Otterblog

We had a spirited discussion today about our story on Monday on the marking of the 4000th death of an American in Iraq. This comes on the heels of last week’s coverage of the war’s fifth-year anniversary (Incidentally, our cover graphic on that issue was mentioned on several newspaper design Web sites.)

The argument against these stories is somewhat philosophical, that numbers are arbitrary. The 3,999 death is as important as the one before and the one after. And is the fifth year any more a testament to U.S. arrogance/resolute leadership (take your pick) than the fourth year and 364th day.

There is power to this argument, but I think it runs counter to our nature. We keep score. We mark anniversaries, birthdays, milestones, yahrzeits, you name it. It’s a way to know where we’ve been and hopefully where you are going. To treat events of the magnitude of the war in Iraq as a day-to-day event is the equivalent of trying to look at the world only through a one-inch wide pipe. You need different views and perspectives.

Flying, writing: We had a story this morning about the resignation of Bill Diffenderffer from Skybus, the discount airline that has set up shop at PTIA. He said he is going back to writing books. Some analysts sense trouble for the carrier. I haven’t read any of his books, but here’s an excerpt from his 2005 book, The Samurai Leader.

There’s that great scene in Casablanca, where Capt. Renault is shocked to find there’s gambling going on at Rick’s.

I feel a little of that misplaced energy this morning, after Sen. Barack Obama’s speech on race yesterday. Love him, hate him, just don’t care for him. It’s hard not to be impressed by the pain and power in his speech. Over the past week, I get the sense that many white Americans have been shocked, shocked, to find out that a) Barack Obama is black, and b) that he goes to a black church; and c) that he has a black minister who has preached on controversial and potentially divisive topics, particularly when seen in a short video snippet.  Was I shocked?  Not really. Still, the harshness of the preacher’s rhetoric was jarring and a little unsettling.

And if Obama ends up as the Democratic nominee, you will see these clips again and again through November.

The mix of race and politics on which the Democratic primary will now likely turn is familiar ground to many journalists in North Carolina. Some of the overtones and undertones of this primary are reminiscent of the 1990 primary between Harvey Gantt and Mike Easley. In that campaign, which I covered a lifetime ago, Gantt did an effective job—at least in the primary—of courting a sufficient number of white voters, while sewing up a huge majority of black voters. Obama hasn’t quite done that, but he’s deftly managed the calculus of the sprawling primary schedule.

Obama is in Fayetteville and Charlotte today, giving speeches, a reflection of the renewed interest in North Carolina’s primary voters. See James Romoser’s Trail Mix blog and our story this morning for more details on that.

This is a very fluid story, and what I will be interested to see as the day wears on, is whether Obama’s talk in Fayetteville, which is supposed to be a “major address” on the War in Iraq (now in its fifth year) can fight its way through the more provocative story that features the endless video clips of the Rev. Wright.

Back after a week in corporate development. Good to get away. Good to be home.

One of the things we spent a lot of time wrestling with in Richmond was the continuous news monster, the potential, the power, the pitfalls.

There’s a report out today from the Project for Excellence in Journalism on the state of the media, 2008. Needless to say, it’s not all that cheery.

Key points from the intro:

The reality, increasingly, appears more complex. Looking closely, a clear case for democratization is harder to make. Even with so many new sources, more people now consume what old media newsrooms produce, particularly from print, than before. Online, for instance, the top 10 news Web sites, drawing mostly from old brands, are more of an oligarchy, commanding a larger share of audience, than in the legacy media. The verdict on citizen media for now suggests limitations. And research shows blogs and public affairs Web sites attract a smaller audience than expected and are produced by people with even more elite backgrounds than journalists.2

But more and more it appears the biggest problem facing traditional media has less to do with where people get information than how to pay for it — the emerging reality that advertising isn’t migrating online with the consumer. The crisis in journalism, in other words, may not strictly be loss of audience. It may, more fundamentally, be the decoupling of news and advertising.

If you’re interested in the media business, I recommend the report. The PEJ has some biases, and they don’t have a solution, but their reports are to me a generally accurate mirror/prism of the state of things.

From time to time, I’ve included the updates that the Associated Press sends us on style changes. I think they’re interesting, because they speak to the ever-evolving use of words and the shifts in meaning as culture adapts over time. Like most large institutions, the AP tends to be fairly conservative, so when they change something it’s not done just on a whim.

Here’s what they sent out last night:

Latino

  Often the preferred term for a person from—or whose ancestors were from—a Spanish-speaking land or culture or from Latin America. Latina is the feminine form. Follow the person’s preference. Use a more specific identification when possible, such as Cuban, Puerto Rican, Brazilian or Mexican-American. See Hispanic, nationalities and races, and race entries.

This is a little murkier than I like in a style guide. What does preferred mean? Most of the time?

Latino/Latina wasn’t in the old stylebook, but it’s gained in popularity through the years. And it’s just one of many terms that can be used to describe people who are from south of the U.S. border or even from parts of Europe. It’s not interchangeable with Hispanic. While a person from, say, Nicaragua, might be both. A person from Brazil would be the first and not the second.

The National Association of Hispanic Journalists has as its sub title: Increasing the influence of Latinos in U.S. Newsrooms. It’s not a pick one and only one solution.

The tempting thing for Anglos to do is to make a blanket statement to the effect: These folks can’t figure it out. Why should we bother?

To me, that’s a cop out. The world comes in more flavors than it used to. I’d like to think that’s a good thing, even when it causes confusion in trying to accurately describe people.

Taste Test: There was a story in the paper yesterday about making kosher pickles. I am a serious pickle person, and, while this is not the time of year to be making pickles, reading the story gave me a hankering. So, I got all the ingredients and followed the five easy steps. I will report back in a week on whether this recipe is worth its (kosher) salt.

One of the interesting things about the new news world order is how stories move through the media, up and down the food chain. Often, it’s difficult to track the stories, because there are so many of them on a given topic, but the case of Dick Vitale—he of YEAH BAY-BEE fame—makes for a good little case study.

As the more rampant college bball fans know, Vitale had throat surgery two months back to repair throat lesions. He couldn’t talk for a few weeks (Yes, I’ve heard all the jokes about what a blessing that might be…) But he’s back, and just in time for the thrilla in Chapel Hilla tonight, featuring old rivals UNC and Duke. We ran a story last week about Vitale’s return to the job he loves. I happen to like the guy. He’s funny and enthusiastic and knowledgeable, a good combination in my book.

John Dell, the reporter who wrote the story, said he pursued it because he thought it would be a good idea to follow up with Vitale after his voice went dark at the beginning of the season. Turns out we weren’t the only ones with the same idea. The Tampa Tribune, our sister paper in Florida, had the story two days earlier. Three days after our story ran, the N&O followed with its own piece. And today, the NY Times gets into the act. Tipoff tonight is at 9, so you can hear for yourself.

So, the big question is: What does all this mean? Beyond the fact that ESPN and Vitale know a good marketing/PR opportunity when they see it ....  I think it means a couple of things. First, is that what constitutes news is fluid. Second, original content is in the eye of the beholder. Third, being first is no longer the be-all and end-all for media. It still matters—a lot. But not being first is no longer reason to drop a story. Good writing and analysis also are vital.

Careful readers of our Living section have probably noticed that during the past few months that we have de-emphasized the strictness of the day’s theme. In other words, Tuesday’s features section, which has a focus on health, is also likely to have stories on other topics. The idea is to offer readers a wide variety of topics on various issues. Take yesterday’s section, which has its focus on Food. The centerpiece was about a after-school program that teaches kids how to cook, but there were also stories about Monopoly going cashless and $5200 cashmere sheets (I thought all these stories could be lumped under a collective headline “Signs of the end times” but that’s just me.).
Today’s Living section had two stories about food, including the whole Chowhound phenomenon, and tomorrow, we’re previewing a new wine column by Michael Hastings. Michael used to be our only food writer. Now we have a second. Laura Giovanelli, a former metro reporter, has moved over to features, where she will cover the intersection of food and culture, as well as general assignment features. In these troubled times for newspapers, it might seem a bit frivolous to stick another journalist onto the eating beat. But Laura is a spirited writer who is as animated and knowledgeable talking about food as she was talking about higher-education policy in her previous role here. And all our research suggests that many of our readers (including this one!!) are passionate and curious about all aspects of food. We’ll have some additional coverage changes in features to announce in coming weeks, so stay tuned.

Another year is upon us.
I’ve been away for a few days, and it is always a bit strange to get back into the flow of things. Especially this week. The holiday order sort of assured that this week is pretty quiet. The real start of the year will be next Monday.

In no particular order, I spent the few days away reading (Microtrends, Rome and Jerusalem and The Mother Tongue), watching a few movies (Charlie Wilson’s War and Juno) and visiting friends here and there. In a span of a few short days, we had an epic rain and, this morning, the first time that I felt really cold all season.

This promises to be a really interesting year for the nation in general and journalism in particular. Here’s why: First, the elections. This is the first national election since the bottom fell out of newsrooms. Most staffs are down, and there is going to be pressure from all sides to cover and inform voters on critical issues. And oh, yeah, don’t stop entertaining us about Britney et al. So, for all newspapers, there are going to be hard—but valuable—decisions on how we use our resources. On the other end, the digital gatherers—Yahoo, Google etc.—continue to add original content. The extent to which they wade into politics is yet to be seen, but they have the resources, if they choose, to be players. Second, Fleet Street vs. Wall Street. Newspaper stocks got crushed last year, and in my opinion, most were spared the brutality of restructuring (again) by the fact that they were all in the same boat, so activist shareholders couldn’t single out one company as being the cloud in an otherwise sunny day. My guess is some of that patience will wear thin in 2008. Finally, the economy. Oil is at $100 a barrel. Housing market is generally flat to down. Much more than in the past, our economy—and a whole lot of newspaper revenue—is built on consumer spending.

On the plus side, newspapers are savvier than ever. We’re taking more risks, doing less things just for the sake of tradition, and looking carefully at our role in the community and in the little d democracy we live in. It’s not going to be easy, but it will be worth watching. So stay tuned.

thompson.JPG

I’ve been spending the past few days thinking about the death of Roy Thompson, who died Saturday at Salemtowne. For many years, he was the local columnist and a reporter for the Journal, and he was really one of a kind. In the golden age of newspapers, before the Internet, before cable news, he was the real deal. In that era, many columnists were almost inseparable from the identity of their city. Think of Mike Royko and Chicago or Jimmy Breslin in his prime and New York. The city’s stories bubbled through these people. For better or worse, Winston-Salem’s stories bubbled through Roy Thompson. Its quirks. Its optimism. Its manners. Its sense of place in the world.
As somebody who loves journalism and thinks he’s reasonably good at it, I can tell you that it’s humbling to spend an hour or so thumbing through Roy’s clip files. He could flat out write. The Roy Thompson column was a work of beauty. Sly. Visual. Elegant in its simplicity and respect for clear writing. Roy was of the old school, where columnists never said what they thought. They just described what was going on and let the weight of their words paint a pretty clear picture of the events as they ought to be seen. As a reporter, he was wide-ranging, covering everything from the Klan to Thomas Wolfe and the Vietnam War. I’ve attached one of his later columns, which is both an essay on clutter and the ineptitude of state government.
There’s an expression somebody told me several years ago that applies to many of the jobs that people do. It goes something like this: Imagine a triangle with three words at the corners. One is Good. The other Cheap. The last Fast. When you are getting a job done, you can at most pick two of those. In other words, something that is cheap and good isn’t going to be fast. Roy was fast. And he was good. I don’t know if he was cheap, but whatever we paid him back then, it was a bargain.

Roy retired a year before I came to the Journal, so we never had a chance to work together. Surely my loss more than his.

I received this email today from the Associated Press about an update to its stylebook:

A new entry has been added to the AP Stylebook:

Allah

  The Muslim name for God. The word God should be used, unless the Arabic name is used in a quote written or spoken in English.

The AP spends a lot of time thinking about what to call God. Here’s it’s entry on deities:

DEITIES: Capitalize the proper names of monotheistic deities: God, Allah, the Father, the Son, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Redeemer, the Holy Spirit, etc.
Lowercase pronouns referring to the deity: he, him, his, thee, thou, who, whose, thy, etc.
Lowercase gods in referring to the deities of polytheistic religions.
Capitalize the proper names of pagan and mythological gods and goddesses: Neptune, Thor, Venus, etc.
Lowercase such words as god-awful, goddamn, godlike, godliness, godsend.

As I’ve noted before, names matter. What we call things—whether countries, people or deities—influences how we think of them. Islam is one of the three monotheistic religions that all spring from the same tree of Abraham. Sometimes, it’s hard to divine the intentions behind the AP’s style changes, but I think the point the news cooperative is trying to make is that God is God is God, and that having different religions call what many theologians consider to be the same deity different names is confusing and causes more problems than it solves.

On another front: Here’s how the Philly paper is covering the arrest of the students who have been arrested on identity-theft charges.

You know times have changed when ... Wake Forest football is the subject of national rumor mills. That’s the situation with Coach Jim Grobe, and the intense speculation (is there any other kind?) that he may or may not be interested in the top job at Nebraska, which I suppose is to college football what Lexington is to barbecue. We were engaged in some very spirited discussions about how to cover this story. Coaching searches are maddening affairs. There are leaks. Well-intended but misinformed speculation, etc. etc. And sometimes the news is that there isn’t any news. Don’t know Grobe. People say he’s a nice guy. Certainly a good coach. He’s smart enough, too, to not close the door on anyone. So it’s not that he’s encouraging the rumors, so much as he’s not very effective at publicly squelching them. The continuous news cycle has also fed this beast. ESPN, message boards, blogs, etc. etc. Everybody has space to fill, air time to fill. In the old days, rumors had less places to land. News or the lack of it was more effectively controlled. That’s all changed. The result is that newspapers—in addition to all our other responsibilities—are the place to go to make sense of the rumors, things we might have ignored in a more gentlemanly time.

The state of journalism. Matt Taibbi and Ben Bradlee are from very different points on the news spectrum. They both have some interesting things to say about how we are doing and where we are going, particularly as it related to political journalism.
Here’s Taibbi, the political reporter for Rolling Stone. Here’s Bradlee, the former editor of the Washington Post. A note to young OTTERBLOG readers. Their comments are PG-13.

Finally, worth reading. BusinessWeek has a really well-done story on economic development in Africa and what it means to some of the world’s poorest people and the rich people here and elsewhere who rely on Africa’s resources for our daily conveniences.