Otterblog

I received an email alert today from Beth Grace, the executive director of the NC Press Association, about the association’s fight against proposed legisation that would allow cities and counties to use electronic notification of public meetings in lieu of notices in the paper. Click here to read the bill.

I have to say that I love legal ads. The foreclosures. The storage center sales. The zoning notices. Public meetings. They are a great way to take a city’s temperature and also find stories. That said, as far as notices go, they are pretty sorry. It’s no one’s fault, but they are not the first place most people look to see if a meeting is being held unless you are a geek like me. That said, they are better than nothing, and the bill’s language is pretty vague about the definition of electronic notification. Does that mean an email alert, just posting a notice on a city Web site? It’s not clear.

So, I think the public has a right to question whether doing away with publication of notices in a newspaper is the right thing to do. Some day—hopefully not soon—newspapers may go away. But for now, we’re here, and we’re still the best way to reach a broad range of people. So there’s a public-policy component. But of course, there’s a financial component as well. Legal ads and the like are one of the few staples of the classified advertising business that haven’t migrated to Craigslist and the like. So, you combine public policy and government secrecy with newspapers’ financial woes, and it’s no wonder the NCPA is fighting mad about this.

Some of you may remember the story we ran a week ago about the death of Moonshiner “Popcorn” Sutton, who killed himself to avoid a prison sentence. We got lots of online comments about the piece.

Larry Parnass, a former colleague of mine here and in Connecticut, is now the managing editor at the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, MA. He earned an earlier OTTERBLOG mention a few years back, when ASU whipped up on the UMass team in the FCS championship. He sent me a story he wrote after Popcorn’s death, based on an interview with Sutton’s semi-estranged daughter. Here’s the link. It’s a good read for a rainy Friday.

If you read our letters on the editorial page, you know there is a debate of sorts on the worthiness of Scott Hollifield, a contributing columnist to the Journal. Click here and here for some samples of the letter.

Scott is the general manager of our sister paper in Marion, The McDowell News. And I’ll admit my bias up front. I like him. Personally, he’s a generous and funny guy who draws his best laughs poking fun at himself. Professionally, he’s a good columnist with a common-sense approach to things. I don’t think he hits one out of the park each week,  but he has a good batting average, and I chuckle at his column more times than not. And we have plenty of columnists who can tell you about macroneconomics and President Obama’s foreign policy. Scott’s the country store on the side of the road. You’re always better off stopping and poking around.

What I find interesting in the spirited debate over his work is the expectation of agreement, that we as readers ought to approve of every article in the newspaper. It’s impossible. I read everything in the paper, and lots of it doesn’t do it for me as a reader. Particularly the syndicated material. There are comics I can’t stand, standing features I find uninteresting. But I don’t take an axe to them. The reason is that some bulk of readers find value in them, and that’s good enough for me. Now, there are clearly limits to this. I’m not the last word and some very small group of loyal readers aren’t the only word. There’s an important middle ground. The great thing about a newspaper is that if a standing feature bothers you, you don’t need to read it.

Getting the scoop. The Web has changed the definition of a scoop. It’s now measured in minutes or seconds. But it’s still important to verify the facts. Yesterday, one of our electronic competitors sent out an email alert that a plane had crashed in Davidson County, and they made a huge deal out of it. Turned out there was no crash. Just a rough landing. Big difference. Speed is essential but it’s facts first, not first, facts.

It has been a busy, busy Monday here, and so I am late to posting. Our corporate parent, Media General, reorganized itself today. You can read the release here: At the operating level, we’re still going over what it means for our newspaper and Web site.

It’s no secret how difficult a year this has been to be in the newspaper business. Difficult because of the job cuts. Difficult because of what I think it means to the ability to provide checks and balance in a democracy. And difficult because of the incredible glee that many people seem to take in our demise. It’s hard to imagine people rooting for a furniture company to fail…But I digress

I am an optimist by nature, and so I try to find the good in what we are doing and continue to try to do. Two of our biggest stories today are the trial of Ernie Pitt, the former chairman of the Housing Authority of Winston-Salem, and the continued machinations over the city’s Silk Plant Forest Review Committee. These events didn’t just happen. Each is a direct result of the Journal’s reporting. No story. No trial. No story. No review committee. It’s that simple. I’m sure there are people out there who believe we would better off without either of them, but I respectfully disagree.

So, in between the milestones, and the bulletin boards, and the sports agate and the Scene and Heard column, this is the essential role of the newspaper. As I’ve said before, it’s a privilege that I take seriously.

Deacon Melt No, it’s not a sandwich. But the online traffic about the WFU collapse against Cleveland State and the speculation about the pro aspirations of three starters is intense. Dan Collins does a great job, and it’s a conversation that even a non-basketball enthusiast can follow. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not taking any delight in the team’s loss. A local team making a deep run in the tournament is a great story. But it is what it is, and for now, we wait until fall ...

Our economy is so big and wide and diverse that it is really difficult to get a sense of movement at the margins. Most of the indicators that economists use are at least a month old—housing starts, unemployment claims, factory output… But we all have our own private “common-sense” indicators. How much traffic is there on the highway. Is it as crowded as it used to be at the place we go for lunch. What’s on sale at the supermarket. Me, I look for clues in the packaging sector. I figure if boxmakers are having a hard time, it’s because the folks they sell boxes to are having a hard time. And just about everything—except for cars and houses—comes in a box.

So our story this morning on Smurfit-Stone this morning is a good news/bad news sort of thing. They’re closing a factory in Lexington, as part of a consolidation of production into other plants, including one in Winston-Salem, where there was a substantial upgrade this past year that will hopefully mean a more efficient, profitable company down the road.

I keep hearing bits and pieces from people who say they see signs of recovery out there. I haven’t seen them, or it may be that I’ve seen them and not recognized them for what they are. I would love to do a story on people’s own gauges of our economic health, so if you have ideas beyond the obvious let me know.

Our piece this Sunday on Bill Magness struck a chord with many readers. It’s the sort of story about service above self and rising above life’s misfortunes that many people are hungering for these days. Our reporter, Kim Underwood, managed to tell the tale with grace and restraint, as I think the subject matter deserved. We plan to do more of these pieces in coming month. Not just as ways to make us feel good. But to point out the larger picture and power of recovery in all our lives.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about small newspapers. While folks from big cities might imagine the Journal as a small paper, we’re not. By most standards, we’re a small to midsized metro. My cutoff for small is below 25,000 in circulation, with a little wiggle room on either side.

What’s got me thinking about these papers are two things in the news that I have connections with. First, is the decision at our sister paper in Cabarrus County to go from daily to three times a week. I spent a few weeks in Kannapolis mebber 4 or 5 years ago when they were between editors. It’s a very newsy community, right on the edge of Charlotte, but beset by some demographic forces that are hurting the paper’s survival as a seven day a week publication. Several papers, including the Detroit papers, are giving up daily publication in some form or another. It’s still unclear if that will solve problems or create other ones. Stay tuned.

Second is an announcement out of Connecticut that a former boss of mine is taking over the editor’s job at two papers there that nearly closed after their previous owner said it didn’t want them. The new editor is a guy named Jim Smith, who was my managing editor 24 years ago. And like the old adage that everything you know you learned in kindergarten, a lot of what I know about journalism I learned from him (You can blame or thank him, as you wish…). He was a great combination of passion, big-city ambitions and small-town values and community. The papers he is taking over are in rough shape, but I am rooting for him.

There are way more small papers than big papers in the United States, and in North Carolina as elsewhere the majority of journalists work at these places. So their survival is critical for lots of reasons. For me, selfishly, it’s our shallow end for journalists, and my preferred place to find proven talent. More important, it’s hard to imagine them being replaced anytime soon by something better. I have my doubts that crowd-sourcing or blogging is going to publish a photo that is widely seen of someone’s Eagle Scout project or have the clout to challenge a public official over some policy. Are small (or big) newspapers perfect? Of course not. But communities without them will be worse off.

For those who missed it ( and I include myself), here’s the transcript of the roundtable of CNN’s John King at Cagney’s restaurant on Friday. It’s about two-thirds of the way down, and you can see how much of it got trimmed. To read our story on King’s visit, click here.

So, in the past month or so, the Cloverdale Shopping Center has had two special guests, Jessica Simpson at Cloverdale Kitchen and King at Cagney’s.

The practice of journalists going to diners or barber shops looking for people to interview has been around for ever. Here’s my question of the day/week: If you were going to advise a visiting journalist on one place in Forsyth County to go and find people to interview about the state of things, where would it be and why?

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As you might suspect, there are a lot of folks in the Journal newsrooom whose names never appear in the paper. They work behind the scenes, helping our operations run smoothly. They’re copy editors, page designers, line editors etc. We all have specific job descriptions, but everybody has a shared job description, which is to do whatever it takes to make the next day’s paper the best it can be.

Melissa Hall is one of those people who embrace this ideal. She used to be in our Kernersville bureau and is now on our administrative/research desk. She deals with lot of bureaucracy: expense accounts, ordering office supplies, etc. The other day we sent her on an unusual mission. We needed some coal for a photo shoot to use on the Insight front for this Sunday. So we sent her out to get some. She went to Sunnyside Oil Co., which still sells it to consumers, and came back with not just a little hunk but a big chunk. See the attached photo. You would need a very big stocking…

You’ll have to see Sunday’s paper to find out how we used it, but it’s very cool.

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This week, I am spending a great deal of time answering questions from readers, helping our staff answer SAM questions. As many of you know, our SAM columnist, Ronda Bumgardner, resigned, effective Monday, to take a job with financial-research arm of MIT. We’ll miss her, as she did a good job, and embodied the SAM spirit.

With a smaller staff and greater demands than ever, we’re working hard to figure out a new path for this column, one that respects its heritage but balances that against other needs and how consumers can get information these days. We’ll tell you about online and in the paper in the next few days.

A little history. SAM began life as the Sentinel Answer Man. When the Journal’s afternoon sister closed, SAM moved with it, and became the Straight Answer Man. For years, its author was David Watson, a hard-charging and gruff journalist with a hunger for precision. David could be a real pain, but he knew his stuff and was a consummate professional. He died of a heart attack about 8 years ago while on a canoe trip, and Ronda stepped in and brought her own personality to the task at hand. She was the Straight Answer Ma’am.

The world has changed a great deal since we started down the SAM path all those years ago. Information has been democratized in ways we could never imagine. Answers that took weeks and expertise are now available at the click of a mouse. That said, it’s a hit with readers, and it speaks to a level of micro-news that is very important in today’s global village.

One last weather pic. Kellie Sapp, who works in our classified advtg. department, sent me the attached photo of Pilot Mountain. It’s too late to print in the paper, but it’s a great shot that is worth seeing.