Public service takes many forms in the newspaper biz. There’s the whole righting wrongs thing, speaking for folks who have no voice, etc. And there’s what I like to call “refrigerator journalism”, the publication of important events in people’s lives, such as dean’s lists and Eagle Scout awards. And then there’s my wonderful telephone call with a reader named Robert this afternoon. Nice guy. He couldn’t figure out how to play the Sudoku puzzle we have in the paper. For better or worse, one of my jobs here is Sudoku outreach coordinator. I’m addicted to the puzzle. So Robert and I spent about 10 minutes on the telephone working a Level Two puzzle together. It’s difficult to explain logic puzzles solely through words, but we made our way. And it was pretty rewarding when I heard him say, “Oh, I get it.” Hopefully, he will be hooked on a great way to keep your brain sharp.
Speaking of public service. We’ve been dogging the good folks in Davidson County for several weeks to get the settlement figure that they paid the family of Carlos Claros Castro. Today, we published it. $1 million. Settlement figures are public, but, all too often, counties will duck and dive on releasing this information. I’d like to think that Davidson County would have released it anyway, but I think our persistence had a great deal to do with this. It’s important that people know what governments have to pay when they commit fatal errors. I know many folks say that we do this just to embarrass officials, but I think we speak for taxpayers and citizens. Anybody can ask for these figures. We’re the public.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
flipping through a clerk of court case file document the other day, i came across a manila envelope, a mailer size, and it was marked “SEALED.” it’s worse than the deprakote blues. it’s tempting not to open one of those boogers. at the hickory daily record i went to the police station after the cops called us to take a picture of a drug defendant who was going to do a perp walk. when i got there, i realized i had forgotten the film in the days of kodak and celluloid. so i went ahead and started flashing, and flashing, and flashing the camera right in the guy’s face to see how much he could take. it was so much fun just to see the look on his face, like a caged animal.
i put an FOI in at the darlington police department and i had to get the paper to do a story on it to get the police record, and even then it was full of more black spots than baer’s c.i.a. indictment of tora bora.
on the firing lines you kind of feel sorry for public officials sometimes, ducking from wild editorials which make the ground mushy. you lose a lot of contacts. we are the public. i like that idea. we are the champions - fred mercury. blue man group was awesome last night with a full house almost. the opening dj act was great with hip hop scratching to movie clips.
we are the police.
we are the walrus.
we are the waterboarders.
we are the eavesdroppers.
we are the republicans.
we are the democrats.
we are the terrorists.
we are the victims.
we are the public. i like that.
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