Otterblog

One of my favorite road names in all of North Carolina is off Interstate 40 just outside of Raleigh. It’s Jones Sausage Road. And like most good road names, there’s a story behind the name. It’s the place where they make sausage. Or more properly, Slim Jims. The Jones comes from the Jesse Jones brand of hot dogs, one of the original products in the business ... but that’s another story for another day.

Slim Jims are not the best things in the world for you, but they can be pretty tasty in the right situation and state of hunger. All this processed meat nostalgia is courtesy of a great little piece we had in our sports section today on a football player named Keith Newton. He started at WSSU, wasn’t particularly focused, then left school. He ended up at the Slim Jim factory in Garner, turning meat and what have you into beef jerky and Slim Jims. He realized this was a tough way to make a buck and is back at school. A job is a job, and I believe that all professions can be noble callings, but Newton’s descriptions of the inner workings of the Slim Jim empire are a little Upton Sinclairish. Not saying I am going to swear off the occasional meat snack, but I may think twice. As a former political reporter, I’ve always subscribed to the old saying (often attributed to Mark Twain) that “Those that respect the law and love sausage should watch neither being made.” I’ve watched my share of laws being enacted but haven’t had a tour of the other end of that adage.

And speaking of food that isn’t particularly good for you ... yes, the Dixie Classic Fair starts tomorrow. Very exciting. Love the fair. Wish it was 10 degrees colder, but not a whole lot you can do about it.

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More soccer. More NASCAR. Less NASCAR. Smaller pictures. More politics. More news about the region. Less news about the region. And get rid of F-minus (only a week to go there...)

That is two days of telephone calls with my most important constituency: readers. You all are a demanding bunch, and you have a right to be. I think it amazes people that they can pick up the phone and speak to somebody who is more or less in charge of news coverage. My experience tells me that readers want to vent, that they feel a sense of ownership in the paper and that they take changes to their paper personally.

All of that is great, and I mean it. The difficulty comes in aligning people’s recollections of what the newspaper was with what it has to be to reflect today’s realities (both financial and cultural). As somebody who has been here for nearly 20 years, I’ve seen a big shift in what we do and where we put our resources. We used to have one graphic artist. Now, we have four. So, the look of our paper is better. There’s an argument to be made that those four bodies could be better used as reporters, as gatherers. But that’s not as neat and tidy as people suggest. Our paper looks better today. It has more pop, thanks in large part to our artists, and I have to think that a better-presented paper is a better-read paper.

We still have pretty exemplary arts coverage in our Sunday paper, but to my mind, the best art Sunday was a photo on the Local section of a BBQ cooker made out of a mailbox (see above link). Talk about your special delivery. I am always amazed at the creativity of the cooking class. If you have an interesting cooker, send me a photo.

The two longest-running story lines in our paper both deal with criminal-justice issues intermingled with a good deal of politics. And they both started in the 1980s. The first is the Darryl Hunt case, now largely resolved except for the continuing echoes through study committees, legislative commissions and the like. The second is Michael Hayes, which began in 1988, is still going strong, and could continue for years.

Hayes is in court this week, trying to get released from his commitment to a state mental institution after being found not guilty by reason of insanity. It’s a commitment hearing with criminal and political overtones. This is one of those stories that I feel has been with me my entire career, and it’s incredibly difficult to cover. Many of the records are sealed by patient-confidentiality laws. The law on commitments in insanity verdicts is complicated. And there is so much emotion and anger on the part of the most-interested parties.

What I keep coming back to in this case is how different things could have been. We were talking this morning about the difficulty officials in Watauga County are having finding a jury for a capital murder case up there. Somebody cracked they ought to move it to Davidson County. It would be over in two shakes. The Hayes killings took place on Old Salisbury Road, a whisker away from the Davidson County line (It’s where the demolition landfill of NC 150 is.) I’ve thought from time to time what would have happened if Hayes had killed those people in Davidson, rather than Forsyth. Different trial? Probably. Different outcome? Likely. And all that followed would also be different

Mike Mulhern is one of the most amazing people at our operation. He’s smart as a whip. Overcaffeinated. Lives and breathes NASCAR. Knows everybody. Knows everybody’s Daddy and Momma, too. Just amazing. Sort of person that if you ask him an innocent question about Dale Jr., you are likely to get a 20-minute riff on Jr., Sr. Teresa, Winston Cup and maybe some reflections on Japanese literature thrown in as well. Computer geek, too.

We’ve been trying to mate him with technology for some time, and we finally were able to pull it off this weekend, with a video dispatch of his from Loudon, NH. Not perfect, but a good start, and it will get better. But his 4-minute explanation of the story lines at the track are very insightful and show the value of a person with his knowledge, contacts and institutional memory. Take a listen. Tell me what you think. And yes, he is talking while driving. Which is a little scary. We’re going to get him to work on that.

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Some followups and quick thoughts ...

A week ago, we ran an exclusive about Wake Forest selling the naming rights to Groves Stadium to BB&T. The reader comments are very interesting and more extensive than for many stories. Two most prevalent threads are 1) that WFU sports may have become a bit flashy for its own good and 2) that BB&T still isn’t considered a hometown company by many people in Winston-Salem. Both are good points of discussion. We do a lot of these reader reactions, and sometimes they click and sometimes they don’t. When they do, it’s an impressive conversation. As it is here.

Several of us had a good chuckle recently with Scott Sexton’s column on the sketch artist who drew the picture of the person of interest in the killing of Jonesville police office Gregory Martin. The sketch looks a fair bit like Adam Lane, the Jonesville trucker charged with murder and assault. And there’s a fair resemblance to Scott as well. The above file has all three mugs side by each.

I was a little bothered this morning by the story we had of the reported rape and assault on the woman in West Virginia. Generally we don’t identify rape victims, but in this case the Associated Press named her, because that was her wish and that of her mother. This is the old classic of just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should.

Today is 9/11, and there are plenty of events that commemorate the attack on our country six years ago. We remember, and vow never to forget. At times, the attack still seems fresh. At other times, it is fading like a scar. Still, it is one more day that I have added to my Outlook calendar with plenty of advance notice so that I remember to remember and plan coverage accordingly. It’s there with Pearl Harbor, D Day, the holidays, and all the local events that we want to make sure we recognize at the appropriate time.

Remembering to remember seems like a strange concept and idea, but it’s an essential part of the job, and of life for that matter. It sounds cynical and opportunistic, that if you have to remind yourself to remember then it’s not an event you care about. I don’t need an Outlook reminder for my birthday ... But I think that misses the point. Reminding yourself to remember—I think—is honoring the event. It says that you cared enough to make a note for the future.

It’s gotten more complicated in recent years, as publication cycles have sped up. Many newspapers now tend to commemorate events with stories on what will happen on a particular day, then don’t do a whole lot with what actually happened on that day. The logic behind this is that by the time the newspaper hits the driveway on the next morning, the world has moved on. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Often it’s best to do both. 

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A reader could fairly construe that we here at the Journal have an obsession with all things herpetological. In the past month or so, we have published stories about the search for hellbender salamanders in Watauga County, a lost iguana in West Salem, and today’s expose on an alligator that wound up in Lake Katharine.  I won’t speak for the rest of the newsroom, but I plead guilty to my interest in lizards and such. Moreover, the world is a scary place, and story about our interaction with the wild are a nice change from the mayhem of the day to day. I don’t expect a series on reptiles of the Triad, but if you get a picture of a huge snapping turtle that’s backed your dog into a corner, give me a buzz.

On a more serious note, we published a serious look at the restructuring of HanesBrands and the financial and personnel measures that companies use to measure success. This is a anniversary story of sorts, and on occasion, I think that we may do too many of these look back/look ahead stories. But my preference is to err on the side of doing these pieces. Newspapers are often called the first draft of history, and history is at its most simple, recounting what happened during a particular time frame.

Here’s a little art for the OTTERBLOG community. A week or so ago, Scott Sexton wrote a column about a guy named Curtis McCullough who is running for president. Mr. McCullough wrote me a nice note and included a political cartoon he did. His art skills are a little rusty, but I’ve seen worse.

And finally, your OTTERBLOG on video. Let me know what you think. I apologize for rocking back and forth like Norman Bates’ mother. It’s my rolling chair. Probably why I’m in front of keyboard and not a camera. Enjoy.