Otterblog

We spend an enormous amount of time thinking about what will be on our front page. That makes sense. It’s our front door and the first thing that readers see when they pick up the paper, even if it’s just to thumb through the sections looking for Sports or the Jumble.

Today is a day filled with news—and most of the big stories are national. There’s the POTUS/SOTU (President of the United States State of the Union), the confirmation of Sam Alito to replace Sandra Day O’Connor, and the death of Coretta Scott King.

They compete with each other for the prime real estate on the front page, and with local stories that may be exclusive to us and have more immediate impact on our communities. The trick is to have a front page that tells what happened, why it happened, and doesn’t look dated by the time it hits porches, yards and newsracks tomorrow morning.

So we juggle and adjust. And then we juggle again.

Having inadequate tools for the job doesn’t guarantee that the final product will be inferior, but it doesn’t help. That’s the situation facing the Deborah Sykes Citizens Administrative Review Committee, the subject of a story this Sunday

.

The committee’s task is to look at the Winston-Salem Police Department’s handling of the investigation into the death of Deborah Sykes in 1984, an investigation that led to the wrongful conviction of

.

The

lacks subpoena power, and it can’t compel people to consent to interviews. Many key players have so far declined to be interviewed. The result is that the committee’s final report is likely to be not as complete as it could be and that its findings may be less clear and less accepted as the “truth.”

This is familiar ground to journalists. We’re armed with a notebook and a pencil (or a laptop and 10 fingers) and little else. We prod. We ask. We plead. But in the end, we can’t make people agree to be interviewed.

This isn’t to simply commiserate with the Sykes Committee. These are the rules the city chose to play by. But we understand the difficulty of getting reluctant people to talk.

Parade magazine

is a staple of our Sunday paper. It’s comfortable, like slippers and a cup of coffee. There’s James Brady, Marilyn Vos (I’m smarter than you are) Savant, and the celebrity gossip on Page 2.

I look at Parade third, after the front page and the comics. Last Sunday, the cover story was about dictators around the world. Parade tried to make the subjective—who are the world’s worst dictators—into the objective, the 10 worst. Like David Letterman meets William Shirer.

has a fun interview today with the Parade editor who put the list together, what it means and what it doesn’t mean.

There was an important hearing about differing interpretations of North Carolina’s Public Records Law yesterday. Here’s our story

on it, for those who missed it.

Public records are incredibly important for a democratic (with a little D) society. Lots of people think newspapers and other media want special status in public records. We don’t. We want everybody to be able to get the records they think are important for helping them understand how government works.

In this case, our argument is with the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office over 911 tapes created during two high-profile incidents. The 911 calls are raw and emotional. But our reason for wanting to examine wasn’t just about their visceral power. We’re also keenly interested in how law enforcement responded to these crises. These emergency communications give one clue.

The sheriff, the DA and the defense attorneys have their own reasons for not wanting to release these tapes, and their lawyers and ours made compelling oral arguments to the N.C. Court of Appeals yesterday. I’ll keep you apprised of the ruling.

I wanted to take a few seconds to tell you all what I hope OTTERBLOG will be about. First and foremost, journalism as practiced by the Journal and JournalNow. Mostly print, but I will get into broadcast or multimedia if I think I have something worth adding to the conversation.

Fair topics include ethics, public records, open meetings, election coverage, the culture of newsrooms, good headlines (see earlier post), bad headlines, blown stories, missed opportunities, great writing, great reporting, etc. etc. We can also as needed discuss other forms of writing—books, magazines etc., along with two other topics—food and regional history—that I care about.

I have a pretty thick skin, and I am used to getting criticized. So I don’t mind if folks have disagreements with my perspective. There are frequently and often several plausible views on any issue. My one request is to keep it reasonably civil and the e-decibels down below the full-blown yell.

Thanks for reading.

The big story today is Ford Motor Co.‘s decision to close more than a dozen factories and eventually lose about 30,000 jobs. It’s sad no matter how you slice it. Lots of lives disrupted.

I’ve been thinking about Ford’s reckoning for another reason. A couple of years ago, we did a survey that asked readers this question: If the Journal were a car, what type would it be? If my memory is correct, the leading answer was Ford, and many of us interpreted that as a vote in favor of our solid reliability. Which is good and all that. But it does make you think if that is enough or was it ever enough.

Ford’s problem is the problem of all institutions as they try to adapt to the marketplace and to changes in technology and consumer expectations. We feel it keenly here. The drumbeat of the Internet, the shrinking shelf life of News, the new definitions of news and community. They’re all changing how a newspaper is put together and what it contains or ought to contain. It’s exciting and frustrating. A journey and destination.

A poem for Monday:

Writing a headline
is like creating Haiku.
It must work - and fit.

Among the hardest jobs at the paper is writing headlines. There’s limited space, both in the number of words available and the width of the columns. Think about it this way. It’s easy to get Bush into a one-column lead headline. Washington would be another matter. And then of course is the real test, balancing truth and seduction. Good headlines inform, attract and entertain. Puns are good when they work. When they don’t, a bad pun headline is like the guest at your party who never leaves.

The Panthers’ loss to the Seahawks yesterday gave a chance for headline writers to strut their stuff. Here are how three newspapers headlined the story, at least in their printed editions.

: ‘Helpless in Seattle’. Pretty good. Almost as inspired as our infamous DANG headline of two years ago, when the Cats lost in the Super Bowl.

: West Toast. A little obscure to pick up on the pun, but big and bold and I applaud it. Newspapers don’t use toast in the non-breakfast sense nearly enough.

: Seattle Reigns. Dignified. And maybe I’m reading too much into it, but my sense is that head subtly implies that the Panthers didn’t lose so much as Seattle won.

Sometimes I think we’d all be better off if everybody read The Economist magazine. Sounds elitist, but it really isn’t. Great journalism with a global perspective and a tilt toward brevity, fiscal sanity and common sense.

Their cover story this week is called

, and it’s a nice tour of the media landscape in the early 21st Century and what it’s likely to become. Key points: Technology. Changes. Everything. You can read that as one sentence or three. It doesn’t matter.

First, technology. We haven’t seen anything yet. We’ve only scratched the surface of the digital and wireless revolution. Second, change. You can’t fight it. You can only ride it. Third. Everything. It means just that. Everything.

The fourth point—and here’s what the Big Ape is all about—is this: Content is still King. At the end of the day, the technology is only as good as what it connects you to and with.

We carried a small police brief

today about a woman who apparently killed herself by jumping off a bridge in Yadkin County. Careful readers of the Journal know that we don’t publish a lot of suicides these days. That’s a change from the past.

Our old policy was that we reported all suicides in our circulation area. Or at least we tried to. But our policy changed over the years to reflect two different concerns. The first was whether there was compelling public interest in a very private and painful decision by somebody to end their own life. Our collective decision was that most times there wasn’t. The second—although less important—was more pragmatic. Finding out about suicides was extremely difficult. In some counties, they weren’t reported in a timely fashion and were on occasion covered up. The result was haphazard coverage, which didn’t make a lot of sense.

Here’s the basic rule now. We report suicides for three general categories. First are suicides that take place in a public setting. Second would be a suicide by a public official or similar newsworthy person. Third are trend stories that examine the issue of suicide, such as past coverage of high suicide rates among the elderly in some rural counties.

John Delong used to cover pro basketball for us. That ended when George Shinn moved the Hornets to New Orleans. But John’s kept his hand in the game, and he still has a keen understanding of the game and its players. There was a lot of squawking on Monday about John’s column on Chris Paul, which basically said the former Wake (and West Forsyth) star made the right move to turn pro and people who don’t like it just need to get over it and move on. John is a straight-shooter. You may not agree with his opinions, but it’s clear where he is coming from.

Like any other institution, we like to be right. So, the story this morning about Paul leading the Hornets past the Bobcats was a nice confirmation of John’s insight and intuition.

Will that stop the message board rants? Of course not. And that’s OK. The noise of the marketplace of ideas is a good thing.