Otterblog

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….

One of the complaints that I hear very frequently is that the Journal cares way too much about public-school sports and not enough about academic excellence. It’s true that we cover a lot of high-school sports, but it’s a little simplistic to pit one against the other. They’re organized differently, and the story lines are different. Achievement is important, but it’s not often as compelling a story line as triumph in competition. And it tends to be more individual than team-oriented. So we try to cover achievement in different ways, through our milestone sections and the occasional stories of high achievers.

But we had a nice confluence of events this morning with our piece on the Hanes Academic team’s national quiz-bowl championship. There was drama. There was victory. And there was that most important element to making a front page work: great art.

David Broder is often called the Dean of Washington journalists. Yes, he’s part of the MSM, but he is an incredible shoe-leather reporter who knows more about government reporting than just about anybody, and he’s incredibly fair, tough, deferential, inquisitive and cynical—whatever is needed for the job at hand. And for someone who is that powerful and important, he’s also a heckuva nice guy. His column runs here as well. He took some questions this morning at the Washington Post’s site, where he discusses the state of the Bush Administration, as well as DC journalism and how cost-cutting affects coverage.

It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry over the world of trouble that Don Imus has gotten himself into. On the one hand, it’s the sort of natural progression of a lot of talk radio, especially the big-time national shows, where audiences are fickle and if the host’s comments don’t make the water cooler conversation then there’s a serious problem. On the other hand, there’s the whole business of a person’s right to say what they want to say—regardless of how offensive it is.

As I’ve noted before, journalists take the first amendment very seriously. Free speech/free press. It also includes freedom of religion (an issue careening across Forsyth County right now) freedom to petition the govt. and freedom of assembly.

It’s important to note that the Bill of Rights doesn’t say anything about broadcast radio and shock jocks. At the time, even a thinker and futurist as brilliant as Thomas Jefferson had no idea what was coming down the pike. But we treat broadcast different from newspapers and just shouting out your window or what have you, because the airwaves are seen as a public domain. In essence, the government can’t control what you say, but they can determine the size and existence of your broadcast equipment. That hasn’t happened yet with Imus.

Instead, the marketplace seems to be doing its job, with various businesses and marketing executives evaluating whether they want to keep advertising on his show. If they do, he’ll be fine. If not, he’ll probably end up in a greatly reduced role.

My guess is that Imus will survive in some fashion for several key reasons. First, he’s got a huge audience. I’m an occasional,once every three month listener, but my guess is that before the YKW hit the fan, lots of people chuckled at his remark about the Rutgers bball team. He says what many people think. Two, his support base among elected officials and the powers that be is broad. He has a lot of chits to call in. Three, Americans love nothing more than a story of redemption. If Imus can sell group two that he’s serious about three, then he is good to go.

Typically, when people are arrested and charged with newsworthy crimes, we run their pictures in the paper. In the case of the man charged with murder in the death of the Winston-Salem police officer, that hasn’t happened—yet.

The reason is that the police were still doing lineups at the time of the arrest, and they asked us to withhold publication under the idea that the integrity of the lineup might be compromised if the man’s picture was published.

Complying with these sorts of requests puts us in a difficult position, and our agreement was reluctant. We did so because of the unique nature of this crime, i.e. an officer shot to death in the parking lot outside a nightclub, where there are hundreds of potential witnesses. Not your usual crime scene. In addition, this arrest comes on the heels of the Sykes report, which details all the problems police had with lineups in that case.

We told the police that we would give them three days to do their lineups, then we would publish pictures of the accused when they made journalistic sense to do so.

The Speaker for the Speaker of the House: A former Journal staffer has gotten a promotion of sorts. Bill Holmes, who was an editor and reporter here in the late 1990s and early 2000s was just named the spokesman for new House Speaker Joe Hackney. He had left the Journal to go work for the Associated Press. Bill grew up in Surry County and went to N.C. State.

Iin this time of angst in American newsrooms, a new study is making the rounds. It’s from the University of Missouri, and it suggests that investing in quality journalism directly benefits the bottom line. Here’s the release. What’s important to remember about studies like this is that most of the terms are pretty subjective. I have an idea what quality journalism is, but it may not be somebody else’s idea, and—most important—it may not be a reader’s idea.

The essential question remains: what drives people to read a newspaper. I like the three Rs: Reflection (We reflect the world we live in), refraction (we provide context and meaning to complicated subjects) and reaction (we respond to events and seek out the uncomfortable truths).

A site worth checking out. My first journalism job was as a night clerk on the foreign desk of the Wall Street Journal. The day clerk was a kid named Gregg Birnbaum. We haven’t talked in more than 20 years, but I ran across his tracks the other day. He is now the political editor at the New York Post, a pretty demanding job, and also the operator of a web site called justhillary.com, which as you might guess, is devoted to Hillary Clinton and her run for the presidency. There’s something for Hillary lovers and Hillary haters on this site. For those who would like to ignore the whole thing, sorry.

A couple of people have told me about Barack Obama’s interview on 60 Minutes last night. Steve Kroft. wife on the sofa, etc. etc. What piqued my interest was the candidate’s discussion of tobacco policy. Not federal. But personal. Apparently, according to his wife, Sen. Obama had to promise to quit smoking in order to gain her blessing to run for president. Here’s the online version of the CBS story.

This is sort of interesting. We haven’t had a smoker in chief in a long time, and my guess is that smoking is somehow seen as a presidential liability, i.e. if they can’t quit, how are they going to have the fortitude to go toe-to-toe with Vladimir Putin and the Sunnis and Shiites etc. etc. Maybe. I don’t smoke, but I’m not sure smoking is the third rail of electability. We too often expect our presidents to be perfect and then we are utterly shocked to find out that they aren’t. If you elect a smoker, you know from the get-go that they are human.

Now for the important stuff, at least for our little town. Which is ... what brand did Sen. Obama smoke and—if you are to believe his promise—give up. I have a good friend who is an editor at the Chicago Tribune, and he asked around, and the answer is .... Marlboro.