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The Name of the Rag

Politicians and the press have always taken jabs at each other, but animosities reached a new level in Kentucky when a county official snatched a newspaper's name right from its masthead.

Politicians and the press have always taken jabs at each other, but animosities reached a new level in Kentucky when a county official snatched a newspaper's name right from its masthead.

It seems the Mountain Citizen, an Eastern Kentucky weekly, has been hounding John Triplett, a member of the Martin County Water Board who also used to serve as the board's chairman. In critical stories with headlines such as "Stinking Water Woes," the newspaper accused Triplett of mismanagement and blamed the board for the brown water that sometimes flows from county taps.

Triplett fought back in a most unusual way. He did some digging and found that the Mountain Citizen had neglected to file its annual incorporation paperwork with the state. That meant the paper's name was essentially up for grabs--and Triplett grabbed it. All he needed to do was pay a $40 fee. A judge in May agreed that the name belonged to Triplett, and when the paper continued to publish under its old name, the owner, publisher and editor each got hit with $500 fines for contempt of court.

Was revenge the only motive? Triplett won't say, though he's done little to put down rumors that he wants to start a rival newspaper of his own. Mountain Citizen editor Gary Ball thinks Triplett just wanted to shut the paper up. "This is just good old boy mountain politics," he says.

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