Charles Apple

USA Today art director Ron Coddington has moved from Tyson’s Corner to downtown D.C. with an appointment as assistant managing editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education.

A 1985 graduate of the University of Georgia, Ron spent three years as an illustrator for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and then three more years as assistant art director for the San Jose Mercury News before joining Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services in 1992 as an illustrator. He was promoted to art director in 1994 and helped with the launch of KRT’s Faces in the News caricature service and KRT interactive. In 2000, he moved to USA Today.

In addition, Ron has written two books about the Civil War…

• Faces of the Civil War (2004)
  
• Faces of the Confederacy (2008)

…as well as a monthly column for Civil War News magazine. Find his Civil War site here and his portfolio site here.

Ron’s last day at USA Today was May 14. Here is the autographed caricature — drawn by longtime USA Today artist, designer and manager Jeff Dionise — presented to him then:

The Chronicle of Higher Education is a weekly that covers college and university-level education. The staff also publishes a biweekly, Chronicle of Philanthropy and, of course, online sites for both. Find the Chronicle here.

Graphic überjournalist Karl Gude is speaking today at TEDx — an independent TED gathering — in Lansing, Mich.

The organizers plan to present his talk via live-streaming video. He’s supposed to begin shortly before 2 p.m. EDT. We’re supposed to get a url for today’s video, but the TEDx event started ten minutes ago and it’s not yet been posted. Keep watching this page for more information.

One of the better infographics brains on the planet, Karl served as graphics director for United Press International, the New York Daily News, the National sports daily, the Associated Press and Newsweek. Karl currently teaches infographics at Michigan State University. Find samples of his work here.

TED stands for Technology Entertainment Design, a series of conferences held annually in the U.S. and in Europe and founded by Richard Saul Wurman. Find more info about TEDx Lansing here.

The staffers of the Daily Chronicle – at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City — wrote their annual farewell columns and then tombstoned them across the bottom of the page of last week’s final issue of the semester.

Pay attention to the drop caps, please:

Now, there’s no possible way that was accidental, was it?

Not likely. Especially when you check out the bemused tweets by the Daily Chronicle staff:

Sure enough, it made the Fail Blog. Find it here.

Find the Utah Daily Chronicle online here.

Thanks to Erica Smith for tweeting this today.

—
UPDATE:

Oh, man. This was worse than I thought. Much worse.

That little excerpt I showed you up top was just one batch of columns — which I should have guessed from the headline ((More) farewell columns).

Here was the first batch:

Jesse Fruhwirth of the Salt Lake City Weekly reports:

Nine University of Utah graduating seniors and former staff members of the Daily Utah Chronicle received an e-mail alerting them that there has been a hold placed on their records after a traditional newspaper staff farewell gag caught the attention of administrators.

The drop-cap gag is a tradition for the Chronicle, Fruhwirth reports. Outgoing editor-in-chief Rachel Hanson gave Fruhwirth a list of previous drop-cap messages. I’d repost them here, but I fear what it would do to my search-engine traffic.

Find the list — and Fruhwirth’s story — here.