Otterblog

Most small towns in rural Iowa are all pretty much the same. Town square, fading business district etc. So I remember how bizarre it was when I drove through Fairfield, Iowa last summer and saw all these restaurants selling Indian food. The reason: It’s home to the Maharishi University of Management, formerly Fairfield University.  These are the transcendental meditation folks who used to own lots of property in eastern Watauga County and had built a meditation center there called Heavenly Mountain.

I thought about them this morning because of our story on what’s happened to the land. The TM connection is gone, and the property—all 6,000 acres—is going to be developed as a huge mountain resort with more than 1,000 homes.

It’s hard to get your arms—literally and figuratively—around how big 6,000 acres is. So here’s the deal. It’s a little more than 9 square miles. Picture a square with each side being three miles. It’s huge.

In much of the mountains, development and tourism are the top industries. And second and third homes for the wealthy are on some levels almost perfect for county governments because the homeowners pay a lot in taxes but don’t require much in the way of services such as schools. It’s why Dare and Currituck counties on the coast, for example, have some of the lowest tax rates in the state.

But you have to wonder about what the gating of the mountains means in the long run to our collective heritage and our sense of ownership in the wondrous resources North Carolina has to offer.

We got a request a few days ago from a law-enforcement agency to use some photos from our archive. They wanted to post them as part of an investigation. We declined.

This wasn’t out of spite or a desire not to help. We just don’t think that is the best way we can help. A newspaper functions best as an independent organization, a watchdog, rather than as an agent of the state. Once, we start turning over our files to public agencies, we’ve given up that independence and the freedom that comes with just having a note pad and a penchant for asking questions.

This ties back to some extent to the Judith Miller case of last year and a more recent one involving the SEC and a reporter’s notes. The Miller case was to a large extent about confidential sources, but it’s also about government agencies trying to get the media to help them do their jobs.

The way we help is simple. We write stories. Then public officials can read them and decide what to do.

One more thing: Wake Forest may not be winning a lot of games, but you gotta love their understanding of world events. Only Skip Prosser would use the phrase causi belli in a quote. Not to be outdone, Eric Williams gives a nice summation of European history with this quip: “Coach always talks about me being selfish, but at the same time I’m not going to be stupid. I’m not going to try to fight my way through the Russian Army.”

I don’t like to hawk too, too many things on OTTERBLOG, but I wanted to make folks aware of two milestone events happening in our newsroom that are important because a) they’re very cool and b) they get at the way the newspaper and our Web site are collaborating in areas that alter how we do our jobs and how readers interact with us.

Number one is our first online chat, which will be this Monday. It’s about anxiety disorders (no jokes, please). Here’s how to take part. Yeah, we’re not exactly the first newspaper to host an online chat, but it’s a big deal nonetheless because as with most things in life you have to start somewhere.

Number two is our reader travel-photo archive. More info here. It’s a place to share travel memories, look at your neighbor’s pictures, and get ideas on where to go and what you might see when you get there.

Both of these projects underscore the tremendous possibilities available in a digital newsroom, where technology enables you to do things without the constraint of newsprint. And they also illustrate the way technology is rewriting the definition of community. Physical geography is now only one factor. For newspapers, which have a delivery system built on physical geography, i.e.  roads, this is a bit scary, but that model now only takes you so far.

One definition of journalism: A bunch of English majors trying to write about numbers.

A bit of a stretch? Probably. But a lot of journalism is trying to make sense of the world we live in and report on trends and indicators that show whether progress is being made. We take solace in numbers and science. They’re hard and seemingly objective.

Maybe not. There’s a fascinating article in American Scientist about the train wrecks that frequently happen when politics and science meet. The main point is that science is so broad and so deep that scientific measurements and observations can too often be used to arrive at competing conclusions.

What we choose to measure and how we choose to measure it inform the results we get.

There’s not really a good alternative to eliminating research from the body of evidence used to make political decisions or to back up newspaper stories. What this author pushes for is better disclosure, that the experts not paint themselves as unbiased observers. And also this: first clarify the values and goals, then bring in the science to see how we get there and how we are doing.

A friend brought by some interesting ads that ran in the Journal in 1932.  The first, on Feb. 4, was for Lucky Strike, and features Douglas Fairbanks Jr.  and his tough-guy persona extolling the “toasted” taste of Luckies.  The second, on Feb. 6, is for Camels. The pitchman? Douglas Fairbanks pere, complete with jungle togs etc.

As the Virginia Slims folks might say, “You’ve come a long way, Baby.”

Just how far became clearer yesterday when the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday refused to allow Reynolds and Lorillard to keep alive their lawsuit that California’s anti-smoking ads—essentially paid for by the tobacco companies—was too harsh and punitive.

Maybe the next round of these ads will feature Carl and Rob Reiner?

Y’know how every once in a while, in The Family Circus, they run a little disclaimer that says Bill Keane is on vacation and his son “Billy” is going to draw the strip?

That’s a little how I feel looking at the new logo of the N.C. Lottery.

This is the best we could do? From the choice of colors to the misshapen lighthouse that looks perched on the backs of what appears to be two giant fishes to the sun and star rising or is it setting in the west, it all looks slightly off.

Yes, the lottery commission is on a tight schedule, and, yes, it’s hard to imagine that anybody is going to play the lottery because of a logo, but that doesn’t mean we have to settle. Remember the state motto: Esse Quam Vidieri. It’s not Soso Quam Vidieri

The budget document that the General Assembly approves is not terribly exciting. It’s 300-plus pages of legal language and dollar signs. Lots of those.

Sandwiched or hidden—depending on your point of view—in the budget was a provision requiring kids to get eye exams before starting school. That’s now the subject of litigation from a variety of groups that claim it’s expensive and unconstitutional. They cite Section 2 of Article IX.

The provision came courtesy of Rep. Jim Black, the house speaker and a politician with his share of troubles these days. Because of those troubles, it’s easy to pile on and blame Black for eyegate.

But there’s more to it than that. Unsavory special provisions get passed for one of two reasons: either legislators bow to power or they don’t read the bills they vote on. It goes back to the old argument: is it better to be a fool or a crook?

I was getting my weekend fix of Bugs Bunny yesterday. Saw the episode “High Diving Hare,” with Bugs and Yosemite Sam. Quick story line. Bug is running a vaudeville act. His star performer is Fearless Freep. Yosemite Sam is a big fan of FF, so he buys a lot of tickets. FF doesn’t show. YS gets mad. Bugs gets the best of him. As always.

But it’s the way that Bugs learns of the no-show that is key to the conversation here. He gets a telegram. Yes, a telegram. Bugs is timeless, but it’s also dated. Another episode on the DVD had a game at the Polo Grounds…

Quick. When was the last time you got a telegram? Or used a pay phone? Can’t remember? Join the club.

Coincidentally with the Bugs marathon on the DVD was a story in our Sunday business section on the collapse of the pay phone and telegram industries. They’re essentially gone, replaced by cell phones, email, text messaging etc.

They join the growing heap of technology—floppy disks, cassette tapes, video tapes—that once seemed vital and now seem quaint at best. Most technology is transitional. Sometimes the transition is just so slow that you can’t see the transition happening. But it is. Whether with the automobile, the telephone or the ways that people get their news.

Good read: Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time. This is a fascinating look at the people who stayed in the Dust Bowl rather than joining the migration to the west that John Steinbeck wrote about in The Grapes of Wrath. 

It is awfully hard to work today with the sweet, sweet smell of pancakes and sausage from the Kiwanis Pancake Jamboree next door at the Benton Convention Center. An amazing event. Like a lot of activities, from fishing to carpentry, having the right gear makes all the difference. The KPJ uses this incredible rotating griddle…

That said, the real story of the day is about our region’s roads. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when reading about David Gaeb, the truck driver who smacked his truck carrying furnace parts into the Green Street bridge on Business 40. He blamed bad directions on a DOT permit, because the permit said to take BYP 40 instead of just stay on I-40. Instead, he got off onto BUS 40. The rest, as they say, was a physics problem.

This comes on the heels of the annual AAA survey that ranks the Liberty Street bridge over Business 40 as the worst in the state. Repairs are still a ways away.

There’s a couple of points to all this. 1) Business 40 is in sad shape. 2) It has been for a while. 3) And as everyone dithers over the best way to fix it without bringing traffic to a standstill, the situation will only get worse.

On the flip side of the road game, check out our story this Sunday on how the Shelton brothers used the art of the deal to bring development to a remote corner of Surry County.

Enjoy those pancakes!!!

Check out the latest issue of Time magazine. It’s the one with the Google-geeks and their plan for world domination on the cover. Page 28 has a story about John McCain, who is priming the pump for another presidential run in 2008.

The photo of McCain (it’s not online) with some politicos in Spartanburg, S.C., shows him clutching a cup of Krispy Kreme coffee. Faithful readers of OTTERBLOG know my obsession with the way that beverage containers have become part of the backdrop and fabric of our lives.

McCain is a savvy politician with sharp instincts, the Republican that Democrats respect if not like, and a person who survived a political-influence scandal (Remember the Keating Five?). He’s a maverick who often sees openings and opportunities before the other 534 members of Congress.

You don’t want to read too much into McCain’s drink of choice for this photo. Maybe the Starbucks was closed or the mini-mart was out of Blenheim’s, but for battered Krispy Kreme, this is about as good as product placement gets.