Alderman Sumner Davis was kind enough to email in this point:
Robbie,
In response to your post this morning about the failure of publication for the bonds, the problem was with the SDN’s operation not the City. Attached is the explanation from Brian Hawkins. Feel free to disseminate the information as you see fit.
Sumner
TO: Mayor Dan Camp, the Starkville Board of Aldermen
FROM: Brian Hawkins, Editor, Starkville Daily News
DATE: Friday, March 20, 2009
RE: Non-publication of the legal advertisement for the capital improvements bond issue
To the mayor and Board of Aldermen, first let me offer a most sincere apology on behalf of the Starkville Daily News staff for the non-publication of the legal advertisement for the capital improvements bond issue on the intended date of Thursday, March 13, 2009. All care was taken to ensure the legal advertisement was to be published, but a computer software glitch precluded its publication in the March 13 edition.
Simply put, our legal advertisements clerk followed proper procedure to ensure the legal advertisement was correctly input into the system and scheduled on the computer to be published for the first time in the March 13 edition. Given prior problems that have occurred with publication of city legal advertisements, she took extra care to ensure all was done properly so the advertisement for the capital improvements bond sale would be published as adopted by the board and signed by the mayor.
The glitch occurred when the legal ads were sorted for publication along with the other classified advertisements for the March 13 edition. When the deadline passes for submission of all new classifieds — including legal advertisements — the staff directs the computer to compile all the ads into one file in order to be placed on the page via a computer template for a given day. Each ad is tagged in the computer to be compiled for a given day according to the date of publication. The legals
clerk and I verified that the advertisement for the bond issue had been properly tagged and should have been compiled to run for the March 13 edition.However, at random times in the past, we have encountered problems with advertisements not being compiled by the software for one reason or another. Despite extensive evaluation when prior incidents have occurred with advertisements being left out of the classifieds, we have not been able to pinpoint what exactly causes the computer to randomly omit advertisements when compiling for publication. On most days, this is rarely a problem. But it happens from time to time, though infrequently. We believe that the age of the classified advertising software may have created a compatibility issue since almost all of the computers in the newspaper offices have undergone a major upgrade in software and hardware within the last nine months. The classified advertising software is scheduled for an upgrade in June; we believe this should prevent future problems.
In the case of the bond issue advertisement, there was no way our legals clerk could have known about the non-publication until after the fact. She followed all the proper steps with the computer system to ensure it was published. However, until the software upgrade occurs in the couple of months, we are working to develop a backup plan to ensure that all legal advertisements and other classifieds run as scheduled with our office. It will be a bit more time-consuming for the classified advertising staff in the short run, but we believe it will help us prevent problems until the new software is installed and operation.
Again, please accept our sincere apologies for the problems that have resulted from the non-publication of the advertisement. I felt it important that you understand that the non-publication resulted from a software glitch, not human error by any staff member at City Hall or with the Starkville Daily News.
UPDATE (4:17 PM): From SDN Editor Brian Hawkins
Robbie,
Simply put, the legal ad for the bond issue was not published due to a computer software glitch. This has happened on two other random times with legal ads for other customers, and we have not been able to specifically identify what is causing the software not to publish certain ads. We believe the problem is resulting fromo an incompatibility with the older classified software and the new software we’re using for layout and design that was installed about 8 months ago, but we have no way to verify that.
In reviewing the situation, we discovered that all the proper steps were taken by our legals clerk to ensure the bond issue ad was published as scheduled, but, for some reason, when the computer file was compiled for the legals and classifieds to be published, the ad was not included and it was not discovered until the next day. The newspaper’s classified software is to be upgraded in June, but in the meantime, we have had to develop a checks and balances process to ensure this doesn’t happen again. We are embarrassed by what happened, but in this case, there was no way we could have prevented it.
I hope this answers your questions…
Brian
The first issue with a road bond issue-related legal ad running in the SDN happened before Christmas and was chalked up to human error. This time, it appears that a computer issue at the Starkville Daily News was to blame.
Coincidence? Grand conspiracy?
Sorry for the implication that this was something that happened inside of City Hall.
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