Otterblog

A couple of quick notes as we head into the Labor Day weekend.

1) Pearls before Swine will disappear on Monday as part of our rotating test of comics to replace Kudzu. F Minus takes its place. If you have comments about either strip, you can send them to or this link on JournalNow. Very different strips. I liked the clean lines of Pearls and the silliness of it all. Will see if F Minus grows on me.

2) We have posted a story about the continuing fallout of the Jill Marker/Kalvin Smith investigation. The city manager is ordering a new review. This comes in part as a result of our initial investigation into the crime and the police and prosecutorial work. Similarly, the story this morning about the eugenics exhibit at the library is based in part on our reporting on the state’s sterilization program. One of the things that newspapers get accused of is having an agenda and pursuing that agenda at the expense of other stories. Agenda is a loaded word. To the extent our resources allow, it is incumbent upon newspapers to report on injustices and not just in an initial report but the follow-ups where the actual decisions are made. I think that at times, readers get a little exasperated. But there’s not a great deal of choice in the matter when it comes right down to it. If we don’t do it, who will.

3) Have a safe and fun Labor Day. Don’t drink and drive, and if you drink and grill, please use a potholder.

Monte Mitchell is one of our state desk reporters, out of Wilkes County, and he’s a heckuva journalist. He’s the perfect blend of stubborness and professionalism that is indispensable at newspapers. I think of him as the sort of person who on occasion grumbles with editors when he is assigned a story and then does such a good job that you would think it was his own idea.

He wrote a great story this morning about the “Mitford Days” in Blowing Rock. Some 18-20,000 folks coming to the mountains to pay homage to the writings of Jan Karon. Apparently Thomas Wolfe was wrong. You can go home again. I haven’t read any Karon, but I am told that in an uncertain world, she is a comforting and engaging storyteller.

Anyway, in Monte’s piece, he had this excellent line:

The Mitford Main Street Parade will start at 2 p.m. that day.

Burns, who is more affable and pleasant than the Mitford character, is one of a select group of newspaper editors in America who have people come into his office asking for an autograph.

Now, I’ve been interviewed. I’ve been on TV. Even on ENPEEARR. But an autograph? Nope. And don’t ask me for one.

Two years after: Good story in Newsweek about the rebirth of the Times-Picayune after Katrina. 

OK. So I’m back. I know you all missed me terribly ... Vacations are fun and all that, but other than photos and memories, what you really get are 2000 emails to go through and lots of smoldering fires to try to put out.

If you read the paper today, you know that we are making some changes. We are letting five staff members go across all departments of the newspaper and making some significant changes to our features and business sections.

Our standalone business section, which has been a prominent part of our daily report for the past 8-10 years, is going away. Business coverage will now be in the metro section, as it was when I began here as a reporter in the mid-1980s. Like many other things in journalism, there’s a financial component to it. We’re trying to control costs, and newsprint is a big one. I won’t BS anyone and say that this is an improvement, but I would like to think that a smaller newshole and less display space will force us to change some of our approach to business coverage and place more emphasis on bigger stories and less on routine pieces.

This is not the first time I’ve addressed layoffs here or changes in the paper’s coverage, but the realities of being part of a publicly held company create demands that can be difficult to work through. It’s messy and never pleasant. The newspaper of today looks different from the newspaper of 10 years ago, which in turn looks different from that of 20 years ago. They are reflective of the times in which they exist. And the newspaper of 10 years from now? It may be paper in name only. It will certainly be more focused, with more short stories, and a distribution system that I can only begin to imagine.

What is it about hot weather stories? Newspapers. TV. We all love them. Readers do, too. Most of our time in the newspaper business is spent trying to uncover things, to tell readers things they don’t know, such as the great Iguana caper of 2007.

But weather? That’s a whole different shade of sunscreen. Headline: It’s hot. Story: It’s hot. And here’s how hot it was, is, and is likely to be. One of the interesting things about how newspapers cover the weather has been a subtle change in recent years. It used to be that except for major weather events, such as hurricanes, newspapers ceded the weather to electronic media, i.e. TV and radio. The idea was that by the time we printed the paper and said it had snowed, the snow had melted, the rain had stopped, etc. But it turns out that readers thought a lot differently about this information. They wanted weather stories, to complement and supplement their info elsewhere.

So what’s the appeal of weather stories? I think it’s this. The weather is universal. It’s hot everywhere. Or it’s snowing everywhere around the city or region. In this day and age when we are segmented, fragmented and cemented (to our couches), the weather is a true community event.

Consolidation: I talked the other day about consolidation of printing presses. That’s not the only place it’s happening. The Associated Press offices in North and South Carolina will now fall under one bureau chief, Sue Wilson, who is the NC bureau chief. AP is owned by the publications and broadcasters who use it, but it hasn’t been immune to the financial pressures on other info providers in the fast-paced 24-hr news world. They do a good job, but their franchise has been eroded in recent years. Sue is a good newsperson, and will do a good job in this expanded role. She said (jokingly) about the BBQ in the other Carolina “It’s different.” A true politician.

GOING DARK (or is it just dim): OTTERBLOG will be largely inactive for about 10 or so days, as I pursue a little R&R. We’ll see you all on the other side. Take care. Stay cool.

We ran a little business brief Tuesday about the decision by the Dispatch in Lexington to stop printing its newspaper. Instead, the paper will be printed in Spartanburg, S.C. Yes, Spartanburg, 130 miles away. The fact that the New York Times Co., which owns both papers, thinks it’s more efficient, i.e. more profitable, to print the paper, put it on a truck and drive two hours says a lot about the economics driving the newspaper business these days. Press closures and consolidations are everywhere. Here at the Journal, we print the Statesville Record & Landmark, one of our sister papers. It goes to bed before our first edition is put on the press. The Hickory paper prints the papers in Morganton and Marion.

There are a couple of factors driving this trend. First, of course, is the push to squeeze costs. Presses are huge and expensive pieces of equipment. In the old days, they cranked up once a day for the run. Now the goal is to maximize their use throughout the day. Second, is a personnel issue. It’s become harder to find people to work the press, particularly in small towns, as the equipment has become more complex. In addition, the hours of a pressman are hard, and it’s an exacting job without a lot of wiggle room.

This isn’t just an issue in smalltown America. Even the big metros are getting in on the act, as this story about the Boston Herald makes clear.

Newspaper delivery and distribution continues to change. People get their news from the newspaper in different ways and different forms. It’s possible—even likely—that the press in Spartanburg will be able to print a better paper than the smaller press in Lexington did.

But that misses a larger point. If you’ve ever watched a newspaper press in action, you know that it is a thing of beauty, power and grace to behold. It just roars, and it does this roaring at a time when most people are sound asleep. It’s the heartbeat of a city carried over from one day to the next. And when the heartbeat is divorced from the folks who read the paper, who put it together, who rely on it, there is a loss that is hard to measure but still a loss nonetheless.

Our story this morning on the trial (lead) balloon being floated by the Arts Council is an interesting metaphor for a lot of other issues that swirl around Winston-Salem. The council has proposed that the county create a taxing district along one of the shopping corridors where an extra property tax would be levied and distributed to nonprofits. Not surprisingly, it’s going nowhere. There are logistical and mechanical and ethical and semantics problems that are virtually insurmountable.

But I think that within this idea is a germ of something much larger, that of a sense of longing for the good ol’ days, when raising money in WS was a lot easier. There were fewer doors to knock on and the owners of those doors were a lot more generous. Kind of like how trick or treatin’ has changed, come to think of it. But those days are gone, and they’re not coming back.
The Arts Council’s lament is a familiar one to lots of legacy industries and institutions. I’ll put newspapers in that category. The explosion of retail along Hanes Mall Boulevard and University Parkway and South Main Street in Kville and L-C road etc. etc. is largely fueled by national and regional companies setting up shop here. They’re not always the best advertisers in the paper. Doesn’t mean they’re bad businesses or the like. They do things differently. Wishing they would change or forcing them to change isn’t the answer. You have to find a third way, which is always the tricky part.

I believe in the importance of the Arts Council, just like I believe in the power of newspapers. But I also believe in the power of the marketplace, which is much less restrained than it was in the past. It often provides cruel truths to those who listen.

A few weeks back, I posted an entry about the death of Doug Marlette and mentioned that we would have to find a replacement. Somebody called me “Cold,” for saying that in the same post as the basic news of his death. With clarity of hindsight, it probably was a little on the chilly side.

Anyway, we have a story tomorrow on our grand plans for our comics page and our search for a replacement for Kudzu’s slot. And like all things these days, reader response will help guide the decision-making process. Iconic comics are becoming scarcer and scarcer these days. No surprise, really. We live in a niche world, sliced and diced for maximum efficiency. Comics are no different.

A co-worker sent me the obit of Jerry Ringlien, who died the other day in Wilkesboro. Not a household name. But he was the guy behind the Oscar Mayer jingle, which is about as iconic as the Winston jingle.