Otterblog

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.

Many years ago, when I had just become the Journal’s business editor, I paid a call on John Medlin, then the chairman and chief executive of Wachovia. He’s a smart and cordial and curious man, and he had a question for me as we looked down on Winston-Salem from a dining room in the old Wachovia tower. “What do people think of the bank,” he asked. What I told him was there was a perception that Wachovia wasn’t the most generous corporate citizen. In Charlotte, where there were two large regional banks, the competition to be first was a battle of hearts and minds, house by house, block by block…
Those sorts of competitions to be biggest, best, most loved, etc. take their toll over time, and we’ve seen the fallout first hand in the past few weeks. Bank of America, the successor of NCNB/‘NationsBank etc., is now one of the survivors, an institution throwing out life preservers (for a price), and First Union/Wachovia, which doubled down to grow, is in the lifeboat, but at a steep price for most everyone involved.
It isn’t pretty to watch or write about.
The question that everybody has been asking me this week is “How bad is Winston going to get hit?” My guess is a lot, but that’s just informed speculation.
We still tend to think of Wachovia as a local institution, but in reality it isn’t, and hasn’t been for 7 years.
What I think is interesting is that all this comes almost exactly 20 years after the battle for RJR began. That was the deal that defined Winston-Salem and helped spur the changes that remade the city. So the question beyond how bad is Winston going to get hit is really the more important one. Which is this: What do we do next?
When the dust clears, that is the next great story in our city.

Presidential debates are always interesting, if not always important. This year, I think, they’ll be both.

They have a special place in Winston-Salem, as we’ve been host to two presidential debates in relatively recent history. The first Bush-Dukakis debate, in 1988. Then the G.W. Bush-Gore debate, in 2000.
It’s interesting to look back at these debates with the benefit of hindsight. The Bush-Dukakis debate was seen as one of Dukakis’ better showings. It’s the second one, where he appeared too emotionless over a question involving the death penalty, that is remembered by the public. The Bush-Gore debate here was marked by its civility and its deep discussion of foreign policy, with Gov. Bush out to prove that he understood the complexity of the modern world. If there was no knockout, it gave many swing voters comfort in Bush’s ability to handle an uncertain world.

Here’s how Washington Post columnist David Broder summed it up:

Even the foreign policy discussion, which dominated the first half of the Wake Forest debate, unexpectedly played into Bush’s hands. This is one policy area where Gore has the advantage of years of experience. But Bush appeared far more comfortable in Wednesday’s extensive conversation on that topic than he had been in the brief exchanges that took place eight days earlier at the University of Massachusetts.

It’s really interesting to go back and look at some of these presidential debates, the tone and substance. You can find transcripts at this Website, courtesy of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

And the Emmy goes to ... Some of you with good memories may remember a young man named Rashaun Rucker, who was a photo intern here in the late 1990s. He grew up in the city, went to Carver, then N.C. Central. A tremendous journalist and good friend. He is working at the Detroit Free Press, and just received an Emmy for a documentary he filmed on pit bulls. Here’s the link. Who would have ever thought there would be a day when a newspaper would win an Emmy? That is convergence.

We’re celebrating the life of Mary Garber today. She died yesterday at 92. You can read more about her remarkable life as a journalist by going here. I highly recommend the video. And for what another paper is saying about Mary’s life, here’s a piece from the Los Angeles Times.

Why all the fuss about a tiny woman who covered sports? Mary Garber’s life is all about humanity, about the desire to be accepted for who you are and what you want to do. I won’t claim a close, personal friendship with Mary. By the time I came to the Journal, she was already easing toward retirement. But the stories about her work ethic, her respect for players and coaches, and her tireless work to demand that this respect be returned are the very fabric of an eloquent life.

In her last days at here, she would come to the office with these walking sticks that looked like ski poles with tennis balls on the ends of them. She’d be over in the sports department, discussing the news of the day and adding insight and opinion to the conversation. And long after she left the Journal, we still had a parking space reserved for her, in hopes that we would look up from our desk and see her making her way slowly across the newsroom, ambling with that half smile of optimism and determination that she wore so well.

We’ll miss her.

There’s a new poll out today from USA Today about the presidential race. It shows the McCain-Palin ticket having done a reversal on Obama-Biden and now with a sizable lead. Political polls are a staple this time of year, and you can expect many more between now and election day. AP, the principal provider of national news for the Journal, also does its own polling. USA Today uses Gallup. AP uses an outfit called Ipsos.

Polls and politics have a long history together—and some of it is controversial. There is—of course—the famous Dewey beats Truman headline of 1948. But polling is a lot more sophisticated than it used to be, flaws and all. The main issue with polls these days is the surveyed electorate, as more people—particularly the young and the restless—don’t have land lines.

I find the journalism of poll reporting to be troubling. On the one hand, polls give a good snapshot of where a race is at a particular point in time, and that can inform the reporting on issues and strategies. It gives context and helps answer “why.” On the other hand, my concern is that polls become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A poll says a race is over. So people don’t vote. So the race is truly over. I think concern one outweighs concern two, if only because there’s no embargo on poll coverage. The Journal not running these numbers isn’t going to prevent many people from knowing about them.

That said, tell me your thoughts on this issue. You often hear candidates say “The only poll that counts is on Election Day.” Are they right?

I was involved in a thoughtful email exchange last week with a Realtor upset with our coverage concerning real-estate prices, locally and nationally. Her take was that this coverage is self-fulfilling, that negative stories destroys consumer confidence, reducing demand and reducing price, thus reducing consumer confidence ....

Here’s part of my response:

Yes, we run a fair number of stories from New York or elsewhere about the national housing scene, but we also run a great deal of local stories about our housing market. Typically, we take stock of the market here once a month. Normally, the figures we use are Triad-wide, furnished by the N.C. Association of Realtors.  That makes sense, as we circulate beyond Forsyth County.
It’s pretty clear from the figures that the local market is struggling. Perhaps not California struggling, but struggling nonetheless.
The unasked question is this: Why does the Journal bother running stories out of New York on the national real-estate market. The answer is two-fold. First, it’s news. Second, as I’m sure you know, the national economy feeds into the local economy. Not just psychologically, but financially. We have banks, retailers, garage-door manufacturers, mortgage insurers etc. that are based here but do business all across the country. The cough in California becomes a cold here.
That said, we will work harder at providing context to the intricacies and subtleties of the real-estate market, locally and nationally.
Finally, I want to address your opening paragraph about our news coverage “delivering the wrong message to our local economy.” It seems illogical, but the newsroom’s job isn’t to sell ads. It’s to write, report and publish credible and factually accurate news and information. I would like to think that people buy our newspaper because the news there is honest and objective, rather than skewed to help a particular industry or person. It’s that credibility that makes the newspaper such a great place to put an ad to sell a house.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not wishing a collapse in home prices. I’m a home owner, too, and when the time comes for me to sell, I want prices to be moving nicely upwards, but once we start making news decisions based on what’s best for selling ads, the whole thing falls apart.

That’s one view of the newspaper’s role in the housing market. The economic news these days seems to come in three varieties: poor, bad and worse. There are small bright spots, to be sure. But despite the best efforts of the Fed and the Treasury and everybody else, the economy has cycles, and we’re at the low end right now. NW NC is in much better shape than other parts of the country, but that is little consolation if you are looking for a job or trying to sell your house.

Sin Tour: Our story on Saturday about the resurrection of Schlitz beer got some of us thinking about the old days in W-S, when a savvy traveler could hit the factory tour at Whitaker Park, get some smokes, and then head down 52 to the Schlitz brewery and grab a beer or two. Unfortunately, factory tours have pretty much become a thing of the past. That’s one of the great things about being a reporter, you can still take factory tours. Over the years, I have been able to get inside factories that made newsprint, orange juice, cigarettes, blenders, toasters, ball bearings, armored vehicles, furniture, thread, chicken breasts, mobile homes, cooked shrimp, tires, chemicals, crackers, T-shirts, sweatshirts, denim, fans, springs, ice cream sandwiches, turbine blades and .... kitty litter.

It was with a great deal of disappointment and sadness that I read yesterday of the decision by the Lexington Dispatch to stop publishing a Monday newspaper. They will be Tuesday-Saturday.

We compete with the Dispatch and compete hard when we have to. I’ve frequently told our reporters who go up against smaller papers that I want them to do the stories those papers can’t do or won’t do. But that said, I don’t wish these papers to become less competitive. More news invariably means better news.

Many newspapers, not just small ones, are evaluating whether they ought to publish every day. It’s the sort of thinking that might have been heretical just a few years ago. But advertisers have become much pickier about where and when they run ads. The Journal’s Monday paper is thinner than most other days of the week, and in some senses, that’s a reflection of how we no longer ease into Monday, but barrel into it, trying to get going, going as quick as we can. And there are a million things to do, so reading the paper (and looking at the ads) gets pushed to the back. And as to the question that’s hanging out there: Is the Journal going to stop publishing on Monday? No. Could that change? Of course. That’s not me grasping for wiggle room. It’s simply a recognition that in today’s media environment, anything is possible. 

I cut my reporting teeth on a paper much like the Dispatch, the Register-Citizen in Torrington, Conn., which published five afternoons a week, Monday-Friday. It was a great time. Eventually, we made the switch to morning publication, because the reading trends were heading in that direction, and we added a Saturday edition as well. But the five day p.m. was really the perfect arrangement because the week was the week. There was no bleed over, and when you came to work Monday morning at 6:30 a.m., you got right to it. Coffee. Doughnut. Story. Repeat until deadline.

OK. So I’m back from a week at the beach. Sort of like Nixon. Tanned, rested and ready. A week largely unplugged. Got my news from the Wilmington paper. It is strange being at the beach and reading the local paper. All this news about school boards and road construction. And all I’m concerned about is the next high tide and the price of bait shrimp…

One of the things that I found pretty interesting is how quickly Jesse Helms’ death vanished from the front and center. It was huge news. Then it was big news. And now, it’s gone. Our staff did an exceptional job on July 4, covering the breaking news of his death. And you don’t realize what a team of dedicated folks you have until you start trying to get them to come in on a paid holiday to report and write a big piece. Even now, with all the turmoil in our industry, that is something to be proud of.

When I returned to North Carolina in 1990 as a political reporter, I was thrown into covering the Senate race between Helms and Harvey Gantt. My sense is that Helms was past his political prime, even though he had 12 years left in the Senate. He could still give a good speech, still had great political antenna, but not the lion/tiger/bear he once was. I don’t know if he hated the press as much as people said he did. My guess is that he understood us better than he let on, and he loved to use reporters as foils for what he was doing or not doing. And for a reporter, there was no bigger thrill than for your paper being singled out in one of his speeches as an example of what was wrong with the world. What I also remember is just how incredibly polite he was when you got him one on one. He understood that politics was about relationships.

One of the questions that keeps getting circulated in the aftermath of his obituaries is whether the press, which was so hard on him when he was in the Senate, gave him a pass in his obituaries in recounting the very raw and ugly side of his political career. There’s some credence to that. I think it is harder to speak ill of the departing than the staying, and of the dead rather than the living. At this point it doesn’t change anything.

Beach reads: The Great Gatsby. Somehow, this classic evaded me during high school. It’s one of OTTERBLOG Jr.‘s favorites, and the writing and pacing is incredible. Like Twain, it is timeless. Also, Stiff, by Mary Roach. Perhaps more than anybody needs to know about the cadaver business. Entertaining and amusing.

Back from a week at a leadership development seminar in Richmond. As I’ve told several people, it was by turns terrifying and invigorating. Terryfing because, well because, the media landscape is a terrifying place. Layoffs. Crashing revenues. Readership issues. Etc. etc. But it’s also invigorating. As we were told time and again, the demand for information has never been greater. So, if you care about news and media, this is the time to be in there fighting and leading change and the rest.

As most people know by now, George Carlin died early this morning. I’d like to think that comedians and journalists share a common bond. We understand the importance of words and the power of words and the power in the precision of words. Carlin certainly did. He’s best remembered for his “filthy words monologue,” i.e. the seven words you can’t say on TV.

Of course, now you can. Just not on network TV…

You’ll read a lot about his death in the coming days. Here’s my little addition. Click here to read the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in FCC v. Pacifica, which ruled that—indeed—you couldn’t say those words on TV. Like most court opinions, it is long.  But it’s a fascinating tour through the conflicting views and balance between free speech and the public airwarves.

Today, I am going to channel my inner schoolmarm. Our subject is punctuation, specifically the hyphen.

If you’ve been following the debate over what to name the team that until the end of this season will be called the Warthogs, you know that we have five finalists: The Aviators, the Racers, the Wallbangers, the Rhinos and the Dash. We’ll talk about the first four in a bit, but I wanted to write about the fifth offering from the perspective of someone who makes their living from the precision of words and grammar. I hate it. Here’s why:

The Dash is supposed to a play on the little bar that connects Winston with Salem in our fair city’s name. There’s even a downtown booster group for young folks called the Dash. I get it. It’s hip. It speaks of movement, and a certain Bondlike devil-may-care attitude. It even gives a tip of the cap to our heritage as a conjoined city. Just one problem. Winston and Salem aren’t separated by a dash. They’re separated by a hyphen. What’s the difference? A hyphen joins compound words: good-tempered, double-jointed, Winston-Salem, etc. A dash is more of a punctuation mark. It’s used to set off thoughts in the manner of a comma—although some of us don’t like these clauses—but with slightly heavier emphasis. You can tell they are different characters because the computer keyboard tells you so. Word software lets you create dashes, essentially extended hyphens. This blogging software doesn’t, so I have to use two hyphens —.

Now, you don’t have to be a marketing genius to realize that as a team name, the Winston-Salem Hyphen or Hyphens is dead in the water. It sounds too frumpy.

As we noted in a story on Sunday, the hyphen is causing Winston-Salem all sorts of problems in a digital era. But the answer isn’t to call it a dash.