• The broadcast tower of St. Louis’s Nine Network picked up an unexpected Halloween decoration Thursday night: a parachutist who was stuck for two hours about 120 feet off the ground, reports KMOV-TV. Firefighters rescued 27-year-old Timothy Church after he attempted to jump off the tower. The illicit leaper and an accomplice were charged with trespassing.
Officials estimate Parachuter is 120-130 feet in air. He's now been dangling for an hour and a half. pic.twitter.com/wHJagGQrWA
— Cory Stark (@CoryStarkKMOV) October 31, 2014
• Elsewhere on the crime beat, a former finance manager for WFWA-TV in Fort Wayne, Ind., pleaded guilty Thursday to embezzling money from the station in July 2010, according to the News-Sentinel. Gail Waymire was indicted Sept. 10 on 20 counts of wire fraud, having allegedly stolen $130,000 by transferring money from a station account into her own accounts. She will be sentenced Feb. 4.
• If you’ve already listened to this week’s episode of Serial and are despondent at the thought of waiting another week for the next episode, you can do the next best thing and read about Serial. Producer Sarah Koenig tells Vulture: “A part of me is thrilled that people seem to be into it and listening, and another part of me wants to hide under a blanket and huddle in a corner. Suddenly there’s all this scrutiny, and people think I’m messing with them, but I’m not! In a great and terrible way, I’m learning right along with everyone else.”
And she tells Nieman Storyboard how she’d do things differently if they were starting Serial today: “Have more than two episodes done by the time you launch.”
• A four-year partnership between the Texas Tribune and the New York Times is coming to an end due to budget cutbacks at the Times. The partnership, “while innovative, ambitious and, relatively speaking, cheaply produced, was objectively an expendable line item,” writes Tribune CEO Evan Smith. Under the partnership, the Tribune provided a semiweekly two-page section for the Times‘s Texas edition.