Otterblog

What is it about hot weather stories? Newspapers. TV. We all love them. Readers do, too. Most of our time in the newspaper business is spent trying to uncover things, to tell readers things they don’t know, such as the great Iguana caper of 2007.

But weather? That’s a whole different shade of sunscreen. Headline: It’s hot. Story: It’s hot. And here’s how hot it was, is, and is likely to be. One of the interesting things about how newspapers cover the weather has been a subtle change in recent years. It used to be that except for major weather events, such as hurricanes, newspapers ceded the weather to electronic media, i.e. TV and radio. The idea was that by the time we printed the paper and said it had snowed, the snow had melted, the rain had stopped, etc. But it turns out that readers thought a lot differently about this information. They wanted weather stories, to complement and supplement their info elsewhere.

So what’s the appeal of weather stories? I think it’s this. The weather is universal. It’s hot everywhere. Or it’s snowing everywhere around the city or region. In this day and age when we are segmented, fragmented and cemented (to our couches), the weather is a true community event.

Consolidation: I talked the other day about consolidation of printing presses. That’s not the only place it’s happening. The Associated Press offices in North and South Carolina will now fall under one bureau chief, Sue Wilson, who is the NC bureau chief. AP is owned by the publications and broadcasters who use it, but it hasn’t been immune to the financial pressures on other info providers in the fast-paced 24-hr news world. They do a good job, but their franchise has been eroded in recent years. Sue is a good newsperson, and will do a good job in this expanded role. She said (jokingly) about the BBQ in the other Carolina “It’s different.” A true politician.

GOING DARK (or is it just dim): OTTERBLOG will be largely inactive for about 10 or so days, as I pursue a little R&R. We’ll see you all on the other side. Take care. Stay cool.

We ran a little business brief Tuesday about the decision by the Dispatch in Lexington to stop printing its newspaper. Instead, the paper will be printed in Spartanburg, S.C. Yes, Spartanburg, 130 miles away. The fact that the New York Times Co., which owns both papers, thinks it’s more efficient, i.e. more profitable, to print the paper, put it on a truck and drive two hours says a lot about the economics driving the newspaper business these days. Press closures and consolidations are everywhere. Here at the Journal, we print the Statesville Record & Landmark, one of our sister papers. It goes to bed before our first edition is put on the press. The Hickory paper prints the papers in Morganton and Marion.

There are a couple of factors driving this trend. First, of course, is the push to squeeze costs. Presses are huge and expensive pieces of equipment. In the old days, they cranked up once a day for the run. Now the goal is to maximize their use throughout the day. Second, is a personnel issue. It’s become harder to find people to work the press, particularly in small towns, as the equipment has become more complex. In addition, the hours of a pressman are hard, and it’s an exacting job without a lot of wiggle room.

This isn’t just an issue in smalltown America. Even the big metros are getting in on the act, as this story about the Boston Herald makes clear.

Newspaper delivery and distribution continues to change. People get their news from the newspaper in different ways and different forms. It’s possible—even likely—that the press in Spartanburg will be able to print a better paper than the smaller press in Lexington did.

But that misses a larger point. If you’ve ever watched a newspaper press in action, you know that it is a thing of beauty, power and grace to behold. It just roars, and it does this roaring at a time when most people are sound asleep. It’s the heartbeat of a city carried over from one day to the next. And when the heartbeat is divorced from the folks who read the paper, who put it together, who rely on it, there is a loss that is hard to measure but still a loss nonetheless.

Our story this morning about the problems that have befallen the Teapot Museum proposed for Sparta is one of those bittersweet cautionary tales. We’ve written extensively about this proposal, and it’s been covered in the national press as well. The national press got on board for two reasons. First, it showed up on a list of pork-barrel spending projects. There’s a legitimate economic-development argument to make about the intersection between the arts and business, but a musem about teapots is too big and juicy a target for ridicule, regardless of the merits of that ridicule. Second, and this speaks to newspaper/media culture, there’s a “writesitself” story line that also makes for great headlines: Steeped in controversy. In the bag. Brewing battle. Tempest in a teapot. You get the idea.

There’s still some unanswered questions about what is going to be salvaged from the scaled-down proposal. A teapot museum? A regional crafts/arts center? Not quite sure. One of the emerging stories that we keep coming back to in our newsroom is how do the small former-manufacturing communities in the mountains, from Sparta to Independence to West Jefferson, remake themselves for the 21st Century, and how do these places balance growth against preservation and come to terms with a tourism-based economy.

NBTF coverage: Check out our multimedia presentation for our coverage of the National Black Theatre Festival. Very sharp.

Some quick notes for Wednesday.

1) There is a very good read in American Journalism Review about the media’s handling of the Duke Lacrosse case. I can’t say there’s anything truly surprising, but the detail and structure of what was said and when it was said is really well done.

2) In a career at the W-S Journal I’ve done a lot of things, and my work has appeared on a lot of different pages and different sections. Today was a first. I consider it a highlight that I made the ”Recipe Swap” part of the Food Section. Michael Hastings, who is our food editor, is a tough judge, believe me and incredibly knowledgable about what goes in our bellies. You don’t want to get in an argument with him about bouillabaise or borscht or blueberries. He had some fun at my expense, which is what he should do…

I’m sure most of you have heard of the death of Doug Marlette, the cartoonist and comic-strip artist. He was currently a cartoonist at The Tulsa World, but he cut his teeth at The Charlotte Observer, where he made a high art of skewering the troubles of Jim and Tammy Bakker. He was also the author of the strip “Kudzu,” which appears in lots of papers, including the Journal.

I go back and forth on Kudzu, mainly because I thought it was very inconsistent (Although it is the birthplace of one of the most important phrases in my life “The whitest whiteboy at Bypass High”). But as an editorial cartoonist, Marlette was superb. He had a great understanding of issues and how to distill them down to an image. His humor was subtle when it needed to be subtle and his sarcasm was biting when it needed to be biting. And like all good cartoonists, he could flat out draw and draw quickly. He’ll be missed.

I’m not sure what will happen to Kudzu. Somebody else may try to pick it up and continue drawing it. Or the syndicator may stop distributing it. But my guess is that we will be having a newsroom discussion about what might go in Kudzu’s spot on our comics pages. If you have suggestions, please let me know.

We have published several stories in the past few days that look into questionable conduct by elected officials. They include our story of last week about Debra Conrad, a Forsyth County Commissioner; our stories about the foundation run by the members of the N.C. General Assembly’s black caucus, and a related piece yesterday. Some might even throw in our column from a week or so back about Rep. Larry Womble and his Ferrari.

What’s the common thread here? Is this “gotcha” journalism, or are there more substantial issues at play. First, let’s remove the Womble Ferrari from the discussion. I’m not sure it’s unethical to drive a nice Italian sportscar. May be un- something else, but that’s another debate for another day. Since the fall of Mike Decker/Jim Black, Meg Scott Phipps. etc., the ethical bright line in North Carolina has moved. Nobody said it moved. But it did. And perhaps what was business as usual a few years ago now feels kind of—well—icky.

The media’s role in this is complicated. Sometime we are accused—with a bit of justification—of being society’s nannies, of tsk-tsking disapprovinglyabout every little thing, and making transgressions seem more serious than they are. But my other feeling—which trumps the Nanny 911 deal—is that little problems are quite often indicators for larger problems. They are the warning signs. And as a newspaper, assuming that you are handling the material responsibly, there is a predisposition to publication when you are dealing with elected officials.

Good Summer Read: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, by Michael Chabon. This is a crazy, big book built on a big, crazy (and fictional) premise: that the Jews of the world are relocated to Sitka, Alaska and its environs after the collapse of the goal to build a Jewish homeland in Palestine in the late 1940s. To paraphrase the old Levy’s rye bread commercials, you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy it….

I try to keep OTTERBLOG focused on local journalism, but there’s an interesting cautionary tale of the intersection between old and new media that’s too funny to pass up ...

Yesterday, I was looking at the Romenesko Web site run by the Poynter Institute. It’s a good clearinghouse for journalism news, gossip and reporting/writing ideas. A story about “The Pot Farm next door” caught my eye. It’s a well-written story about how marijuana growing, once the purview of country folks, has moved to the cities and suburbs. So I read it and thought about whether there’s a house in Ardmore or Sherwood Forest or Advance that is really just a shell used to grow pot ...

The story is out of the Daytona Beach News-Journal in Florida, which is a pretty decent independent paper. And like a lot of papers, its online paper is a mishmash of ads and journalism. They have some sort of partnership or arrangement with Google in terms of advertising, in that the stories and keywords in the story (my guess) help generate the footnote ads at the bottom of the story. For example, a short on an elderly person being bilked was followed by four little teaser ads for background checks and the like. Or a piece on a surfboard had links to tsunami and hurricane relief. You get the idea. The logic isn’t always crystal clear.

So at the bottom of this article about an entrepreneurial dope grower who got 10 years for building a suburban agri(evil)empire, the Google computers ended up with four ads for companies selling hydroponic supplies, closet systems, grow-lamps, etc. All the stuff you would need to grow marijuana in your house.

And so it goes ...