Otterblog

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I had the pleasure of speaking yesterday to a Sunday School class at Ardmore Methodist Church about Ethics in Journalism. A good group of people who asked some pretty astute questions about what we do and why we do it.

These sorts of discussions are interesting, as you get to see a wide range of people and hear what they have to say about journalism in general and the Journal in particular. One thing that’s clear is that people have an intensely personal relationship with the paper. That creates a sticky obligation on our part. We don’t want to disappoint, but it also makes change hard to push through.

I’ve attached a copy of a draft of my remarks.

A blog update: First there was Otterblog. Then there was kBlog. And the beat goes on. We’re getting ready to add some more staff blogs to the offerings on JournalNow. We’re interested in your thoughts on topics, areas of interest, journalists, etc. Let me know your ideas.

One of the hallmarks of the blogosphere is the openness and discussion fostered in an online environment. So, that seems like a decent way to augment our efforts to expand in this area. We’ll consider all and act on the ones that we think make the most sense.

I’ll admit some mixed feelings on this. It was nice when I was the paper’s only blogger, but competition is good. And the marketplace of ideas is where it all happens.

Language watch: American idioms—as opposed to American idiots—are one of my favorite things, and I heard a good one the other day. I was talking with one of our reporters about a consistent and recurring events, and she used the phrase “When the buzzards return to Hinckley.” It’s a Midwest version of the whole swallows and Capistrano thing. Here’s more info on the event.

There’s an interesting intersection between what’s a private matter and what’s a public matter. Journalists spend a lot of time discussing how to balance compassion and a respect for privacy with what is quite possibly a larger story with wider impact that requires public disclosure. Two stories from today illustrate that point. The first is about some hikers who got lost at Stone Mountain for three days. It’s not a huge park, but being lost is being lost and it can get confusing in a hurry. The second involves a boy who died at a camp on the WFU campus.

Hikers get lost in the woods all the time. 12-year-old boys die, not all the time, but more than we think. So how do these essentially private matters migrate into the public realm? There’s no hard-and-fast threshold, but there are a couple of factors in these cases. The first is public expenditure. It costs money to look for two lost hikers, and so even though these hikers are not from this area, many people who are were involved in the search effort. Also in this case, there’s a lesson about how easy it is to get turned around in the woods and the drama of survival.

The boy’s death is more complicated. But it goes something like this: When children die in public, and the police investigate, that’s newsworthy. Parents and guardians routinely turn their kids over to others to take care of them, whether it’s at school or at camps or in scouts or what have you. Custodians have responsibilities, and as the newspaper, we want to make sure that the custodians did their job. So, we’ll keep reporting on this until we get a final answer on why this boy died.

We ran a story last week about the battle over smoking in public places, fueled by the most recent report of the Surgeon General. And when the story ran, we set up an online comment area, and it’s been incredible to watch it fill up with insights, insults and everything in between. It’s the sort of dialogue and discussion that is sometimes hard to foster and happens best when it’s reasonably organic.

We’re doing a lot more of these interactive exchanges as we transfer our print journalism into digital format. They’re not the last word, of course, but you never know what you will get until and unless you ask people to contribute.

Quick Notes: There a lot of interesting stories in the paper today, but for my money, the most interesting were:

1) A little item in our regional briefing on B2 about a home invasion off of Silas Creek Parkway. Among the items stolen were “$400, three rings, two necklaces and three piggybanks.” Piggybanks. That is cold.

2) Cohabitation is big business—so to speak—in North Carolina. 144,000 people, more or less, are part of unmarried couples. That’s about three-quarters the size of Winston-Salem. If you’re interested in the statute, here it is. It’s 14-184 .

Happy Friday.

The journalism world is buzzing this morning about the president’s swearing. A microphone in St. Petersburg, Russia, picked up President Bush having a frank discussion with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The President said that Syria needs “to get Hezbollah to stop doing this s--- and it’s over.”

The other George, Carlin, made a lot of money and laughter with his seven words you can’t say on TV. Much of that still holds true today, and for print journalism as well. We have used some of these words in the paper before, but very sparingly and not to embarass. Many—but not all—of the national newspapers used the full S-word. Most of the papers in North Carolina that I have seen opted for the shorthand we used.

Either way, you get the idea of what the President said. You can decide whether it’s coarse or refreshing.

Newspapers—including this one—often have very complicated relationships with other major institutions in the community. You can see/read that complexity in how we cover such folks as the sheriff’s office, or Wake Forest University or the School of the Arts. Quite often, we will have a “positive” story one day and a “negative” story the next and on and on. From our standpoint, it’s perfectly logical. It’s just the news. But it can cause an outsider to scratch his or her head.

Our most tangled relationship, I think, is with Reynolds Tobacco. At one point, members of the Gray family, which were intimately connected with RJR, owned the Journal, although that was quite a while ago. The Journal’s coverage of tobacco and tobacco-related issues has certainly changed through the years, particularly as the knowledge of the health risks associated with smoking have become clearer. We’re no longer a cheerleader, but I don’t think we are the village nag either. We just cover the news. Our coverage is complicated by the fact that RJR is a neighbor. Many of us know people who work there. It’s much easier for journalists who don’t live here to come to W-S and write about the faults of the cigarette business etc. It’s tougher when you run into the people you criticize at the supermarket or coaching Little League.

I got to thinking about this because of our story this weekend on the new cigarette lounge that Reynolds plans to open in downtown Winston-Salem. It’s going to be a stone’s throw from the Journal. For all I know, it could be our new hangout. But it’s a bizarre concept, a place designed to sell a particular brand of cigarettes. And it comes on the heel of the latest Surgeon General’s report, a tough document about the risks of second-hand smoke. In many places, such a development would be greeted with skepticism, and the health activists would be up in arms. The public-health community in W-S is certainly more vocal than in the past, but for now, the idea of a lounge that essentially promotes smoking is simply a downtown development story. That could change, but it hasn’t yet.

ON ANOTHER NOTE: The great BBQ hunt took me far afield this past weekend, to the Dillsboro Smokehouse in Western North Carolina. Mapquest puts it 190 miles plus to Lexington, but it’s closer in spirit, if not vinegar, so to speak. Worth a road trip? Maybe not. Worth a detour? Sure.

Amid all the horror of the terrorist attacks in India was a question that is both important and picayune: What do we call the city where the attacks took place: The city is Mumbai. It used to be called Bombay. Some people still call it that. The Associated Press, for example, whose style book we typically defer to on questions of international style, uses Bombay. The New York Times, the BBC, the Washington Post, by contrast, use Mumbai, although frequently their stories contain a line that says the city used to be called Bombay. The city officially changed its name in the late 1990s.

We had a discussion about this, and decided to go with Mumbai. There’s an argument to be made that worrying about what to call a city that has just endured a massive terrorist attack is silly and trivial in times of crisis. But it isn’t. Names matter. And what we call things matter. And there’s often a story behind naming and name changes that speaks to power and control. Those with longer memories may remember the battle over the name of Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum. (We refer to it as Joel Coliseum in the Journal.)

From a newspaper style standpoint, there’s a balance between convention, clarity and convenience. The convention is that generally speaking, we err on the side of people or institutions being able to determine what they’ll be called. Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali, Integon became GMAC, Forsyth Memorial Hospital became Forsyth Medical Center, etc. Where we might adjust is if we think a new name is confusing or inconsistent. Some public schools are still called schools. Others are called academies. We try to call them all schools. Same with the Forsyth County Law Enforcement Detention Center. We call it the Forsyth County Jail.

Here’s an email I received today. It gets to many of the issues that editors of any medium deal with in determining where to run stories.

I am an avid newspaper reader and always look to the front page for the most important news at the time of printing regarding worldwide, national, and local affairs. 

The story you printed on Tuesday, July 11, 2006, describing the “Double Duty” of Mark Freidinger, WFU’s play-by-play announcer, was interesting and a good read, but I’m wondering about the soundness of the editorial decision to print it on the front page of the Journal, and above the fold at that.  A far more appropriate placement of the story would have been in the Sports section, or the Local section, for example.  Two stories of national and international significance were printed on Page A5, under the banner Nation/World. Either of these stories were more appropriate for print on the front page than the article about Mr. Freidinger.

The story of local interest regarding the appointment of an interim chancellor at WSSU is also on the front page, and is placed below the fold.  Because this is news and can affect thousands of local citizens (WSSU staff, employees, and students), it is right that it be placed on the front page. 

I think more careful thought is warranted as to which stories your editors choose to print on the front page.

My response to this reader was as follows: One of my jobs here is pick the stories for our front page, in consultation with other editors at an afternoon meeting. On any given day, there are many stories that could be considered worthy of being on the front, but there is rarely room for them all. What we try to put together is a page of broad interest with something for everybody, one that reflects the news of the day (local and national and international) but also includes stories that are unique to the Journal. As you might gather, it’s a somewhat subjective process. We work very hard to keep politics and bias out of the selection, but there’s no rulebook to follow. Ultimately, it’s about people with experience making choices.

Your point on the WSSU announcement is a good example of that. I thought it was front-page news, but I also believed that a) an interim appointment is far less signficant than a permanent one, and b) that this story would be covered on TV and radio etc. It wasn’t exclusive to us, so it didn’t need to be trumpeted as much by being above the fold.

You’re correct that the Freidinger story was a light piece, but it was pretty interesting, and that counts for a lot in my book.

Other blogs: Lifeinforsyth is an interesting blog that tracks a little community news, a little media criticism and general commentary on Forsyth County. A recent entry is about the transformation of Tim Clodfelter as he begins life as our new tech writer. Pretty amusing.

A quick plug: Phoebe Zerwick, our investigative reporter, will be on The State of Things, a public-affairs program produced by WUNC radio out of Chapel Hill. Some people in the Triad can get it on the radio, it’s 91.5, but you can also listen on line. Phoebe will be on around noon today, discussing our recent series on the death of Carlos Claros Castro in the Davidson County Jail. Have a listen.

We ran a story Sunday about the pending closure of The Pavilion, one of those boardwalk-era type places that are fading fast from the American consciousness. They’re all a little frazzled and frayed, like they’ve spent too much time in the sun and the surf, which they have. What’s most interesting about our story and the topic for discussion today is our use of what I will call UPC, or user-provided content. There’s another term for it, but it escapes me at this time. UPC—much of it enabled by better communication and technology—is changing a lot of the world. It’s how Myspace and Flickr essentially work. And it’s traveled all the way to a newspaper near you, this time in the form of folks reminiscing about an entertainment complex on The Grand Strand.

It’s an interesting and seismic change for journalists—particularly those in newsrooms. We’re by nature reluctant to let outsiders contribute to our pages. That whole gatekeeper complex etc. But the walls are tumbling down. Several reasons: One, readers like it. They want to be part of the newspaper and its extended online empire. Two, editors have decided that the newspaper can be lots of things to lots of people. A true bazaar of content. Three, we still get to be the gatekeeper, and if we reject a lot of stuff for not being up to snuff, that still leaves a lot of UPC that is really very good for the format in which it was intended.

It’s all part of being interactive, which happens in fits and starts, and of being open to possibilities of letting others help, where appropriate.