Otterblog

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OK, so it’s not quite up there with who shot J.R. or (closer to recent memory) Mr. Burns, but I need to say a few words about our decision to reveal the identity of our restaurant reviewer. Today’s relish has the scoop.

When we started down the Dinner Belle path two+ years ago, we had some pretty simple and sensible reasons for Laura to have a nom de spoon. She was covering higher education, and we thought that it would be awkward for her to negotiate that public beat of objective journalism while wading into the subjective world of risotto and ribeyes. We did some juggling a month or so back and moved Laura to features, and now the world of food will take up a large chunk of her time. And because one of her areas of coverage will be culture/food/restaurants, it seemed silly to have her be a reporter for some bylines and the anonymous dinner belle for others.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Laura is a great writer about food, and as a reviewer she is painstakingly honest. It gives her no delight to be disappointed by the food at a restaurant.

A quick word about anonymity. Most restaurant reviewers go to great lengths to avoid publicity. In big cities, some have worn wigs, or used fake names to make reservations, etc. The idea being that if the folks at the snooty restaurant recognize the reviewer, he or she will get better service and an extra shrimp (the one that should have been in your appetizer ...). Winston-Salem isn’t at that place yet in its food culture. My guess is that Laura can wander in and out of restaurants with impunity. Still, she is preserving a shred of her anonymity, which makes sense. Our cover doesn’t show her face.

So what does Laura look like? As a special OTTERBLOG treat, I have attached my own artist’s conception/cartoon/courtroom sketch of the dinner belle, hard at work. And yes, I am going to stick to my day job. Now, let’s eat.

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The English language is filled with double entendres. Innocent words that can have not-so-innocent other meanings. One of the old adages of newsrooms is “It helps to have a dirty mind when editing a newspaper.”
For example, our new wine feature had the name The Wine Tool. Tool apparently being a synonym in some circles for corkscrew or opener. Not where I come from. Or some others. So, we’re changing it.

Over the weekend, we received this email from a reader in regards to a story that ran Saturday on a service project at Atkins High School. I have kept the grammar and spelling from the original.

Did you notice the artical in Saturday’s local section re: the teacher & her students riting a book..One girl is “giving the finger” sign. 

You may want to tell the
teacher her student ruined the whole concept of the artical, and I cannot believe the JOURNAL did not catch this before it was published.

Attached, you will find the picture in question. I can tell you that we look hard at photos for these sorts of things and for unintended images. Occasionally something unintended gets through. I’ve looked carefully at this photo, albeit after publication, and I disagree with the emailer. Yes, you can see the girl’s middle finger, but it’s pretty clear—at least to me—from the position of the other fingers that she isn’t giving the finger.

That said, there’s certainly a less-confusing way to hold a drawing.

And the question of the day: You’re the editor. You see this image, which some readers might find confusing. Do you run it, even if you believe that the confusion is unintended and misconstrued?

Careful readers of our Living section have probably noticed that during the past few months that we have de-emphasized the strictness of the day’s theme. In other words, Tuesday’s features section, which has a focus on health, is also likely to have stories on other topics. The idea is to offer readers a wide variety of topics on various issues. Take yesterday’s section, which has its focus on Food. The centerpiece was about a after-school program that teaches kids how to cook, but there were also stories about Monopoly going cashless and $5200 cashmere sheets (I thought all these stories could be lumped under a collective headline “Signs of the end times” but that’s just me.).

Today’s Living section had two stories about food, including the whole Chowhound phenomenon, and tomorrow, we’re previewing a new wine column by Michael Hastings. Michael used to be our only food writer. Now we have a second. Laura Giovanelli, a former metro reporter, has moved over to features, where she will cover the intersection of food and culture, as well as general assignment features. In these troubled times for newspapers, it might seem a bit frivolous to stick another journalist onto the eating beat. But Laura is a spirited writer who is as animated and knowledgeable talking about food as she was talking about higher-education policy in her previous role here. And all our research suggests that many of our readers (including this one!!) are passionate and curious about all aspects of food. We’ll have some additional coverage changes in features to announce in coming weeks, so stay tuned.

Here in North Carolina, we take our public-records victories where we can get them. Like a lot of states, our laws are good on the easy stuff, less so on the hard stuff. But we had an important win in this Sunday’s paper. It involved the personnel record of Robert Watson, the middle-school math teacher who was convicted of numerous sex offenses. After his conviction, we asked the school system for his personnel file.

Generally speaking, personnel files are not public records. The public is entitled to only a few bits of info on government employees: length of service, salary, position, etc.. The nitty gritty of reviews isn’t part of that.

But within those restrictions is a small out. It ALLOWS governments to release personnel records if the release would help restore confidence in a public institution. Here’s what it says in part:

Notwithstanding any other provision of this Chapter, any superintendent may, in his discretion, or shall at the direction of the Board of Education, inform any person or corporation of any promotion, demotion, suspension, reinstatement, transfer, separation, dismissal, employment or nonemployment of any applicant, employee or former employee employed by or assigned to the local board of education or whose personnel file is maintained by the board and the reasons therefor and may allow the personnel file of the person or any portion to be inspected and examined by any person or corporation provided that the board has determined that the release of the information or the inspection and examination of the file or any portion is essential to maintaining the integrity of the board or to maintaining the level or quality of services provided by the board; provided, that prior to releasing the information or making the file or any portion
available as provided herein, the superintendent shall prepare a memorandum setting forth the circumstances which he and the board deem to require the disclosure and the information to be disclosed. The memorandum shall be retained in the files of the superintendent and shall be a public record.

We made our request under this provision, and the school board agreed to release the records. It’s important to note that this is a voluntary action by the school board. There’s nothing in the statute to compel them to release these records. Now, there was no smoking gun in Watson’s personnel file. And maybe that absence made the decision easier. I don’t know. But I do know that the story was really interesting, because it showed very clearly the limits of a personnel evaluation.

About the weather: The storm of the century, nay of the millennium, fizzled out on Saturday. Unfortunately, our skyboxes and our Friday reporting said a storm was coming. They were still saying that Saturday morning, right until the snow didn’t come. I got a caller this morning who said we owed everybody an apology for getting it wrong. C’mon. It’s the weather. It’s a forecast. It changes.

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In more than two years of writing this blog, I’ve talked about ethics, hirings, firings, public records, etc. But never about the snow. I haven’t had the chance. Today is the day…

In the pantheon of weather stories, a snowstorm is at the top of my list. Journalistically, it can’t compete with a hurricane or epic flooding, but there’s something nice about the whole deal. Usually not a lot of damage or loss of life. It’s incredibly pretty, and it’s a nice disruption to the every day. And because we live on this interesting knife edge when it comes to snow, there’s a lovely uncertainty and serendipity.

A newsroom—at least down here—is a funny place when it snows. Folks haul out clothes that look like they only get used during a winter storm. One editor has on socks with snowflakes on them ... It’s like casual Friday meets Northern Exposure.

But there is some good journalism going on here that reflects how we’re adapting our coverage with technology. If you go to Journalnow, you’ll notice that we have a closings box. For years, we ceded that area to TV and radio. The idea being that our print product would be dated by the time it hit the ground. The Web has changed that, and our online team has hustled to develop a way for folks to post closings on our Web site. It will grow and improve over time, weather permitting. Secondly, our multimedia team came to work at 3:30 or so, posting stories, photos and videos really early, while the world slept in the muffled stillness and the angels’ frozen breath draped itself over limb, eave and blade (sorry, will stop with the purple ...) That’s as close as we’ve gotten to a 24-hr newsroom in many years, and it’s pretty cool.

Some quick notes: Check out the multimedia on Dorothy Calloway, teacher extraordinaire from Pilot Mountain. And if you wonder why we fight so hard to keep public meetings open, read Scott Sexton’s column today. Finally, we’re targeting photos from Kernersville in our online galleries and also in the Kernersville Journal, which is published Thursday. Here’s the story. If you’re in K’ville and have a good eye, send us your shots.

And as a special winter treat, your faithful correspondent has attached his own photographic effort from this morning. Have a good one.

I spoke to a group of about 100+ folks yesterday as part of Centenary UMC’s senior lunch council. A good group of very interesting people. Loyal readers. Tough. Polite.

One of the questions that came up was about our comics section. The questioner disliked our comics pages. In particular, Lio really burned him up.
It always amazes me how people torture themselves over the comics. Personally, I think we have good comics pages, and it’s worth noting that we have more strips than most papers our size. I don’t like every strip and I don’t read every strip. I only learned in the past week that OTTERBLOG Jr. reads Judge Parker, which I can honestly say I have never read but may have to now. Some strips I read just because I get a chuckle out of how lame they are. But I guess that I’ve never expected to be delighted by every strip there is. And so I wonder why people keep reading a strip that annoys them. It’s like continuing to eat at a restaurant where you don’t like the food. My guess is that virtually every reader can find at least 8-10 strips on the pages that bring a little mirth to their mind. That’s pretty good.

Speaking of comics, we’re heading into the final stretch of our great search for a replacement for Kudzu. We’ll be announcing a winner in the Jan. 18 edition of the Journal.

So ... We’ve left the corn and the snow and the granite and the flinty New Hampshireans and the taciturn Iowans for the rest of the country… Nevada, where the casino workers are the third rail of politics. Michigan, and its post-industrial funk, and South Carolina, site of John McCain’s 2000 Waterloo and John Edwards zenith in 2004… There are a lot of dynamics in both races. Once again, last night, we saw the dangers in polling. Most polls showed Obama out ahead, and so that became the story line. But Clinton ended up winning. Were the polls wrong? Or did voters make up their minds very late. My guess: a little of both. If this keeps up, maybe North Carolina’s primary will matter.

Public access: North Carolina’s open-meetings law isn’t perfect, but it’s all we have in this state, and so I get a little passionate in my defense of the public’s right to be there. Not just the media, but the public, in all its unwieldiness and awkwardness. Last night, as we reported, the city council tried to essentially close a public forum on police-investigative procedures. We made a fuss, but the reason the city wisely backed off its plan was the larger fuss from the public. That’s important. The press can’t find public access alone. And unfortunately, when the public doesn’t push for access, government becomes less responsive and more imperious.

This Sunday’s Parade magazine had a cover story interview with Benazhir Butto. A remarkable feat given that she was assassinated a week and a half ago. Our reader’s note on Sunday didn’t do a particularly good job (my fault) of explaining how the whole thing works. Here’s part of an AP story that goes into more detail:

NEW YORK—An interview with Benazir Bhutto before the former Pakistani prime minister was assassinated was important enough to keep on the cover of Parade magazine, the magazine’s publisher said Sunday _ even though the publication had already gone to print when Bhutto was killed.
Randy Siegel said Parade went to press on Dec. 21 and was already on its way to the 400 newspapers that distribute it when Bhutto was killed in a Dec. 27 shooting and bombing attack at a campaign rally in her country.
The Web version of the story was updated, Siegel said, but it was too late to change the magazine. He said the only option other than running the outdated article would have been asking newspapers not to distribute the magazine at all.
“We decided that this was an important interview to share with the American people,” he said.
Logistically, it’s virtually impossible for Parade to replace editions. Editorially, I thought the interview was good, prophetic. But it does point out the production problems inherent in newspapers on a grand scale.

Et tu Nelson: Last night’s Simpsons episode was a spoof on the N.H. primaries. In one scene, there’s a panel of pundits being introduced. One from CNN, one from Slate, and then one from the Washington Post, dismissed derisively as a “print journalist.” Nelson, the semi-orphaned bully, pipes in “Ha Ha. Your medium is dying.” Ouch.

Good read: If you have a chance, check out A Whole New Mind, by Daniel Pink. A fascinating look at the left brain vs. right brain, and which half of our head is going to be important in years to come.

I was working the nightshift last night and had a few minutes to kill between editions so I was flipping through a back issue of Newsweek. Anyway, they have a little section in the front of quotable quotes, including those submitted by readers, such as this one from Larry Roth, from Germanton:

You don’t want to just take one that can’t play dead in a cowboy movie—WFU Football Coach Jim Grobe.

The coach said that in an article in the Journal in late November. Newsweek credited us as the source, although in the tiny type. Still appreciated. 

Another year is upon us.
I’ve been away for a few days, and it is always a bit strange to get back into the flow of things. Especially this week. The holiday order sort of assured that this week is pretty quiet. The real start of the year will be next Monday.

In no particular order, I spent the few days away reading (Microtrends, Rome and Jerusalem and The Mother Tongue), watching a few movies (Charlie Wilson’s War and Juno) and visiting friends here and there. In a span of a few short days, we had an epic rain and, this morning, the first time that I felt really cold all season.

This promises to be a really interesting year for the nation in general and journalism in particular. Here’s why: First, the elections. This is the first national election since the bottom fell out of newsrooms. Most staffs are down, and there is going to be pressure from all sides to cover and inform voters on critical issues. And oh, yeah, don’t stop entertaining us about Britney et al. So, for all newspapers, there are going to be hard—but valuable—decisions on how we use our resources. On the other end, the digital gatherers—Yahoo, Google etc.—continue to add original content. The extent to which they wade into politics is yet to be seen, but they have the resources, if they choose, to be players. Second, Fleet Street vs. Wall Street. Newspaper stocks got crushed last year, and in my opinion, most were spared the brutality of restructuring (again) by the fact that they were all in the same boat, so activist shareholders couldn’t single out one company as being the cloud in an otherwise sunny day. My guess is some of that patience will wear thin in 2008. Finally, the economy. Oil is at $100 a barrel. Housing market is generally flat to down. Much more than in the past, our economy—and a whole lot of newspaper revenue—is built on consumer spending.

On the plus side, newspapers are savvier than ever. We’re taking more risks, doing less things just for the sake of tradition, and looking carefully at our role in the community and in the little d democracy we live in. It’s not going to be easy, but it will be worth watching. So stay tuned.