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.

Back after a week of raking and more raking. Glad to see winter trying to arrive.

Many of you have asked about the changes in the Journal’s newsroom management. Carl Crothers, our vice president and executive editor, explained some of the rationale in a column yesterday.

The operations of a newspaper always seem a little quaint and archaic to outsiders, particularly the relationships between the content areas (news and opinions) to each other and to the business side of the house. The lack of coordination seems silly and damaging. Why would you not want to write positive stories about your best advertisers? Why would you not want to have the same people writing and supervising news and opinion?

The first one is pretty easy. It’s about credibility, an important but ephemeral quality that is hard-won but easily lost. If we write puffy stories about our best advertisers, can you believe what we’re saying? And not just on those stories, but throughout the paper?

The News/Editorial split is more difficult. In the old days, this split was nonexistent, particularly in cities with more than one newspaper. Paper X supported these various positions, and those positions affected how stories got written. Paper Y took the other position. Much of this was driven by the newspaper as the property of one person. Its opinions and news reflected the owner’s. Pretty simple. The rise of newspapering as a profession, the loss of multi-newspaper communities, and the move to corporate ownership created a different structure, one that valued moderation and fairness in the news pages and a separation from opinion. The best example of this has been the Wall Street Journal, with its notoriously eloquent and conservative editorial pages, and its news pages that frequently revealed the shortcomings of the policies endorsed on the opinion side.

The idea is a good one. We want the people who are writing opinion pieces to have strong opinions, but we want reporters and the folks who supervise them to not form opinions, but rather to sift and gather facts and let those facts form the basis of balanced stories.

Now, like any system, it’s not perfect. But it works suprisingly well. Our critics may think it’s all a big joke, that the opinion side and the news side are joined together in crusade. But we’re not. This new arrangement will be a little tricker, because Carl, unlike Linda, is my direct supervisor, but we’ll make it work the way we always have—through respect and communication.

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.

Now, the mop up. I think the symbol for the day after elections in America, or at least in American newsrooms, is the empty pizza box, slightly greasy on the bottom, still redolent with that amazing aroma of half cheese, half cardboard. Lots of them stacked around here today.

First things first. How’d I do. I wrote yesterday:
As for predictions, here are mine. North Carolina will pick McCain by a slight margin, but Obama’s coattails will be enough to carry Perdue and Hagan to eke out wins. Obama will win national popular vote 52-48, and the electoral vote in the low to mid 300s.

I give myself 3.5 out of five. Not too shabby.

The press and the larger MSM have come under incredible scrutiny/criticism this election for being in the tank for Obama. And that by the selection of stories we covered or ran or chose not to cover or ran we essentially gave the campaign to the Democrats. I think that’s a convenient explanation that deflects blame and responsibility. I was watching FOX last night (less graphics than CNN but better analysis) and Karl Rove was talking about the Obama win, and even if you think that he is evil incarnate (I don’t), you have to respect his understanding of politics and campaigning, and he was just in awe of Obama’s machine, its discipline, its work ethic and focus. Yes, the tide of discontent with the current GOP administration was running with the Obama camp, but Rove’s point was that Obama just pounded this puppy home.

It’s fair to say that press coverage by the Journal made a difference in two races. Our story on Sen. Elizabeth Dole and her relative absence from North Carolina was not done on behalf of Sen.-elect Kay Hagan, but it became a key piece of her attack against the incumbent. Similarly, our column that outlined the sweet deal that Rep. Walter Church, a Democrat from Burke County, received when he got a speeding ticket in Forsyth, was probably a reason in his loss last night. I don’t mention these as bragging rights or as notches on our belt, but just to say that if you wonder how reporters make a difference in campaigns, these are two pretty good examples.

I’ve mentioned it before, but one of the coolest sites out there is by the Newseum, and it shows newspaper front pages from around the world. Updated each day. Getting a lot of traffic, so be patient.

A crazy last few days, most of it spent in the Richmond area, as our company tries to figure out the direction of the media business in 2009 and beyond. And I apologize for not posting ...

Anyway, Election Day is here. Short voting line at my polling station this morning. Does that mean something? Drizzly day. Does that mean something? There has been so much analysis and uber-analysis of this race that it makes your head spin. Conventional wisdom is out the window at this point. The only things left to do are to vote and to count.

As for predictions, here are mine. North Carolina will pick McCain by a slight margin, but Obama’s coattails will be enough to carry Perdue and Hagan to eke out wins. Obama will win national popular vote 52-48, and the electoral vote in the low to mid 300s.

I’ve been wrong before, and I’ll be wrong again…So no Dewey/Truman jokes please…

Covering elections is always crazy, and along with the preparation of who’s covering what and making sure all our editorial ducks are in a row comes the most important question ... Who ordered the pizza. I’m serious. A bad pizza experience is something that can live on for months/years. And from the attached message below from the News & Observer, you can see it is not confined to the Journal. For the record, we have no slice limits ...

From: “Susan Spring”
Date: November 3, 2008 11:46:07 AM EST
To: [Raleigh News & Observer staff]
Subject: Pizza etiquette

I want to remind you that pizza will be provided tomorrow night ONLY for
those working on elections. Please be polite. If you are working elections, you may have up to TWO slices. Thank you in advance for being considerate.

Susan Spring
Director of Newsroom Operations
The News & Observer
(919) 829-4860

A message from executive editor John Drescher a few hours later:

There will be no two-slice limit Tuesday night (although if Susan Spring chases you with a knife in her hand, you are on your own). And anyone who is here can partake.

Election Day is a week away. Or is it? As our story this morning makes clear, early voting has changed all the rules. What’s not clear yet—and may not be clear or not be able to be clear—is whether early voting changes the outcome. Does a two-week or three-week voting period change the composition of the people who vote and therefore the results?

Early voting is also changing journalism, and it has forced us to consider when we run stories. Traditionally, the goal was to get everything done before the Sunday before Election Day. But the start of early voting creates another deadline. It’s very likely that somewhere between a quarter and a third of the voters will have cast ballots before the official Election Day. We have tried, not always successfully, to use that as a guide. This year, that’s been easier said than done, as the campaigns here have been wilder than anything in recent history. That’s forced us to spend more time reporting the spot news, the events, the rallies, the ground war, and less time on set pieces. And one thing hasn’t changed. Our sample ballot will appear in Sunday’s paper.

One of my favorite politics sites is called simply The Note. It’s put together by ABC News, and it is an incredible digest of the day’s political news, with links to stories. Like many of these sites, there’s a lot of conventional wisdom floating around. But it’s a good clearinghouse for news and often reasonably entertaining.

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.