Otterblog

You would think that a surefire way to be depressed is to spend two days at a meeting of newspaper editors and newspaper circulation managers. I did. And I’m not. Maybe I should be, but that’s neither here nor there. Myself and about 50 other news and circulation types from Media General (which owns the Journal) spent two days at the Benton Conv. Center talking about circulation, mostly what’s called single-copy sales and mostly about Sunday single-copy sales. Single copy is all the papers sold through racks and at stores. In markets like WS, it’s a growing part of our total circulation.

And unlike subscriptions, it’s much more variable. It changes with the weather, with the time of the year, and—of course—with what stories we put on the front page. It’s also clear from some of the research, that different people are looking for different things in their Sunday paper. Some folks want coupons. Others want deep-think pieces. Others want a quick read of the news—and don’t give them any depressing stuff. The main issue, though, is time. Sunday is no longer a day of rest, reflection and reading.

One of the exercises we did was to compare the best-selling and worst-selling Sunday papers from each of the newspapers and try to look at what worked and what didn’t. The winning papers had a couple of things in common. First, they were well-designed, particulary in the top half. Two, the main stories were local. Three, they tended toward more serious news . Not necessarily mayhem, but more news than lifestyles. (Our best-selling Sunday single-copy paper was about the investigation into the shooting death of Sgt. Howard Plouff.) But if there was an easy solution, I didn’t see it.

What I’m interested from all of you is the following. If you’re an occasional buyer of the Journal, tell me about your decision-making process in choosing to buy the paper on a particular day.

I don’t know how many of you saw this story today, about the arrest of the publisher of a weekly newspaper in Alamance County. Tom Boney, the publisher, is eccentric, but he cares about public records and open meetings, and he fights the good fight. If you saw our story the other day about the Davie school board holding meetings in a member’s garage, you know why this is such an important issue.

It’s never easy to come back to work after a long weekend.

This was a busy couple of days, with some tragic stories interspersed with the coverage we had planned to carry us through the weekend. Each of these stories (a drowning at Salem Lake, the auto wreck that claimed four young lives, and the shooting death of a high-school student) was horriible in its own way. All senseless. And they each ended up on our front page, a reflection of the seriousness of the events. Each also told a larger story and one that I hope was reflected in the articles.

At times, people don’t want us to write about death. It’s too sad, they say, or it doesn’t change anything. I disagree. There are potential lessons in each of these deaths, about water safety and language barriers, about the volatile mixture of alcohol and automobiles, about the violence in many of our city’s neighborhoods. Solutions are hard to come by, but the search for answers only starts with questions.

Red-Green: An interesting email we received over the weekend. When the Winston-Salem Journal publishes what offices will be closed or open on a holiday, they use red and green dots as a legend. Since I suffer from red/green colorblindness, I can never distinguish which is which. I suspect I am not the only reader so afflicted. Could another color combination be used?

If you have color ideas, let me know

I have gotten a ton of calls in the past three or four weeks about changes to our obituaries page(s). While the obits are only partially a responsibility of the newsroom, the distinction is often lost on many readers. So let me try to explain what has gone on.

First, the obits themselves. We run two types: free and paid. Free obits are shorter, with the basics.  Everybody who wants one gets one. It’s a public service. Paid obits are longer. Because they are paid, they are essentially advertising, and as with most of our advertisers, the people paying the bill have much greater leeway in what they want to say. Journalists always say somebody died. Paid obits might have a person passing, succumbing, going to their reward, etc.

The obits—free and paid—are put into our system by our team of obituary writers. It’s an exacting job, and we have a good crew. A typo in a story is bad, but misspelling Aunt Millie’s name in an obit is much, much worse. These folks have been in administrative limbo for years, with one foot in the newsroom, the other in classified advertising. This year, we switched to a new ad-management system, and it made sense to stop the dual-reporting. The obit team will soon be entirely in classified. The new system has forced us to revise the look of our obituaries and the obit box itself, but we understand the importance of the index and the page itself. We want the same thing that readers want: an obituary page that is informative and useful.

As the joke goes, “I read it every morning to make sure I’m not in it...”

We have received a lot of feedback on our Sunday story about traffic stops in Winston-Salem. They seem to fall into two camps. The first is that this is a no-brainer, i.e. blacks and Hispanics are stopped more often for minor traffic offenses—such as expired tags—because they have more expired tags. If you don’t want to get stopped, says this group, don’t break the law. The second group says that the police are just doing their job and that they approach their task with professionalism and detachment and they ought not to be criticized.

I think that quite often, people have an incorrect view of the job of the media in general and newspapers in particular. It’s not to conform. It’s to inform. And we do that by putting information out there and bringing it to people’s attention. In this case, what our story showed was that a higher percentage of blacks and Hispanics were stopped during the past four years for minor traffic offenses. We suggested some reasons for it, some noble, some potentially not so noble. Now, it’s up to policy makers to figure out if they think this disparity is significant and what if anything they might like to do about it.

Some new faces among us. The end of spring means a lot of things at the Journal. But to me, a highlight is the arrival of our summer interns, four journalists who will be with us the next three months, writing stories, editing copy and taking photographs. It’s a program we take pride in because it has helped train some exceptional journalists, many of whom are still with us and others who have gone on to bigger—and often better—things. And it’s invigorating to me and many others to have young journalists with us who are excited about our calling and profession. That seems important, now more than ever. Our interns this year are Erin Fitzgerald, from Syracuse (copy desk); Kevin Litten, from Maryland (metro desk); Kate Lord, from UNC Chapel Hill (photo); and Erin Perkins, from Winston-Salem State (metro desk). A good group (although a little confusing with the two Erins...). Look for their work during the summer.

One of the complaints that I hear very frequently is that the Journal cares way too much about public-school sports and not enough about academic excellence. It’s true that we cover a lot of high-school sports, but it’s a little simplistic to pit one against the other. They’re organized differently, and the story lines are different. Achievement is important, but it’s not often as compelling a story line as triumph in competition. And it tends to be more individual than team-oriented. So we try to cover achievement in different ways, through our milestone sections and the occasional stories of high achievers.

But we had a nice confluence of events this morning with our piece on the Hanes Academic team’s national quiz-bowl championship. There was drama. There was victory. And there was that most important element to making a front page work: great art.

David Broder is often called the Dean of Washington journalists. Yes, he’s part of the MSM, but he is an incredible shoe-leather reporter who knows more about government reporting than just about anybody, and he’s incredibly fair, tough, deferential, inquisitive and cynical—whatever is needed for the job at hand. And for someone who is that powerful and important, he’s also a heckuva nice guy. His column runs here as well. He took some questions this morning at the Washington Post’s site, where he discusses the state of the Bush Administration, as well as DC journalism and how cost-cutting affects coverage.

I want to get on my soapbox for a few minutes and talk about SB1006, which is making its way through the General Assembly. It’s another example of the slow and steady erosion of North Carolina’s public-records laws. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Tony Rand, of Fayetteville, carves out an exemption in the public-records law for public hospitals when they buy private medical practices.

These purchases have been going on for some time, and are part of the general consolidation in the medical/health care industry, with hospitals having primary care practices. Forsyth/Novant has these arrangements. So does WFUBMC, the other 800 lb gorilla at the opposite end of Hawthorne Road. These are both private, not-for-profit entities, and, the argument goes, that public hospitals need the same sort of privacy if they are going to be able to compete.

It’s a common-sense solution, supporters say. To me, the key word in this debate is public. A hospital that is owned by taxpayers is a different entity. The money, the assets, the reputation, it’s all owned by us. If a private hospital wants to overpay for a clinical practice, that’s OK. But taxpayers ought to know how public officials are spending their money. in addition, this is a slippery slope, as the line between public and private blurs all the time. What public hospitals want one day, city government is going to want the next.

Incidentally, this legislation is a result of a court case won by a newspaper against Wilkes Regional Medical Center. Click here to read the ruling.

Separately, our story today on Cheerwine brought back some fond memories of the Caravan hot ginger ale that Cheerwine’s parent company, Carolina Beverage, used to make. It made you cough, gag and sometimes sneeze, but it was good stuff. The death of regional sodas is one of the great mistakes in this country. Ale-8-One in Kentucky is another good one. Their factory/store is easy to get to off Interstate 64 in Winchester, if you are ever out that way.

The Journal, like most newspapers, has several sections besides the Front section, or A section: Local, Sports, Business and Features. Generally speaking, news in those categories stay in those sections, unless we think there is a wider audience or interest in the topic. We push a lot of business stories to the front. Winston is a business town, with companies that frequently make a lot of news. And two weeks back, we pushed our coverage of West Side Story out there as well. Sports is sometimes trickier. Other than ACC and Final Four coverage, sports is its own category. People are either interested in a sport—or they’re not. The same could be said about other topics, but it seems to me the lines are a little harder and firmer with sports.

But my guess is that the front-page sports story here the next few months is going to be the courtship of Dale Earnhardt Jr. It’s one of those sports stories that transcend the sport itself. It could be its own reality TV show. It has all the elements: A beloved, crusty father who dies tragically; a son trying to live in his daddy’s larger-than-life footprints; a stepmother who is seen as evil and conniving; and that all-American catalyst for conflict: money—lots of money. Think of it as Survivor/Daytona edition.

The Jr./DEI breakup was front-page news everywhere—and not just in the South. My guess is it speaks to several things. First, it’s a big story. Second, it has all the above elements. Third, editors are paying closer attention to what their readers are interested in rather than what they should be interested in and trying to balance scarce resources to reflect these two visions. This story isn’t global warming. Or Iraq. Or the 2008 presidential race. Or Darfur. It’s just an entertaining diversion, like Pro Wrestling. The old school might have been that those stories can never be on the front page. The new school is they can be, if they are handled and presented properly.

I was flipping through ESPN a few times this weekend, and they kept on running clips of Dale Jr.’s press conference. With the sound off, it could have been any young movie star on a podium talking about his new film and how he got the part.

Best headline of it all: D-E-I vorce… Several papers had it. A good one.

A small group of WFDD executives—including Jay Banks (general manager) and Denise Franklin (news director)—came through our newsroom yesterday to discuss the radio station and its plans. WFDD—as they are quick to remind you during pledge drives—is a public radio station, but it’s not a hippie, dippy place. They take the balance sheet seriously, and are as active in the solicitation of revenues as most other media organizations, for profit or not-for-profit. I listen to the station, but less than I used to. A function of time and my dislike of talk radio across the political spectrum.

The public radio model is an interesting one that on occasion newspaper types look on with envy. Radio is a simple, yet very flexible type of medium. It’s portable. It can exist in the background or the foreground (i.e., you don’t have to pay attention to the radio while you use it), and its distribution model doesn’t rely on geography as much as newspapers. Like the Web, radio quickly gets down to communities of interest, scattered here and there. Physically, they are hard to stitch together. Virtually, they are not.

Radio, like newspapers, is old media, and like newspapers, it’s trying to become new media. And the challenge is that the content we provide is expensive and that somebody has to pay the freight for it.  There’s so much content that is hopping around the planet that is free. May not be as good or as relevant, but the price is right.

This is the hamburger, spamburger analogy. Imagine you like hamburgers, but they cost $3. The spamburger isn’t as good, but it’s free. So you eat spamburgers. At first, you miss the hamburger. At some later date, they become a habit and you have forgotten what a hamburger tastes like. So the decision for media companies is one of two paths: either improve the hamburger so that the differences between that and the spamburger is clear and worthwhile, or start selling spamburgers…

We ran a news obituary on Sunday about the death of Sam Moss, who for many years ran Sam Moss Guitars on Burke Street.

The death of a guy who sold guitars isn’t front-page news, but it’s worth covering in this instance. News obituaries are a chance to take stock of a person’s life and how he or she fit into the fabric of our community.

I bought the only guitar I’ve ever bought from Moss. A 1953 Gibson acoustic with a slim neck and a big sound. My son bought his guitar—a strange Japanese-style electric—there also right before the store closed. Moss was a character, with his wild shrub of hair waving this way and that, his erratic and sporadic hours, and his incredible knowledge of guitars. Basically, he was cool. Not celebrity cool. Just cool.

And in the death of his scruffy store there was in a sense a larger symbol of our city’s change. The Arts District was booming, big plans were in place for the West End neighborhood where the guitar shop was. But this little remnant of an arts scene that didn’t quite conform to all the conventional rules didn’t make it. And neither did Sam Moss.

In another Sunday story, we took a look at the question of Winston-Salem’s arts legacy and future, and despite all the good reporting and analysis, the story makes clear that it’s uncertain whether we are still the city of the arts. But I do think that all the questions about shaky finances and crumbling buildings and leaky roofs and West Side Story and RiverRun miss some of the more subtle intangibles about the success of arts communities. It’s that they are welcoming for characters, the eccentric people who don’t quite fit into anybody’s vision, but are still important. For lack of better words, it’s about our heart and soul.

Many years ago, when I was a business reporter here, I was working on a deadline piece about something going on at RJR Nabisco. I wan’t having much luck. Then I got a call from the head of public relations at the company, a guy who never returned or acknowledged my phone calls (This was before the days of email...) Anyway, he was chatty, helpful, useful. Then he realized I worked for the other WSJ, as in Winston-Salem Journal, and not THE WSJ, as in Wall Street Journal. Apparently his assistant had been unclear in her message. He hung up 5 seconds later.

The battle for control of Dow Jones, which publishes The Wall Street Journal, is now playing out in front of us, with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp making an offer. It’s a recognition of the hidden value of newspapers and the power of a brand, in this case, the Journal’s brand as the place for national business news.

Long before I was dissed for not working at the right Journal, I did work there, as a 30-hr-a-week copy boy. I was a News Clerk 2, which was so many rungs down the editorial ladder that you needed a flashlight and a trail of breadcrumbs to even get a glimpse of a future. I fixed printers that were jammed, ran errands to get cigarettes and passports for editors, hustled stories between floors, basically anything that anybody above me (which was everybody) wanted me to do. And I learned a lot just by watching some brilliant, brilliant journalists do their jobs and sweat the details until it was right. An amazing, complicated, inefficient and energetic newsroom.

So, it’s a little sad to see what is likely to become some sort of sale/deal/merger etc. involving a newspaper that in my mind is really a national institution and that has an exceptional journalistic model (in print and online) but can’t quite seem to get the financial model to gel.

We’ve had an ongoing discussion about what to call Shaha Riza. She is the woman near the center of the controversy at the World Bank involving Paul Wolfowitz. Early accounts called her Wolfowitz’s companion. Some referred to her as “long-time companion” or even “female companion.” Now, the style has shifted back to the more generic “girlfriend.” They all have their flaws. An editor here, taking a page from the NY Post (owned by Murdoch’s News Corp.) suggests the colloquial and colorful Wolfy Gal Pal.