Otterblog

A poem for Monday:

Writing a headline
is like creating Haiku.
It must work - and fit.

Among the hardest jobs at the paper is writing headlines. There’s limited space, both in the number of words available and the width of the columns. Think about it this way. It’s easy to get Bush into a one-column lead headline. Washington would be another matter. And then of course is the real test, balancing truth and seduction. Good headlines inform, attract and entertain. Puns are good when they work. When they don’t, a bad pun headline is like the guest at your party who never leaves.

The Panthers’ loss to the Seahawks yesterday gave a chance for headline writers to strut their stuff. Here are how three newspapers headlined the story, at least in their printed editions.

Winston-Salem Journal: ‘Helpless in Seattle’. Pretty good. Almost as inspired as our infamous DANG headline of two years ago, when the Cats lost in the Super Bowl.

News & Record: West Toast. A little obscure to pick up on the pun, but big and bold and I applaud it. Newspapers don’t use toast in the non-breakfast sense nearly enough.

Charlotte Observer: Seattle Reigns. Dignified. And maybe I’m reading too much into it, but my sense is that head subtly implies that the Panthers didn’t lose so much as Seattle won.

Sometimes I think we’d all be better off if everybody read The Economist magazine. Sounds elitist, but it really isn’t. Great journalism with a global perspective and a tilt toward brevity, fiscal sanity and common sense.

Their cover story this week is called King Content, and it’s a nice tour of the media landscape in the early 21st Century and what it’s likely to become. Key points: Technology. Changes. Everything. You can read that as one sentence or three. It doesn’t matter.

First, technology. We haven’t seen anything yet. We’ve only scratched the surface of the digital and wireless revolution. Second, change. You can’t fight it. You can only ride it. Third. Everything. It means just that. Everything.

The fourth point—and here’s what the Big Ape is all about—is this: Content is still King. At the end of the day, the technology is only as good as what it connects you to and with.

Our story this morning on Osama bin Laden’s latest tape recording struck a nerve with many readers—in print and online. Our online poll, although not scientific, hints at how worried many Americans are about his plans and intention. And reader reaction is strong.

We received over 15 pages of messages. Amazing. There’s a continuing debate among U.S. policymakers and in newsrooms about the news value of Osama bin Laden. One argument is that he’s no longer particularly relevant. As a hunted terrorist, he’s in deep hiding, marginalized to the point of nonimportance. The other view, suggested by what readers say, is that we care about bin Laden. He’s a symbol for the war on terrorism, it successes, shortcomings and its duration.

We carried a small police brief today about a woman who apparently killed herself by jumping off a bridge in Yadkin County. Careful readers of the Journal know that we don’t publish a lot of suicides these days. That’s a change from the past.

Our old policy was that we reported all suicides in our circulation area. Or at least we tried to. But our policy changed over the years to reflect two different concerns. The first was whether there was compelling public interest in a very private and painful decision by somebody to end their own life. Our collective decision was that most times there wasn’t. The second—although less important—was more pragmatic. Finding out about suicides was extremely difficult. In some counties, they weren’t reported in a timely fashion and were on occasion covered up. The result was haphazard coverage, which didn’t make a lot of sense.

Here’s the basic rule now. We report suicides for three general categories. First are suicides that take place in a public setting. Second would be a suicide by a public official or similar newsworthy person. Third are trend stories that examine the issue of suicide, such as past coverage of high suicide rates among the elderly in some rural counties. 

Got the word this afternoon that Vernon Robinson is considering a run for Congress against Mel Watt. Vernon is a smart guy, often entertaining, and his brand of take-no-prisoners politics often makes for good newspaper stories.

The problem for him is one of demographics. Watt’s district, the 12th Congressional, is a serpentine patch of land that stretches from Charlotte to Greensboro. According to the State Board of Elections, it’s among the most heavily Democratic districts in the state, with Ds outnumbering Rs more than 2-1. In addition, it covers two major broadcast markets, which increases the cost of campaigning and makes it difficult for a challenger, particularly one who is not from the Charlotte area.

Robinson ran a credible campaign against Earline Parmon several years ago, but he’ll have a hard time against Watt, who is tough and smart and well-connected as the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. The first question for Robinson—and for the Journal—is figuring out whether he will be able to get National Republicans to pay attention to this race and give him some financial help. If not, he could end up with a megaphone but not enough batteries.

That raises another question for journalists: how much attention to give to races that aren’t very competitive. It’s the same situation in the 5th Congressional, now that Allen Joines has shied away from challenging Virginia Foxx. The Democrats will probably find somebody to run, but they won’t have the stature that Joines would have brought to the race. 

John Delong used to cover pro basketball for us. That ended when George Shinn moved the Hornets to New Orleans. But John’s kept his hand in the game, and he still has a keen understanding of the game and its players. There was a lot of squawking on Monday about John’s column on Chris Paul, which basically said the former Wake (and West Forsyth) star made the right move to turn pro and people who don’t like it just need to get over it and move on. John is a straight-shooter. You may not agree with his opinions, but it’s clear where he is coming from.

Like any other institution, we like to be right. So, the story this morning about Paul leading the Hornets past the Bobcats was a nice confirmation of John’s insight and intuition.

Will that stop the message board rants? Of course not. And that’s OK. The noise of the marketplace of ideas is a good thing.

When Dr. King shared his dream of one America, with black and white Americans learning and growing and living together in harmony, it’s hard to imagine that his sweep or promise included inmates at the Caswell Correctional Center in Yanceyville. But that’s the dominant image on the Journal’s front page this morning, a photo of two inmates—one white, the other black—having a cigarette in the smoking yard at a state prison. It accompanied a story on the prison smoking ban and what it has wrought across North Carolina. This was a good piece, seemingly frivolous at first glance, but nuanced and symbolic about crime, punishment, and our state’s complicated history with tobacco. Cigarettes, like cable TV, can be a useful tool in a prison, and taking them away has benefits and costs.

A larger question is this: Is there something disrespectful about publishing this story on the King holiday? Timing is important in journalism. We publish spot news as soon as we can, but news features and the like have their own timelines, and our decisions about when to publish or if to publish are often vigorous debates. What we choose to do sends important messages—often unintended—about our values and concerns. My sense is that this story was’t disrespectful to King’s legacy, and the art showed in clear terms that our state’s prison population isn’t just black males. You can find more information on prison demographics here.

Much of the mail (both snail and e) that we’ve received during the past week has been tied to our reporting on a recent study about the economic clout of Hispanics in North Carolina. It was put out by the Kenan Institute at the University of North Carolina. The report’s findings aren’t really surprising. They’re essentially two-fold, first that Hispanics are a huge and growing part of the economy, and second, that the cost to governments to provide services is tremendous and may by some estimates exceed the taxes that Hispanics pay to the state. Several readers have been concerned over that second point. They felt that we downplayed that information. I don’t think so. We gave it less attention, but that’s different from downplaying. You can do all sorts of comparisons with numbers, and I’m not sure we want to get into cost-benefit analyses with various ethnic groups. It’s a slippery slope.