Otterblog

If there’s any one area where newspapers look with longing at electronic media, it’s the weather. It’s hard to stay ahead of it. We can say what happened. We can say what might happen, but it’s the rare storm in these parts that allows us to write that it is indeed happening as it happens (That’s because most of our winter storms have the annoying habit of starting in the early morning.).

But we talk about the weather and we still write about the weather and figure out ways to explain the weather in ways that make sense.

Which brings us to today’s post. At our afternoon budget meeting the other day, one of our page designers, Steve Mann, was talking about how a bad storm was coming in. When we asked him how he knew, he said that his pot-bellied pig was making a deep nest in her barn near Stokesdale. Like many animals, she is much more accutely attuned to the weather than us humans. Miss Piggy is apparently incredibly accurate in predicting the weather, much better than the aches in my joints. Not sure if she will become the Journal weather icon, but we’ll see what we can do.

On another pig-related note, some of you may remember me writing many months ago about a BBQ joint called Allen & Sons near Hillsborough. They were written up in the LA Times today. Good piece. Good BBQ.

Is the phrase “football players” a loaded term? What about “Palestinian students?” As the coverage of the fight at Guilford College draws more attention and investigations, there’s a need to be wary of loaded words and shorthand descriptions.

Since the Duke lacrosse incident, there’s been a great deal of evaluation and introspection about labeling athletes through their sports. Lacrosse players at Duke were quickly dismissed as swaggering children of privilege. Football players are often seen as big, dumb brutes. That’s not always or necessarily even usually the case. At Guilford, a Division III school, there aren’t athletic scholarships, so its football team is arguably different than that found at a Division I school.

Similarly, the phrase “Palestinian students” conjures up all sorts of images, of students far from home, strangers in a strange land, unsure of local customs and mores, perhaps even folks with anti-American sentiments. Again, it’s not always or possibly even largely the case.

So, depending on your view of football players and Palestinian students, you can view this fight in a lot of different ways, some that might meet the definition of hate crime, others that clearly don’t. What’s clear after all that has happened at Duke is the need to have restraint and to not jump to conclusions based on what is the best storyline.

There has been a lot of teeth-gnashing about a column we ran Sunday by Scott Sexton. The column was mainly about the confrontation/event/incident involving Superintendent Don Martin and a parent of a student at Lewisville Elementary, where a suspended teacher has returned to work.

Our previous coverage of the suspension had not said what the teacher was being investigated for while the suspension with pay was in effect. Scott’s column did. The criticism we received—to paraphrase and summarize—runs along the lines that we erred by naming the nature of the allegations. Now that he has been allowed to return to teaching, the belief goes, he is still tarred for life and the allegations will live on in Google long after we have all turned to dust.

Our reporting is based on asking questions, and our writing is based on informing people to the greatest extent possible, not through arched eyebrows and knowing nods, but through words.  Most parents at Lewisville already knew what the teacher was being investigated for, and it appears that a great deal of them supported him and felt that he had been wrongly accused.

We live in a day and age where two things are prevalent. First, people take much more seriously accusations that adults are abusing children, and second, that it doesn’t take much to get a mob mentality going on just a whiff of a problem.

I don’t like the image of a newspaper as the lead torch carrier out to get Frankenstein, and I don’t think we did that here. I talked with Scott, and his point—which I think is a good one—is that without an understanding of the seriousness of the allegation, it’s difficult to understand why a) the parent was so upset and b) Don Martin reacted the way he did.

The Darryl Hunt saga is in so many ways the story of Winston-Salem. Not the only story. But a story that can be used to tell the larger tale of Winston-Salem’s growth and change during the past 20-some years. The murder of Deborah Sykes happened about 18 months before I arrived in Winston-Salem, but my time at the Journal has overlapped with the rest of the events. And when I left in 1988 and then returned to Winston-Salem in 1993, it was still evolving and would reach a new critical phase shortly thereafter with the battle over DNA results.

The Journal has covered the story and been part of the story. Sometimes at the same time. Today’s story about the negotiations between Hunt’s legal team and the city about a settlement is but the latest twist in this drama. Now, it’s about more than admitting wrongs or acknowledging mistakes. It’s about money.

There’s a legitimate question about “When does this ever end?” But it doesn’t have to be a question posed in exasperation.

There are certainly many people who want to move on, who think the healing is done and it’s time to close the book. Others don’t want to be told when they’ve healed, and that they will decide when it’s over.

At some point in the State of the Union speech last night, I started trying to count the blink differences between Nancy Pelosi and Dick Cheney. Maybe, it’s just the shape of their eyes, but I could swear that Pelosi was blinking about four times more frequently than Cheney...It also seemed a little odd that the President waited until the final moments to say “The State of our Union is strong ...” Usually, that’s at the top.

A few months ago, I wrote about the disagreement the Journal was having with Rep. Virginia Foxx.

The quick recap is that she took issue with our reporting and then refused to speak directly with any reporters at the Journal. At the time, I discussed our paper’s policy on dealing with public officials and how we work to resolve these situations: in short, we correct our errors where we are wrong, stick up for our journalists when we feel we are correct, and we try to confront problems honestly and openly.

Anyway, careful readers of the Journal would see a quote from Rep. Foxx in a story published this morning about student loan changes.

It’s easy to read all sorts of motives/reasons into Rep. Foxx’s change: The GOP is no longer in the majority. Her maturity as a second-term member of Congress. Her ability to forgive a perceived unjustice. The difficulty/foolishness of carrying grudges. The idea that she has punished us enough.  I don’t know, and in a larger sense, I don’t care. To me, the reasons are not important. It’s the ends, not the means. What mattered then and what matters now is the ability of our reporters to have reasonable access to our elected officials so we can inform our readers.

Humorist is a word that is widely overused and very misunderstood. Being funny is hard work. Being funny for years and years is even harder. Art Buchwald did it well. He died yesterday. If you have a chance, go find one of his books and read a few columns. Good stuff.

We did a story on qigong today that featured a gentleman named David McMahon.

We called him a naturopathic doctor, which brought forth this series of questions:

Is it right for the paper to call people ‘doctor’ if they haven’t gone to med school? There are accredited naturopathic medical schools in the USA that require 4 years of medical education and 3 years of standard premedical education. But in states like North Carolina, lax regulation apparently allows people with little to no education in the field of naturopathy to claim they are doctors.

Let me try to answer these in a way that makes sense in the general and particular instance.

First off, lots of people are called doctor these days. Not all of them are medical doctors or MDs. AP style is as follows: Use Dr. in first reference as a formal title before the name of an individual who holds a doctor of dental surgery, doctor of medicine, doctor of osteopathy, or doctor of podiatric medicine degree: Dr. Jonas Salk.

It also goes on to say: If appropriate in the context, Dr. also may be used on first reference before the names of individuals who hold other types of doctoral degrees. However, because the public frequently identifies Dr. only with physicians, care should be taken to assure that the individual’s specialty is stated in first or second reference. The only exception would be a story in which the context left no doubt that the person was a dentist, psychologist, chemist, historian, etc.

AP style isn’t the last word. The Journal, like many newspapers, adjusts when we think AP style needs adjusting. Here’s our further elaboration on doctoring.

We should use the title with the greatest restraint and reluctance. Here are the conditions under which we may use the title: 1. The reporter knows what narrow ... subject the doctoral degree is in. 2. The story depicts the person actually doing something or speaking in that narrow subject. 3. The degree is significant to the story by enhancing the person’s standing as a credible subject or source in his narrow academic subject.

You’ll note in the story above that we didn’t use Dr. as a title, just as part of a descriptive clause. We thought that was a reasonable compromise. There is some legitimate question about the training and licensing needed to practice naturopathic medicine. In this instance, based on D/Mr. McMahon’s resume and professional affiliations, we thought it was appropriate to refer to him as a doctor.

We did a story on qigong today that featured a gentleman named David McMahon.

We called him a naturopathic doctor, which brought forth this series of questions:

Is it right for the paper to call people ‘doctor’ if they haven’t gone to med school? There are accredited naturopathic medical schools in the USA that require 4 years of medical education and 3 years of standard premedical education. But in states like North Carolina, lax regulation apparently allows people with little to no education in the field of naturopathy to claim they are doctors.

Let me try to answer these in a way that makes sense in the general and particular instance.

First off, lots of people are called doctor these days. Not all of them are medical doctors or MDs. AP style is as follows: Use Dr. in first reference as a formal title before the name of an individual who holds a doctor of dental surgery, doctor of medicine, doctor of osteopathy, or doctor of podiatric medicine degree: Dr. Jonas Salk.

It also goes on to say: If appropriate in the context, Dr. also may be used on first reference before the names of individuals who hold other types of doctoral degrees. However, because the public frequently identifies Dr. only with physicians, care should be taken to assure that the individual’s specialty is stated in first or second reference. The only exception would be a story in which the context left no doubt that the person was a dentist, psychologist, chemist, historian, etc.

AP style isn’t the last word. The Journal, like many newspapers, adjusts when we think AP style needs adjusting. Here’s our further elaboration on doctoring.

We should use the title with the greatest restraint and reluctance. Here are the conditions under which we may use the title: 1. The reporter knows what narrow ... subject the doctoral degree is in. 2. The story depicts the person actually doing something or speaking in that narrow subject. 3. The degree is significant to the story by enhancing the person’s standing as a credible subject or source in his narrow academic subject.

You’ll note in the story above that we didn’t use Dr. as a title, just as part of a descriptive clause. We thought that was a reasonable compromise. There is some legitimate question about the training and licensing needed to practice naturopathic medicine. In this instance, based on D/Mr. McMahon’s resume and professional affiliations, we thought it was appropriate to refer to him as a doctor.

Another year, another season of American Idol… Somebody asked me if I was going to blog about it. I said that would require me to watch it. I recognize the phenomenom. There may be a small part of me that appreciates the phenomenom. But I don’t have to be part of it.

If you picked up our features section today, now renamed LIVING, you might notice two different things about it. First, it has a staff story from Las Vegas, written by Tim Clodfelter. Tim was our TV reporter, but in the past year, we’ve reoriented much of his time to technology, particularly personal technology. And the place to get a heaping helpful of technology is the ICES show, where Tim was last week. Look for more of his coverage on Monday and throughout the week. Two was the recipe for Mac and Cheese, the perfect food, at the bottom of the page. We’re not abandoning our Wednesday food section, but as we noted to readers a few weeks ago, we’re moving stories around a bit, and trying to not carry themes out the window. Readers say they like variety, fish with their “chips” in this case.

Speaking of food. We got the scoop of the month this Saturday, with our piece by Lisa Boone on the great Martha Stewart truffle hunt in Stokes County. Who knew? The next thing you know, they will be feeding acorns to the pigs to make prosciutto up in the hills.

Finally, a quick technical update. As faithful readers can attest, the OTTERBLOG site has frequently been set upon by spammers. When it was a trickle, some of our IT folks said it was a good thing. It meant that I was getting enough traffic to attract the attention of spammers. Then it got out of control. They’ve tweaked the comments section, which should eliminate much of the problem.

I’ve talked in the past about how the different ways newspapers play big stories, such as the report from the Iraq Study Group. At the opposite end of the spectrum is our little bright today about a new study on procrastination. This was a wonderful little reader from the Associated Press that many newspapers spotted as being a fun piece. you can go on the Newseum web site and look at front pages. There’s a lot that have this piece at the bottom of A1 somewhere.

This is one of those stories that just about writes its own headline. There are lots of iterations of: “Read this story now—or later” etc. etc. etc.

Newspaper editors are drawn to puns like moths to a flame. Our wire editor, John Seccombe, spotted this story early, and we thought it might make a nice change of pace on the front page, a little levity in a serious world of stem-cell votes, the war in Iraq etc. Humor is a commodity that often seems to be purposely stripped from newspapers.

We kicked around some ideas at our budget meeting. Les Gura, our metro editor, had the idea of doing a clip-and-save dotted line with the story, making the joke a bit more subtle. I thought it worked well.

It would not be inaccurate to say that there’s a different feel to our coverage of the proposed baseball stadium project along Peters Creek Parkway. It’s not that our first stories were puff pieces, but they captured the excitement of the project, the biggest idea for downtown since Krispy Kreme’s Unity Place unveiling of several years ago (West End Village, its shadow replacement, is proceeding nicely.)

But the stories today are more pointed, and they explore the details of the deal. Essentially, they revolve around what happens to taxpayers if the project heads south.

The shifting stories reflect the way that information is parceled out—or uncovered. In an ideal world, we would have all that information from the outset and be able to deliver soup to nuts in one big journalistic thud. That’s not the way the real world works.

Many of you may know or remember Bill Turner, who was an op-ed columnist for us several years ago. A good fisherman. A better friend. Bill is receiving a top honor from his home state of Kentucky, where he is a vice president at the University of Kentucky, his alma mater.