This is a letter we received the other day:
“Would you please explain to me and 50,000 other people, why you keep having articles in the paper about Darryl Hunt. That case and situation has been a done deal for ever so long. You people need to get on to other news.”
My guess is that this writer isn’t the only person with that sentiment. We do write a lot about the Hunt case. Here’s why:
1) It’s an important case that speaks to larger issues of justice and fairness.
2) It has had important public-policy and political implications in this town that still exist to this day. For example, and this is a bit of an oversimplification, DA Don Tisdale prosecuted Hunt, and was punished in the Democratic primary with a loss to Warren Sparrow, who was subsequently defeated by current DA Tom Keith. And if you read the city’s Skyes report, it’s a blueprint for how to make things better.
3) The newspaper has a special role in this case. Deborah Sykes worked at our sister paper, and the Journal’s coverage is a key factor in the resolution of the investigation.
Sometimes it reads like overkill. From my standpoint, it’s like this: If we don’t cover these issues, nobody else will. I hear some of you saying, “That would be great.” It’s not. Ignoring problems rarely makes them go away. Things don’t get better by just wishing them to be so.
What’s for breakfast? One of our reporters was down in St. Petersburg, Fla., a week or so ago at a training session and she brought back a copy of the St. Pete Times, where I used to work. They had a feature story about a place called Skyway Jack’s. It’s a great read. There are a lot of good breakfast places in the world, including several right here in W-S (IHOP, the Lighthouse, Omega House to name but a few), but Skyway Jack’s is in a league of its own. It’s in South St. Pete, not too far from the bridges. If you’re ever down there, check it out.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
Another reason to keep reporting, of course, is that the story keeps developing. It was only in February that the city settled with Hunt for his false imprisonment. Was the Journal not supposed to report that?
My feelings run contrary to those who are tired of the Hunt case. The case was about race from the word go. And it still is. Looking at the charts in today’s Journal concerning social capital, we need an article about race every day. Maybe the justification for covering the Hunt case was bit selfish on the part of the Journal, in that Sykes worked for the evening paper, but the news concerning that case has been handled completely, fairly, and - just so you’ll know, Ken - without any breathlessness at all.
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