Otterblog

I’ve been getting barraged with emails the past few days about the Associated Press. The emails center around the conduct of Ron Fournier, who is the AP’s Washington bureau chief.

While many folks think that the NY Times is the most powerful news organization in America. It isn’t. AP is. The reason is simple. Most newspapers rely on AP for the meat and potatoes of their out-of-market coverage, nationally and internationally.

Here’s the start of one such letter:

I expected AP to be free from bias as it has always been fairly “middle of the road” in coverage of various issues over the years but I have to admit the new D.C. Bureau Chief Ron Fournier has shown a shocking lack of balance so far this election year!

What has the emailers all in a swivet is an analysis by Fournier on Sen. Barack Obama’s pick of Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate. Led by Moveon.org, these folks allege that Fournier crossed over from analysis to opinion and that he unfairly slammed Obama. As proof of his bias, they note that Sen. John McCain at one point offered Fournier a communications job (which Fournier declined.).

I asked AP about the whole flap, and it’s their decision not to comment on Moveon.org’s allegations. But a spokesman noted that Fournier has solid credentials as a journalist known for fairness and shoeleather. The organization also notes:

“ The dual role of AP Washington Bureau Chief and political writer has long roots in AP history, as well as that of other Washington bureaus. Walter Mears, who won a Pulitzer for his 1976 presidential coverage, served in both capacities from 1977 to 1984. As bureau chief he continued to write news copy, usually analytical pieces. Likewise, other leading news organizations have often had their bureau chiefs serve in both capacities.”

For a not particularly flattering profile of Fournier, click here. I read the analysis, which was clearly marked as such. It seemed to me more of a column than an analysis to me. And in the important advice that it is often not what you say that matters but how you say it, the piece is very blunt, more blunt than most of the content on the wires. You can find the column at the bottom of this E&P story.

But that said, I don’t believe the AP is out to get Barack Obama. Generally speaking, I think the coverage is even-handed. And I’ve heard some folks in the news biz grouse that the AP’s daily coverage on the campaign trail is too Obama-centric.

What seems pretty clear in all of this is that the media is finding itself under intense scrutiny for every sentence in this election year.

Update: Follow this link to a memo from AP about the Fournier flap. I’m not sure it addresses the central question of whether that analysis was analysis or opinion, but it’s a good primer on the interconnectedness of Washington media circles. 

If you haven’t already, you need to check out our story and multimedia on John Dell’s day as a WSSU football player. It is great stuff. A highly enjoyable story told well. As I’ve noted before, John is a first-class reporter who is equally at home writing player profiles and exposes of financial irregularities. And if there’s anybody on our staff who could pull off an afternoon running sprints with young men half his age, it is John.

Here’s the link. Enjoy.

As John wrote, there’s a long and distinguished list of journalists putting on somebody else’s pants for a day/week/season to write about the experience. George Plimpton made a career out of it, most notably with Paper Lion. And that thread continues with the Dirty Jobs show on Discovery. Successful versions of this genre do several things well: First, find the right job. Second, make appropriate fun of your limitations. Third, respect the people whose jobs these are when the camera/notebook is turned away. Fourth: Find the larger story. Fifth, let the story tell itself. Trying too hard creates disaster or treacle.

Update: John’s account of his life with the Rams is the subject of a very interesting message board on SportsJournalist.com. Click here to read.

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.

A few weeks ago, the editor of our sister paper in Bristol, Va./Tenn. made headlines when he wrote a column criticizing Andrea Mitchell, the NBC News correspondent, for the manner in which she characterized the folks of Southwest Virginia.

Similarly, there’s an outrage in Findlay, Ohio, over a story in the Washington Post about how voters in Findlay, known as Flag City, USA, are paralyzed by rumors about Barack Obama. The local paper, the Findlay Courier, wants an apology.

For as long as there have been big cities, there have been big-city journalists who have been coming to small towns and either (depending on your view) speaking the essential truths that the locals dare not speak or painting gross caricatures that oversimply complex relationships. As a mid-sized newspaper (and city), Winston-Salem and the Journal get to be on the giving and receiving end of this examination. I’ve cringed when out-of-town reporters come here and botch the nuances of life here. And I’ve also been upset when I’ve felt that somebody who wasn’t from here managed to find meaning that was right under our noses.
On the giving end, we have reporters who cover many small towns in Northwest North Carolina. And one of the charges I’ve given them is to write the stories that the local papers in those communities can’t or won’t do. One of our recent successes was our examination of the drop out rate in Lexington. Last year, we did a big takeout on the changing culture in Yadkin County. It was a controversial story. For every reader who thanked us for examining why the county’s embrace of the past was getting in the way of the future there were others who said we got it wrong, talked to the wrong people and were simplistic in our analysis.

I think it is human nature to dismiss outside criticism as invalid and uninformed, and to sieze on tiny errors as proof of maliciousness or total incompetence. It’s also easy to dismiss these stories as hit-and-run journalism. The reporters come in, gather selected facts, write a scathing piece and then leave, never to be seen again. That too, is simplistic. Reporters want to be accurate and the ones I know sweat to get it right. Particularly in this day and age. A generation ago, a reporter who wrote a similar piece on Findlay was insulated from the locals. Now, with the Web, they’re a click away from making his or her life misery. 

I noted the other day the running commentary on our Web site about the racial descriptions used (or not used) in stories about crime. A couple of folks have asked me to write about how and when the Journal decides to use race as a descriptor. I won’t call this a rule, because rules tend to imply a yes-no approach to something. I’ll call these guidelines.

Essentially, it is this. We use race when it is relevant to the story or helpful in the capturing of a suspect.

Imagine this description of a robber at a convenience store: Police are looking for a black man in his 20s. Or this one: The robber was described as a heavy-set white woman. As the detectives in Law & Order might say, that ain’t a lot to go on. As you add more details, height, weight, clothing, etc., a fuller description emerges: Witnesses said the driver was a white man in his 20s with a beard and was wearing overalls and an Atlanta Braves ballcap.
But even if those barebones description aren’t helpful to the police, are they relevant to people’s understanding of the event? Some people suggest that when we leave race out of descriptions, we are doing it to cover up the extent that crimes are committed by members of one race or another. I don’t think we are. It’s just that the race doesn’t in our opinion appear to be relevant to the crime. When instances occur where members of one race appear to be targeting victims based on their race, then those caveats might be reexamined.
You’ll notice before that I said “guidelines.” One reason for that disclaimer is this: Different editors sometimes have different benchmarks on when a threshold has been reached to use a racial descriptor. We’ve erred in the past on using race when she shouldn’t have, and also in not using it when we could have. We learn from each episode.

Followup: Some time back, I told you about a great read by Gene Weingarten, on an experiment at a Metro train station in D.C. Here’s a followup. It is proof positive of the old journalistic adage, There are no new stories, just new reporters.

We’ve talked from time to time about the dangers of photoshopping, i.e. adding “content” to a photograph that wasn’t there in the first place. Here’s the latest, and it involves Jocelyn Kirsch, the young woman from Winston-Salem who is in trouble with the authorities in Philadelphia for various ID theft and related charges.

There are all sorts of rules about creating photoillustrations, essentially the merging of a photograph and artistry (beyond the photograph itself). One is that it ought to be labeled as such. In this case, the newspaper did, but I’m told it was in teeny-tiny type. But I think more importantly, when a photoshop result looks like reality, as opposed to fantasy or the like, it is something to be avoided on serious subjects, such as crime and punishment.

Yes, this Bonnie & Clyde tale of young lovers in Philly is good stuff, but that’s not an excuse for lowering the standards.

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.

crossroads.jpg

I don’t do much reporting these days. I do meet a lot of people and I speak with them about coverage, both general and specific. But as far as attending news events and writing up stories, that happens rarely. But every once in a while I like to go an event and watch it myself, rather than absorb it through the discussion with reporters and editors and the stories that ensue.
Last night, I went to the public forum where the four candidates for police chief were interviewed by members of the community.
Our story is here.
I purposely didn’t sit with our reporters and editors who were there, but instead took a seat in the back to sort of watch the whole thing as a member of the public, rather than a journalist. It was a messy democratic process, but a democratic process of sorts nonetheless. The nice thing about going to an event that you’re not covering is that you don’t have to take notes. You can just absorb it all and not obsess about the exact quote a person said.
One of the things that impressed me this morning when I read our story was how spot on the coverage was. I occasionally hear comments and complaints from readers that our version of a meeting or event was as if the reporter was at another function. But we got this one right. If I had been telling a friend about the hearing and I had 20 inches to do it, what they wrote and what we read is what I would have said.

Two other things:
First, have a safe and happy Memorial Day. In between the burgers and the pain at the pump, remember what it is all about.

Second, I’ve attached a photo taken a few weeks ago that I found somewhat amusing. I call it crossroads, and you will see why.

appalachian.jpg

We talk a great deal more about the “news cycle” than in the past. The idea—of course—is that news is perishable and that in a world where information is being bombarded at us 360/24/7, things get stale quite quickly.
So discussions about what to put on our front page and how to present it are different than in years past. When picking stories for the front, I try to consider importance (locally and elsewhere), presentation possibilities, and its place in the news cycle. In other words an important story that has been the discussion of the cable TV stations all day may have less value as a front-page item than something that is equally important but less covered to death.

This is a rather lengthy preamble to our discussion about whether we underplayed the diagnosis of Sen. Edward Kennedy with brain cancer. We used a photo of the senator on the front page and teased to a full story inside the A section. In making that decision, I felt that this was a story that had been in the news cycle—no, it had been the news cycle—for most of the previous day and would be found by readers regardless of where we put it.

At our meeting yesterday, several editors respectfully said we should have put it on A1. National story, etc. etc. I disagreed then and still do. But as I try to do when reasonable people make reasonable arguments, I did some checking. Most regional papers did what we did. They teased to the Kennedy story inside the paper with a photo. National papers tended to make it an A1 story. The most interesting placement I saw was in the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial page has often made Kennedy its personal whipping boy through the years. It was their lead story, stripped across the top with a two-deck head.

I’m interested in your thoughts on how this story ought to have been played.

Followup: On Monday, I discussed Winston-Salem’s inclusion in the geographic definition of Appalachia and asked why that is so. I’ve attached a story from 1965 that attempts to answer that question. 

It’s that time of the year again,when a bunch of the best and brightest college students invade our newsroom for three months of work and learning. As I’ve said in previous posts, this is one of the true pleasures of the job, helping smart and ambitious college journalists advance in their careers. Many of our interns have gone on to big-time journalism jobs, and I’d like to think that some small part of their success was based on their 12 weeks at our paper.

Our four newsroom interns are Erik Spencer Hill, Winston-Salem State University; Liz DeOrnellas, UNC Chapel Hill; Maura O’Keefe, University of Virginia, and Jamie Chevillet, University of Ohio (she graduates next month).

So, you will likely see some unfamiliar bylines during the next few months. Give them encouragement and let them know what you think.

One of my favorite sites is something called The Rural Blog. It’s really a collection of news about rural America, but the folks who run it do a good job of culling stories and packaging. The most recent installment has an interesting debate about Obama and Appalachia. One thing that caught my eye in the included map is the boundary of Appalachia, as defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission. Winston-Salem is in the region, but curiously enough, Roanoke, Va. isn’t. Will have to look into that.

Other views: It’s been a while, but about two years ago, I posted a bit about what to call people who aren’t in the country illegally. It’s an issue at newspapers across the country. Here’s what Ted Vaden, the ombudsman at the News & Observer of Raleigh has to say about the issue.