Otterblog

Our story this morning about the problems that have befallen the Teapot Museum proposed for Sparta is one of those bittersweet cautionary tales. We’ve written extensively about this proposal, and it’s been covered in the national press as well. The national press got on board for two reasons. First, it showed up on a list of pork-barrel spending projects. There’s a legitimate economic-development argument to make about the intersection between the arts and business, but a musem about teapots is too big and juicy a target for ridicule, regardless of the merits of that ridicule. Second, and this speaks to newspaper/media culture, there’s a “writesitself” story line that also makes for great headlines: Steeped in controversy. In the bag. Brewing battle. Tempest in a teapot. You get the idea.

There’s still some unanswered questions about what is going to be salvaged from the scaled-down proposal. A teapot museum? A regional crafts/arts center? Not quite sure. One of the emerging stories that we keep coming back to in our newsroom is how do the small former-manufacturing communities in the mountains, from Sparta to Independence to West Jefferson, remake themselves for the 21st Century, and how do these places balance growth against preservation and come to terms with a tourism-based economy.

NBTF coverage: Check out our multimedia presentation for our coverage of the National Black Theatre Festival. Very sharp.

You never really get used to writing about death. Or maybe it’s that you hope you never get used to it. I watched our newsroom with an incredible amount of pride rise to the occasion yesterday to cover the tragic death of Skip Prosser. Didn’t know him. Never met him. But I liked what I knew about him. Good winner. Good loser. Among other things, he was a big reader: Emerson, Pat Conroy, Tom Clancy. Pretty good list. And he had respect for the written word and journalists. My sense is that he understood they had a job to do, just like him. I realize that a coach’s contract isn’t dependent on the stuff on his nightstand, but all things being equal, readers are a community of seekers and I stand with them.

A newsroom is like any other organism when something unexpected happens. It first tries to figure out the importance of what’s happened. After assessing, it kicks into gear. Amidst the sadness of the story line, there was some humor and sharing and recollection and also a fine group of journalists doing what they needed to do, cover the story.

At about 4 p.m. yesterday, the phone lines for our sports department nearly shut down because of the volume we were getting from folks who wanted to know what was going on. There was a lot of exceptional work by our crew today, but if I had to recommend one piece, it would be Lenox Rawlings’ column. A great read.

So enjoy that.

The other bittersweet occasion in our community also is this weekend, with the beginning of the National Black Theatre Festival, minus its founder and guiding force, Larry Leon Hamlin. We have a special report this Sunday, which lays out why this event is bigger than many of us realize and so important to the city.

We share a street, Spruce Street to be exact, with GMAC. Good people. They have a little cafeteria that folks here occasionally visit. Last week, they had a big block party of sorts. Closed off Spruce Street. I can tell you that it’s tough to work when the people next door are eating barbecue and listening to beach music and whatever.  Some folks in the newsroom groused about it, but what are you going to do, really?

Anyway, we ran a brief on our business section today about what can politely be called some “employment issues” at GMAC. The company—like most employers—is looking at its staffing and seeing if it makes business sense to keep doing what it’s been doing. Nothing’s been announced. It’s all swirling around, like the sweet smell of fried chicken that wafted through our newsroom last week. For as long as I’ve been at newspapers, I’ve been covering layoffs. This was one of the first times I can remember writing about something that hasn’t happened but may. Layoffs are business, but they’re also personal. It’s not just the bottom line. It’s people’s lives. So we try to be careful in not treating this information carelessly and reporting rumors.

We discussed the GMAC story yesterday, and decided we needed to do something, as what we were hearing tied in with what he had reported in a larger, more global sense a few weeks before. Today, lots of GMAC folks marched past our office to the Convention Center for staff meetings. Still no decision. Stay tuned.

I was forwarded a thoughtful complaint today from a reader about the art used with our coverage of Coy Privette. For those with a short memory, he’s the big-time moral lobbyist and former legislator who was arrested Thursday on six counts of aiding and abetting prostitution. As story lines go, this one’s got a lot. First, the hypocrisy issue. Second, the age angle. He’s 74, she’s 32. Finally, race. He’s white. She’s black. Here’s the writer’s complaint:

Two people are involved in an illegal act:  prostitution.  One is a white boy of the “good old” variety, a Baptist and an elected official.  The other is an African American woman.  Despite the guilt of both parties, the journal illustrated the incident with a single face.  No surprise which one it was.

Why, then, do I see only the face of an underprivelidged black woman in the paper?  Where is the weight of justice and equality in this?

As I told this writer, we ran a previous story that used only a photo of Privette, but her point is well-taken and important. Her picture isn’t that important to our understanding of the story. Just as it wouldn’t be if she was closer to Privette’s age and of the same race. Ms. Summers was arrested as well, so her mugshot—newsroom parlance for the small headshots we run—was available, but the fact that we can run something doesn’t mean we should.

While it is not the close of business here at Fifth and Marshall streets, for much of the world in Winston-Salem it is. And so with it, comes a close to my first-annual summer writing contest. We had two entries. To recap:

First entry is a nice haiku:

speed dating was doomed
like agnolotti stuffed with
cheesy nocebo

The second entry is a Tom Wolfe vocabulary builder with a fun narrative:

Nodding his ginormous head to the crunk emitting from his hacked dvr, Larry continued to read the gray literature about getting started in bollywood. He had given up on his plan to become a snowboardcross super-athlete after the IED blew him off the course in Nepal – like the worst RPG smackdown he’d ever been given except this one left him flex-cuffed to a hospital bed with little agnolotti shaped burns all over his body, a perfect storm of pain. Finding that the chaebol financed all productions through their sudoku holding companies and speed dating extortion rackets, suddenly Larry’s viewshed opened up, each piece of the hardscape a microgreen nocebo attempting to break his spirit, like the pimply kid in the telenovela he was ignoring in the background.

I’m not going to dwell on the lack of entries, but instead take pride in the quality of these two participants. Each gets a mug, and I will communicate with them next week on how to get their just rewards.

And as a special Friday treat, here’s my own entry:

Sudoku sure beats
Speed dating, a perfect storm.
Telenovela smackdown.

Enjoy.

Some quick notes for Wednesday.

1) There is a very good read in American Journalism Review about the media’s handling of the Duke Lacrosse case. I can’t say there’s anything truly surprising, but the detail and structure of what was said and when it was said is really well done.

2) In a career at the W-S Journal I’ve done a lot of things, and my work has appeared on a lot of different pages and different sections. Today was a first. I consider it a highlight that I made the ”Recipe Swap” part of the Food Section. Michael Hastings, who is our food editor, is a tough judge, believe me and incredibly knowledgable about what goes in our bellies. You don’t want to get in an argument with him about bouillabaise or borscht or blueberries. He had some fun at my expense, which is what he should do…

We had a spirited discussion this morning about the juxtaposition between our two main stories on Page One on Sunday. The first was a centerpiece about the disparity in arrests between white and non-white students in the public schools. The second was about officials trying to figure out what to do about the Friday night events for young people, which has turned into a disaster for the city.

Race plays a central role in both articles. The first was a story that was in the works for some time. The second was spot news, important developments after a shooting late Friday. Taken together, they could paint an unflattering portrait of young minorities. And they might appear as if we are piling on. The stories are not part of a package, but they are side by each.

Juxtapositions are sometimes unfortunate, and we work hard to avoid those that don’t have a legitimate reason for co-existing on the same page. But I think that the events from Friday night and the seriousness of those events pushed us into three possibilities. One, to move the shooting folo to another page or place on that page. I don’t like that idea because it’s an important story and it deserved to be in that spot. Two, to move the centerpiece or hold it. That’s a possibility, but it’s easier said than done, and we had already told readers it was coming. Three, to do what we did. To me, that’s the best of three difficult choices.

Let me know your thoughts.

Many years ago, we sent a reporter and a photographer out to the Nantahala National Forest to do a story on the wild boars out there that were tearing up the place. They spent about 3-4 days, traipsing up and down the hills. They got a great story, but no sightings of a boar. Nature stories can be like that. So it was with a little trepidation that I approached the story that ran today about the search for the Hellbender, a rare salamander that lives in mountain streams. It had all the makings of a snipe hunt, and we were resigned for defeat, as there is a long and proud tradition of nature journalism not quite panning out. (By the way, Boar is very tasty. If you ever see it on a menu, order it ...)

This time, we got lucky. For most of the day, our crack library was hunting down an image of a hellbender that we could use. Not as easy as it sounds (maybe it doesn’t sound easy ...) But right after they found a photo, we heard from our photographer, Kelly Bennett. The researchers had caught one of these critters, and we had the photos to prove it. Our entire newsroom—probably me loudest—cheered. Great story. Great photos.

Summer writing contest: The other day, Merriam-Webster released its list of new words in the 2007 dictionary. Lots of cool words, like Bollywood, and microgreen, etc. So, here’s the contest. You write a three-sentence paragraph or 5-7-5 haiku using as many of these words as you can. I will choose a winner, who will get a free, yes, free, Journal coffee mug, along with the satisfaction of a job well done. Deadline is close of business on July 20. Have fun!!!

I’m sure most of you have heard of the death of Doug Marlette, the cartoonist and comic-strip artist. He was currently a cartoonist at The Tulsa World, but he cut his teeth at The Charlotte Observer, where he made a high art of skewering the troubles of Jim and Tammy Bakker. He was also the author of the strip “Kudzu,” which appears in lots of papers, including the Journal.

I go back and forth on Kudzu, mainly because I thought it was very inconsistent (Although it is the birthplace of one of the most important phrases in my life “The whitest whiteboy at Bypass High"). But as an editorial cartoonist, Marlette was superb. He had a great understanding of issues and how to distill them down to an image. His humor was subtle when it needed to be subtle and his sarcasm was biting when it needed to be biting. And like all good cartoonists, he could flat out draw and draw quickly. He’ll be missed.

I’m not sure what will happen to Kudzu. Somebody else may try to pick it up and continue drawing it. Or the syndicator may stop distributing it. But my guess is that we will be having a newsroom discussion about what might go in Kudzu’s spot on our comics pages. If you have suggestions, please let me know.

When I was growing up in NY/NJ, we used to track the weather with mob hits. OTTERBLOG Sr.’s theory was that when it got incredibly hot and humid, there would invariably be some outrageous mafia killing in New York or Brooklyn. Right out of the Godfather, blood and pasta across the checkerboard tablecloth, etc. Then the weather would break and it would be much more tolerable. In retrospect, this seems pretty callous, but the idea in one sense was that these killings were unfortunately entertainment for the rest of the world and after a week of temps in the 90s, it was the final straw that broke the weather camel’s back. The tabloid newspapers—the Post and the Daily News—would be all over these stories. In July, there wasn’t much news to compete with it, and readers ate these stories up.

I get the same sense of splendid detachment from our series that is running on the shooting death of Z. Smith Reynolds 75 years ago. It’s a v. good read/summer diversion and if not exactly relevant to most of our lives, is just entertaining and interesting—as well as a nice history lesson on how W-S came to be the place that it is.

Check this out: I’ve been in a long-running debate with several friends about whether the Simpsons movie coming out this month will be worth it. I remain unconvinced. But anyway, on the site for the movie is a v. cool program that allows you to create a Simpsons character that looks like you.