The good folks at Duke are continuing to push the conversation about how watchdog journalism can be saved.

 A new report from
The DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy examines ways that
can make smaller numbers of reporters more efficient at combing through
piles of documents or large databases. The 20-page report has an
intimidating title: "Accountability Through Algorithm: Developing the
Field of Computational Journalism," but it's written so that even the
most hard-bitten of journalists can follow along. 

Newsrooms
across the country are shrinking, but many are trying to hang onto
their investigative teams and to encourage beat reporting that
continues to examine and challenge the actions of those in power. At
The News & Observer, for example, we have expanded our
investigative team this year from two reporters to three, and we
continue to get great watchdog work from reporters on their beats.

The
co-authors of the report, James T. Hamilton of Duke and Fred Turner of
Stanford, say that by applying existing and emerging technology,
journalists can find better ways to sift through thousands of Internet
sites and find trends. They can use software to more quickly search
through huge documents or use voice recognition software to plow
through long videos or audiotapes.

At Duke, they aren't just writing papers. Sarah Cohen, the new
Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy, is at
work with journalists and software developers to try to adapt available
technology to the work of reporters and editors. She has visited our
newsroom twice to alert us to what's possible.  We hope to have some
success stories soon.

 -- Steve Riley

You learn a lot about people when things go wrong.

NC State is having a dismal football season, losing all four conference games thus far, including dropping a tough one Saturday in the last few minutes at Florida State, 45-42. After the game, reporter Ken Tysiac, who covers college sports for The Charlotte Observer and The N&O, was delayed in a logjam on the stairs at Doak Campbell Stadium. Tysiac was a few minutes late for NCSU Coach Tom O'Brien's meeting with reporters. 

Tysiac was the only reporter from a North Carolina newspaper to travel to the game. When O'Brien saw he wasn't there, he stepped away from the podium and said he wouldn't start until Tysiac arrived. O'Brien did his one-on-one post-game radio interview with the Wolfpack Sports Network, then returned to the podium. By then Tysiac had arrived. He thanked O'Brien for waiting for him.

Chuck Walsh, Florida State associate sports information director, said that in 22 years of working in sports information, he had never seen a coach delay a post-game conference to wait on a reporter. 

I give prominent people plenty of grief when they dodge us. So I thought I should recognize one guy who went out of his way to talk to a reporter from back home, even on a day when he must not have felt like talking at all. 

--John Drescher

Early this morning, Dan Kane joined in on Gov. Beverly Perdue's
conference call from Asia, where she was talking about her
economic-development trip. Dan asked about Col. Randy Glover's 1987
affair and why she appointed him to lead the state Highway Patrol. The
governor went off on our Tuesday story, as Dan has reported on newsobserver.com.

Recently, after we published the article, "Pandemic flu kills NC child," we received a complaint from a reader. "Your use of the word 'pandemic'...was disingenuous and I think quite unfortunate," the reader wrote. "There is no H1N1 pandemic. It is certainly a severe disease especially for high-risk patients, but there is no pandemic and barely an epidemic as of now. For sure your headline and the article were attention getting, but the exaggerated and incorrect use of the adjective destroyed its credibility."

We were correct to use the term 'pandemic,' which refers to the widespread nature of an infection, not the severity. Based on infections rates worldwide, the World Health Organization declared H1N1 influenza a pandemic in June. Read that article here. For a good Q and A on the subject from N&O reporter Sarah Avery, click here.

--John Drescher 


A story that we reported on October 9, a couple of days after a young mother was shot to death in Fuquay Varina, drew critical responses from many who say they are advocates for victims of domestic violence.

The story was written after a question was raised about whether the victim, Jammie Shantel Street, had sought law enforcement help to fight abuse from the man who is now charged with killing her. 
And if she had sought help, was the police response adequate? We found that she had let a protective order lapse, had stayed silent on an occasion when he could have faced jail for assault and had signed a statement saying that she was not afraid of him.

After raising the question, we were obligated to report what we found. The story also reported that Ms. Street had separated from Daniel Jerome Montgomery, the man now charged with killing her,  and that the separation was followed by threats against Ms. Street in the weeks before she died. 

For reporting these facts, the N&O has been accused of blaming Ms. Street for her death. Our story made no judgments. There can be honest disagreements over how much more we should have included in that one story--the second of three related to Ms. Street's death--but the assertion of a writer of a letter  to the editor on Friday that the paper has "continued a long trend of blaming women for domestic violence, shifting focus away from perpetrators" is utterly without any factual basis.

The N&O has reported aggressively on domestic violence for a decade and our efforts contributed to significant legal protections for victims and potential victims.

A 2003 investigation by N&O reporters Andrea Weigl and Angela Heywood Bible showed that this state lagged in prosecuting domestic assaults that tended to lead to homicides. The investigation noted that even when charged, few perpetrators were jailed.

Several other stories followed that series. Additionally, N&O columnist Ruth Sheehan has written repeatedly about the complexities of fighting domestic violence, including the many challenges of women in abusive relationships. She has been diligent bringing attention to resources for victims in this community.

Linda Williams

Senior Editor/News

The Cree announcement Thursday that it is going to hire 575 workers is just the latest turn in this company's 22-year history.

Here are 5 things you may or may not have known about the company:

1.  Cree chips lit up the Beijing Olympics, with 750,000 red, blue and green LEDs made by Cree helping to light up the Bird's Nest and Water Cube buildings.

2.   The company donated the $1 million LED system backlighting the shimmer wall at the Raleigh Convention Center.

3.  Cree was founded in 1987 by brothers Neal and Eric Hunter, N.C. State engineering grads.

4.  The company went public in February 1993.  We covered it with a paragraph in our Feb. 10, 1993, edition. Market value of the company was less than $100 million.

5.  Friday afternoon, Cree's market value, as measured by the value of its stock, was nearly $4 billion.

The story behind the old, black-and-white U2 photos
on the cover of Friday's Weekend section is this:  Our Chris Seward
shot them when he was just a young free-lancer for the old Spectator
publication back in the early '80s.

The Tallahassee newspaper is trying an experiment that is interesting.
They have a big investigative story coming Sunday on a local sheriff,
and the reporter working on it has spent several months on the article.
But readers of the Tallahassee Democrat's web site, Tallahassee.com, 
won't be able to read the full article.

We launched the redesigned newsobserver.com around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday
night.  We were hoping to launch around noon, but we were having some
problems with pictures showing up in the photo galleries.

I thought the guy's name was familiar. Mark Whitacre, who is played by Matt Damon in the new movie "The Informant!,"
came up on our radar more than 12 years ago when he was running a company in Chapel Hill. I had been business editor for six months.

Here's a story written by David Ranii that I pulled from the archives.