Not too long ago, a close friend of mine asked me what the deal was with Jim Black. He’s the speaker of the N.C. House, and the word “embattled” seems these days to be permanently fused to his name, as in “embattledspeakerjimblack.”
On Sunday and today, we answered that question, with a two-part series that is really a primer on how the world works in the General Assembly. I don’t know what will happen with Black, but what I think our story did exceptionally well was lay out the tale in all its Shakespearean grandeur.
Writing about corruption or the appearance of corruption is difficult stuff. It’s rare that things are black and white, or even dark and light gray.
It’s the subtlety that makes it interesting, and the Jim Black tale is filled with subtle details about how power ebbs and flows in Raleigh. Yes, a story this long takes some time to read, but it also gives you a panoramic view of what’s happened and why it’s happened.
Newsrooms are different animals than most other parts of businesses. They’re highly inefficient. They’re almost meant to be. People work incredibly hard, but good stories take time to report and to write, and it’s impossible to do an accurate cost-benefit analysis on a single story. But it’s the inefficiencies that in many ways define a newspaper.
Patriot’s Day: That strange gnashing sound you heard this morning was everybody’s NCAA bracket being sent to the office shredder. Gotta love GMU. Even here, in North Carolina.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
As one of probably five or six GMU alums living in Winston-Salem I want to thank you for the love.
Loved the stories on Black...really well done, and quite honestly I think that is the kind of story that does much better in print than it would online. Just too hard to read that many paragraphs on a screen.
Post a comment
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.