you,” she said.

Every kind word, every good deed is a reflection on Terri and the obvious ways that she has touched people. She is a woman of remarkable strength and courage. I can only hope that when I face adversity that I will do so with a positive attitude and can also be an example to others – just like Terri.

Our Messenger newsroom family has just added a new baby boy. Reporter Mandy Bourgeois, who covers the northern part of Wise County and the Northwest school district, gave birth early Tuesday afternoon to Caleb Lyndon Bourgeois. He is 8 pounds, 3 ounces and is 20 inches long.

It is the first child for Mandy and husband, Daniel

This marks the third fourth “newsroom child” to be born in the month of March, joining assistant editor Kristen Tribe’s son, Luke (March 18), sports editor Robert Morgan’s son, Drew (March 28) and my daughter, Audree (March 29).

Our publisher, Phil Major, passed along the following e-mail to me from a local (not Wise County) publisher who has an interesting ethical decision to make. While we have never had the exact same experience as this publisher, it is one of those questions that very likely could come up at some point.

Here is the e-mail, with the town’s name deleted:

“The Middle School in (a nearby town) has a kid whose mother does not want his name published. He’s an eighth grader who is about six-foot-seven. We first encountered this during basketball season when he dunked and they brought us a photo, but didn’t give us his name. It wasn’t a very good photo, so we just didn’t use it.

“Now he’s in track and wins about five events every meet. He anchors a relay team which our sports guy took a photo of. We have his name all over the results, but they didn’t want him identified in the photo. So we’re going to run a caption along the lines of, “The winning 4×100 relay team was (l-r) Jimmy Smith, Ed Jones, Bill Clark and a runner who is not identified.” With his name in all the results below, it will be ridiculously obvious who he is.

“How would some of y’all handle this? The principal says it’s a custody deal and the mom signed a form that he cannot give out the kid’s name. Our contention is, he’s not living a very low-profile life. With his size and speed, I don’t think he’s kidnappable. Thoughts or similar experiences?

If it was me, I totally understand the desire to protect the boy if the mother thinks that publishing his name with his photo in the paper could cause something tragic to happen. But I also don’t know how you can get around reporting on what looks like will be a standout athlete throughout his high school career. And like the publisher points out, it would be obvious from the results who the missing name is in the photo.

If you were the publisher, how would you handle it?

People love crossword puzzles in the newspaper. They also like having answers to those puzzles published.

We went one for two in this week’s All Around. A no-doubt frustrated reader called to let us know that we failed to publish the answers to this week’s crossword puzzle. It was our error.

We will run the answers to this week’s puzzle along with next week’s puzzle in our next All Around Wise. But in case you can’t wait until then, here are the answers.

Former Montague Co. Sheriff Bill Keating, right, and former jailer Calvin Morales walk out of the courtroom following Monday's arraignment.

Our front page photo and lead story tomorrow features former Montague County Sheriff Bill Keating and other former jail employees being arraigned in Pct. 2 Justice of the Peace Terri Johnson’s courtroom Monday and Tuesday. Last Friday, 17 jail employees were named in a 106-count indictment charging them with various acts of official repression, including providing drugs to and having sex with inmates. Until Monday, the names of those indicted, other than Keating, had remained sealed. The Messenger was the only news organization to cover the arraignment and provide the names of those being booked into jail (they all did what is called a walk through - arraigned, booked and then immediately released on bail).

When the Montague County Jail was closed in January immediately after new Montague Sheriff Paul Cunningham (formerly Wise County’s fire marshal) took office, all of the inmates were moved to the Wise County Jail. Montague County’s jail remains closed.

When deciding on how to cover the arraignment, we knew we needed a reporter there, and we wanted to have a photographer there as well. In these cases, the decision to allow cameras in the courtroom is up to the judge. Over the years, we have had different experiences with different JP or district judge offices. It’s been everything from not even allowing a reporter with a pen and notepad in to a hearing (a ruling we fought against, even getting an attorney general’s opinion) to not allowing recording devices in the hearing to Monday’s allowance of cameras in the courtroom by Judge Johnson.

Obviously, the decision wasn’t popular with some of those being arraigned, as you can tell by the secondary photo in Thursday’s paper of the jailers covering their faces. Some even scolded our reporter and photographer, saying we were invading their privacy and their rights. We disagree, of course, since it was an open public court setting with the judge’s permission. If we hadn’t been able to shoot in the courtroom, we still would have been set up outside to take photos as they were leaving or entering the courtroom. That’s our job.

When I covered the Rebecca Simpson murder-for-hire trial in Tarrant County, the trial was covered by several media outlets. We spoke to the judge in the case during a break, and he outlined what we thought were fair rules: We couldn’t photograph any of the jurors, and we couldn’t take any photos in the courtroom while the jury was seated.

However, when the verdict was read, the judge did allow photographers to enter a small “vestibule” area with windows into the courtroom and shoot from one side, again mostly out of the view of jurors. As it turned out, Messenger photographer intern Cody Duty (current Dallas Morning News photographer intern and son of Messenger photographer Joe Duty) was the only photographer there when the jury returned the guilty verdict. We were able to walk a few blocks away to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram office and send the photos electronically back to our office from their photo desk (sometimes even competing newspapers can help out their fellow journalists).

The main thing is to always respect the judge’s decision. In the cases we’ve disagreed, we’ve handled our complaint through the proper channels. We understand that we are there to report to the best of our abilities but not to make a scene, thereby inserting ourselves into the news.

How about you? Any thoughts on cameras in the courtroom? Is it a privacy violation or newsworthy event?