Jackson Tennessee Newspaper

Struck by bat, Franklin placed on DL

Shortstop Nick Franklin, the Mariners' top Minor League prospect, was placed on the Southern League disabled list Tuesday, one day after he was struck by a bat during batting practice.

The incident occurred Monday, some 45 minutes before the Double-A Jackson Generals played at Montgomery. Franklin was taken to a local hospital but accompanied the team on the seven-hour bus ride back to Tennessee, according to the Seattle Times .

"He had some nausea, headaches and dizziness on the bus from Montgomery, but once he got off the bus it all subsided," Mariners director of Minor League operations Pedro Grifol told the newspaper. "It's being treated as a possible concussion. If it is a concussion, we'll take the proper organizational protocol. If it isn't, we're looking seven days at the minimum."

MLB.com's No. 31 prospect had joined the Generals last week after spending the first 2 1/2 months of the season in the California League. After hitting .275 with five homers and 20 RBIs in 64 games with Class A Advanced High Desert, Franklin was tearing up the Southern League. He was 9-for-15 with a homer and two RBIs in four games with Jackson.

"He's elevated his game, like good talents always do," Grifol told the Times . "You challenge them and they elevate their game. The reports we've gotten from Double-A have been unbelievable. He's hitting, hitting with power, playing great defense and he's brought energy to the club. He's a leader. Everything we anticipated, it's happened."

The Mariners selected Franklin with the 27th overall pick in the 2009 Draft, and he saw limited action that summer. But he earned Midwest League midseason and postseason All-Star status in 2010, batting .281 with a league-leading 23 homers, 65 RBIs and 25 stolen bases in 129 games at Class A Clinton.

(Political) Decline and Fall of the Tennessee Daily Newspaper ...

States, “Thirty years ago, the state’s four biggest cities all had two major daily newspapers. In 1983 the Memphis Press-Scimitar folded, and in 1991 the Knoxville Journal ceased daily publication. The Nashville Banner went out of business in 1998, and The Chattanooga Times and Chattanooga Free Press merged into a single publication in 1999.”

The weekday circulation figures of those newspapers since 1971 tell an interesting tale of decline:

attributes the decline in daily newspaper readership to several factors — including a shift from local management and control to corporate administration; the inroads of electronic and digital communications media; the financially dictated decision by major urban dailies to shrink their circulation areas; and even competition from “alternativwe weeklies like the Memphis Flyer and Nashville Scene.”

The dwindling influence of dailies has resulted, says the Journal , in legislative challenges to Sunshine laws and efforts to shift obligatory legal notices from newspapers to Internet sites

Other legislative responses from the recently concluded 2011 session of the Tennessee General Assembly included:

•SB 1168/HB1774, a bill, tabled for now,that would have given local governments authority to keep the wraps on economic development information “of a sensitive nature.” The bill was pushed by the city of Memphis and the Memphis/Shelby County Chamber of Commerce in tandem with the formation of EDGE (Economic Development Growth Engine).

•SB1665/HB1539, a bill to prohibit publication of records of 911 emergency calls without the consent of the recorded party. This bill is scheduled for House action in the next legislative session. SB1951/HB1875, imposing charges on preparation of public records for citizen inspection.. The bill is pending.

•SB822/HB424, establishing the confidentiality of law enforcement or government records regarding home burglar alarm systems, enacted into law.

•SB1844/HB1154, authorizing governmental entities facing litigation to petition the court to bar plaintiffs from obtaining records th rough the open records process. The bill did not advance.

•And several bills that, as mentioned, would shift public-notice responsibility from newspapers to the Internet or direct mail.

I think the Tennessee Journal itself is doomed and has been for years. Who needs Lee Smith and his editorial chumps when all the state court opinions are free on the Net? Same applies to West Publishing, although that situation is compounded by the fact that West pays for expensive trips to far-flung conferences for Tennessee judges, and somehow our judges' work becomes a proprietary publication at absurd prices for West. There is even an ethical exeption making this "OK", adopted by our judges who benefit from the freebies.