Otterblog

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As we get ready to gather with family and friends, I thought I would make a brief list of what I am thankful for. And because this is a blog primarily about journalism, I will keep it focused on that. Here goes.

1) The First Amendment.
2) The N.C. Public Records Act (Not perfect, but still pretty good)
3) Number 2 pencils. They write upside down and you can sharpen them against the sidewalk.
4) That pants pockets are a quarter inch wider than reporters notebooks.
5) All the incredibly smart and passionate people I’ve worked with and still work with.
6) Coffee.
7) My newspaper carrier.
8) The incredible number of paper who use the word “paper” as a precise synonym for the Journal.
9) Google.
10) The N.C. Gazetteer, consistently the most interesting reference book I use.

That’s it. I hope you have a great Thanksgiving.

If you are traveling today, maybe you are stuck in an airport. And maybe if you are whiling away the time in an airport, you are doing a Sudoku puzzle. I love ‘em, and I got to wondering last week just how they create puzzles of different degrees of difficulty. So I wrote the good people at the Mepham Group, who distribute the Sudoku puzzle that appears in the Journal. And because they are British and polite, they wrote me back. I’ve attached their response. Other than making me feel like I should have paid more attention during Algebra II, it’s really interesting.

Last night, I went to hear a talk by Bruce Beehler. He’s the ornithologist/conservationist we wrote about last week. He has one of the great jobs in the world: to go to places that are still wild and document what is there. His talk was about his trips to the Foja Mountains on the Indonesian side of the island of New Guinea.

Beehler has been a prominent researcher for decades, but his work came to national attention in 2006, when his team’s findings after its first trip to the mountains were released. It was news around the world, and in his talk he discussed the quantum leap from humble obscurity to the the klieg lights of prominence. He showed a slide of all the newspaper clippings and said something like “Our findings were news around the world, maybe they were even in your own paper here….”

That’s when my stomach dropped. I wanted to yell out “We Did,” but I didn’t. Now I had read about his work in National Geographic, but the truth is couldn’t remember whether the Journal had run a wire story on the initial findings. It’s the sort of geeky science story I love, but there are a lot of those stories floating around out there. As an editor, you are constantly getting second-guessed and critiqued on what you ran and didn’t run, and you get used to it. But this was a different bird altogether. I didn’t know: Had we missed the research story of the year?

This morning, I made my way to the third floor, where our microfilm machine resides, and I started looking through past editions. And on Feb. 8, 2006, there was the story on Page 2, complete with a photo. Phew.

This isn’t to say that our coverage is perfect or that each and every day it is in perfect harmony with our readers think is the most important news of the day. That’s impossible. But what we strive to do is to give a snapshot of the world, from the mountains of Northwest New Guinea to Northwest North Carolina.

And for those who didn’t make it to the talk last night, here’s a slide show of what they found.

I’m back after a few days of post-election R&R. I have heard from many of you, both privately and through OTTERBLOG, about our decision on reprinting the front page. We’ll move on from there…

As someone who is involved with choosing stories for the newspaper, you learn a couple of things pretty quickly about which events not to forget. D-Day is one. Pearl Harbor is another. So is 9/11. And last are Veterans Day and Memorial Day. They’re in some ways the most difficult. They don’t remember specific events (although Veterans Day arose out of WWI’s Armistice Day), but rather acts of service and of sacrifice. And of the five, they’re the only two that retailers organize sales around (but that’s another topic for another day.).

This year, our local veterans groups did things a little differently. Frustrated at the low turnout for the annual parade when it happened on a weekday, they moved the parade to Saturday in hopes of getting a bigger crowd. So we responded in kind, and planned the majority of our Veterans coverage for Sunday’s paper, including stories on A1 and B1. Consequently, there was less mention in today’s papers, although we did have a poignant column by Scott Sexton and a story in the A section. Some callers are upset with us, and think we gave vets short shrift. I see their point, but I do think this is probably one of those examples of no good deed going unpunished. I think we actually had more veterans coverage this year than in many years, but moving it in concert with the parade two days ahead of the actual day may have been confusing to some readers.  It was certainly not meant to be disrespectful.

Changing times: There’s a revealing story in the New York Times today about the changing demographics of the South, and how Pres.-elect Obama’s victories in NC and VA show the region as searching for answers now that it can no longer be a guaranteed bloc of Republican electoral votes on Election Day. The authors use the phrase “suburban South” to describe what’s happened in many of its more prosperous metro areas, around Charlotte, RTP, NoVA, and—to a lesser extent—the Triad, as in-migration has changed the political equation. I’m part of that migration, of course, and although I have lived here half my life, I still get a chuckle out of the bumper sticker that reads “We don’t care how you did things up North.” But here’s my question: What is your exhibit A of the “Suburban South?”

Several bloggers, including my friend Lucy Cash at Life in Forsyth, are criticizing the Journal for its decision on publishing a special reprint of our election results front page that is only available in single-copy sales, rather than in the papers that go to subscribers.

It’s still a free country, and they have the right to criticize. And it’s all well and good to have conversations and disagreements about what we should have and could have done. My personal belief is that it’s a bit of a tempest in a teapot. I wasn’t part of the decision on how to reprint, but from what I’ve been able to glean, the logic was as follows: Subscribers got the real thing, the actual paper printed on Nov. 5. Many folks who buy the paper one day at a time didn’t, because we sold out. So this was something for them. The subscribers’ anger is that they are loyal and they should be rewarded for their loyalty with the special reprint. That makes sense, too, although from my standpoint, the real thing is more valuable and intrinsically historical than a reprint.

I used to use something called a calculator test when interviewing young reporters. It didn’t assess their math skills, but rather their relative age. The calculator, you see, is my prized Sharp Elsi Mate EL 500, which I received in the fall of my junior year in high school for physics. My teacher preferred a slide rule, but that’s another story…
31 years later, I still have it, in the drawer next to my desk, and I still use it several times a week. And when I loan it out to folks, they often stare at it as if it is some ancient piece of technology, not quite a computer and somehow closer to an abacus than anything they might find useful. Anyway, the point is that about 10 years ago, I realized that I was starting to interview folks who were younger than my calculator. That is the definition of being old! I’ve stopped making that comparison now, as too many folks are younger.
So here’s my new definition of old: In the summer of 2007, one of our interns was a young man named Kevin Litten, a student at the University of Maryland. Smart kid, good reporter. He went back to school, graduated, got an extended internship with the Roanoke Times, which ended a few weeks ago. So he was hunting for a job, and he found one. He starts Monday as a reporter for the Waterbury Republican-American (Not to be confused with the Democrat-Anti-American!!!)  in Connecticut, in their bureau in the town of Torrington. 24 years ago, when my calculator was a mere 7 years old, I began my career as a reporter at the small daily there. The Waterbury paper was the big-city paper, and we battled them for every scrap of news in town. I was very young and very inexperienced and I made a lot of mistakes, but I learned a lot under the sharp eyes of good editors and welcoming colleagues.
So while sitting in my mental rocking chair ... I hope Kevin finds the same success there.

A friend from Arizona writes: Given all the stories lately (and your blog updates), I found it interesting that the building that’s been under construction on the way to my kids’ school is a new Wachovia branch. Maybe they’ll put the sign up with velcro….

I’ve gotten several questions about what happened with our front page photo today. You can see the correct version here. For all you graphic-arts majors out there, what happened was a separation problem with the black part of the four-color separation that makes a color print. That’s why everything is so light. Now, the obvious question is Why didn’t anybody see it and stop it. Well, they did see it, but they didn’t stop it. The reason is that it was the second press problem that night, and we were running way behind and the decision was that it was better to print than to wait an hour to see if it could be fixed. In an ideal world, you don’t want to be in either situation, of course, but I can tell you that our press crew is incredibly conscientious and cares deeply about the quality of the paper that comes off the press. I didn’t like seeing that photo this morning, but it was the right call.

The winner of the first annual OTTERBLOG stock-market correction haiku contest is ....

Nikki, for the following poem:

Dow falls six days straight
Hopes, dreams, and accounts abate
No car this Christmas

The other entries are below, and they are all pretty good, with some subtle rhyming and nice choice of words (the word abate is one of my personal favorites, as it is the same root as abattoir, the fancy name for a slaughterhouse ...) Nikki, if you will contact me, we will figure out how to get your gift to you.

Again, thanks to all for playing.

Jon Lowder says: Dow falls six days straight/401K is prostrate/ The ledge is that way

Anon. entry: Dow falls six days straight/ Why didn’t someone warn us?/ Krugman wins Nobel

Bo Gray says: Dow fall six days straight/ Its all on sale/ Why not buy

Courtney Tucker says: Dow falls six days straight/ lots of sleepless nights of late/ anxiety sucks

Burnie Little says: Dow falls six days straight/ Brother can you spare a dime/ Nineteen twenty nine

We have a lot of very talented people in our newsroom, and Dan Collins is one of the most talented. Lots of folks call him “Country,” and you can often find him at various bars around town playing his guitar and singing some outrageously good and unique ballads. But his day job is covering Wake Forest sports, mainly football and basketball.
Dan believes in the value of reporting, and of shoe leather and of being there. He’s also very good at building trust between himself and the teams he covers. He recognizes that the athletes he covers are not professionals, but, that said, he isn’t afraid to say when something didn’t go quite right. And if you read his stuff, you know he’s a fine writer with a mind filled with historical references and literature. Let’s just say that he stayed awake in his classes in high school and college.
We rolled out Dan’s blog, called My Take on Wake (catchy, eh?) this weekend, and you can find it by clicking here. Tell a friend. And let me know what you think.

Separately, this is a second reminder of the Great Stock Market Haiku Contest, whose rules can be found here. The deadline is Thursday at noon. I will announce a winner on Friday.

Our AP feed allows me to create a message alert each time a story moves with a word or words. So I get an email every time the words “Winston-Salem” appear in an AP story from anywhere. Among the other alerts I’ve set up is one that sends me a message every time a story or caption or agate listing has the word “Iceland.” Yes, Iceland. I’ve been fascinated by this country for years, dating back to a Scandinavian literature course in college, and last summer went there with OTTERBLOG Jr. An incredible place, filled with breathtaking scenery and friendly people.
For most of the past year, the alerts have been ho hum. Handball scores. Whaling treaties. The occasional Bjork publicity event.
No more. The country is in a freefall, its financial system is collapsing. In a year’s time, it’s gone from the success story of global capitalism to teetering on the verge of national bankruptcy.
Here’s a story from the Washington Post on the troubles. Essentially, Iceland’s banks were too big, and they were over-leveraged. The result: good times are great. Bad times are atrocious. Making matters worse is that the country’s currency (the Krona) is falling, and for a country that relies on imports for just about everything, the result is crippling for its residents.
I don’t know how it will all play out, but this is a scary time—for all 300 million of us in the USA, and for 300,000 people on a volcanic rock the size of Ohio in the middle of the Atlantic.

Sense of humor poetry department: Michelle Johnson, our team leader for multimedia, knows of my love for a good haiku. She sent me this email a short time ago:

————————————————————————————————————————
From: Johnson, A. Michelle
Sent: Friday, October 10, 2008 12:32 PM
To: Otterbourg, Kenneth D.
Subject: Market haiku

How about you finish it?

——

So that is my challenge to all you OTTERBLOGGERS out there. Finish this Haiku. Send it to me. I will choose the winner, and he/she will get a special prize…

This is another fluid (to put it politely) day in the financial world. I woke up to see a full-page ad on A3 trumpeting the Wachovia-Citigroup deal, then learned an hour later that Wachovia had entered into an agreement to be bought by Wells Fargo. (Lots of Dewey beats Truman jokes ...) If you’ve been reading our copy, you know most of it is the work of a business reporter named Richard Craver. He is a pro, perhaps the most knowledgeable and respected banking reporter in the state. He started as a sports journalist many years ago, and he still brings that competitive spirit and a desire to make sense of winners and losers. In this new era, writing for the paper isn’t enough. You have to post to the Web, update the Web and then write for the next day with info that isn’t on the Web site. Richard juggles it all and rarely loses his cool. A good journalist to have in a crisis.

Long-time readers of OTTERBLOG know of my deep affinity for gourds of all shapes and sizes. So it was with deep appreciation that I read our story this morning about Eldon Snow, who is the Tiger Woods of gourd growing. No, I didn’t assign the piece, although for years I have marveled at Mr. Snow’s green thumb and consistency at growing humongous gourds. It’s one of my must-see stops at the Dixie Classic Fair, which opens today.