Otterblog

This is one of those days when news just seems to be exploding all over the place. The Hanesbrands plant on Stratford Road nears Hanesbrandstown is closing. 600 jobs. Gone. Sad. Not surprising. Cheap underwear doesn’t just make itself.

I was looking at some Employment Security Commission numbers for apparel employment. In 1990, 96k jobs in NC. Today. About 20,000. Minus 600.

Other big news: The Senate vote on Iraq timetables. And we’re tracking the police department’s re-investigation of the Silk Plant Forest beating in 1995. And the one-year anniversary of the lottery. It’s a thankful scramble to figure out how to get it on the Web. Get it in the paper. And most important, get it right.

Googling yourself. We’ve all done it. Long before that word became a verb, I remember trolling for my name in the tobacco company’s searchable archives. Lots of reporters ended up there, mentioned in executive summaries of interviews conducted and stories written. It’s how big corporations played the game. They still do. Wired magazine—a great read—offers a fascinating memo of what Microsoft put together to help manage a journalist’s story on corporate culture at the software company. Click here to read it.