Scotty McCreery is heading back to the show that made him famous this week as "American Idol" crowns its newest winner.

Scotty, the Garner High School student who won Season 10 of the popular singing show a year ago, will perform on Tuesday night's show and then be on hand for the blowout "Idol" finale on Wednesday night.

On that show, either Phillip Phillips of Leesburg, Ga., or Jessica Sanchez of San Diego will be named the winner of Season 11. (Even without hearing their final songs, we'd bet the ranch on Phillip.)

The honors just keep coming for Garner's Scotty McCreery, whose first CD has just gone platinum.

"Clear As Day," released in October, has sold more than 1 million copies.

"It means the world to me,” said Scotty, 18, who became the winner of Season 10 of "American Idol" in May. “It’s one of the highest honors you can get with your album, and it’s a huge testament to the loyalty of country music fans and how great they have been to me."

When politicians don't like stories about them in The N&O, they say we're "just trying to sell papers." The latest politician to make this charge is Tracey Cline, the Durham district attorney who was the subjct of a three-day series in early September.  Actually, that kind of work doesn't typically sell papers. Sales of The N&O on Sept. 4-6, when we ran our "Twisted Truth" series about Cline, were down from a year earlier.

What does sell papers is winning sports teams. The Hurricanes' NHL championship and Duke and UNC NCAA men's basketball championships all were big sellers, especially the day after the final game. While politics does not typically sell papers, Barack Obama's election in November 2008 was a big seller.

Anything about American Idol winner Scotty McCreery of Garner also sells The N&O. For example, on Saturday, Oct. 8, we published a Scotty poster page to mark his appearance that day at Walnut Creek. McCreery was celebrating the release of his album, "Clear As Day," and his 18th birthday. We sold about 1,500 extra copies of The N&O that day.

We put Scotty on the front page today after he sang the national anthem Wednesday night before the opening game of the World Series. It's too soon to say whether that sold any papers but it could not have hurt. The N&O's Thad Ogburn, who has written several stories about McCreery, reports today that McCreery, a pitcher, hopes to play for the Garner High Trojans in the spring.

--John Drescher

Scotty McCreery has made history on the Billboard charts in his CD's first week.

The Garner resident and "American Idol" winner's "Clear As Day" debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, according to figures released today. First week sales of the album totaled 196,739.

That's worthy of several superlatives:

--youngest male artist in history to reach No. 1 with a debut release. (Previous record-holder was Omarion, who was 20 when his debut "O" opened at No. 1 in 2005. Scotty just turned 18 on Sunday.)