Otterblog

Now that our funny pages fight has abated for the time being, we can return to other matters. Notice I didn’t say other more serious matters. The comics are serious, as we rediscover every time we change them.

Some of you may have heard about a little movie coming out today. It’s something like the Da Vinci Code? It’s supposed to be based on a book? Seriously, this is one of those perfect storms of media and entertainment that raises a lot of questions about the role of newspapers in an increasingly fragmented media marketplace.

It was hard to turn around during the last two months and not be bombarded with something about DVC. Whether it was snippets of Tom Hanks’ long and oiled hair-do or members of

Opus Dei defending themselves and the Catholic Church, there have been bazillions of stories: about the movie, about the role of a novelist and higher truths, even stories about the stories. You have to believe that an executive with Sony is somewhere folding his hands together and stating in a Mr. Burns

-like manner “Excellent.”

So what did the Journal do? A couple of things. First, we decided that DVC is a big event, and one that we didn’t want to be excluded from. Two, we realized that our best purpose was not to rehash the endless stories that people could get from Entertainment Tonight or Time magazine. True to our mission, we took a local approach, talking to local clergy and others about why—for all the hoopla—this isn’t another Passion of the Christ. And we let readers tell us what they thought.

One thing is for sure: the conspiracy movement is alive and well in America. If you assert something as fact, then get a major organization to go ballistic and attack it, there are a fair number of people who think the enormity of the denial points to a kernel of truth.

Dscn1944.jpgDscn1950.jpg

I am in New Orleans to fish with some good friends. The devastation in this city and region caused by Hurricane Katrina cannot be believed. We fished from a place called Shell Beach, where boats still lie stacked on top of each other. We stopped by a little general store there on the way back. The owners were unbloodied and unbowed about their future. The store is in a FEMA trailer, and before and after pictures are on the front door.

The pictures of the Ninth Ward don’t begin to tell the story of the damage to community here. There are blocks upon blocks of houses, some collapsed, others flooded beyond salvage. The flood water line is like a telltale scar across the neighborhood. Rescue graffiti tells a grim shorthand on every house. It’s the sort of place that every American needs to see for himself, either here or in Mississippi.

Ten months later, work is being done to rebuild but there is so much to do. It’s difficult to know what the answer is. Rebuilding encompasses a lot of possible outcomes, and how the Ninth Ward is rebuilt will hold the keys to the future. But for now, it just looks like a bomb went off there. As bad as the houses are, what is most unnerving is that there is no noise here. No cars backfiring on the street. No lawnmowers in the afternoon. No shrieks of children playing in the yards.

I have attached a few photos of the Lower Ninth.

ON ANOTHER NOTE: New Orleans is a great food city, and I got to indulge in two of the city’s great treats. One is a fried pie made by

Hubig’s Pie Co

. I’m a huge fried pie fan, and their coconut fried pie is outstanding.

The second is a Lucky Dog, sold out of these hot dog-shaped vending carts in the French Quarter. Readers of A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole will recall that Ignatius J. Reilly, the story’s main character, had an eventful experience as a lucky dog man.
 

Quick thoughts for a rainy Wednesday:

1) Energy and politics have been entangled for years. They’re likely to become even more so in the future. That’s the back story of a push by GOP members of Congress from Western NC to allow for gas exploration off the NC Coast. This used to be a third rail issue for our delegation. No more. The War in Iraq, uncertainty across much of the international oil belt and supply constraints have changed the dynamics of offshore drilling. Won’t happen anytime soon. But it will happen.

2) The 31st Senate District continues to be nasty—and will get nastier in the final week. Money helps in politics. But it isn’t everything. My predicted order of finish: Brunstetter, Whisenhunt a close second, then Tabor, which might set Whisenhunt up nicely for a second primary challenge if she chooses and Brunstetter doesn’t get over 40 percent of the vote. She has the least money, but if you look at

voting results

, she consistently received more votes than Brunstetter when they ran in the same district on the board of county commissioners.

3) Ash trays and spitoons. Reynolds American is paying $3.5 billion—with a B—for Conwood. It includes the Taylor factory on US 158. Interesting move. The old RJR used all its cash to get away from tobacco. The new RJR can’t get enough. Times have changed.

 

When done correctly, competition can be a wonderful thing. It makes us better, sharper, more responsive. That theory works in autos, in newspapers, and—yes—even in blogville.

With that in mind, a couple of quick announcements on some blog news happening at the Journal. We have some new offerings that will be competing with everybody’s undying and unwavering loyalty of the Otterblog. First, Monte Mitchell, our reporter in our Northwest bureau, will be running a blog for the next few days about

Merlefest

, the annual Wilkes County roots music festival that is this weekend. Look for it on JournalNow beginning tomorrow and through the weekend.

Second, we’ll be starting a blog for Kernersville and Eastern Forsyth County as part of our Kernersville Journal. Melissa Hall, one of our reporters in downtown K’ville bureau, will take the lead on that. It will hit the net for the edition of May 4. While the idea of all blogs is to have a dialogue with the community, we’ll be pushing this concept a little more forcefully in our K’ville blog.

A lot of blogging by the dreaded MSM, i.e. the Journal, is an experiment in new ways of doing things. Balancing tradition and innovation is tricky stuff. But take a look at these when they launch and let me know what you think. Your feedback is important.

WORD WATCH:

Newsweek has a cover story on the Duke Lacrosse scandal, and like everybody else the most loaded word in the whole article is swagger. An interesting word. Norwegian in its origin, says my Webster’s dictionary, from svagra, to sway. You can search North Carolina’s statutes for a long time, and you still won’t find swagger in the criminal code. Court of public opinion is a different matter.

If you ever want to get a scary, close-up look of what happens when big business meets big government, take a look at the Master Settlement Agreement

between the cigarette companies—RJR, PM, et al.—and the states’ attorneys general.

It’s an amazing document, one that we’ve written about and will continue to write about for years to come.

The latest battle

is over the major cig companies’ claims that their market share has dropped so their payments ought to drop as well.

There’s a lot of money at stake. One clue: The state allocation percentages of exhibit A. The shares are calculated out to 7 percentage points.  N.C.‘s share is 2.3322850%. 

LAX and the NYT: Interesting piece in

Slate

magazine about how the New York Times has been covering the rape charges involving members of the Duke Lacrosse Team.

With all the sturm und drang over immigration reform, it’s easy to forget the other demographic pig in a python that is changing our country. That is the graying of America and Forsyth County

. Old people are among the fastest-growing group in the nation, and their numbers will swell in coming years as people who are old live longer and us baby boomers join the group.

Huge policy implications. Huge moral implications. Huge financial implications. And it intersects with the immigration issue, as you are probably aware if you have been in a nursing home recently. Many of the people who take care of our elderly are immigrants, and compassion and treating the elderly with dignity transcends their legal status.

The power of mulch. Community is where you find it. And sometimes it’s hard to recognize. But it was there in the line for free leaf mulch on Saturday at the city leaf dump in back of Reynolds Park Rec Center. Pickup trucks as far as the eye could see. W-S’s skyline off in the distance. A fraternity (and sorority) built around the pitchfork and the wheelbarrow. Not half bad.

Today is the first day for so-called “early voting.” I will get on my soapbox here and tell everybody to vote. I don’t care who you vote for, just so long as you do. Higher turnouts mean more legitimate results, which mean a more confident and more connected government.

You can tell from our coverage that we’re in the thick of the political season, with lots of candidate profiles etc. But anybody who thinks politics is deadly dull ought to read our front page piece on the

battle between Rep. Julia Howard and Frank Mitchell

. It’s like the West Wing as written by Seinfeld. Mitchell was trying to prove that he lived in Howard’s district, and the State Board of Elections cut him off at every pass. It’s all about details. Where he used the most electricity. Where he kept his toothpaste. Where his dog lived.

The saddest thing in the whole story was Mitchell’s attorney denying that the dog was a pet. It was just a stray, he said. “The dog just showed up.” Ouch.

Friday trivia: Our

travel photo of the day

shows a woman in Kenmare, N.D. with a U.S. 52 road sign next to her. Here’s the question: U.S. 52 and U.S. 421 intersect in downtown W-S. Where else do they cross paths.

Click

here

for the answer.

Some quick thoughts for a Thursday:

1) Words matter. The title for yesterday’s hearing on immigration was “Gangs, Fraud and Sexual Predators: Struggling with the Consequences of Illegal Immigration.” Not hard to figure out where this group of elected officials is coming from. Complex problem. And despite what people say, complex problems demand complex solutions.

2) Politics matter. It’s hard not to look at the picture of Erskine Bowles on our front page at his installation as president of the UNC system without thinking that for much of the last five years he spent a great deal of time wanting to do another job. i.e. be a U.S. Senator. My guess is that he will do better with the politics of the state education bureaucracy than he did with voters. It’s a different constituency, and one that plays to his strengths.

3) At the end of the day, it’s the votes that matter. Bowles and U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, who brought the immigration hearing to W-S, know that. So does Bucky Covington, who was voted off the American Idol island last night. Long hair and a nice smile can take you pretty far, but not to the finish line.

Community takes a thousands forms in this day and age. We orient ourselves around where we live, around the schools we attend, the teams we root for, the politicians we like (or dislike), even the barbecue we eat.

In some ways, all communities are equal. It doesn’t matter who we commune with as long as we commune.  In other ways, they’re not. I think that geographic community is most important, because face-to-face conversations with our neighbors builds a better world (No, this is not going to be a sermon ...).

That’s my interest in the

fire that destroyed the Clingman Community Center

, and a reason it’s on our front page today. Community centers seem a bit archaic today. I mean, does anybody really go these sorts of places? Well, as the folks in southeast Wilkes told our reporter, yes, they do. And these centers house memories.

It’s true that a fire doesn’t kill a memory any more than a fire destroys a sense of community. But the absence of a physical structure makes it harder to contain those memories and community. They spread and scatter. It may be the same amount of community, but it’s harder to know it’s there.

A week or so back, I wrote about the Duke Lacrosse case and the power of images

. As most of you are aware, there have some been dramatic new developments in the case: the players’ lawyers say that DNA tests done by the state SBI lab refute the notion of a sexual assault.

Not all sexual assaults leave behind DNA and conversely the absence of DNA doesn’t automatically make prosecutors drop cases. Darryl Hunt can attest to that. But in this day and age, with skeptical jurors and CSI overloads running through our brains, it makes it very difficult for jurors to convict without forensic evidence.

If you believe the players’ attorneys—who are some of the best and best-connected criminal defense attorneys in the state—this case is over. Maybe. Maybe not. What does seem clear is that the events of that night are much more complicated than have originally been reported. And this raises some interesting issues about media responsibility in a 24/7 world. There has been intense pressure to publish and broadcast and post on this case for the reasons I wrote about last week. If you take the sexual assault off the table—assuming for the purpose of this discussion that it didn’t happen—is there still a story about piggish and racist (but not criminal) behavior by a bunch of college jocks? Yes, but it might not make the national news.

What should the media do? Our car doesn’t go in reverse, yet based on what’s happened so far some of the earlier reporting is way too breathless. So this is yet another reminder that most issues—sexual assaults, wars in Iraq, peace in the Middle East, immigration—are much more complex than the providers AND consumers of news want to admit. Neat and tidy works for kitchen cabinets, but little else.