JOURNALIST WORKSHOP: UNDERSTANDING LEGAL DOCUMENTS

Debra Hale-Shelton is a veteran journalist who currently reports for the Arkansas Times. She previously was a reporter and briefly an opinion columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette where she twice received the I.F. Stone Award for investigative journalism. In 2017, the American Journalism Historians Association named her Journalist of the Year. She also has worked as a reporter and editor for The Associated Press, mostly in Chicago but also in Little Rock, Atlanta and Kentucky. Hale-Shelton has interviewed past and future presidents, death-row inmates, and more than a few people who spoke on condition of anonymity. For 6 1/2 years, she taught English at Earle, Arkansas where she helped students start a school newspaper, The Bulldog Express.

Raised in West Texas on a diet of raw rattlesnake venom, polecat eggs and Saltine crackers, John Lynch, courthouse reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, quickly grew strong enough to begin his never-ending battle for truth, public records and a free lunch. Since Halloween 1989, he has worked for one radio station and four newspapers in three states, including 19 years in this one. He asks that you stop using the phrases, “in connection with,” “shallow grave,” “speaking out,”  “breaking his/her/their/silence,” and “it’s official.” And, please abandon “allegedly” in all its forms, except as a last resort.