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A handsome coffee table book arrived in the mail today. It is the Poynter Institute's collection of the best front pages of newspapers published on November 5, 2008. That, of course, was the day after America's historic election of its first African-American president.

The News & Observer's page is one of 100 from around the world selected by Poynter, a St. Petersburg, Fla. nonprofit devoted to journalism education, for this book. Our sister publication, The Charlotte Observer, is also included. A team of journalists contributed to this page, but we are especially proud of news designer Jennifer Bowles, a graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism, has designed many News & Observer fronts and special projects.

The print newspaper has sometimes been undervalued in the age of the Internet. "Election Day, November 4, 2008, was different," cartoonist Garry Trudeau, writes in his introduction to the book. He describes an election evening of boistrous celebrations around the globe. "And then the next day, after the street parties were over, people went out and did something many of them hadn't done in years. They bought newspapers. Yes, newspapers. By the trainload, actually."

The printed paper was not for the purpose of information, Trudeau notes, rather to the people who stood in long lines, it was a tangible keepsake "that can forever evoke and refresh a deeply consequential memory."

Prior to election, we mostly saw this reaction with sports championships.

Here's to the ink-stained, bird cage fillers, fish wraps that we love.

The Poynter book is available here.

Linda Williams

Kay Hagan is getting sworn in today as North Carolina's new senator. From noon to 3 p.m., she is holding an "open house" in her temporary office in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.  But this event has been closed to reporters. Her spokeswoman said the temporary office does not have enough room for the press to be there. She said reporters could talk to Hagan later. 

This much was reported by Barb Barrett, our Washington correspondent, in our Under the Dome blog and in the paper in our print Under the Dome.  If you saw the paper today, there was a picture of Hagan in our page 1A rail, promoting to the Dome item on 3B.

The headline on the rail item read: Hagan Shuts Her Door To The Press.

Now, I don't know how big her office is, and I don't know how many reporters were seeking to attend this open house. 

I also don't know if Hagan was even aware of this decision by her staff to shut reporters out of this event.

Here is what I do know.  It is a good idea to think these things through, if you are a Senate staffer. Think in terms of the juxtaposition of the terms "open" and "closed." Then figure out a way to avoid closing an open house, because such a decision has a probability of becoming a story.

You don't have to be a genius to figure that out, even if you have only a 1 percent clue as to what makes something newsworthy and can lead to an unwanted headline in the paper back in North Carolina on the day your boss takes the oath. 

It could be a useful lesson for Hagan.  Even as her staff is probably telling her how unfair this Dome coverage was, and how small the office is, and how impractical it would have been to have let the press in.  She could tell them, well, yes, all that may be true, but maybe we need to rethink how we make decisions here.  Maybe, if we were expecting a big crowd of reporters, we could have let a couple in at a time. It's a three-hour event, so give each media outlet 20 minutes, for goodness sake.

Or, and this is more likely, there may only have been a handful of journalists who would have attended the open house.  News organizations have cut back on their Washington bureaus, to the distress of many congressional offices who have depended on those correspondents to get the message back to the folks at home.

You might have read Lynn Bonner's update on the problems with the new state government payroll system, BEACON. We have set up a forum for state employees to share their problems with the system. Having been through a couple of decades of new software installations, I can say that I sympathize with the employees. 

But I also know that it is difficult to gauge the severity of the problems from the outside looking in.  That's why I decided to set up a forum.  If you are a state employee or know of one,  the forum is share.triangle.com/beacon. 

"In N.C., death penalty gets rarer."

That headline in the morning paper might be surprising given that public support of the death penalty remains high. A Gallop Poll conducted as recently as October showed 64 percent of Americans in favor of executing people convicted of murder. But that was down from 69 percent a year earlier and other polls show the percentage in favor of putting murderers to death falls far below 50 percent when the alternative of life without parole is presented.

The overall support for death penalty has been clashing in recent years with substantial discomfort with the way it has been carried out and a growing number of obstacles to actually putting people to death. Staff Writer Dan Kane, who examined decisions by prosecutors and trial results from around the state, explains why just one person has been sentenced to death in North Carolina this year.

No one has been executed here since August 2006. 

Linda Williams 

I went to the State basketball game last night and watched from our seats (my wife and I have season's tickets) three rows back in the upper level of the RBC Center. The seats aren't bad. But as I watched State and Marquette, I kept wishing the game were being played in Reynolds Coliseum. A cold night, a good opponent, a visit from DT and the rest of the '74 champs -- it had all the elements for a Reynolds classic. Instead the announced crowd of 16,819 (it didn't seem that big to me) didn't make much noise until the end.

State lost some home-court advantage when it moved into the RBC Center, just as Carolina did when it moved into the Dean Dome. Play that game last night in Reynolds and State wins. OK, I can't prove it but I'll say Reynolds was worth four points a game more than the RBC Center. Reynolds had some quirks -- the heat, the proximity of the students, the noise, the dim lights -- that worked to State's advantage because State's players were used to them. There was a real home-court advantage that isn't as much in a sterile place like the RBC Center.

I'm glad State plays a few men's games a year in Reynolds. Check out the picture of Dennis Horner from Dec. 13 for a good look at the old place. But I wish State would play a strong team -- like Marquette -- in Reynolds. It wouldn't make any sense from a business point of view to
sell several thousand fewer tickets. But it would be great fun for those of us who get sentimental about the place. If you are one of those people, read this piece I wrote in 1999 for The Charlotte Observer, when State was finishing up its last season in the House That Case Built.

-- John Drescher

Steve Padgett, the former mail carrier from Raleigh recently convicted of delaying and destroying U. S. mail, is in the news again. The lawbreaker, known as "Mailman Steve" to his fans, has received a nice check from donations by people all over the country who saw him as a hero, sparing the people he serviced from having to deal with piles of unsolicited "junk" mail.

Padgett made sure the people on his Apex mail route got their bills, personal letters and packages, but postal inspectors found bags of third class mail--advertising circulars and the like--in his garage and buried in his yard. The story, the most popular on newsobserver.com last month, struck a nerve.

The people who depend on third class mail to advertise their services are not amused. Neither is the U.S. Postal Service, which likes to point out that first class postal rates are relatively low compared to the rest of the world, in part, because of its success in keeping those advertisers using snail mail.

Linda Williams 

We've gotten a lot of response to last week's probation series, "Losing Track," but nowhere have the responses had more passion, or specific information, than in Durham.

Public officials there are quite angry, impatient for change — and making themselves heard. With today's story about Durham's probation office being denied any of the new jobs provided this summer by the General Assembly, we posted letters from City Councilman Eugene Brown and Ellen Reckhow, vice chairwoman of the Durham County commissioners, to Gov.-elect Bev Perdue, that outline their concerns and demands for change.

Brown has been particularly vocal. On Monday at a City Council meeting, he spoke at some length about his frustration with probation officials. Staffer Jim Wise wrote this story then. But I thought readers might appreciate his full remarks.

A few weeks ago, a UNC journalism grad student named Sheila Read sent us an e-mail: She had been a social worker at John Umstead Hospital. Would we be interested in a story?

Well, yes. Sheila helped her cause by including the proposed report with her e-mail. And her story is unlike anything we've yet published in our year-long look at the state's mental health failures.

Her story held for a while for space and timing reasons, but this was a penetrating look at what it's like on the front lines of mental health care in institutions that are being de-emphasized. Her email has been lit up today, so readers are noticing.

Here's one e-mail from reader Marc Landry:

"Governor elect Perdue should be compelled to read Sheila Read's letter titled "Why I quit social work at Umstead" and explain to the people of North Carolin why she appeared so accepting of the deplorable condition in our mental hospitals during her long tenure in state government.

She does not need a transition team to tell her what needs fixing.

She does not need to hold public meetings.

A subscription to the News and Observer would more than adequate to point her in the right directions."

Certainly, we also hope Gov.-elect Perdue is among our loyal readers.

In my column last week I previewed our series, "Losing Track:  North Carolina's Crippled Probation System." I also said that despite financial problems, we would continue to do this type of investigative reporting. The column was titled, "We'll keep digging deep."

Readers were supportive. "Keep up the very good work and keep shining the light," said one. Another made a reference to our previous series on problems with the sate's mental health system. "I can't tell you how grateful we are to you, to Michael Biesecker, Pat Stith and Lynn Bonner," she said referring to the reporters on that series. "All the citizens of this state should be grateful for The N&O and how they've investigated the mental health debacle. I'm sure you are going to get to the bottom of this new project." I want to point out that both projects were edited by Steve Riley, our senior editor for investigations.

Another reader, who identified himself in a phone message as a Wake schools teacher, said we did a lot of good work but that I should stop talking about it. "Isn't this you guys' jobs?" he said. "What do you want -- the Big Cookie Award? Times are tough for everybody. That's like me telling my students and their parents: 'I don't get paid much but I'm going to continue to keep doing it.' I appreciate what you do but just keep doing it. No need to blow your own trumpet."

I had never heard of the Big Cookie Award. But I want it.

As for blowing my own trumpet: Fair enough. In tomorrow's column, I blow the trumpet for open government.  We know that since 2000, 580 probationers have been convicted of killing in North Carolina. But we don't know how well they were supervised by the state. That's because the state won't give us reports that would tell us how well those probationers were supervised.  Theodis Beck, state correction secretary, should release those reports. Read more Saturday.

Use of profanity in The N&O is supposed to be approved by a top editor but food writer Greg Cox didn't seek my permission when he wrote: "The F word: an utterance so offensive to many that it's still verboten in polite conversation, even in these cynical times. Certainly any writer -- especially a food writer, and especially during the holiday season -- who uses the word risks a severe loss of credibility. But I can't help it." For more, click here.

Greg: I'll see you in my office to discuss this.