Home > So, what do you think?
Play nicely or not at all
I’ll forego the language of some of our online guests and ask simply, what the heck is going on?
I apologize to anyone sensitive to the reckless use of “heck,” but I doubt we’ll receive an apology of any sort from the people who insinuate as many dirty words as they can in the online story commenting feature of our Web site.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, consider yourself fortunate. For some time now, editors here at the Rocky Mount Telegram have monitored, removed and - as of two weeks ago - pulled the plug on a feature that allows visitors to www.rockymounttelegram.com to comment on stories on our site.
In a perfect world, this feature would be a wonderful tool for fostering positive, constructive dialogue about issues that face our community. Readers could praise people who perform good works and exchange ideas on how to make Rocky Mount a better place to live.
So much for the perfect world. In our world, the online story commenting feature has become a train wreck.
Some of our visitors offer great ideas, support and information that’s genuinely helpful. But too often, those folks are drowned out by the noise of idiots. When they’re not spreading ridiculous rumors about people who live in the Twin Counties, they’re trying to figure out ways to insert dirty words into their comments. This requires the creative thinking power of a fifth-grader, since our Web site software filters out words that already have been deemed to be offensive.
Unfortunately, the software has limitations. It does not require real e-mail addresses, for example, granting posters virtual anonymity. We will be converting to a new platform in the next year that will change that, but for now, we have to play the cards we’ve been dealt.
For more than a few years, we have soldiered on anyway. Almost all of our editors, at various times, have removed comments from the site. At first we tried to limit the take-downs to cases in which readers called to complain. But for much of the past year, we’ve actively monitored the comment section, removing the garbage almost as soon as it has been posted.
That requires us to commit a significant amount of manpower to something that has absolutely nothing to do with producing a newspaper. And even though we are here for significant chunks of time, seven days a week, we can’t monitor round-the-clock. Nor should we have to.
The site melted down completely two weeks ago when some genius began posting variations of the “N” word on every single story. Let me be clear about that. This person wasn’t just posting comments to one or two stories that he or she found to be “N”-word worthy. This person was posting such comments to every single report - sports, weather, features, Associated Press analyses from Afghanistan … you name it.
We think the move might have been timed to somehow relate to last week’s City Council elections. (And that’s a real head-scratcher in itself). But on the night of Sept. 26, Copy Desk Chief Ray Watters pretty much said to heck with it. He pulled the plug on commenting for every story he was posting to the Web for the next day’s edition. Not to be outdone, that’s when the moron team began posting their brilliance on every other story on the site. On the following Monday, we disabled the commenting feature altogether, and it remained turned off through this weekend.
We’re cautiously flipping the switch back on today. I’d like to think that the parties responsible for the outbursts mentioned above may have learned that they have to behave themselves from now on. That means no profanity or hint of profanity, no potentially libelous remarks, no personal attacks and … well, the policy has been posted on the Web site ever since we began allowing comments. It’s very easy to read what’s allowable there.
The commenting feature, despite all its faults, has been popular with visitors to our site. As I noted at the beginning of this column, there are some people who use it responsibly in ways that actually enhance our content. For those folks, I’m genuinely appreciative.
To the others, this is a final warning. If the stupidity gets out of hand again, we’ll take down the feature for good. It’s pretty bad when a Web site improves for what it doesn’t contain rather than for what it does. If that happens, I’d like to borrow a great line from a friend of Watters: We apologize to our readers for our readers. It’s your call, folks. Play nicely or don’t play at all.
Jeff Herrin is the editor of the Rocky Mount Telegram.
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The end of cultural touchstones
It’s a tricky thing to dance with icons, and not just because we mortals look so goofy when we dance. (I’m not allowed to moonwalk in public, for example). Fame itself is as fleeting as Ben Johnson - if anyone even remembers the man formerly known as the fastest sprinter in the world.
We’ve grown weary of stars who burn out after 15 minutes. Can the Jonas Brothers last? Is Usher a flash in the pan? If I was on the Springsteen bandwagon in 1984, is it OK to be there 25 years later?
Lighting up the universe is a pretty tall order for anyone. But finding love from an audience with a record case of attention deficit disorder is even tougher. And tha’s all the more reason why the careers of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett were so remarkable for so many years, and why we’ll probably never see stars of their magnitude again.
Entertainment is a rocket that takes us into a dazzling alternate reality, and for much of the 20th century, we were all aboard the same spaceship. Our media options were so limited before cable television and the Internet became fixtures that prime time meant the same thing from coast to coast.
We all knew Farrah because “Charlie’s Angels” competed against only two other shows in its time slot. Her famous swimsuit pinup - the one with the curls, the smile and the … um, other attributes - occupied dorm room walls like one-third of Mount Rushmore - right next to the poster that came with “Dark Side of the Moon” and the one from the Beatles’ “White Album.” The lowest price I could find for an original Farrah pinup on eBay Thursday was $76 - and every entry had bids.
Pop culture had yet to go through the carefully marketed segmentation and dilution that chops it all up today. The Jackson 5 could follow Johnny Cash or Steppenwolf on AM radio in 1970, and no one thought twice about the diversity that represented. It was all just music. And even as that began to change through cable television and the Internet, we still had our touchstones into the 1990s.
That’ how the punchlines of “Seinfeld” became universally known in offices all over America. It’s why we remember that Han Solo fired the first shot at Greedo in the original “Star Wars” and why longtime fans wanted to set Skywalker Ranch on fire when a later release was unjustly revised to pretend just the opposite.
For roughly 40 years, Michael Jackson raced us through the universe like no other. The little kid with the huge voice hooked us on “The Love You Save” and “ABC” even before we found out he was just 11 years old. He grew up with us - sort of - but he never stopped surprising us. “Off the Wall” signaled an unexpected comeback when I was in college. Who knew that what was cute at the beginning of the 1970s could grow so cool by the decade’s end?
Then came the explosion of “Thriller,” and the universe as we knew it practically collapsed. “Billie Jean” took over the radio with a menacing rhythm that pulled you in and never let go. What planet teaches a man to dance like that? Where’s my Members Only jacket?
The debut of a new Jackson video on MTV was a cultural event that no one could miss. It would have been almost impossible anyway, considering MTV’s practice of playing it for the rest of the night.
“Thriller” sold more than 100 million copies worldwide, and seven of its nine songs made it into Billboard’s Top 10.
No one makes music like that anymore, but even if someone did, how would we find it in the vastness of youtube and myspace? The Internet has become as personalized and as unique as we are, but as a result, we don’t have the Ed Sullivans to bind us together on Sunday night and give us something to share on Monday morning.
Something wonderful got torched in the aura of Jackson’s fame. The endless plastic surgery, the skin whitener, the chimp, the weirdness … they gave us all pause. But the monstrous allegations of child molestation and the out-of court lawsuit settlements ended his popularity with a lot of us. He was never convicted of any of the charges, but we never looked at him the same way either. It was just too bizarre to even think about - men don’t invite children for sleep-overs.
Celebrity death can push aside even the most lurid scandal. Much of the world tuned in together Thursday night as we remembered Jackson and Fawcett after they died, just hours apart. Funny how even decades after the peak of their fame, their magnetism could pull us in once more.
There will be other deaths to do that. You can fill in the names of the stars that still dot your universe. But I’m not sure we’ll ever see the heights of performance or pinup that Jackson and Fawcett represented in their prime.
It’s a different age, now. Icons are the things found on our computer screens - not on our dorm room walls.
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Squash the bed bug bill before it hatches
U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield has the best of intentions, but nowhere in the U.S. Constitution did our Founding Fathers suggest that the federal government fight bed bugs.
Butterfield, a Democrat from North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, has introduced a bill that would spend $50 million on identifying, combating and eliminating the pests, as reported this week by Telegram staff writer Mike Hixenbaugh.
Bed bugs are a big issue for hotels. They’re small, resilient and annoying as heck if they occupy the same bed as an overnight guest. No one wants to imagine a night full of creepy crawlers - not even newspaper editors. But come on. This isn’t the kind of war we’re making sacrifices to fight through our tax dollars.
Bed bugs or termites or fire ants or hissing cockroaches or any other pest you can think of are the kind of risk that hotel operators and homeowners assume when they decide to build and maintain hotels and houses. Rocky Mount residents don’t look for tax dollars to help us contract with pest control services. That’s just one of the obligations that comes with being a responsible homeowner.
We’ve heard the refrain so many times it practically numbs the ears - fifty million dollars really isn’t a lot of money when you look at the whole of the federal budget.
Enough of that.
Fifty million dollars is a lot of money, period. It might not make a big dent in the effort to right the U.S. economy or fight two wars or even reduce Rocky Mount utility costs. But surely those are more important causes to throw it at than bed bug control.
Here’s hoping the congressman’s bill is properly squashed to death in committee.
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An intriguing courthouse drama
Justice in the Twin Counties took a strange, lumbering step forward last week with the appointment of Robert Evans as new district attorney.
Evans has been a fine District Court judge for the past 10 years and will no doubt serve the Seventh Prosecutorial District equally well in his new position. His replacement has not been named, but insiders for some time have mentioned Rocky Mount City Councilman Lamont Wiggins as a strong candidate for a judgeship. Wiggins, too, would make an excellent juror.
All of which sounds fine and progressive for Eastern North Carolina, but what a pile of political intrigue and twists lie in the background. It’s a story with more turns than a Scott Turow novel, and that’s saying something.
Let’s consider some of the more interesting points.
First, the district attorney’s office itself. We’ve had one of the more invisible chief prosecutors imaginable for the last 20 years or so. In other areas of the state, the district attorney generally takes on at least one high-profile case each election year - if for no other reason than to get his name in the paper and remind the good folks back home who kicks butt in his town.
Not so, Howard Boney. Boney rarely even appeared in the courtroom, let alone lead the charge on a big-name murder trial. He didn’t talk to reporters, hardly bothered with campaign speeches and generally kept to himself. An outsider might wonder how in the world he managed to be elected over and over and over.
Well, it was pretty simple. Hardly anyone ever ran against him.
The most serious challenger I can remember in the 15 years I’ve been here was Charles Robinson, a black Republican.
Robinson cut his teeth as a military prosecutor, and Telegram Content Editor Gene Metrick and I often kidded about the intensity Robinson would have brought to a courtroom. But the words “black” and “Republican” don’t mix in Eastern North Carolina, and Boney defeated him easily.
Considering the lack of opposition Boney has faced during his tenure, it’s interesting to see how many people lined up for the job once he announced in April his plans to retire. Where have all these folks been all these years?
Well, Evans, of course, has been faithfully serving as a District Court judge. The move to district attorney isn’t a big step up, but it certainy gives him a higher profile and a bigger staff. Frank Brown, who preceded Boney as district attorney, left the DA’s office in order to become a Superior Court judge.
Gov. Bev Perdue found herself under a bright spotlight on this decision. The NAACP in the three counties that make up the district held a press conference two weeks ago and urged her to appoint a black district attorney.
Note the language there. The NAACP branches didn’t urge Perdue to consider a black candidate. They wanted an African-American district attorney period. That certainly lit up the Speak Up line. Callers and bloggers alike made the same argument: Why should skin color be the most important qualification?
Rocky Mount City Councilman Reuben Blackwell made an interesting comment last week during a race relations forum. Once the NAACP released its statement, he said, almost everyone under consideration for the job began talking about the need for diversity in the district attorney’s office. Even if the next DA was going to be white, the NAACP’s message had been driven home.
Evans becomes only the second African-American district attorney in the state and the first one ever east of Interstate 95. That’s a big step in racial equality for this area. Unfortunately left behind in the selection is Assistant District Attorney Keith Werner, who was under consideration for the post, as well. Werner has done much of the heavy lifting for the office for the past decade or more. He’s a fierce prosecutor who often takes on difficult cases.
New leaders have their own staffing needs, and the office certainly needs more diversity, but District Attorney Evans would do well to keep Werner in a position of effectiveness.
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A treasure trove of pencils
Leave it to some school kids in Kenya to show us what’s really important.
Education reporter Natasha Robinson gave us a great glimpse into the open hearts of youth through a couple of stories about a Red Oak Middle School student collecting pencils for Africa.
Jay Brown has collected more than 17,000 pencils, erasers, sharpeners and other supplies for a school in Nairobi, Kenya. As Natasha reported in February, he began his crusade after his pastor returned from a trip to Africa and talked about some of the basic needs Kenyan children have.
We all have thoughts about the hardships we’re bearing during these tough economic times, but reading a thank-you note from a kid who’s thrilled just to have a pencil really puts things in perspective.
Here are a few excerpts from the dozens of letters Jay received from students at Grace Harvest Academy. Keep in mind that English is a second language for these 11- and 12-year-olds:
“I am writing to you using the pencils that you gave us. Some of us bubbles of joy are bursting out of them because they have never caught anything from America. We really appreciate you. May God bless … wherever you go, God’s blessing to follow you plus all the blessings from Kenya.”
— Faith Wanjiru
“In Kenya, our country, a child can not (construct) things like those to other children. … I am a girl. I like education because education is the strength.”
— Cecilia Wambui
“It is with a lot of dedication and honour to write for you this letter to send to you a vote of flying thanks because in my lifetime I have never met somebody generous, kind hearted and concerned like you Jay.”
— Jane Wanjiru
“I have never known somebody who is like you. As I am writing this letter, I am as happy as a king. We as a school are proud of you. … God bless you mightily. May he keep you and may you grow up to be a good and important person.”
— Gloriah Nekesa
By a lot of measures, Jay seems well on his way being good and important. Jay’s hard work reminds the rest of us that even the smallest bit of goodwill can make all the difference in the world to someone else.
Here’s a link to Natasha’s most recent story:
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Pass the sunscreen and the lasagna
So the big rumor around town is that the Olive Garden has decided not to locate in Rocky Mount after all. The chain’s owners, who live in the Tuscan Valley of Italy, say the restaurant never should have been built here in the first place. They blame the goof on a geographic error in the company’s marketing department.
Apparently, the Olive Garden gurus thought Rocky Mount was located in the Rocky Mountains. When the company learned of the mistake, it supposedly pulled the plug on the local operation.
Instead, a new Italy-themed tanning salon will open in the same location. The Sunny Side of Rome will boast a dozen tanning beds, mandolin music and complimentary pasta. Not coincidentally, it is scheduled to open exactly one year from today — on April 1, 2010.
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A refreshing visit to fifth grade
In the middle of all the economic turmoil in these troubled times, it’s kind of cool to find out that fifth-graders are still fifth-graders.
I spent part of Friday morning talking to a couple of classes at M.L. Hubbard Elementary. The school had invited a bunch folks from the community to come in and talk about their jobs on Career Day.
I tried to demonstrate to the students why newspapers try to talk to as many people as possible in order to represent a cross-section of opinions. To make my point, I asked a young man named Isiah Lynch to come up to the front of Ms. Bennett’s class and asked him some questions about what he wanted to be when he grew up.
A football player, he said, preferably a wide receiver. Among his favorite NFL stars are Terrell Owens and Tom Brady. (I found only one Green Bay Packers fan in either class … a shortcoming I’m sure will be corrected in middle school).
If I returned to the office to write a story about Career Day, I asked the class, would I be correct in saying that everyone in the fifth grade wants to grow up and play professional football?
There’s nothing like a loud a chorus of “NOs” to put a newspaper editor in his place. So, I asked other students about their career plans. Here are a few highlights (and my way of saying “hi” to some of the kids I met):
Courtney Craddock wants to be a professional horse rider. She loves the feel of the wind in her hair, she told me.
Lindsey Norfleet wants to play basketball. His favorite team is the Cleveland Cavaliers. Hope he saw the LeBron James piece on “60 Minutes” Sunday.
Over in Ms. Mercer’s class, Darrien Smith wants to be a car designer. His favorite model is the Porsche Carrera. Nice ride, Darrien.
Britany Alston wants to be a singer. Beyonce is her favorite artist.
Jake Weaver wants to be a historian. His favorite period of history is the Revolutionary War. Jake says he got the bug from his dad.
Ryan Black wants to join the FBI or serve in the military. Good for Ryan.
The funny thing I thought about as I drove to the office is that fifth-graders really haven’t changed much in the mumble-mumble years since I was 10 or 11. Kids still want to be cops and ball players and ride horses.
With everything else going on in this crazy world, I found that kind of refreshing. To the good folks at Hubbard Elementary, thanks for letting me visit.
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The waiting is the hardest part
Three months into this grand adventure called 2009 and I’m sitting here remembering a weekend hike I took with my old Scout troop in the 1970s. We thrashed around for hours in the mountains one Saturday with no idea where the hell we were.
No one wanted to come out and say we we were lost, but no one was picking up the trail with an “Oh, wait, here we go …” either. That episode rings familiar in these twisted modern times.
Newspaper guys have always had the luxury of sitting back and making wry comments on struggles like those. But the economic issues of these time are so big that even we’re floundering.
You’re right, I can truthfully say to everyone outside the industry who has asked. It’s not so funny when we’re in the thick of it.
In Obama-land, as in that weekend of Scouting, half of us are content to simply yell, “You’re doing it wrong!” whenever there’s an opportunity. Most of the rest of us want to believe we’re somehow stumbling in the right direction, but we keep looking to the heavens for a sign. Shouldn’t the Dow be recovering by now? How high do you think unemployment is going to get? What’s the story at your shop?
That last one is especially touchy. The story at our shop - our shop being the Rocky Mount Telegram - is we’re still up for sale. We’re still wondering who might own us in six months. We’re still trying to figure out the best way to do our job in these uncertain times.
Newspapers thrive on organized chaos. We shift gears a dozen times a day with only the vaguest sense at 9 a.m. of what tomorrow’s edition will look like at 11:30 p.m., when our last page is due to the pressroom.
That’s a crazy business model in itself, but at least it has an order to it. “Don’t ask me how long a story’s going to take to write,” former reporter John Ramsey used to say. “Just give me a deadline.”
The deadline for a sale, it seems, is pretty much whenever a buyer wants to step up and make it happen. That uncertainty, plus the godawful economy, has a pretty big effect on all of us here, just as the circumstances of your workplace and your market have an impact on you.
On a more personal level, it affects where we buy groceries, how much we want to spend for shoes, whether we take a vacation this year and a zillion other decisions we rarely thought about when times were good.
Most of the Americans who are fortunate enough to have jobs probably share a mixed prayer each week. Will today be the day we stumble back into the clearing? An economic celebration of “Oh, here we are!” On the right path again at last? Or will it be something considerably less joyous. One I’d rather not think about at the moment.
The waiting, as Tom Petty said, is the hardest part.
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Knight should be candid and forthright about the assault charge
During much of the past five years, Telegram reporters and editors have asked questions, raised issues and investigated claims made about Rocky Mount City Councilman Andre Knight. We’ve often drawn plenty of heat from people for reporting what they haven’t wanted to hear.
For instance, during the residency challenge that haunted Knight a couple of years ago, John Ramsey visited Knight at Knight’s Ward 1 home, obtained copies of Knight’s utility bills (with Knight’s permission) and was the first to raise questions about why Knight’s electricity bill was so low.
At the same time, we noted that North Carolina’s candidate residency requirements are so nebulous and so loosely written that it’s almost impossible to prove a candidate isn’t qualified to run in a particular district — or even the state itself. Did anyone really think of U.S. Elizabeth Dole as a true resident of North Carolina, before or even after she was elected?
So it was with Knight. The residency challenge he faced was driven far more by political enemies than by a law that spelled out requirements in clear, unequivocal terms.
But Knight faces a charge of a different kind this week. And his response to the charge has been far from satisfactory to his alleged victim or to the constituents he represents on the Rocky Mount City Council.
Knight has been accused of shoving a 70-year-old disabled man into the motorized scooter the man uses for transportation. Even if you forget for a moment that Knight is a public official, the charge is reprehensible. It’s never OK for a young, able-bodied man to shove a 70-year-old with disabilities. Who does that? No matter how upset you might be?
Let’s quickly remind ourselves that Knight has not been convicted of anything. He is scheduled to face the charge in court in January, and we can all hope for a clear sense of what happened to emerge at that time.
But Knight’s response to the charge thus far is troubling, to say the least. He has offered no alternative version of what happened Monday night. He has given no details about what was said or what might have provoked either him or Herbert Moore, the alleged victim.
Knight’s only public statement has been what Telegram staff writer Eric Klamut reported in a Telegram story Wednesday: “All of those allegations are lies. I defer comment to my legal counsel.”
As I wrote in an editorial which will appear in Thursday’s edition of the Telegram, that short statement might help his legal defense, but it certainly won’t satisfy his critics. Nor should his constituents be happy with it.
As a public official, Knight faces a higher standard. He should explain exactly what transpired now, without hiding behind a lawyer. If all the allegations are false, then tell us where the misunderstanding occurred. Is Knight suggesting that Moore simply made up the whole claim? If so, why did Police Chief John Manley step in between the two, as Manley told me today he did?
Knight has weathered more than his share of criticism throughout the years, much of it undeserved. But this is an incident he must confront with an explanation that’s candid and forthright.
The city he helps to lead deserves nothing less.
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Will this school ever be built?
The tortuous path to building a new high school in Rocky Mount reminds me of a fight my wife and I had one year over shoe molding and miter boxes.
We had pulled up carpeting in a bedroom to expose the hardwood floors underneath, and decided to replace the shoe molding to match the floor. Susan is a math teacher. I’m just a stubborn guy.
As my math-challenged brain struggled to figure out miter-box angles to make sure the molding came together correctly in the room’s corners, Susan would calmly explain exactly how to cut the piece I had in my hand. Her brain works that way. Mine doesn’t.
But common sense rarely slows down a man on a mission. It took many goofed molding cuts on my part because I insisted I knew better. Eventually, I gave up the male pride thing and started listening. The rest of the project came together amazingly quickly.
I’m not sure if there’s a miter-box expert on the Nash-Rocky Mount Board of Education, but I think the board members could use something similar. The school board has made one wrong decision after another about the new high school, only to reverse course in an embarrassingly public way that makes almost no one happy.
The latest is the decision to pick one architect for the new school, then switch to another architect, then switch course again and go back to the original architect. But that’s not the first reversal in this mess.
You might remember a hundred years ago when the board first started talking about building a new school. One plan suggested constructing the new school in the same place where Rocky Mount High School stands now. Presumably, students would have split class time between the old building and the new building, depending on how far along the construction was on any given morning.
The board eventually decided that wasn’t such a good idea, so it started looking at the possibility of building the new school next to the city’s athletic field complex near the new YMCA building. That caught the Rocky Mount City Council by surprise, but not nearly as much as it did the Nash County Board of Commissioners, who didn’t care for the idea at all.
That plan eventually was abandoned, and the school board began scouting around for a new site. How about the Edgecombe County side of town, where a lot of students who attend Rocky Mount High School live anyway?
Well, no. That wouldn’t fly. It’ll be a cold day in Baghdad before Nash County commissioners spend millions of dollars on a school building in Edgecombe County.
So the board eventually settled on the site on Bethlehem Road. And after a lot of wrangling, including an eminent domain lawsuit against a church for its adjacent property, the board finally seemed to have a plan in place.
Next up, who will design it?
In a work session earlier this fall, the board informally selected SFL+a Architects, a design company with many school construction projects to its credit. But that sparked a storm because the board turned its back on Oakley Collier, a local firm competing for the job.
I’ll be honest. I thought Oakley Collier would have been a good match. Put some of that construction money in the hands of a local business, who then will spend it at local stores and other businesses. When the school board returned for a formal session, it selected Oakley Collier instead of SFL+a.
But the board this week switched course yet again. SFL+a is the designer of choice - at least for the moment. And once again, there are plenty of people who are unhappy with the call.
All of which makes me think back to the way Susan and I tried to tack up shoe molding on that fateful weekend. As rough as that experience was, imagine the mess that room would have been with nine more people trying to help us out.
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My new posterior protection ordinance …
It’s amazing how far government officials occasionally go to find names for plans or programs that do anything but explain what the plans or programs actually are.
Three quick examples:
- I remember sitting in a planning meeting many years ago in High Point as a reporter, listening to well-meaning officials talk for a half an hour about the value of “single-family dwelling units” to a community.
Single-family dwelling units?
Oh, yeah … “houses” are what you and I usually call them.
“Single-family dwelling units” just sounds so much more impressive in a planning department document.
- Have you noticed how members of Congress insist on calling Henry Paulson’s brainstorm for helping banks a “financial rescue plan?”
I guess that sounds more noble and responsible than what everyone else in the world is calling it - a bailout.
- Rocky Mount police much prefer the term “youth protection ordinance” over the new policy that requires kids under 16 to be home before 11 p.m.
To the rest of us, the policy sounds like a curfew. But I guess curfew sounds too bossy.
If I had had a little more sense when I was a kid, I would have asked my parents to refer to my own curfew as a “Jeff’s butt protection ordinance.” Because that was what was going to kicked if I didn’t get home on time.
That’s not very politically correct, but it sure gets the point across.
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Extra, extra - A historic day for newspapers
Telegram Advertising Director Mark Wilson had a great idea last week. Why not offer for sale full-color proofs of Wednesday’s front page, featuring the historic election of Barack Obama?
Sounds good to me, I said. I figured we’d sell a dozen or so to people who like keeping newspapers for historic purposes.
We printed six copies on the color printer in our newsroom and took them to the front desk. Then I sat down to put together an announcement for our Web site to let folks know about the offer.
Before I could even finish writing the announcement, Margaret Harrison, our receptionist, was on the phone to me.
“Do you have any more?” she asked. “Those have already sold.”
Wow. I guess that’s why we have Wilson in Advertising, where we can use his thinking to make money, and me in Editorial, where I at least know how to punch the buttons to make the printer work.
We’ve sold at least 100 of the reproductions since Thursday, and we have plenty more people asking about them.
Our color printer offers excellent reproduction at a really slow speed. It takes about a half hour to print 12 copies. As a result, we’ve been running the printer morning, noon and night to keep up with the demand for the Nov. 5 reproduction.
Jeanne Brown, a longtime Advertising assistant who somehow manages to smile through hurricanes and any other crisis that comes her way, is laminating her fingers off to make the reproductions look as good as they possibly can.
On Friday, we had to order more card stock and laminate to replenish our supplies. We hope to be offering the front page on card stock and laminate again by Tuesday. Today, we’re offering the front on proofing paper only, which still looks pretty exceptional.
I’ve written before about some of the tough economic times newspapers are facing. If we could elect Barack Obama president everyday, I think some of our financial issues would be resolved.
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Nov. 5, 2008
Elections bring a twisted kind of fun to newspaper offices.
We sit down around 5 p.m. Tuesday and map out the post-election paper. It’s a chess game process of “If McCrory wins, we’ll play him here,” “If Dole loses, we’ll put her here.”
We make a call on which pages are best suited for local races, where we should put the state results, how late we can wait on national stories involving congressional results and governors’ races.
Then we order sloppy pizza and wait for the polls to close.
In the middle of everything else last night, we also took a few minutes to ponder history.
The election of Barack Obama as president could not legally have happened a generation ago. If you had told me even four years ago we would elect an African-American in 2008, I’d have thought you were crazy.
As many strides as the United States has made away from an era of Jim Crow laws, poll taxes and segregation, the significance of Obama’s election can’t be overstated. That civics lesson every kid hears in kindergarten came true: Anyone born in this country really can grow up and become president.
We face the most overwhelming challenges I’ve seen in my lifetime: two wars, a recession, a country divided ideologically on so many social fronts. But we somehow put all that aside this year and elected Obama in a way that flipped over just about every conventional thought we’ve ever had about modern politics.
As I write this, North Carolina is still too close to call, although Obama has a razor-thin lead. We’re no longer an automatic “red” state. Whatever the final result, we are finally a place that will command the attention of both parties in elections to come.
Obama won a majority of the popular vote, something George W. Bush couldn’t do in 2000 and even Bill Clinton couldn’t do in 1996. There are plenty of John McCain supporters who are unhappy with Tuesday’s results, but no one can say this election didn’t reflect the preference of a majority of American voters.
No one knows how well Obama will govern. Maybe he’ll be great; maybe he’ll be a bust. But whatever his term holds, he will be in the White House because most of the people in this country want him to be there.
And however his presidency is regarded in years to come, the foundation for it began in front of all of us on Nov. 4, 2008. A day that history will never forget.
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Come on down to Jeff’s Bank (offer good for a few days only)
I’m thinking about starting up a bank. I’ll call it … um … Jeff’s Bank, not to be confused with Jeff’s Brain Trust because financial genius I am not.
Then again … financial genius seems to be an oxymoron these days.
I figure I’m at least as dumb as the people who have driven the economy off the cliff, into the swimming pool and thrown in a bunch of electrical appliances to make sure the thing stays dead.
But the big difference is, those guys are lining up to collect their bailou- … excuse me … rescue plan checks, and I’m not. Heck, I’m still in the office every day working with a bunch of other people who haven’t realized what an opportunity we’re missing.
Not to brag, but I think I can run Jeff’s Bank into the ground within a week easily. I figure I’ll either lend money to every person on the planet or I’ll lend no money at all … whichever looks worse to Henry Paulson.
Then I’ll wait for Hank to call while I’m watching football this weekend. Anybody want to bet on the Colts-Packers game? Weekends seem to be Hank’s favorite time for coming up with bonanza payout- … I mean, rescue plans.
Afterward, I’ll be in desperate need of comfort and consolation to help me overcome my heartbreak and loss. Can anybody help me out on that?
I hear the spas in California are pretty sweet …
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Pardon our reconstruction
Folks, I hope you’ll bear with us for a little while as we tighten our belts and try to figure out how to best serve readers in tough economic times.
Many of you have noticed already that we’re moving features around in the Rocky Mount Telegram paper edition and that our page count on several days is fewer than what it has been in the past.
It’s no secret that newspapers everywhere face rising expenses and diminishing revenues. On the expense side, we’re victims of escalating fuel prices, just like everyone else. We’re also paying a bunch more this year for newsprint - the paper we print on.
On the revenue side, we’re getting whacked on two fronts. Retail advertising is down because advertisers are trying to cut expenses, too. They’re also scratching their heads and trying to figure out how much emphasis they should put on the World Wide Web and how much to continue with traditional print advertising.
We’re hurting in classified advertising, also. One of the benefits of a strong economy is a growth in Help Wanted ads by area employers. With unemployment in the Rocky Mount Metropolitan Statistical Area at almost 10 percent, fewer companies are hiring, and as a result, our Employment advertising is down.
On the circulation side, we’re wrestling to hold our own. We’ve dropped a few hundred subscribers in the past couple of years, as have a lot of newspapers across the country. Our Web site traffic, fortunately, has grown in leaps and bounds. We hit 1 million monthly page views for the first time In January. In September, that number topped 3.7 million page views.
We’re trying to save money by reducing the number of pages in our print product. By doing so, we hope to continue to deliver local news, sports and features to your doorstep without costing you more money.
Naturally, that involves some anguish on our part. We targeted our daily TV grid as one feature we could cut. We include TV schedules in an insert that’s included with our Saturday paper, so the daily grids seemed redundant.
In dropping the grid, though, we had to find other ways of accommodating our Dear Abby, Bridge and Horoscope features. I get more than an earful from readers whenever any of those features is inadvertently left out.
The result is an exeperiment in progress. During the next several weeks, we’ll be tinkering with the Telegram to figure out how to present the features that are most important to you in a way that helps us meet our economic goals, as well.
Comments and suggestions are appreciated. It’s easier to keep from making a mistake if we hear from our readers before we cut out something that’s more popular than we realize.
Right now, for example, we’re wondering about the future of our Friday Tech page and our Monday Travel page. They provide interesting reading, I think, but if we compare their value to, say, Religion, Marquee or Health, I think they have far less local content and are less read.
Tell me if you think I’m wrong about that. And any other thoughts would be appreciated, also.
Finally, thanks for your patience and for continuing to read the Rocky Mount Telegram, whether in print or online. We value your business, and we know what an important tool accurate information about local matters is in your lives.
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Here’s a candidate everyone can support
A few of us in the Telegram newsroom were kicking around some of our favorite political cliches a little while ago.
None of them actually say anything, of course. But that’s exactly why they’re perfect for any candidate, no matter what party or planet they’re from.
Staff writer Mike Hixenbaugh has a new puppy named Bowie. I’m proud to be on the Bowie bandwagon.
Here are some of the things Bowie may or may not be thinking as we approach the Nov. 4 election.
Washington is broken, and I’m here to fix it.
We have to stop thinking so much about Wall Street and paying more attention to Main Street.
Children are the future of this country.
My campaign is going to focus on the issues.
It’s time to take special interest groups out of politics.
My opponent wants to throw out the baby with the bath water.
Well, that dog won’t hunt, Mister.
At the end of the day, America will be a safer, brighter, more prosperous nation.
My opponent wants to embrace the past. I’m here to lead us into the future.
It takes a village to build a bridge to the 21st century so we can take back our streets from the criminals and break the gridlock in Washington.
Remember: Vote Bowie on Nov. 4.
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They call this justice?
I covered enough murder trials as a cops reporter to understand the value of a plea bargain - in theory, at least. It’s almost always better to take a guilty verdict from a suspect than put the question in the hands of 12 people you’ve never seen before.
But theories have to go out the window at times. I’m just as bumfuddled as everyone else at the plea bargain granted to Mark Bowling. Rose Vincent received 29 years in her “deal” in exchange for testifying against the man who asked her to do the killing. Bowling may be out of prison by the time he’s 50. That’s justice?
Look at it this way. If Rose Vincent had never been part of the picture, chances are that Julie Bowling would be dead anyway. A stripper who talked to the Telegram last year told us Mark Bowling had offered her money to kill Julie. Who knows how many other women he propositioned the same way? Or how many he would have asked before he found someone else to do the dirty work?
Rose Vincent is no innocent victim in the case. But even if she was the one who pulled the trigger, it was only because Mark Bowling was pulling the strings that made her do it.
Bowling is a jerk, a coward, a liar and every other name you want to throw at him. Thank goodness there’s a place in prison for him. It’s a criminal shame he won’t be there for the rest of his life.
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Defining moments in presidential debates
Even in this age of YouTube ads, incessant polling and action figures, debates have the potential to define a moment in a presidential campaign.
Just a few examples that come to mind:
* 1960 - Get me make-up! Richard Nixon vs. John F. Kennedy. Even I was too young to see this firsthand, but we studied it in a political science class my freshman year in college. Make-up and coolness gave Kennedy a decided edge over a pale, sweating Nixon. A defining moment in the role of television, one that would forever change how the candidates and campaigns approached mass media.
* 1980 & 1984 - There you go, again. Ronald Reagan vs. Jimmy Carter and later Walter Mondale. Again and again, Reagan shaped Carter’s record in four words, each time suggesting that nearly every statement Carter made came from a liberal agenda. The phrase became forever linked with Reagan. He reprised it in 1984 for his debate with Mondale, who had served as vice president under Carter.
1988 - Would you favor an irrevocable death penalty? George H.W. Bush vs. Michael Dukakis. Dukakis had plenty of hills to climb as a liberal governor from Massachusetts. But his campaign got no easier on the first question of his second debate with Bush. Then-CNN anchorman Bernard Shaw asked Dukakis if Dukakis would continue to oppose the death penalty even if Dukakis’ wife were raped and killed. Dukakis’ answer was so wooden and unemotional, it’s not even worth quoting here. His response did little to rally a spirit in American voters.
1988 - Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy. Dan Quayle vs. Lloyd Bentsen. Vice presidential debates don’t often become national conversation pieces, but this one did. Quayle, a little-known senator from Indiana, was a surprise running mate choice for George H. W. Bush. Quayle noted during a debate against Bentsen that he had just as much experience as John F. Kennedy had when Kennedy ran for president. Bentsen, a longtime member of the U.S. Senate, leveled his gaze at Quayle and said, “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator … you’re no Jack Kennedy.” The statement did nothing to knock Bush’s campaign off track, but it was an early sign (and many more would follow) that Quayle was a lightweight on the national political scene.
Those are a few that come to mind. Any others you want to share? More important, what do you hope to hear John McCain and Barack Obama address as the presidential debates begin Friday?
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Who’s going to bail out the rest of us?
This editorial will appear in Wednesday’s edition of the Telegram:
Washington doesn’t do emergencies well.
The United States rushed into a decision to invade Iraq … because it was an emergency. Congress passed the U.S. Patriot Act … because it was an emergency.
Now comes U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson pressing Congress for a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street … because it’s an emergency.
In every instance, the onus has somehow fallen on Congress to act quickly, whether the move made sense or not. Should Congress fail to do so, the fault somehow gets shifted to Capitol Hill because of the lawmakers’ “short-sightedness.”
Lord knows, Congress has been guilty of thousands of other poor decisions, and the bailout may indeed be the only sound course of action for the U.S. economy. But here’s hoping senators and representatives will make that call after hearing reasoned arguments and evidence - not on panic-stricken cries from the financial institutions who cared little about abandoning their responsibility during the past couple of years.
The $700 billion it will cost U.S. taxpayers to rescue lenders is more than the war in Iraq has cost us thus far. For that kind of money, let’s hope taxpayers get a few reassurances out of the bailout legislation.
As Wall Street struggles back to its feet and begins to turn profitable again, those profits should be returned to the people who threw them their life line - that’s U.S. taxpayers. And the notion that the people who steer the recovery should be paid handsomely for their efforts needs to be thrown out the window, also.
Taxpayers are dog-tired of paying through the nose every time trouble comes along - in airline prices, at the gas pumps, for failed savings and loans - only to see how well the CEOs and other corporate leaders line their pockets.
We’d much rather help the family down the street in danger of losing its house because of the sub-prime meltdown than write another check to a Wall Street tycoon.
If Congress can come up with a plan that addresses those concerns, we’ll swallow the pill a little more readily.
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The loss of an award-winning writer - and mentor
Sad news on the state wire this week about the death of Mary Garber.
Mary probably wasn’t well-known in this part of North Carolina, but I’ll bet hundreds of kids who played high school sports around Winston-Salem remember her. So do their parents.
Mary was a longtime sports writer for the Winston-Salem Journal. I remember her well from my earliest days in journalism, when I was a shaggy haired college kid covering preps on weekends 30 years ago.
Even in the late 1970s, seeing a woman sports writer wasn’t that big a deal. I learned more than I could begin to tell you about writing of all kinds from Sarah Sue Ingram, then a sports writer at the High Point Enterprise.
But what set Mary apart from - well, just about everyone - was the fact that she was at a high school ball game of one kind or another every weekend, every Tuesday, for every holiday basketball tournament and who knows how many other events that I never attended.
She was in her early 60s then. She’d climb the bleachers in her blue sneakers and knit cap, and she’d take notes and offer pointers to kids like me trying to keep track of fumble recoveries and technical fouls. Always with a smile on her face. Always with an attention to detail and an eye on her watch. Not making deadline was out of the question.
I didn’t realize until reading her obituary today how prized she was by her peers. She was the first woman to win the Red Smith Award - the highest sports writing honor given by The Associated Press Sports Editors.
She never talked about such accolades when I knew her. The kids on the field or court in front of us were far more important.
Mary Garber was 92 when she died Sunday.
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Trying times for optimists
A guy named Gil Stern had a pretty good line about the value of optimists and pessmists: An optimist invented the airplane. A pessimist invented the parachute.
Wall Street could use one of each these days.
I try to stay sunny about the economy. No matter what we’re going through right now, I think things are going to pick up in 2009, once we have new leadership in the White House.
I don’t think it even matters much to the market who wins the election. Investors are so ready for a change from the past eight years of misery they’re convinced that happier times are just around the bend. They can’t get here soon enough.
The optimist in me remembers that the Dow bottomed out at 7,500 six years ago. In October of last year, we hit an all-time high of more than 14,000. The optimist tells me to be patient. Things will turn around again.
We sure have our work cut out for us though, don’t we? In addition to fighting two wars, trying to keep gasoline prices under $4 a gallon and figuring out what to do about health care, the new president now is going to have to keep banks from going under.
I’m 50 years old. A lot of folks my age and younger have pretty much given up on the idea that Social Security will take care of us in our old age. Many of us have sacrificed to put money into 401(k)s. That’s where the growth is, right?
I don’t even want to log onto the Web site that tells me how my mutual fund is doing any more. But what do you do? If you stop investing now, there’s no way you’ll pull back up. So we keep the contributions rolling out of our checks every payday and hope for good news from Wall Street.
I’m still an optimist. But more and more I’m looking around for a guy who knows where the parachutes are stored.
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Very nice site!
... read the full comment by John1181 | Comment on The end of cultural touchstones Read The end of cultural touchstones
Wrong.
The internet will continue to create a galaxy of stars as famous or more famous than those of the past. There will be posters. There will be plastic surgery. There will be wierdos. There will be incredibly hot women.
Journalism
... read the full comment by Willpower | Comment on The end of cultural touchstones Read The end of cultural touchstones
Great blog!!! I haven’t always agreed with you, but this I do!! There has been controversy over who is the greatest, Elvis, the Beatles or Michael Jackson. Although they are all goundbreakers and fabulous in their own rights, there is no question,
... read the full comment by Cindy Matulich | Comment on The end of cultural touchstones Read The end of cultural touchstones
I was riding home from work this past Wednesday night around 12:00 am ( I work 2nd shift), I decided to go a few blocks out of the way to ride through my old neighborhood. I must have counted 15 people out and about in this neighborhood. Recently, gang
... read the full comment by Darin Gurganus | Comment on Squash the bed bug bill before it hatches Read Squash the bed bug bill before it hatches