News Briefly
Free at last
Deputy Gov. Dave Cooley is "a chastened person." At least that's what his boss, Gov. Phil Bredesen, said at a Monday afternoon press conference. In an imminently predictable move, Tennessee Attorney General Paul Summers decided there was "insufficient evidence" to charge Cooley or ticket-dismissing judge David Loughry with criminal wrongdoing. Instead, the guv wrote Cooley a grouchy letter. We're betting there's some good dirt in the sealed-for-now TBI investigation file, but the state's top ranking good ol' boy seems to be out of the woods.
Reporting news is so old-fashioned
The Tennessean is wrapping up a six-part series of front-page articles about a poll it commissioned, conducted over a week ago. Among the revelations are that Van Hilleary has the most name recognition of any potential GOP candidate for Bill Frist M.D.'s Senate seat and that three out of five voters don't care about the presidential candidates' service (or lack thereof) in Vietnam. At a time when the reliability of polls is in deep doubt—and while serious newspapers across the country run analytical pre-election pieces about the two candidates' positions—the local daily is content to present manufactured stories telling readers what they're thinking. Every day matters indeed.
Still at bat
The much belabored issue of whether the Nashville Sounds will get to build a new stadium on the old downtown trash-burning site may finally—mercifully—be coming to an end, one way or another. Scene sources say that Mayor Bill Purcell realizes that thing about the pot and sitting on it for extended periods of time, and that he may well be meeting with Sounds officials this month to bring this stadium question home.
Poll: News Briefly stiff, print too fine
In a newsroom poll commissioned by the Nashville Scene, three out of three respondents indicated they felt our aging audience often overlooked this column. At the advice of our reader editor and several corporate attorneys from New York, then, we've decided to retool News Briefly as a newsy, gossipy, bloggy column where facts will no longer constrain us like they once did. See you next week, albeit with a new name.
