It’s a sad day at CL.
Our friend and colleague Russell McLendon is leaving us today to work for the start-up environmental news and information website Mother Nature Network.
Mere words cannot express how much we’re all going to miss working with Russell.
Only infographics can.
How many words is this worth? More than a thousand, but, really, it’s unquantifiable genius.
AccessNorthGa.com’s best news graphics don’t just illustrate or elaborate a story — they become the story. Using a complex graphical algorithm that attracts, confuses, amuses, delights and then intrigues readers, these bizarre Photoshop Frankensteins can add surprising appeal to a small-town news story. They’re the only reason I followed this summer’s rabies outbreaks in Hall County or knew about various North Georgia manhunts and car crashes.
And I keep coming back to AccessNorthGa.com for more. The creative flow has slowed considerably the last couple months, although the site does still occasionally reuse some classics. But since this is Best of Atlanta week, let’s review ANG’s hits of 2008. The top 15 are after the jump, in very little particular order.
SHARP AS ATTACK: Obama will kick off today a more aggressive approach in campaigning and defending himself against recent truthy attacks from the McCain campaign.
HURRICANE IKE: The National Weather Service warns of “certain death” for coastal residents around Galveston who try to ride out the storm. Houston, however, is doing just that. In metro Atlanta, the specter of Ike has raised gas prices slightly.
THE BEST OFFENSE: The upcoming announcement of where the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility will be located has led to renewed discussion of bioterrorism dangers and accidental disease outbreaks. Meanwhile, NBAF proponents were joined by Gov. Sonny Perdue, who chimed in in support of locating the facility in Athens.
TROY DAVIS: Clemency hearing is today.
FALCONS: Ranked 29th in the NFL in terms of team value. But the emergence of a dynamic running game may make that a low estimate.
DOWNTOWN CONNECTOR: All work that requires lane closures is now finished.
ACCESSNORTHGA.COM: Reports that the Ga. 316/I-85 interchange is one step away from completion; crews now just need to remove the oversized road construction signs.
MARS DROUGHT DOWNGRADED: Scientists find and sample water from the Martian surface, and will spend the next several weeks studying whether it could support life.
TED STEVENS: Not giving up without a slow, creaky fight.
COLBERT: Offers a “rare apology” to Canton, Ga., for calling the town “crappy,” adding that he meant to call Canton, Kan., crappy: “How many Canton, Kan. residents does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None. They don’t use lights because they don’t want to see where they live.”
RUNOFF: Congressional Quarterly summarizes the uphill battle ahead of whoever wins Tuesday’s Democratic primary runoff in the U.S. Senate race to unseat Saxby Chambliss.
316: Won’t toll for thee.
HEADLINE NUDES: Lavonia buys the town’s only strip club with $1 million of taxpayer money, closes it and burns down its billboards.
LINGERIE: Included, along with bras, garter belts and hosiery, among the items exempt from sales taxes in this weekend’s statewide tax holiday. WSB-TV makes the distinction, however, that only sexy lingerie is exempt:
UNEMPLOYMENT: U.S. rate hits a four-year high in July as employers cut 51,000 jobs. But who’s going to operate the giant computer-chip-gear machine that makes red lightning bolts?
WITHDRAWAL METHOD: Third of three candidates for president of Georgia State withdraws his name from consideration, leaving no active candidates.
STORK LIFT: South Georgia’s endangered wood stork is making a comeback, having doubled the number of nests found last year, according to the DNR’s Wildlife Resources Division.
DOT: Settles sexual harassment charges against two former board members for nearly $150,000.
PACK LIGHT, PACK HEAT: State Rep. Tim Bearden thinks better of bringing a gun to pick up his family, but Georgia Carry continues his crusade, suing the city, Mayor Shirley Franklin and Hartsfield-Jackson GM Ben DeCosta for the right to bear arms at the airport. Also, giddy gun carriers congregated Tuesday at a Cobb County restaurant to mark the first day they could do so.
STUDY: Finds Georgia needs to raise college graduation rates.
T.I.: Andrew Young is working to mold the rapper into a different kind of King.
VOTER REGISTRATION: Continues to grow in Georgia. But don’t take my word for it — this AccessNorthGa news graphic answers all your questions.
NATIONAL HEALTH MUSEUM: Atlanta is picked as the location for the $230 million museum, Sonny Perdue announced Wednesday afternoon.
HEALTH UNSURANCE: Georgia gets failing grade, as do most other states, from a Families USA study on equality in health insurance coverage.
SHORTFALLIN’: The Georgia DOT will likely finish this fiscal year more than $1.2 billion in the red, Commissioner Gena Abraham says.
EASTERN EQUINE ENCEPHALITIS: Six new cases of the disease, which is spread by mosquitoes and swells horses’ brains, are reported in South Georgia. Humans are also susceptible.
IN FARM’S WAY: Carroll County woman plans to turn 66 acres into a sustainable, ecologically balanced agrarian community called Brokenfoot Ranch. At least its name isn’t as lame as Serenbe.
NANNY 911: A Forsyth County deputy, his wife and his part-time magistrate father are charged in a human-trafficking case in which they allegedly hired a woman from India to be their nanny, only to quit paying her and threaten her if she tried to escape.
MANHUNT: Lawrenceville police searched for a suspected car thief for three hours Wednesday. It looks really exciting in this exclusive AccessNorthGa shot of the manhunt.
FLYING HIGH: Two former TSA agents and a former Delta Air Lines employee plead guilty to intended drug-smuggling after being caught during a sting operation at Hartsfield-Jackson.
LET’S ALL OWE TO THE LOBBY: Saxby Chambliss skips debate in which five Dems and a Lib argue over whether taking PAC money affects a candidate’s integrity.
OBAMA: Expected to make a trip to Georgia sometime this month, which could help some down-ticket Georgia Dems in July as well as November.
WRONG SIDE OF THE TAX: National average gas price reaches $4 a gallon for the first time in history. State gas taxes are often higher than the much-politicized federal tax, but many states depend heavily on them for infrastructure maintenance.
REST FOR THE WEARY: SCAD students design, build beds for the homeless in Savannah.
ROCK US LIKE A HURRICANE: State climatologist says low stream flows indicate a worsening drought; tropical storms may be our only relief.
WARMTH WAVE: Temperatures are nearing record highs. Still, AccessNorthGa.com avoids the temptation to sensationalize the story with this news graphic.
CLINTON: With hopes dwindling despite winning Puerto Rico, her campaign sends e-mails to staff summoning them to NYC Tuesday night and telling them their roles in the campaign are ending. The campaign is silent as to whether this means her campaign is ending.
ON THE HALF SREL: UGA’s nationally renowned Savannah River Ecology Lab soldiers on with fewer than half its scientists despite the Bush administration cutting its funding eightfold last year.
LOW WITH THE FLOW: Beginning Sunday, all houses sold in DeKalb must have low-flow toilets.
DIPLOMA KILL: Clayton’s corrective superintendent scraps seniors’ diplomas because they don’t have his name on them; printing company offers to waive reprinting fee due to error.
TAKEN FOR A RIDE: Athens’ homeless population, which was 462 as of January, is partly fueled by resource-strapped rural police departments driving their homeless residents there under the premise of better opportunities, Athens officials allege.
BONES TO PICK: The Augusta Chronicle profiles Dr. Rick Snow, the GBI’s first full-time forensic anthropologist, who has 62 sets of nameless remains to identify.
“MAKING NEWS”: TV Guide Network reality show about Savannah’s low-rated WJCL/Fox 28 local news station debuts Wednesday night at 8.
WACHOVIA CEO: Asked to retire by the board of directors. AccessNorthGa brightens my day with presumably unrelated keypads and police lights.
OBAMA: Tries to solidify his standing as presumptive nominee by visiting the House of Representatives and taking a “victory lap,” as the NYT calls it.
BONEHEADED: Without even being asked, teen being questioned about an unrelated crime tells police officers that he and a friend dug up a 1921 grave, stole the skull and made a bong out of it.
ATLANTA NO. 1 FOR SINGLES: Maybe now there actually will be thousands of local singles waiting for our call.
BAN KI-MOON: U.N. secretary-general, while visiting Atlanta, calls for Myanmar to allow in foreign aid workers.
CLAYTON COUNTY: Has the best-tasting water in metro Atlanta.
BURNING TO THE VICK: Judge orders Michael Vick to repay more than $2.4 million to a Canadian bank for defaulting on a loan.
UNIONS FIGHT LAYOFFS: Fired city workers and union leaders say Mayor Franklin didn’t exhaust enough short-term options before laying off 441 employees.
YOU’VE COME A LONG WAY, RABIES: Hall County has its 20th reported case of rabies this year. AccessNorthGa has used one of its finest rabies file photos for this story.
EVENT VERIZON: Girl discovers that a Verizon store manager, while doing an “emergency battery charge” on her phone, sent himself a copy of a revealing photo she had taken of herself on her phone. WSB is so outraged on her behalf that it posted a (cropped) copy of the photo on its home page.
PENNSYLVANIANS: Vote today to determine which candidate’s cable-news-fueled faux controversies have most distracted them.
COMIC RELEAF: Hagar the Horrible, Snuffy Smith and 43 other comic strips unite for Earth Day-themed strips today.
STUNNING: Byron, Ga.-based company indicted for allegedly relabeling and selling faulty stun grenades to the FBI.
TESLER TRIAL: Judge closes jury selection to media and public, sans explanation.
REVOLTING DEVELOPMENT: Hall County would like the drought to end so it can start sprawling again.
SMOLTZ: Four strikeouts away from No. 3,000; could get it tonight in Atlanta.
ANDRUW JONES: Flailing.
PANS: Being handled more often in Atlanta, according to ACVB study.
KEEP ON TRUCKIN’: Truck crashes into bank branch in Gainesville. And in case you can’t quite picture what this looked like from the driver’s point of view, AccessNorthGa has you covered.
TAX BREAK: IRS extends tax deadline to May 19 for tornado victims in eight Georgia counties, including Fulton and DeKalb.
HOSPITAL SHOOTING: Three dead at Columbus hospital after a man goes on a shooting rampage. The suspect was shot in the shoulder by police, is in stable condition and charged with murder.
DEKALB POLICE: Grand jury calls for criminal investigation in six of the 12 fatal shootings by DeKalb police in 2006; DeKalb D.A. says the county will act on the recommendation.
TROY DAVIS: Attorneys ask state Supreme Court to reconsider its March 17 rejection of newly discovered evidence in the case.
GRAVE CONDITION: Tornado damage in Wren, Ga., unearths unmarked grave believed to belong to a Revolutionary War soldier.
WALK IT OUT: Norcross plainclothes cop tests testy drivers by walking back and forth on a crosswalk across Jimmy Carter Boulevard intersection, while uniformed cops lie in wait.
PRECESSION: President of Atlanta Federal Reserve says “slowdown” will last longer than previously predicted and may still become a recession. Also, AccessNorthGa.com expertly illustrates local effects of the economic downturn with this news graphic. [UPDATE: Apparently this story, and its graphic, have been taken down. But here's a screen shot.]
LIFE IN THE FAT LANE: Overweight Henry County man is denied bus service, despite weighing less than the posted weight limit for hydraulic wheelchair lift on county bus.
WTF, MSM? Local bloggers attended the Atlanta Press Club event on “Ethics and New Media: How the Blogosphere is Affecting Journalism and Business” last night. We’re still waiting on impressions from such folks as Shelbinator, GriftDrift and MostlyMedia.
OAKLAND CEMETERY: Still waiting on federal evaluation to begin cleaning up most tornado damage, including smashed Confederate monuments and uprooted 19th-century trees with roots tangled around coffins.
CHASE TATUM: Former WCW wrestler found dead in Buckhead home after apparent drug O.D.
CLINTON: It depends what your definitions of “ducking” and “sniper fire” are.
TYRA BANKS STALKER: All the way from Dublin, Ga.
BASKET CASE: Federal inmate Jonathan Lee Riches alone has filed 39 percent of all cases filed this month in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. Among his March “defendants” are Eliot Spitzer, Tom Glavine, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Cyndi Lauper. Last August Riches filed a $63 quintillion suit against Michael Vick for selling his pit bulls on eBay to buy missiles from Iran.
UGA EARMARKS: Surprisingly, the recipients of earmarks like earmarks.
YELLOW JACKETEERING: Another Ga. Tech employee charged with racketeering for allegedly abusing state p-card. (According to AccessNorthGa.com’s news graphic, she is an elf and was arrested in miniature handcuffs much smaller than a dollar bill.)
DEATH-PENALTY BILL: Voted down in state Senate.
OBAMA: Passport “imprudently” peeped; State Dept. investigating. Also, will be endorsed by Bill Richardson today.
BRACKETEERING: Obama woos N.C. sports radio station by picking UNC to win the NCAA tournament. He also said he picks Stanford over Pitt in the South, but earlier told the NYT he picked UNC, Kansas, UCLA and Pitt in the Final Four. Scandal!
BUSH DECLARES DISASTER: About our tornadoes, not his presidency.
NO MICH-AGAIN PRIMARY: Revote plan falls apart; Obama suggests splitting delegates, Clinton wants a mail-in revote.
QUEEN OF KONG: Zoo Atlanta gorilla headed to Orlando to get knocked up. (The scientific name for a western lowland gorilla, I’m amused to find out, is gorilla gorilla gorilla.)
DEANGELO HALL: Finally gets sent to Oakland; Falcons get second-round draft pick and fifth-rounder for 2009.
FOULED OUT: Former SEC ref sentenced to 12 years in prison for running a $100 million Ponzi scheme.
DON’T MESS WITH TAXES: Faux-IRS scam reported in Gainesville (and AccessNorthGa.com gets to the heart of the story again with another hard-hitting news graphic).
GIRL SCOUT COOKIES SURVIVE TORNADO: Says one scout leader: “Thank God none of our cookies were destroyed.”
