University of Florida

You may recall the excitement about this prospect when it was first reported back in June, but we've now made it to the planning stages, and per this GTN report, Publix struck a deal with the McDonald's that currently exists just north of University Avenue on 13th Street for the fast food franchise's location. (McDonald's plans to build a store just west of 13th on University.) As previously mentioned, this new Publix is apparently intended to be a pilot for a small-scale version of the supermarket giant's stores. In the GTN report, Gainesville City Commission Harvey Budd suggests the location would have a specialized parking lot for scooters and small vehicles, but would also have both a pharmacy and a liquor store.

The Florida professor in question is Mike Foley, one of the stars of the Florida's journalism school faculty. After (more or less) leaving the newspaper business, he's been on staff at UF since 2003, and his Reporting class is notorious for its difficulty. But I think he's wrong in this case. According to Capital New York's Peter Sterne, Foley said this during a deposition: "The fact that there was a video of [Hogan] naked having sex in a private bedroom in a private home and that was posted on the Internet for anyone to see, it's not newsworthy." For me — and, as a disclosure, I worked for Gawker Media at Deadspin for about two months, and previously contributed to Deadspin before that — defining something as "newsworthy" in an era in which the definition of "news" is increasingly broad has become a task much like defining something as pornography was for Potter Stewart. And I know it when I see it: A public figure like Hulk Hogan having made a sex tape is quite clearly news — and I think proof of the video's existence is, while distasteful, pretty clearly news, especially if all of the other details of its existence are. That said, though: Gawker's lawyers trying to get Foley's testimony excluded on the basis that it's just opinion — that it's somehow not analysis reflective of Foley being an expert in the field of journalism — is laughable. One can be an expert and wrong.