![]() ![]() After retiring, he traveled the state writing syndicated features and a book, Paper Boy: Giving His Heart to Journalism. He won many awards and helped spur school consolidation in Anderson County, but also restoration of a one-room school, one of several civic activities. He was news editor of the Commonwealth Journal in his hometown of Somerset and wire editor of The Lexington Leader, but joined Landmark as editor of the Casey County News in 1976 because he missed contact with the public. White was softspoken but resolute in his convictions, and had a quick wit. It’s to report the news and provide information.” He wrote that publishing mug shots of those convicted “adds a level of punishment, or at least embarrassment, beyond what is imposed by a judge.” He told the Lexington Herald-Leader, “I really don’t think that the role of a community newspaper is to punish or embarrass anybody. ![]() When he retired in 2006, Ben Carlson, the new editor-manager placed by Landmark Community Newspapers, stopped the practice. When the chairman of the county Democratic Party was convicted of drunk driving for the second time in five years, White published his mug shot and a story on rather than on the District Court page."įrom 1999 to 2000, drunk-driving cases in the county declined 37 percent, and the National Commission Against Drunk Driving gave White an award. "Only once did White give any person special treatment. "The only cases in which photos were not published were those where the DUI suspect was injured, taken to the hospital for treatment and, although charged, never processed at the jail and never photographed," Hansen wrote. A few months later, he limited the photos to residents of counties where the paper circulated, according to an ethics case study for the Society of Professional Journalists by Elizabeth Hansen, then a journalism professor at Eastern Kentucky University. “We hope the certainty that their picture will also be published will keep more drunks off our highways.” In that edition, he also ran drunk-driving statistics and stories about seven people killed by drunk drivers. “Most violators of the law dislike having their name in the local paper,” he wrote in an editorial announcing his plan. In 1998, White had been editor of The Anderson News in Lawrenceburg for 20 years when he decided to tackle drunk driving in Anderson County, which had about 19,000 people at the time. Don White (Photo via Somerset Commonwealth Journal)ĭon White, who as a weekly newspaper editor drew national attention by publishing photos of people convicted of drunk driving, then entered the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, died Wednesday in a one-car accident that may have been caused by a medical condition. ![]()
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