Otterblog

Most small towns in rural Iowa are all pretty much the same. Town square, fading business district etc. So I remember how bizarre it was when I drove through Fairfield, Iowa last summer and saw all these restaurants selling Indian food. The reason: It’s home to the Maharishi University of Management, formerly Fairfield University.  These are the transcendental meditation folks who used to own lots of property in eastern Watauga County and had built a meditation center there called Heavenly Mountain.

I thought about them this morning because of our story on what’s happened to the land. The TM connection is gone, and the property—all 6,000 acres—is going to be developed as a huge mountain resort with more than 1,000 homes.

It’s hard to get your arms—literally and figuratively—around how big 6,000 acres is. So here’s the deal. It’s a little more than 9 square miles. Picture a square with each side being three miles. It’s huge.

In much of the mountains, development and tourism are the top industries. And second and third homes for the wealthy are on some levels almost perfect for county governments because the homeowners pay a lot in taxes but don’t require much in the way of services such as schools. It’s why Dare and Currituck counties on the coast, for example, have some of the lowest tax rates in the state.

But you have to wonder about what the gating of the mountains means in the long run to our collective heritage and our sense of ownership in the wondrous resources North Carolina has to offer.

I don’t like to hawk too, too many things on OTTERBLOG, but I wanted to make folks aware of two milestone events happening in our newsroom that are important because a) they’re very cool and b) they get at the way the newspaper and our Web site are collaborating in areas that alter how we do our jobs and how readers interact with us.

Number one is our first online chat, which will be this Monday. It’s about anxiety disorders (no jokes, please). Here’s how to take part. Yeah, we’re not exactly the first newspaper to host an online chat, but it’s a big deal nonetheless because as with most things in life you have to start somewhere.

Number two is our reader travel-photo archive. More info here. It’s a place to share travel memories, look at your neighbor’s pictures, and get ideas on where to go and what you might see when you get there.

Both of these projects underscore the tremendous possibilities available in a digital newsroom, where technology enables you to do things without the constraint of newsprint. And they also illustrate the way technology is rewriting the definition of community. Physical geography is now only one factor. For newspapers, which have a delivery system built on physical geography, i.e.  roads, this is a bit scary, but that model now only takes you so far.

A friend brought by some interesting ads that ran in the Journal in 1932.  The first, on Feb. 4, was for Lucky Strike, and features Douglas Fairbanks Jr.  and his tough-guy persona extolling the “toasted” taste of Luckies.  The second, on Feb. 6, is for Camels. The pitchman? Douglas Fairbanks pere, complete with jungle togs etc.

As the Virginia Slims folks might say, “You’ve come a long way, Baby.”

Just how far became clearer yesterday when the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday refused to allow Reynolds and Lorillard to keep alive their lawsuit that California’s anti-smoking ads—essentially paid for by the tobacco companies—was too harsh and punitive.

Maybe the next round of these ads will feature Carl and Rob Reiner?

Y’know how every once in a while, in The Family Circus, they run a little disclaimer that says Bill Keane is on vacation and his son “Billy” is going to draw the strip?

That’s a little how I feel looking at the new logo of the N.C. Lottery.

This is the best we could do? From the choice of colors to the misshapen lighthouse that looks perched on the backs of what appears to be two giant fishes to the sun and star rising or is it setting in the west, it all looks slightly off.

Yes, the lottery commission is on a tight schedule, and, yes, it’s hard to imagine that anybody is going to play the lottery because of a logo, but that doesn’t mean we have to settle. Remember the state motto: Esse Quam Vidieri. It’s not Soso Quam Vidieri

The budget document that the General Assembly approves is not terribly exciting. It’s 300-plus pages of legal language and dollar signs. Lots of those.

Sandwiched or hidden—depending on your point of view—in the budget was a provision requiring kids to get eye exams before starting school. That’s now the subject of litigation from a variety of groups that claim it’s expensive and unconstitutional. They cite Section 2 of Article IX.

The provision came courtesy of Rep. Jim Black, the house speaker and a politician with his share of troubles these days. Because of those troubles, it’s easy to pile on and blame Black for eyegate.

But there’s more to it than that. Unsavory special provisions get passed for one of two reasons: either legislators bow to power or they don’t read the bills they vote on. It goes back to the old argument: is it better to be a fool or a crook?

I was getting my weekend fix of Bugs Bunny yesterday. Saw the episode “High Diving Hare,” with Bugs and Yosemite Sam. Quick story line. Bug is running a vaudeville act. His star performer is Fearless Freep. Yosemite Sam is a big fan of FF, so he buys a lot of tickets. FF doesn’t show. YS gets mad. Bugs gets the best of him. As always.

But it’s the way that Bugs learns of the no-show that is key to the conversation here. He gets a telegram. Yes, a telegram. Bugs is timeless, but it’s also dated. Another episode on the DVD had a game at the Polo Grounds…

Quick. When was the last time you got a telegram? Or used a pay phone? Can’t remember? Join the club.

Coincidentally with the Bugs marathon on the DVD was a story in our Sunday business section on the collapse of the pay phone and telegram industries. They’re essentially gone, replaced by cell phones, email, text messaging etc.

They join the growing heap of technology—floppy disks, cassette tapes, video tapes—that once seemed vital and now seem quaint at best. Most technology is transitional. Sometimes the transition is just so slow that you can’t see the transition happening. But it is. Whether with the automobile, the telephone or the ways that people get their news.

Good read: Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time. This is a fascinating look at the people who stayed in the Dust Bowl rather than joining the migration to the west that John Steinbeck wrote about in The Grapes of Wrath. 

Imagine if Coke or Pepsi wasn’t allowed in its advertising to urge people to drink soda? If they weren’t allowed to say that an ice-cold cola is awesome and refreshing and makes your day? What would the ads say? Drink Coke. It’s brown and sweet. OK. You see why I’m in the news business, not advertising, but you get the idea.

That’s the situation facing Howard, Merrell & Partners of Raleigh, which won (if that’s the right word) the $8 million contract for advertising of the N.C. Lottery. The lottery legislation spells out the restrictions, including that no ad “may have the primary purpose as inducing persons to participate in the lottery.”

Winston-Salem’s own Mullen ad agency also competed, but didn’t get the job. Our reporting suggests that the agency’s ads played up the possibility of big wins, another no-no.

It’s hard to sell a product with one ad tied behind your back. And my guess is that there will be a lot of disagreement over the meanings of the words “primary purpose” and “inducing”. With $1 billion on the line every year, it’s likely that the definitions will get looser over time.

Winston-Salem lost a good man yesterday with the death of Pete Oldham. His real name was Warren, but everybody knew him as Pete. It was a childhood nickname he picked up as a kid in Indianapolis.
Pete Oldham was a lot of things—coach, university official, legislator—and he did all of these jobs the same way, modestly and purposefully, always keeping in mind whether a particular course of action was the right thing to do.

I remember Doug Wilder, the former governor of Virginia and now the mayor of Richmond, telling me that in Pete’s day, he was one of the premier running backs in college football. It wasn’t the sort of thing Pete bragged about, but even toward the end, he carried himself with the step and confidence of a former athlete.

Pete Oldham and I came to the General Assembly at about the same time during the early 1990s, him as a freshman legislator, me as a rookie statehouse reporter. So we bonded over the insanity of the legislative process, the characters that still controlled life in Raleigh, and the pomp and circumstance that envelopes life at the capitol.

Pete Oldham didn’t make waves as a state representative, but he understood his role in the process: to stand firm on the things he believed in at his core; to be flexible on other matters; and to know the difference between the two.

Twenty-six years is a long time to hold the same job. But that’s how long Bill Stuart has been city manager in Winston-Salem. Now, he’s retiring.

There are a lot of tough jobs out there in the world; Being manager of a city as complex as Winston-Salem is one of the tough ones. This is a resilient city, to be sure, but it’s been through the wringer. During Stuart’s tenure, the economy has shifted from a reliance on tobacco and textiles to one built around financial services and health care. The demographics of the city have changed as well. We’re more diverse, less insular, more demanding, more politically divided.

Cities grow or die. They grow by bringing in more revenue, i.e. taxes, and by adding people. The first is done by increasing the tax rate or the tax base. The second is done by either being a desirable place to live that attracts new residents, or by annexation. Stuart has used all these arrows at various times. He’s angered many with his unapologetic support of annexation without the consent of the annexed.

City managers have enormous power under our system of government. While technically they just work at the behest of elected officials, the relationship is much more subtle. They guide, they teach, they push back, they stand up for their beliefs.

For better or for worse, depending on your perspective, Winston-Salem’s shape and scope reflects Stuart’s vision—and his longevity. In some cases, he just simply outlasted his adversaries. It’s doubtful his successor will hang around for a quarter century.

A few weeks back, we ran a story about changes in kindergarten, how it’s now real school instead of sand in the buckets etc. And we had a great photo to go with it. There was one problem with the shot. Smack dab in the middle of this closeup of a teacher helping two students was a 20 oz. water bottle. We had a long discussion in our newsroom about the bottle. We don’t manipulate photos, so we couldn’t use Photoshop to take it out. But we did talk about the ethics of asking the teacher to move the bottle before we started shooting. That alters the reality as well, so the water bottle stayed in that shot, as it will in future shots.

But if you start paying attention to news photos, it’s amazing—or frightening—how many water bottles end up in shots. We ran one on Saturday with Joey Porter of the Steelers. They’re everywhere, along with coffee cups. Part of our disposable society. I was relieved last week that the President didn’t take a swig from an Aquafina bottle during the State of the Union speech.