Otterblog

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.