Otterblog

One of the recurring themes in the newspaper biz, and also on this blog, is how the definition of news is both constant and changing. Constant, because a good story is always a good story. Changing, because of changes in delivery methods, consumer expectations and values, the fragmenting of society etc.

That’s one of the backdrops against how the McClatchy takeover of Knight Ridder will ultimately be viewed. And it’s the fight of newspapers coast to coast—and eventually of news web sites as well. Remember this important fact: content isn’t cheap and in the end somebody has to pay for a reporter, whether she works at a newspaper or a web site, to write a story. In business terms, that’s called “monetizing”.

The Columbia Journalism Review has a good take on the coming battle. Briefly stated, the mag says that newspapers may have squandered their monopoly and now found themselves in a competitive market without the DNA to compete.

An e-mail from a dissatisfied reader made this point: “The only reason that we continue to receive the Journal in our home is because you have the monopoly on the printed, local news.”

Maybe. But monopolies—and I would disagree that we have a pure monopoly—aren’t what they used to be. There is plenty of competition. TV. Radio. Government web sites. The list goes on. I can’t speak for the business side of our company, but speaking as a journalist, I love competition. In the end, it makes you better and the reader/viewer/clicker gets the benefits.

The RiverRun International Film Festival starts today. It’s not Sundance, with celebrities and paparazzi in the Rocky Mountains of Utah. But it’s a nice, growing event that gives the city a chance to promote its self-proclaimed image as a (or is it the?) City of the Arts.

We had an interesting story today that looks at the city’s contributions to RiverRun, which turns out to be somewhere between slim and none. Some of the film folks in town want to draw comparisons between RiverRun and the National Black Theatre Festival, which is held every other year in the city. The next festival is in 2007.

The NBTF gets government help, the theory goes, so RiverRun should as well.

Maybe. But at this stage, I think they are different events on different stages, so to speak, and they play to different audiences and are presented by different organizations. And while it’s important for W-S to present itself as a vibrant city of the arts for folks into independent films, our future probably is less tied to funkiness than it is to the message that being home to the NBTF carries. Which is: We like being host to an upscale cultural event that brings in thousands of black people for a few days of theater and fun.

Lots of places would like to get their hands on the NBTF. We have it. And my guess is that the city will do what it can—within reason—to keep it. So for RiverRun, maybe next year. And maybe not.

Since 9/11, the Journal, like many papers our size, has published front-page stories about soldiers and Marines from our circulation area who have died in combat. We’ve tried to run all of them above the fold, in the top half of the paper. Today’s story about the death of Sgt. Anton Hiett was no exception.

He was an Army reservist from Mount Airy.

One of the complaints I on occasion hear is that running stories on the deaths and placing them in prominent positions is weakening our country’s resolve to sustain the fight. The argument, if I understand it, would be that we focus on the negative (the deaths) and rarely write about the accomplishments of all the men and women from this area who have not died and are serving proudly overseas and making a positive difference in the rebuilding of Iraq and Afghanistan.

It’s true that a story about a soldier’s death personalizes the war and brings it home. So our decision to run it on the front page makes a statement. But I don’t think it’s a statement based on whether we are pro- or anti-war.

Rather, it’s about an important role of the media, to bear witness, and to display society in all its complexity and pain for all to see and to consider.

Sgt. Hiett’s father said it best. “You know, we live in a free country, but no one wants their child to die ... I also know that somebody has to fight the battle, and freedom has a price.”

Newspaper style is all about consistency and clarity. The words we use in Tuesday’s paper ought to be the same words we would use in Monday’s paper given the same set of circumstances. THE driving force behind this is the Associated Press and its influential stylebook. Many newspapers—including the Journal—have an inhouse stylebook as a supplement, but use AP style for most issues that come up.

The AP, for example, determines which cities take a state after their name in datelines and which don’t. The folks in Charlotte have been after AP for years about this, but if you travel around the country and read newspapers, you will always see Charlotte, N.C., but just plain old Atlanta. Newspapers aren’t required to follow AP style, but we often do, or at least we take our cues from the AP.

So, when the AP weighs in on a style change, it can matter. Yesterday, they sent out this update to their online stylebook:

Gay:  Used to describe men and women attracted to the same sex, though lesbian is the more common term for women. Preferred over homosexual except in clinical contexts or references to sexual activity. Include sexual orientation only when it is pertinent to a story, and avoid references to “sexual preference” or to a gay or alternative “lifestyle.”

The old entry was far less expansive. It said gay was an acceptable synonym for homosexual, etc.

The AP tends to be a conservative organization when it comes to change. It recommends the use of American Indian over Native American, prefers black over African-American, etc.

Words matter, particularly in the way that we define ourselves and others define us. There are probably many people who remember and long for the good old days when “gay” was just a rhyming word in “I Feel Pretty” in West Side Story.

Those days are gone.  How do we know? The AP says so.

The Fourth Estate is buzzing—can you hear it—with the announcement that Knight Ridder is being sold to McClatchy in a deal worth about $4.5 billion. It’s never good when newspapers get bought and sold like a corner lot near the interstate, but lots of folks are cheering the deal. The thought being that McClatchy runs good newspapers and cares about public-service journalism. On the other hand, the fact that no other bids really emerged might give the owners some pause.

In North Carolina, it means that the Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News & Observer—the state’s two biggest newspapers—will be owned by the same company. South of us, Rock Hill, Columbia, Myrtle Beach and Hilton Head will all be under one owner. Is that a good thing? It’s too soon to say. Generally speaking, newspaper consolidation almost always leads to cost-cutting and sharing services. Efficiency is all well and good. But often, it’s the inefficiencies that define good newspapers.

The less-covered part of this deal is the back end. McClatchy will sell 12 of KR’s papers to help pay for the deal. And where these papers are says a lot about where some very bright people think the future of print journalism is and isn’t. The cities include Philadelphia (two papers) San Jose (where Knight Ridder has its headquarters!), St. Paul, and Akron (the ancestral home of the Knight publishing empire). These are big newspapers in metro markets, and many have done exceptional journalism in the past 10 years. That wasn’t enough. Another problem may have been unions. Many of these papers have guilds, and newspaper managers would just as soon not have to negotiate with them. The real question for these papers is who ends up with them now that they have been tagged as performance slackers.

McClatchy is instead betting on the Sunbelt. And by buying KR, it’s saying that the future of the newspaper is still strong in the right markets—and at the right price,

Like a lot of mid-sized cities in the world, Winston-Salem is often interested—to the point of obsession—in how the rest of the country, and particularly the decision makers in places such as New York, view our patch of ground.

We’re a town built on cigarettes and underwear, now a financial and healthcare center, and in some circles equally well known for the delectable downfall of the hometown doughnut company. It’s easy for writers to wallow in symbolism and metaphor.

So in rumbles The New York Times, with an overnight guide to Winston-Salem. It’s part of a series they do on 36 hours in places that are usually what might politely be called “second-tier” travel destinations.

The good news: their 36 hours in the city didn’t start out with the advice: spend your first two-and-a-half hours driving to Asheville ...

But on a serious note, the city comes off pretty good, if a little precious and sanitized.  The author’s tour captures some of the heart --if not a lot of the soul—of Winston-Salem. Their restaurant choices are pretty good. All in all, a piece the chamber and tourism folks will be happy to clip, copy, save and mail.

commuters.bmp

Before my brain has woken up on Sundays, I like to do the easy puzzles in the paper. My favorite is the “six differences” on the back of the comics section.

Here’s a puzzle for Friday from this photograph (found by clicking on the commuters link above). I got it from a man named Juan Giner, who is an extremely smart and well-traveled consultant—not always a dirty word—with an outfit called Innovation Media Consulting. He spoke with myself and several dozen news types on Wednesday. Look at this photo—taken in the 1950s—and then imagine all the ways the photo would likely be different if a photographer went to that same station today. There are at least six differences.

They are: More women. Not just white men. Nobody would be wearing a hat. Everybody would be talking on a cell phone ... and for the purposes of our discussion, there would be far fewer people with a paper tucked under their arm.

Giner’s message to all of us journalists wasn’t one of gloom and doom. Just a reality check. The center is always changing. As soon as you get comfortable with a center, it moves to the edge. There is more clutter in the world, more choices. If people don’t want to wear fedoras, then selling fedoras is a tough way to make a living. Better only takes you so far. At some point, you have to be better AND different than your competitors.

Oh, yeah. There was a sixth difference. The photo would be in color!

I’ve had the chance to read the Times-Dispatch in Richmond the past few days. It’s a mid-sized metro about twice the size of the Journal. We’re both owned by Media General. They have a fairly new publisher and a new executive editor, and it’s very interesting—particularly in the print edition, to see the changes both large and small that they are bringing to the paper.

Newspapers are unwieldy organizations. They’re steeped in tradition, and they are not known for the nimbleness. Change comes slowly, and it can often seem that in this time of reader inattention, stagnant circulation, this little thing called the Internet that we are simply rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Maybe. Maybe not. The T-D is arguably one of the most traditional papers in a traditional state. But it looks and feels different. Some stuff—the ads on section fronts—I don’t like. But other things I do. Most signficant is story selection and editing the paper for readers and their busy days and diverse interests. My favorite story I read the past three days was about the mating process of salamanders in a neighborhood in Richmond. Monumental? Of course not. But it was very entertaining and very informative. And to get to that story, I found myself wondering what else quirky and interesting and relevant might be there. I found a lot. So it worked on a couple of levels.

Does a salamander turn a battleship? Nope. But newspapers can’t be just about what happened yesterday. They’ll survive by telling people what they don’t know. Whether about major issues or the dating habits of amphibians. That’s where the steering wheel is found.

Up in Richmond for a conference with other folks at the company on the future of news, newspapers and digital media. We’ll talk more about that at a later date ...

But driving up here and eating lunch here yesterday got me to thinking again about a question that I’ve pondered for a long time.

What is the dividing line between sweet tea and unsweetened tea. Richmond—a clearly Southern town—is an unsweet kind of place. Henderson, N.C. is sweet. Your thoughts on where the boundary is? This might not be as burning a question as the line between Lexington and Eastern N.C. BBQ, or the brown egg-white egg belt in New England, but it’s still one of those random thoughts that bugs me in the middle of the night or on a long drive....

Numbers matter. And it’s always interesting when two groups look at numbers and draw different conclusions and observations from the same set of facts.

Take our story this morning about Carver High School, which is on a watch list from Judge Howard Manning, who is presiding over the so-called Leandro case.

By Manning’s reckoning, Carver is a failing school, and one that he is threatening with closure. He looks at the percent of students at grade level. Local school officials say the world-famous declaration yeahbut. The raw figure is less important than the trend line, which they say shows that Carver is climbing, albeit slowly, out of its hole and making improvements.

Carver will be an interesting test case if push ever comes to shove. The Leandro decision began with poor, rural schools challenging the state’s funding mechanism for schools. Then the state’s largest urban districts, such as Forsyth, joined in. There is plenty of poverty here, but there are also tremendous resources that are not available in poor, rural school districts. If Carver can’t make it, the future is pretty uncertain for schools across the state.

Quick note: Did you ever think that the words I.M. Pei and NASCAR would be used in the same sentence? I didn’t. But they are, courtesy of the planned NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte. Tough week for Atlanta. First, BellSouth getting bought. Then losing this tourism plum.