Otterblog

It’s not often the words “Tobaccoville” and “World’s Sexiest Man” get used in the same breath, but yesterday they were, more or less, and we had the photographs to prove it. Our story about George Clooney, and the filming of Leatherheads in the Donnaha area of western Forsyth County was a great little diversion from our world of problems small, large and extra-large.

The photograph that we ran on Page One by Lauren Carroll was a real grabber, with a wonderful interplay between the starstruck and the star who is striking her. We had a brief discussion at our budget meeting yesterday about how to play the Clooney story, whether we should give it more prominence at the expense of a well-crafted story about the investigation into the shooting at the Red Rooster. In the end, it wasn’t close. The Red Rooster story moved to the front of the Local Section, where we were able to give it a nice display

Does that mean Hollywood won? Yes. And no. There are a lot of parts of the definition of news: What happened. What people are talking about. What is important. Quite clearly, nos. 2 and 3 are subjective. The best stories touch all three of these. The worst, barely touch one. News is serious. But it’s OK to have some sizzle with the steak.

We had a interesting discussion yesterday about trying to define Gangster Rap, and how one person’s definition might not match up with another’s. It had to do with what the bouncers at the Red Rooster said was being played when the problems at the club started. I don’t claim to be an expert on rap or hip-hop or really any music, but I do know that shorthand often gets people into trouble.
Which reminds me, National Geographic has a very good article called Hip-Hop Planet in its current issue. Beautifully written By James McBride, who wrote “The Color of Water.” A great book.