Otterblog

Yesterday, we had an important decision about whether to name the accuser in the Duke Lacrosse case. She is the college student/dancer/mother who was hired to dance at the party and then made accusations that led to charges that were dismissed by the Attorney General.

Most news outlets don’t name the accusers in rape cases, although there are exceptions to every rule. Several newspapers that I respect, including the News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer, both decided to name the woman. Her name was widely available prior to this decision. Here’s the explanation of the N&O’s exec editor, Melanie Sill.

We decided not to. Here’s what our rape policy says, in part:

In the event that an accused rapist is acquitted or released after being charged [and that charge was reported by us], we will make significant efforts to detail the story behind the defendant’s success. In these narrow cases, we may choose to name the accuser if there is competent evidence that the charges were deliberately bogus. Even in this event, however, we will not use the names of any victim under 18 years old.

I think the key word here is “deliberately.” To my mind, what AG Cooper said yesterday is key, that the accuser may actually believe her stories. I’m not sure her charges were deliberate lies.

It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry over the world of trouble that Don Imus has gotten himself into. On the one hand, it’s the sort of natural progression of a lot of talk radio, especially the big-time national shows, where audiences are fickle and if the host’s comments don’t make the water cooler conversation then there’s a serious problem. On the other hand, there’s the whole business of a person’s right to say what they want to say—regardless of how offensive it is.

As I’ve noted before, journalists take the first amendment very seriously. Free speech/free press. It also includes freedom of religion (an issue careening across Forsyth County right now) freedom to petition the govt. and freedom of assembly.

It’s important to note that the Bill of Rights doesn’t say anything about broadcast radio and shock jocks. At the time, even a thinker and futurist as brilliant as Thomas Jefferson had no idea what was coming down the pike. But we treat broadcast different from newspapers and just shouting out your window or what have you, because the airwaves are seen as a public domain. In essence, the government can’t control what you say, but they can determine the size and existence of your broadcast equipment. That hasn’t happened yet with Imus.

Instead, the marketplace seems to be doing its job, with various businesses and marketing executives evaluating whether they want to keep advertising on his show. If they do, he’ll be fine. If not, he’ll probably end up in a greatly reduced role.

My guess is that Imus will survive in some fashion for several key reasons. First, he’s got a huge audience. I’m an occasional,once every three month listener, but my guess is that before the YKW hit the fan, lots of people chuckled at his remark about the Rutgers bball team. He says what many people think. Two, his support base among elected officials and the powers that be is broad. He has a lot of chits to call in. Three, Americans love nothing more than a story of redemption. If Imus can sell group two that he’s serious about three, then he is good to go.

It’s not often the words “Tobaccoville” and “World’s Sexiest Man” get used in the same breath, but yesterday they were, more or less, and we had the photographs to prove it. Our story about George Clooney, and the filming of Leatherheads in the Donnaha area of western Forsyth County was a great little diversion from our world of problems small, large and extra-large.

The photograph that we ran on Page One by Lauren Carroll was a real grabber, with a wonderful interplay between the starstruck and the star who is striking her. We had a brief discussion at our budget meeting yesterday about how to play the Clooney story, whether we should give it more prominence at the expense of a well-crafted story about the investigation into the shooting at the Red Rooster. In the end, it wasn’t close. The Red Rooster story moved to the front of the Local Section, where we were able to give it a nice display

Does that mean Hollywood won? Yes. And no. There are a lot of parts of the definition of news: What happened. What people are talking about. What is important. Quite clearly, nos. 2 and 3 are subjective. The best stories touch all three of these. The worst, barely touch one. News is serious. But it’s OK to have some sizzle with the steak.

We had a interesting discussion yesterday about trying to define Gangster Rap, and how one person’s definition might not match up with another’s. It had to do with what the bouncers at the Red Rooster said was being played when the problems at the club started. I don’t claim to be an expert on rap or hip-hop or really any music, but I do know that shorthand often gets people into trouble.
Which reminds me, National Geographic has a very good article called Hip-Hop Planet in its current issue. Beautifully written By James McBride, who wrote “The Color of Water.” A great book.

The Council of State is the group of statewide elected officials (Governor, Lt. Governor—known as the Lite Gov, Labor Commissioner, etc) who meet once a month. One of the main things they do is approve the sale and purchase of property. Today, they approved the state taking control of two important properties: Chimney Rock, and SECCA.

Both reflect the changing economics of our times. But they are interesting for other reasons. Chimney Rock will eventually become a state park, like Mount Mitchell. SECCA will be probably be some mini N.C. Museum of Art, with a nod to modern/contemporary art.

SECCA’s move was driven in part by the cost of maintenance and repairs at its facility off of Reynolda Road, but there is something a bit troubling about museums becoming part of the state. Art is expression, First Amendment and all that, and inevitably, when the government gets involved with the First Amendment, there is a change. SECCA made its bones by being provocative and taking risks, challenging the government over what constitutes art. Can that happen when it’s part of the government? Maybe. But don’t bet on it.

In answer to a question below, I’ve put in a link to SECCA’s latest filed tax return on Guidestar.

PLOUFF.jpg

We have heard a lot of comments and reaction from people about our decision to publish a photograph of a memorial for Howard Plouff. I’ve attached it above. It’s of a sign that reads in part “YOUR OUR HERO” instead of “OUR HERO”.

The criticism is that we ran a photo that is embarrassing to the WSPD.

The photo by photographer Lauren Carroll is very strong, and while it’s true that it is hard to look at it without seeing the grammatical mistake, I don’t believe that the mistake negates the picture or means we shouldn’t run it. It is what it is. It’s a tribute.

Journal policy is that we quote people faithfully and accurately but also that we don’t go out of our way to make somebody look foolish. With quotes, it is easy when somebody doesn’t speak the King’s English. We can paraphrase. But a photograph is different. We’re not going to photoshop an E and an apostrophe into that picture.

The larger points are that 1)  we can’t be the grammar police for the world and 2) that we didn’t go out of our way to find this photo. It’s part of breaking news, and for us to tell folks “We’d like to go take a picture of it, but you need to get the grammar fixed first” makes us part of the story.

Let me know your thoughts.

Typically, when people are arrested and charged with newsworthy crimes, we run their pictures in the paper. In the case of the man charged with murder in the death of the Winston-Salem police officer, that hasn’t happened—yet.

The reason is that the police were still doing lineups at the time of the arrest, and they asked us to withhold publication under the idea that the integrity of the lineup might be compromised if the man’s picture was published.

Complying with these sorts of requests puts us in a difficult position, and our agreement was reluctant. We did so because of the unique nature of this crime, i.e. an officer shot to death in the parking lot outside a nightclub, where there are hundreds of potential witnesses. Not your usual crime scene. In addition, this arrest comes on the heels of the Sykes report, which details all the problems police had with lineups in that case.

We told the police that we would give them three days to do their lineups, then we would publish pictures of the accused when they made journalistic sense to do so.

The Speaker for the Speaker of the House: A former Journal staffer has gotten a promotion of sorts. Bill Holmes, who was an editor and reporter here in the late 1990s and early 2000s was just named the spokesman for new House Speaker Joe Hackney. He had left the Journal to go work for the Associated Press. Bill grew up in Surry County and went to N.C. State.

A week or so back, we reported on a naming study done for the city of Winston-Salem that said that the city could make a lot of money if it sold naming rights for the coliseum. At this point, it’s a non-starter. Scott Sexton also wrote a column about it.

The Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum has been a controversial name since the very beginning, and the Journal has often been the focus of the controversy. A caller today screamed at me for the way we refer to it in the paper, Joel Coliseum (Most other media and WFU also refer to it like this). The calmer interpretation of what he was saying is that by removing the V and the M part of the name, we are not honoring the other men and women who served and died for this country.

I disagree. First, the journalistic argument on the name we use. It’s one of clarity and it’s how most people refer to the coliseum. Occasionally, someone says they saw a concert or a game at LJVM, but it’s almost always just Joel Coliseum or Lawrence Joel. The opposing argument would be that if the newspaper—and all the other media—had called it by its full name from the very beginning, we’d all be doing it. Language adoption rarely works like that. Clarity and simplicity find a way.

Second, the emotional argument. This goes back to the original fight over the name and the decision by the aldermen at the time to elevate one man above the others, while still adding these other parts in a Christmas tree fashion that was sure to cause confusion down the road. Political solutions to emotional issues rarely leave all parties happy. Lawrence Joel is our only Medal of Honor winner from Winston-Salem. He’s also black, and the elevation didn’t sit right with some people at the time and still today. In a sense, the full name honors three groups of people in the military. First, all veterans. Second, those who died in service. Third, Joel himself. Some people are in one category, others in two. Joel, himself, in three.

What I like about calling it Joel Coliseum is that that naming forces you to focus on one person and his bravery and courage. That said, I don’t believe it demeans or excludes other vets or those who died in service. If anything, it personalizes the sacrifice each of these people—even those who don’t have a coliseum named after them—have made.

Is the phrase “football players” a loaded term? What about “Palestinian students?” As the coverage of the fight at Guilford College draws more attention and investigations, there’s a need to be wary of loaded words and shorthand descriptions.

Since the Duke lacrosse incident, there’s been a great deal of evaluation and introspection about labeling athletes through their sports. Lacrosse players at Duke were quickly dismissed as swaggering children of privilege. Football players are often seen as big, dumb brutes. That’s not always or necessarily even usually the case. At Guilford, a Division III school, there aren’t athletic scholarships, so its football team is arguably different than that found at a Division I school.

Similarly, the phrase “Palestinian students” conjures up all sorts of images, of students far from home, strangers in a strange land, unsure of local customs and mores, perhaps even folks with anti-American sentiments. Again, it’s not always or possibly even largely the case.

So, depending on your view of football players and Palestinian students, you can view this fight in a lot of different ways, some that might meet the definition of hate crime, others that clearly don’t. What’s clear after all that has happened at Duke is the need to have restraint and to not jump to conclusions based on what is the best storyline.

There has been a lot of teeth-gnashing about a column we ran Sunday by Scott Sexton. The column was mainly about the confrontation/event/incident involving Superintendent Don Martin and a parent of a student at Lewisville Elementary, where a suspended teacher has returned to work.

Our previous coverage of the suspension had not said what the teacher was being investigated for while the suspension with pay was in effect. Scott’s column did. The criticism we received—to paraphrase and summarize—runs along the lines that we erred by naming the nature of the allegations. Now that he has been allowed to return to teaching, the belief goes, he is still tarred for life and the allegations will live on in Google long after we have all turned to dust.

Our reporting is based on asking questions, and our writing is based on informing people to the greatest extent possible, not through arched eyebrows and knowing nods, but through words.  Most parents at Lewisville already knew what the teacher was being investigated for, and it appears that a great deal of them supported him and felt that he had been wrongly accused.

We live in a day and age where two things are prevalent. First, people take much more seriously accusations that adults are abusing children, and second, that it doesn’t take much to get a mob mentality going on just a whiff of a problem.

I don’t like the image of a newspaper as the lead torch carrier out to get Frankenstein, and I don’t think we did that here. I talked with Scott, and his point—which I think is a good one—is that without an understanding of the seriousness of the allegation, it’s difficult to understand why a) the parent was so upset and b) Don Martin reacted the way he did.

A few months ago, I wrote about the disagreement the Journal was having with Rep. Virginia Foxx.

The quick recap is that she took issue with our reporting and then refused to speak directly with any reporters at the Journal. At the time, I discussed our paper’s policy on dealing with public officials and how we work to resolve these situations: in short, we correct our errors where we are wrong, stick up for our journalists when we feel we are correct, and we try to confront problems honestly and openly.

Anyway, careful readers of the Journal would see a quote from Rep. Foxx in a story published this morning about student loan changes.

It’s easy to read all sorts of motives/reasons into Rep. Foxx’s change: The GOP is no longer in the majority. Her maturity as a second-term member of Congress. Her ability to forgive a perceived unjustice. The difficulty/foolishness of carrying grudges. The idea that she has punished us enough.  I don’t know, and in a larger sense, I don’t care. To me, the reasons are not important. It’s the ends, not the means. What mattered then and what matters now is the ability of our reporters to have reasonable access to our elected officials so we can inform our readers.

Humorist is a word that is widely overused and very misunderstood. Being funny is hard work. Being funny for years and years is even harder. Art Buchwald did it well. He died yesterday. If you have a chance, go find one of his books and read a few columns. Good stuff.