Otterblog

I am up in Richmond for a few days at a corporate training seminar. We had a presentation this morning about finance, and at the break our speaker was teasing me about reading USA Today. Even all these years later, it’s a paper that still lacks respect. Actually, I’m reading three papers this week. USA Today comes to the hotel room, which is convenient. And the Times-Dispatch is in our conference room, which makes sense since they are the flagship paper of our company, Media General. And I’m reading the Journal online between breaks and when the wireless service is up and running here (A storm last night knocked it out for a while.). It is still an unnatural habit, reading the paper online, but I’m getting better at it and better trained about how to make my way through the site. It’s an organic process. More hopscotching, less A1 to A2 to A3, etc.

One of our facilitators was talking this morning about why he still likes getting the newspaper delivered to his house. It was in the context of thanking our company’s CEO, Marshall Morton, for taking some time to address our group. He said he likes the comfort of the paper. That’s a new one for me. I’ve heard convenience, content, continuity. But not comfort. And he put it in the context of “comfort food,” mac and cheese, meat loaf, etc. That in these uncertain times, comfort is important and an attribute that shouldn’t be overlooked. So some food for thought as the media landscape continues to be redefined before our very eyes.

I had to go to the Central Branch of the Forsyth County Public Library last night. The basement is about half empty. Much of the library expansive library collection has been removed. It’s for sale, as our story this morning noted.

There is something incredibly sad about the process. In the quaint old days before the Internet, the magazine archives at the library were the place where I did much of my research. It was an impressive collection. I don’t think we would have been able to report our mammoth history of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., known as Lost Empire, without it. I’ll be honest. In recent years, I haven’t used it as much, but I took comfort in knowing it was there and from time to time killed a few hours researching this or that.

Our information era is a scary place. We have more information than ever available at our fingertips. And with a few clicks you can often get to exactly the article you are looking for. But here’s what I fear is being lost along the way. It’s the art of browsing, and the joy of serendipitous discovery. Of going looking for one thing and ending up completely entranced and captivated with something else.

It’s true that NC Live, which has a vast collection of magazines online, is a wonder. But it’s not a replacement for what was there. The information you get is only the text. You don’t see the pictures. How a story was played. The ad on the facing page, and the really cool story that is just before it.

This is just one more example of how the Web is changing our world and changing journalism. I’ve always thought that journalism is a combination of exertion and observation, learning to recognize both patterns (i.e. trends) and non-patterns (things that don’t look quite right). And as information gets ordered up just the way we asked for it or somebody else asked for it, those skills become harder to exercise.

I had lunch today with Donald Reaves, the newish chancellor at WSSU. Smart guy. Tough job. He’s trying to increase graduation rates and academic standards, while not hurting enrollment figures and alienating key constituencies of the university as it grows. In addition, Reaves (most recently at the University of Chicago by way of Brown U.) replaced a popular chancellor who had the advantage of being from, as they say, “around here.” Joining us was Sigrid Hall-Pittsley, who is the interim head of marketing and university advancement. Not surprisingly, much of our conversation focused on the Journal’s coverage of WSSU.
Generally, I think it’s good. Like most things, it could be better. But I think the hallmark of our coverage is that we do cover it. In many places, HBCUs get only limited coverage, or coverage that is driven by crisis and scandal. Like most big institutions, WSSU hasn’t been immune to these stories. But that said, we cover WSSU as a legitimate institution, a major employer and a taxpayer-supported university.
And as I told Chancellor Reaves, our sports coverage (which is a big part of coverage of any university) is unparalleled. That’s due to the work of John Dell, who mastered CIAA athletics and, presumably, will do the same thing now that WSSU is part of the MEAC.

An addendum: A friend of mine read this post and thought it might be interpreted that I was saying that WSSU should be grateful for its coverage. I apologize for that inference. There’s no expectation of gratitude; it’s not above and beyond the call of duty. It’s just what should be done.

I am rising right now—for a limited time only—to make an important commercial announcement. It is this:

VOTE.

From the presidential primary all the way down to county commissioner, there are important races for both Republicans and Democrats tomorrow. Good candidates with diverse views across the board. They deserve your attention and a few minutes of your time in the voting booth. Yes, there’s the old saw that if you don’t vote, you have no right to complain, but I think it’s deeper than that. It’s about having a stake in the system and about being part of something that is larger than yourself. There are real and important differences between the candidates, so who gets elected does matter to each of us. But that said, one of the real long-term dangers to our system of government —to me at least—comes from disinterest. So VOTE.

Now, I am putting the soapbox in storage for a while.

Good read: A friend recommended the book Goodbye to a River, by John Graves, which is an eloquent tale of the Brazos River and the history of Texas and life and learning in the 1950s. Part travelogue, part personal journey, part elegy to a vanishing landscape, it is heart-breaking and uplifting, sad and joyous. 

The Hyphens. The I-40s. The Hushpuppies.

Those are my suggestions for what to call the Warthogs when they take the field next year at the new stadium. As our columnist, Scott Sexton, asked, “What’s wrong with keeping the Warthog name?

I don’t mind the Warthogs. A big improvement from the Spirits, but progress marches on.

One of the ticklish things about yesterday’s announcement by the folks who will be running the Winston-Salem MLBTTWCTW* is that the Journal will be one of the funnel points for folks offering their suggestions on what to rename the team.

Me, personally, I’m not crazy when the business side of the house gets involved in issues that we might cover. There’s the potential for conflicts or the appearance of conflicts. But if you think about it, the Journal outside the newsroom is already doing business with many if not most of the institutions we cover. It’s unavoidable. So all we can do is manage it, and by that I mean be upfront and work hard not to let the back side affect the front side.

*Minor-league baseball team that was called the Warthogs.

Yesterday, I did my civic duty and answered the call for jury duty. The timing couldn’t have been worse. Right in the middle of spring break. But what are you going to do? Everybody I told I was doing this said essentially the same thing? They’d let you be on a jury? I tried not to take that as an insult on my impartiality/intellect/independence. The conventional wisdom is that journalists never get picked for juries. Lots of reasons/speculation: We’re anti-authority. We don’t believe what anybody says. We know too many lawyers. We’ve written about the plaintiffs/defense/prosecutors etc. Take your pick. But times have changed. I know several journalists who have been picked to serve on juries in recent years. My guess is it’s a function of several things. First, that the jury pool is more shallow than we care to admit. Second, a realization that we’re good at sifting through complicated matters and rendering fair decisions.

Now, civic duty takes many forms. For me, it was this. Sitting in a room about as cold as a meat locker for seven hours reading magazines and doing some work. In the background, reruns of Sanford and Son and the Jeffersons. Sort of an interesting dynamic there. The TV was off for the first 90 minutes. Then somebody turned it on. At first, it was a big annoyance, but slowly our group’s attention turned to the rantings of George and Louise, Fred and LaMonte. Even the most hard-boiled of us was laughing by the end of it all. And so, if most of us didn’t get to serve on a jury, I’d like to think there was a little bit of bonding and good will formed through the day that will carry over into our daily lives. That and the $12.

We had a spirited discussion today about our story on Monday on the marking of the 4000th death of an American in Iraq. This comes on the heels of last week’s coverage of the war’s fifth-year anniversary (Incidentally, our cover graphic on that issue was mentioned on several newspaper design Web sites.)

The argument against these stories is somewhat philosophical, that numbers are arbitrary. The 3,999 death is as important as the one before and the one after. And is the fifth year any more a testament to U.S. arrogance/resolute leadership (take your pick) than the fourth year and 364th day.

There is power to this argument, but I think it runs counter to our nature. We keep score. We mark anniversaries, birthdays, milestones, yahrzeits, you name it. It’s a way to know where we’ve been and hopefully where you are going. To treat events of the magnitude of the war in Iraq as a day-to-day event is the equivalent of trying to look at the world only through a one-inch wide pipe. You need different views and perspectives.

Flying, writing: We had a story this morning about the resignation of Bill Diffenderffer from Skybus, the discount airline that has set up shop at PTIA. He said he is going back to writing books. Some analysts sense trouble for the carrier. I haven’t read any of his books, but here’s an excerpt from his 2005 book, The Samurai Leader.

card.jpg

card2.JPG

Two weeks ago, I gave a writing lesson at Cook Elementary School. The dozen or so students are in the third grade in Mr. Ruddy’s class. Great kids. We talked about newspapers and about writing, and I brought a couple of things from the world of nature for them to describe and write about. The great thing about working with very young minds is that they describe things in incredibly unusual ways. Their imaginations haven’t been restricted yet. One young woman described the holes in a piece of coral as being like snowflakes. Which they are, although I had never thought of them that way.

Anyway, I went back yesterday for my regular tutoring session, and the kids gave me some thank you cards, which were very touching and meaningful.  The first image is by a young man named Dwight, and I am trying to honor his request, at least in a digital setting.  The second is by Alphonso, the young man I tutor. His drawing made me smile. Alphonso also happens to be the best dominoes player I know, and he takes extreme pleasure in beating me.

So, I’m in Richmond for a few days, with some other managers of Media General, looking at the future of our industry and where we are going. Some very bright minds, and some very optimistic minds.

One thing that is clear is that journalists bring a different toolkit to the conversation. Not necessarily better. But different. We tend to be more skeptical, distrustful of power, more wedded to tradition and the power of history to inform the future. So, it’s been a challenge for me to straddle my roles as journalist and manager and stare forthrightly at what might lie ahead.

Some observations so far:
-- Users of content are going to determine more than ever the value of that content.
-- There is an incredible demand for specific, local content.
-- It’s not clear if multimedia content can be monetized at the level that print and broadcasting content has been and is.
-- Delivery of content is becoming as important as the content itself.

One random thought, and I’m going to ultimately ask this question of our birding experts when I return to W-S, but ... On my drive up I-85, I saw more red-tailed hawks than I have ever seen in one afternoon. Granted it was over a 150-mile stretch ... but it made me wonder. We think of the return of hawks as a signal that our environment is being healed, but I wonder if there is something out of whack in the prey part of the ecosystem that is driving the hawk increase.

The drill is getting eerily familiar. There’s a report of a gunman on a college campus. Lockdown. Panic. Then an all-clear. The Virginia Tech shootings in April 2007 and last month’s shootings at Northern Illinois University have focused attention about the very real dangers of high-profile shootings. But what about the hoaxes and the scares? That’s what happened yesterday at Appalachian. Today, police said it was all a hoax, and they’re moving to file charges against the person who made it all up. A somewhat similar event happened at Ferrum College last week.

As journalist, uncertainty is part of the deal. But that said, it’s incredibly difficult to get folks to jump in their cars and drive 2+ hours on the rumor of a gunman being seen. But of course it has to be done. To not go, to say you fooled me once and you’re not going to fool me again, is to invite a larger problem: Not being there.