newsobserver.com blogs -- editor

Saving Watchdog Journalism

steveriley — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:04:54 -0500

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

Coach O'Brien stands and delivers

jdrescher — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:20:06 -0500

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

Governor: Don't report on affairs

steveriley — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:03:48 -0400

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.

"...regardless of the articles you continue to write, this is a man who is lieutenant colonel of the Highway Patrol, he had an affair nearly 25 years ago, he's married with two beautiful little daughters and I really, really am disappointed in this kind of journalism," Perdue said. "And did I disclose it? I will have to be very honest with you, I never once in any interview for any position asked anyone about their sexual preference, their sexual orientation, or their past marital history."

But Gov. Perdue did know about the affair, because Glover told her. And she didn't really answer Dan's question.

I’m the editor who encouraged Dan to pursue this story, and I believe we were right to publish. First, I agree with the governor that a 22-year-old affair (or a 5-year-old affair) would rarely have any impact on someone's ability to serve in state government, and we would almost never waste time on such stories.

This is the very rare exception. Glover has been appointed to lead an agency that has a significant problem with sexual misconduct, and he has talked widely about cleaning up the patrol's ethics and about getting troopers to stay out of sticky situations.

"As we celebrate and reflect on the organization's many accomplishments, we ask you to remember that everything we do, whether on- or off-duty, is a reflection not only on our organization, but also on those who have gone before us," Glover and Crime Control Secretary Reuben Young and Glover wrote recently to troopers.

Further, the patrol felt strongly enough about Glover's affair to transfer him out of Harnett County. It apparently believed his affair was disrupting his work or the work of others. We would love to see what the personnel and internal affairs files say, but the patrol declines to release them.

It will be instructive to see whether Glover's past impacts any future cases involving patrol misconduct.

-- Steve Riley, Senior Editor/Investigations

Yes, it is a pandemic

jdrescher — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:47:53 -0400

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

Writing about domestic violence

linny — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 07:30:30 -0400

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

Cree's story

danbarkin — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:23:17 -0400

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.

Chris Seward's U2 photos

danbarkin — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:34:30 -0400

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.

Chris, who joined our staff in 1986, was a recent graduate of N.C. State at the time, with a major in economics and a minor in computer science and a passion for photography. He had learned his craft shooting for the college newspaper and yearbook, and was looking for full-time work and taking free-lance assignments to pay the bills.

And that's how he found himself at Kenan Stadium seeking shelter from the rain while a young singer name of Bono was waiting to go on with his group, a gaggle of Irishmen who were beginning to make a name for themselves. As our music writer David Menconi noted in Friday's story, U2 wasn't even the main attraction at the April 1983 "Spring Fling" concert.

Seward noticed that Bono seemed a little quiet and pensive, so he tried to reassure him: Don't worry, man, he said. They're going to like you. They know who you are.

In a few months, everyone with access to MTV would know who U2 was, and the band would become one of the most enduring in rock history.

You may have noticed that the photos we ran were in black and white. That was pretty much all we ran back in the 1980s and into the '90s. Better technology, particularly in the printing presses, made it possible to start running more color.

Like the cover of our Hurricanes preview section on Friday, featuring Seward's great shots of the Canes' veteran players (and graphic artist Tim Lee's terrific rock-poster design.)

Seward is the photographer who specializes in shooting hockey, so the pictures that you'll see this season of goals and fights in the paper and online will come through his lense as he roams the RBC. I can't imagine a more difficult sport to shoot than hockey. I can barely figure out where the puck is sometimes, let alone think about trying to shoot the photo of the game-winner that's going to get spread across four columns of our Sports front in the morning. That's why I became a writer. I don't have the ice water in my veins that news photographers have.

I asked him, what's the difference between shooting rock concerts and hockey?
Seward thought for a moment and said, well, there are some obvious differences, of course, rink vs. rock, but not in what he’s trying to achieve as a photojournalist.

In both cases, he's trying to capture the special moments, whether it's the expression on Bono's face as he sells a song, or the look on Eric Staal's face when he drives the puck to the back of the net.

Tallahassee experiment

danbarkin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 07:00:00 -0400

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. A summary of the story will appear on the web site, but if readers want to see the whole thing, they'll have to buy a paper.

This goes to the heart of an ongoing debate among journalists. In the mid-1990s, newspapers set up web sites and put their stories on them. For the most part, they were giving away their content for free. This was back in the good old days. Newspapers were very profitable. Plus, no one really knew whether the Web was going to be a big deal or not. So newspapers hedged their bets by putting their content online, for nothing.

We may not know for some time whether this was a good or bad idea. Intuitively, you might say that you shouldn't give away your product for nothing, that that isn't a brilliant business model. But newspapers have built a pretty strong online audience by doing that. The thinking was that we would be able to monetize that online audience by selling online adverising. And we have. Online advertising has continued to grow. The problem is that it hasn't grown fast enough to offset the declines in traditional print advertising.

But, for all we know, that may be a transitional problem. Ten years from now, we may be making a majority of our money from online advertising, and we still may be giving away our content for free online.

The fact is that even though our content is online, many people still like to read their newspapers with their corn flakes. I've eaten breakfast while reading a newspaper and I've eaten breakfast with my laptop perched on the table in front of me, and it's a different experience. I get a benefit from looking at a newspaper that has been ediited by smart people, who have used their best judgment to rank the stories and choose the right pictures and other elements that package with them.

I also like the daily surprises in the newspaper, stories that I might not seek out online but that I discover when I turn the page.

It's not a matter of being old-fashioned or new-fangled. A printed newspaper is the result of a lot of decision-making all day long, and whether we think about it or not, the result is an interesting window into how journalists grade the news.

So there is an argument to be made that there's a difference between the newspaper and the exact same content online, and that enough people will continue to value that difference and pay for the printed product.

What Tallahassee is saying is that they don't buy that argument. They're saying that putting all the content online gives folks significantly less reason to buy the paper, and that they have to do something about it. So what they are doing is to make their web site inferior to the newspaper.

That's not how the editor of the paper put it. He said that people don't like to read long investigative stories online. I don't know about that. I look at the traffic numbers all day long, and great stories get a lot of page views if they break news. Long thumb-suckers, not so much. The key is whether you are telling people something that is pretty significant.

(This, incidentally, goes to the heart of another journalistic debate. Short stories versus long stories. Stories that hold to the front versus stories that jump inside the paper. I have always thought this argument missed the point. People will read a 50-inch story if it knocks their socks off. They will skip a boring 10-inch story.)

If keeping a big story off the web site once in a while is all Tallahassee does, then this experiment will be more symbolic than real. They might get a pop in single-copy sales on Sunday, but on Monday, it's back to business as usual. To make this experiment really valid, Tallahassee needs to keep their most valuable content off-line everyday. It may make the folks in the newsroom feel good that a big investigative story isn't being given away for free, but from a business standpoint, it may be just a blip in the Democrats circulation numbers.

But maybe the editor of the Tallahassee paper is just dipping his toe in the water to see what happens, and if he gets good results on Sunday, he will likely push for a more aggressive strategy. I may call down to Tallahassee Monday morning to see how things turned out.

If you're still reading this and you want to see what the Tallahassee editor had to say about all this, go to his blog.

We launched

danbarkin — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:54:17 -0400

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.

Photo galleries are a really important part of our site, so we didn't want to go with them being flaky. We were pretty antsy, though, because after months of work, we wanted to get going. Also, as long as we were running our old site and operating the new one in "beta" mode, we were having to maintain two web sites with one staff. One web site is plenty of work by its own self. Finally, the switch was thrown, metaphorically speaking, and the old site was replaced by the new one.

A couple of minutes after launch, I noticed that the toolbar at the top of the home page wasn't working. I contacted the techies over at McClatchy Interactive with an urgent message to this effect. They checked into it and said it was because the toolbar was hard-coded to the old site. They put in a temporary workaround and it was fixed. I said: Thanks, I was over here having a heart attack. The guy over at MI emailed me back words to the effect: This your first redesign?

Well, yeah.

His point was that he'd been through a bunch of them, and this one was fairly uneventful.

Maybe so. Wednesday morning, when I woke up early, I went online and saw that we were having another hiccup. Pages were refreshing after about three seconds, which kind of makes it hard to read them. Others were noticing, and our technology folks figured it out and made the problem go away.

I have to say that I find a lot to like in the new design. I like that fact that we can display our photos more prominently at the top of the home page. That gigando index at the top of the home page, which you can get to by clicking a tab, lets you see where most of the major content categories are. Our blogs can now be found on related section fronts, instead of being hidden behind a tab on the home page. Our story pages now look like a human being designed them, instead of a robot.

I can move sections around on the home page to customize it, including showing the numbers of stories that I want to see.

Our search is also better. It indexes a lot more content, like the blogs and photos. There's nothing worse than a bad search engine on your site that brings back garbage.

All that said, it will take a little time for folks who are accustomed to one way of seeing our site to get used to the new way. If you have any feedback, you can tell us what you like and what you don't like. We don't redesign things and cast them in cement. We will be spending probably the next few weeks tweaking stuff, and your ideas are welcome. You can preface them with: "Dear Incompetent Morons" or "Dear Creative, Hard-Working Folks at the N&O." Either way, we'll listen to what you have to say and if we can make a fix that you want, we will.

The local angle to the Matt Damon movie

danbarkin — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:09:59 -0400

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.

Whitacre sues agent from FBI

The News & Observer - Tuesday, January 14, 1997

Author: David Ranii, staff writer

CHAPEL HILL - A few months after MarkWhitacre began secretly taping the price-fixing schemes of his fellow executives at Archer Daniels Midland for the FBI, he began using the agency's own equipment to surreptitiously record his meetings with the FBI agent in charge of the investigation.

By that time, Whitacre said, he was as wary of the FBI as he was about the goings-on at ADM, the self-proclaimed "supermarket to the world."

Among other things, that wariness was triggered by instructions from FBI agent Brian Shepard to destroy evidence, Whitacre
claimed in a lawsuit filed Monday.

The surreptitious recordings made at ADM by
Whitacre - now the chief executive of a Chapel Hill startup, Biomar International Inc., and the former president of ADM's Bioproducts Division - set the scene for Decatur, Ill.-based ADM to pay a record $100 million fine and plead guilty to price-fixing.

Now Whitacre said a second set of tapes he made - the ones the FBI didn't know about - could be used as evidence in a lawsuit his lawyers have filed against Shepard.

Whitacre said that lawsuit is a prelude to filing a suit against the FBI itself. At any rate, one legal expert told Reuters that,
because the suit targets Shepard in his official capacity as an agent, Whitacre is effectively suing the FBI.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Urbana, Ill., claims that: - Shepard threatened Whitacre with criminal prosecution when
Whitacre asked to have his immunity agreement reviewed by a lawyer, even though another FBI agent advised him to do just that.
The FBI later decided that Whitacre had broken the immunity agreement, according to the suit, and last month charged him with price-fixing - the very crime he was recruited to uncover - along with two other former ADM executives.

- Shepard prevented Whitacre from seeking medical assistance for depression and "suicidal thoughts," which
Whitacre said were inspired by the stress of being an FBI mole.
Whitacre said he was diagnosed as a manic-depressive after he tried to commit suicide in August 1995.

-Whitacre was repeatedly subjected to "anger, shouting, threats of criminal prosecution and intimidation" from Shepard.

The FBI press office in Washington declined to comment on
Whitacre's lawsuit.

"We couldn't discuss or comment on pending litigation," an FBI spokesman said.

In an interview with The News & Observer late last week,
Whitacre said that, in retrospect, he was naive to agree to work as an FBI mole in the first place.

"What happened is, I had ADM on one side, the government on the other - both massive forces, and I am stuck in the middle with a big mess," Whitacre said.

Whitacre moved from the Midwest to Chapel Hill last September and took the job as chief executive officer of Biomar, which is
developing technology to predict, years in advance, whether someone is likely to contract cancer and other diseases.

Whitacre said that although he is seeking more than $1 million in compensatory damages - plus punitive damages - in his suit,
his primary motivation is "to put the cards on the table about what really happened."

Clearly, however, the lawsuit also is part of his defense against the criminal charge of price-fixing.
Whitacre has pleaded innocent to the charge.

ADM also has accused Whitacre of embezzling millions of dollars from the company, a charge he denies, saying the money he received was part of a company-approved, secret compensation plan for top executives. He has sued ADM for wrongful termination.

Whitacre said the seeds of his mistrust of the FBI were sowed when, early on, Shepard told him to destroy any tapes that made ADM look good - such as a recording that indicated ADM was involved in price-fixing involving fructose. (The price-fixing
case that eventually was pursued against ADM involved two other products, citric acid and lysine, an animal feed supplement.)

"He was saying ... this case was a 'tough sell.' To make it a higher priority, he wanted the best stuff to sell it as
a case," Whitacre said of Shepard. "If he didn't like a tape and thought it was bad for us, he would say ... this is a tape you have to go home and get rid of. Destroy it."

When Whitacre questioned the legality of destroying the tapes, according to the suit, Shepard said he would deny ever having issued such instructions. "Who are they going to believe, an FBI agent or you?" Shepard asked Whitacre.

Whitacre said he didn't destroy those tapes, however. He also said Shepard stopped ordering that tapes be destroyed after his
superiors made the case a priority.

The pending criminal case against Whitacre forced him to go public with the FBI's treatment of him and his manic-depression, despite his concerns about revealing his condition.

Whitacre said his depression is under control because of medication - and pointed out that prominent, successful people like Mike Wallace also have been diagnosed as manic-depressive.

Whitacre said of his lawsuit: "This gives people a sense of what could happen when you go undercover."

(Reuters contributed to this report.)

Our redesigned site

danbarkin — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:32:55 -0400

We are putting the final touches on a redesign of our web site. You can get a preview of our new look by clicking here.

Here's some of what we said in an introduction to changes that we have made. We'd like to hear what you think:

We have made many changes, some big and some small. Let's talk about some of the big ones.

Here's one cool feature. Go to the "Index" tab on the main toolbar at the top of the home page. When you click on it, you will find links to all of the sections on our web site.
Go to our News Grid and customize what you want to see. Click on the "Customize your news" link and choose from a menu of all kinds of stories on our site.
At the top of the home page, you'll see our "Featured Stories" showing you some of the best stories, photos and videos of the day. We have a deep and rich site, and we wanted to show you more of our stories and visual content.
Our search has been expanded to include items from our popular blogs, as well as our photo galleries and videos.
We have given the weather more prominence on our home page, including a quick way to find out what it's like at the beach and in the mountains.
We've added convenient tabs at the top of our story pages to help you navigate easily between the article, photos, videos and comments.
Our new Support Center will help you get answers to your questions and find a knowledge base that can help you get the most out of our site.

Covering the healthcare debate

linny — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:30:58 -0400

The news media spent much of the summer focusing on public gatherings where people denounced plans to overhaul the nation's healthcare system. A number of forums featuring people who think an overhaul is long overdue, and who generally support the Obama administration's efforts, also drew coverage.

We covered several in the Triangle, but missed a couple. Thus, we heard from forces both on the right and the left about "media conspiracies." We are keenly aware that some studiously count inches given to the "antis" and the "pros." We strive to be fair, but we don't think that merely keeping up with who is for, or against, something is adequately doing our jobs. In fact, we have a long history of covering the healthcare system and our coverage of the most recent overhaul effort has gone far beyond public demonstrations.

We will continue to strive for depth in our reporting on this issue, including following the action in Washington and examining the impact on local healthcare providers and the region's industries.

We do believe that hearing from individuals who will be affected by any changes, or no change, is also an important element of our coverage. We will soon begin a series featuring Triangle residents discussing healthcare and the question of whether a revamp is needed. We did not approach these people based on assumptions about their politics or where we think they might come down on the question of reform.

Rather, we looked for people from a wide variety of life circumstances and occupations. We asked them to talk about their personal situations, their concerns about the healthcare system and what specific changes, if any, would effectively address their concerns. One of the first to be featured is the owner of a small business. Others include physicians, insurance and hospital administrators, seniors on Medicare, people who lost health insurance with the loss of a job, people who have private insurance through work, and people who have chronic illnesses.

We think these personal stories will enlighten us all.

We welcome your feedback.

Linda Williams

Senior Editor/News

The Obama speech

danbarkin — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:46:00 -0400

All the controversy over the president's planned speech to school children reminds me of how things have changed. Everything is political now. Some people claim that President Obama is trying to create a cult of personality, like Mao or Saddam.

Or, hey, Eisenhower.

When I was a very young child growing up in a Boston suburb, I used to go home for lunch every day from school.

The noon TV show for kids was the Big Brother Bob Emery Show. (How is that for an Orwellian title?) Bob was a grandfather figure, and we did what Bob said. I don't remember much about the show's content, except this: He was big on making sure we drank our milk. So we would all be asked to raise our glasses while background music played "Hail to the Chief" and the camera focused on a portrait in the studio of President Dwight Eisenhower. Once the music finished, we would drink our toast to the commander in chief, finish our tuna on Wonder Bread and head back to school.

That Ike and his golf-club swinging, syntax-mangling cult of personality. Little did we know.

Tweeting the State game

danbarkin — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 10:59:39 -0400

Our sports writers will be blogging the key developments in the N.C. State - South Carolina game tonight at blogs.newsobserver.com/accnowlive, and if you want to follow along from your smart phone, sign up at twitter.com/accnowlive.

Here is what Eric Frederick, managing editor of newsobserver.com, says on accnowlive:

Return here tonight for regular updates
from our sports staff on the football season opener between N.C. State
and South Carolina at Carter-Finley Stadium. Kickoff is scheduled
shortly after 7 p.m.

If you won't be near a computer, you can get a Twitter feed of those same updates. Just go to www.twitter.com/accnowlive and click the Follow button to get the feed on your phone or other mobile device, and, of course, on your Twitter page.

If you have questions or suggestions, shoot me a note at eric.frederick@newsobserver.com. Enjoy the game.

Testy Elizabeth Edwards

danbarkin — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 08:11:16 -0400

The headline over staff writer Anne Blythe's story in today's paper, on 1B, read: "Edwards stays in public eye, guards her privacy."

Elizabeth Edwards was at UNC on Wednesday talking about her book. When Blythe wanted to ask her questions about the 800-pound gorilla in the room -- her husband's mistress going to the grand jury, the possibility that her husband John would be tested for paternity of the mistress's child, etc., etc. -- Edwards didn't want to talk. In Blythe's words, she got "testy."

She said: "Attention to things like this as opposd to the serious issues is one of the things that contributes to the dumbing down."

What are we supposed to do?

Absent John Edwards' globally notorious affair, absent the grand jury investigation into his campaign spending, the narrative would be exclusively about a courageous Elizabeth Edwards as she battles cancer. She has done some remarkable things. She is writing books and opening a furniture store and making public appearances despite her illness.

Here's her problem. Elizabeth Edwards is famous not because she has been an accomplished lawyer, a terrific mom, a writer of books and extraordinarily courageous in the face of a deadly disease. She is famous because her husband ran for president. And she may be more famous because of her husband's romp with That Woman. Her husband's national ambitions put her in the spotlight and his extracurricular activities have kept her there.

She now wants to continue being in the spotlight, but she wants to control where it shines. And she gets peeved when she can't control it.

Frankly, I'm OK that she got testy. I kind of like Elizabeth Edwards because she seems to show her real self. I'm not wild about political spouses, who, when their husbands' bimbo eruptions make headlines, smile through clenched teeth and talk about how this has all "made our marriage stronger."

Who wouldn't be testy? You feel awful and you have to deal with your husband's scandalous behavior. You still have things you want to accomplish, but these questions keep coming to step all over your message. (Although she poured a little gasoline on the fire the other day when she said on Larry King that she expected John to take a paternity test at some point.)

I sure couldn't handle it the way she's been handling it. If I were talking to her, I'd say, it's OK to show your displeasure in public when asked about scandalous matters. The reporters have to ask about it; it's their job. Your husband is the one who bears the major responsibility here for the dumbing down of the public dialogue. Anne Blythe had to point to the gorilla and ask: "What about that big hairy creature?" It's fine if you want to say, "Just ignore it." Do it testy, for all anyone cares. You're entitled.

Easley records: Trust the Patrol?

steveriley — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:22:15 -0400

With about two questions last week, our Dan Kane learned more about the disappearance of Highway Patrol travel records than the patrol did with two investigations.

Kane was interviewing secretary Diane Bumgardner about being ordered to delete records of Gov. Mike Easley's flights and events in 2003, 2004, and 2005. She had told internal investigators that Capt. Alan Melvin, then chief of Easley's security detail, had told her in 2006 to download the records to a computer disk and delete them in order to free memory on her computer.

So, Kane wondered, was your computer nearly out of memory?

No, Bumgardner said.

The patrol's four-page report makes it clear that investigators learned of the computer erasure late in the game, because they asked Bumgardner about it by telephone in a second interview. But there's no indication in the report that they ever went back to Melvin to ask what he did with the computer disk containing all those records.

The 2005 records of Easley's travel are considered important in the ongoing federal investigation of the former governor because 2005 is when a lot of things happened: Mary Easley was hired at N.C. State after the governor's emissaries pressed the case; the Easleys bought a coastal lot at a good price; and Easley confidant McQueen Campbell, who helped get Mrs. Easley her job at NCSU, got key environmental permits from Easley's administration that led him to brag about his political influence.

But back to the patrol. The check into the missing records led to a second internal investigation, this one into Melvin. He was placed on administrative leave as it progressed, then last month was reinstated to active duty by Col. Randy Glover, Gov. Beverly Perdue's choice to run the patrol.

We'd love to tell readers what the patrol learned in that report, but so far the agency and Crime Control and Public Safety Secretary Reuben Young have refused to give it up.

But we can presume that no one asked Melvin about Bumgardner's computer, or asked Bumgardner about her computer's memory. That's because Young was so disturbed by Kane's story on Saturday that he sent Melvin back to adminstrative duty and has ordered a new investigation, this one to be independent of the patrol.

Young "had not heard that information before," a patrol spokesman said.

Young is in a bit of a hard place here. He served as Gov. Easley's chief legal counsel, and his record in that job includes spending a few hours investigating The News & Observer's assertions in March 2008 that state agencies had been instructed by the governor's staff to destroy e-mail messages.

On March 5, he wrote to us: "I have concluded that there is absolutely no evidence to support your allegation."

A few weeks later, reporter Pat Stith showed otherwise with a story revealing that Easley's press office had instructed public information officers to delete e-mail to and from the governor's office.

BlackBerry/texting column

danbarkin — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:57:10 -0400

Not surprisingly, I got some lectures from readers on Monday about my column "defending" my habit of using my BlackBerry while driving. I put quote marks around defending because no individual in his right mind would enthusiastically defend such a practice. (Which raises questions about my faculties, and possession thereof.)

But given that Matthew Eisley was taking the "anti" position, they had to find someone to take the "pro" position in this new Monday feature, called Faceoff, and they roped me into the deal.

Obviously, I was not bringing my usual vim to this assignment -- as I tried to make clear -- but you gotta do what you gotta do. And I do believe that of all the menaces on the road -- speeders, drunk drivers -- that people who sneak an occasional peak at the BlackBerry aren't the worst problem. And you can still take and make calls on the road, so I don't know that the law banning texting is a model of consistency.

One guy who called to nicely give me the business let me know that he was a motorcycle rider. My feeling is that riding a motorcycle is not the safest activity, and I told him that. He said, yeah, but if I wipe out, I don't take a minivan out with me. I gave him that.

Another reader, an elderly lady, let me know that she was disappointed in me. I told her I would try to look at my BlackBerry only at stoplights. That seemed to mollify her.

This afternoon, me and Matthew are scheduled to go on WPTF to continue our debate, which I approach without ardor, hoping as I was to move on.

Fired by WRAL-TV

jdrescher — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:45:44 -0400

I've been canned by WRAL-TV.

In 2002, WRAL and The News & Observer joined forces on a weekly 30-minute news and public affairs show called "Headline Sunday" (later changed to "Headline Saturday"). The show was co-hosted by WRAL's David Crabtree and Melanie Sill, executive editor of The N&O. When Sill left for The Sacramento Bee in late 2007, I was named executive editor and joined Crabtree as co-host.

This week, Steve Hammel, WRAL's general manager, called to say he was changing the format of the show. Crabtree will host alone and the show won't be affiliated with The N&O, although N&O reporters could be invited to appear from time to time. Hammel was gracious and even gave me two weeks notice, meaning my last show will air Saturday, Aug. 22. By the way, neither I nor other N&O staffers who appear on the show are paid by WRAL, so this wasn't a cost-cutting move.

It's more about the pace of the show, Hammel said, which can quicken with a single anchor. Certainly, TV is not my medium -- even my own mother once pointed that out to me. (If your mother says you looked bad on television Saturday night, you probably did.) But I have enjoyed working with David Crabtree, floor director Stuart Todd and the rest of the crew at WRAL. They always made me feel welcome and helped a newspaper guy get through a television show. They are true professionals. We have a healthy rivalry with WRAL but there's no doubt it's a first-rate operation. I'd like to think we make each other better.

As for my co-hosting abilities, I might have erred in modeling myself after Ron Burgundy of the 2004 movie, "Anchorman." Still, as my TV career ends, I'd like to say: Stay classy, Triangle.

--John Drescher

The sterilization foundation

danbarkin — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:09:44 -0400

A few weeks ago I wrote a column about the new historical marker about the state Eugenics Board, which approved the sterilization of thousands of North Carolinians. The marker was installed to remind us of the shameful work of the board.

A few days later, I got a call from Nellie Webb, who lives in an oceanfront community. Nellie's her first name. She goes by her middle name of Ruth.

She is 59 years old, grew up outside Greenville, and was sterilized when she was 15.

She was sterilized in the infirmary, she says, of the girls reform school where she was sent. "I remember them putting me on the table, and they sterilized me, and they kept me in a room by myself for a solid week." The experience left her shattered, psychologically scarred, she said. Talking to her reminded me exactly of my conversation several weeks ago with another sterilization victim, Elaine Riddick.

There has been a proposal floating around to compensate sterilization victims like Ms. Webb, maybe $20,000 each. Rep. Larry Womble, a Winston-Salem Democrat and the leader in the campaign to help the victims, acknowledged that the compensation legislation isn't going anywhere for the moment. Thousands of North Carolinians were sterilized, and we could be talking about millions of dollars to pay victims who are still alive.

But, Representative Womble said, there's an appropriation of $250,000 to set up a foundation that would coordinate, among other things, a compensation program if and when it's funded. One of the things the foundation would do would be to gather the names of people who come forward, look into their cases, and administer the compensation process, if the legislature ever comes up with payments for victims.

With all the to and fro over the budget, I checked Tuesday to see if the foundation money was still in there. I could have spent hours hunting, so I emailed Ben Niolet, who covers the legislature for us and for you. He called me back and told me to look on Page 143 of the conference committee report on the budget.

Here is what it said: "Funding is provided for planning efforts associated with the establishment of the Justice for Sterilization Victims foundation. This foundation will provide justice and compensate victims who were forcibly sterilized by the State of North Carolina between 1929 and 1974."

$250K. So that's something.

Travels with Harry and Bess

danbarkin — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 11:50:58 -0400

Got a call from a reader who read my blog post about the presidential motorcade, reprinted in Sunday's paper, and how things have evolved since Harry Truman used to travel rather lightly guarded.

Nancy Proia commended for my reading pleasure a book by author Matthew Algeo called "Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure. The True Story of a Great American Road Trip."

When he left office, Harry and Bess decided to drive from Missouri to the East Coast and back again.

I had originally read about this in David McCullough's biography of Truman. Imagine George W. Bush or Bill Clinton cranking up the Buick and driving around America, without Secret Service agents or an entourage, staying at Hampton Inns, grabbing meals at fast-food restaurants. Well, maybe Bill Clinton.

Obama's visit

danbarkin — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:00:26 -0400

We had indications this morning that President Obama might be driving right by our building on South McDowell Street. The police had posted signs telling everyone to keep their cars off the street in front of our building. That's a clue. Around 11 a.m., there were crowds of the curious assembling on both sides of the street, and around 45 minutes to an hour later, the traffic in front of our building ceased. That never happens, which is why when you pull out of our parking lot, you need to say a prayer and burn rubber.

Then we saw the first Highway Patrol cars that probably escorted him from RDU and Air Force 1. Looked like a lot of troopers. Then came the caravan of black SUVs, followed by the mandatory EMT vehicles, followed by more trooper escort vehicles. I was there with my cell phone trying to take some pictures, which I've uploaded here. Now I have no idea whether President Obama was in either of these SUVs or one of the others that sped by. And I was focusing on shooting the picture with my new Blackberry Curve cell phone, and so I didn't try to peek into the windows, which look like they are tinted anyway. Heck, this may have all been a decoy and he was being driven in on Wade Avenue in an old Buick for all I know.

I do think that it's unfortunate that the president, for his security, has to be driven fast through city streets accompanied by a detail of dozens of law enforcement vehicles. In the old days, and I mean the old days, President Truman used to take brisk walks in Washington accompanied by a couple of guys. I've seen pictures. Presidents used to ride in open cars through downtowns, their limos moving very slowly. This all changed, of course, in Dallas 45 years ago, and now we've got these speedy presidential motorcades in armored cars.

Two new blogs

danbarkin — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:21:47 -0400

Staff photo by Juli Leonard

We've launched two new blogs. One is .biz, the business blog. The other is Mouthful, the food blog.

Here's a link to a post by Andrea Weigl, our food writer, about what the food blog is all about.

And this is what the business editors said about their new blog:

This is your window into the world of Triangle business. It's the
source for news on local companies and people who keep capitalism moving. It's your exclusive tip sheet on deals, squabbles and the whimsy that makes this region's industries interesting.

The blog is maintained by the reporters and editors of the N&O business staff, including Alan M. Wolf, Sue Stock, Jonathan B. Cox, Jack Hagel, David Ranii, John Murawski and Mary Cornatzer.

UNC's Steve Streater, RIP

jdrescher — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:16:10 -0400

The N&O's Matt Ehlers reported recently on the life and death of former UNC football player Steve Streater, who was paralyzed in a car wreck in 1981 after signing a contract with the Washington Redskins. As a Carolina student, Steater lived hard, on and off the field. "Steve was just a full-speed guy," said teammate Bobby Cale. Ehlers reported that Streater started a fashion trend among his fellow defensive backs, encouraging them to wear gloves on their hands and elbow pads on their knees.

At age 22, he was paralyzed, unable to use his legs. For the most part, Streater's personality didn't change. Among other things, he coached a semi-pro football team and coordinated the state's Students Against Drunk Driving program (Streater was sober when he wrecked near the Raleigh-Durham Airport). "Steve lived life like we always think we should," said his brother, Eric Streater.

I spent a day with Streater in the summer of 1981, a few months after he was paralyzed. He was at a rehabilitation hospital in Charlotte, preparing for life in a wheelchair. He had charmed the staff. He was upbeat and working hard. "I don't have time to sit around and get down on myself," he told me. "I've got a lot of things to do, a lot of hard work to do."

That hard work included getting used to a specially equipped car. He was practicing getting into the car, folding his wheelchair and placing it in the back seat. Think about doing that while sitting in the front seat of a car. Using a cord attached to the chair, he tried for 15 minutes to pull the folded chair into the car. He tried and tried and finally the chair tipped and fell to the pavement. He looked down for a second, discouraged. But just for a second. Five minutes later, the chair was in the back seat of the car.

"It hasn't changed me any," he said of his paralysis. "I'm still the same Steve."

Maybe that's the ultimate tribute to Streater: Even after a devastating wreck sent his life on a difficult course, he was still the same Steve.

How Chuck Liddy got the Madoff shot

danbarkin — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:15:07 -0400

You might have seen the photo online Tuesday and on Wednesday's print front page of Bernie Madoff entering the federal prison complex at Butner, up in Granville County. N&O photojournalist Chuck Liddy got the shot as a result of a little luck and a lot of experience.

We were aware that Madoff was supposed to be coming to Butner, where he will serve out his 150-year sentence for engineering one of the greatest frauds in history, a Ponzi scheme of epic proportions.

We actually planned to do a story telling our readers about Butner, which is a sprawling group of prisons about 45 miles northwest of Raleigh, pegged to the news that Madoff had been assigned there. To illustrate the story, a decision was made to send Liddy, who would shoot some photos for the complex and its surroundings. We didn't know if Madoff was coming Tuesday, or Wednesday or in a week, because all we knew was that he was temporarily at a federal lockup in Atlanta.

When Liddy got to Butner, TV crews were across the street from the facility, and the buzz was that Madoff was on the way from Atlanta.

Literally five minutes after Liddy parked his car, a bus pulled into the complex, and backed up to a building. Liddy had to stay across the road from the complex and maneuver for an angle that would let him see the prisoners getting off the bus and entering the building. At the same time, federal corrections staffers weren't making things easy, trying to position a vehicle to block the view of the front door of the bus.

But Liddy ran up the road until he found an angle that gave him a clean shot with a long lense of a few feet between the bus and the building. About a four-foot space. "And I just wait." The first guy who comes into view is a guard. The next one is a big fellow. Then comes a prisoner with grey hair, long in the back. Liddy took four quick shots in the seconds that Madoff traversed that four feet between the bus and the building.

Liddy estimates that he was about two football fields away.

The photo was moved by The Associated Press and has pretty much run everywhere in the country.

What's on TV tonight?

linny — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:39:51 -0400

Who needs a newspaper to answer that question?

In the age of cable and satellite TV, few people actually need the newspaper's guide to decide what to watch on a day-to-day basis. They look to the newspaper for stories about TV, TV celebrity gossip, occasional reviews and news of trends in television entertainment. In addition to print, we provide a TV blog that includes short reviews, news and gossip tidbits and a forum to discuss TV shows.

But a significant number of people want their daily newspaper to provide a generous listing describing what's on the tube and at what time they need to be on the sofa. Some really want it. In fact, they demand it.

We knew this to be true even as we made the difficult decision to sharply reduce the one-page guide that we had printed six days a week for several years.

In recent years, TV viewing habits have changed drastically. Many people rarely watch a TV show when it is scheduled to air. They rely on DVR devices with generous capacity to record hours of programs. They can program the DVR to record all episodes of their favorite shows to view at their leisure. Some watch their favorite shows on their computer screens. Others have digital cable and satellite services with elaborate on-screen guides that can be sorted not only by time and channel but by genre.

Even people with basic cable have a TV guide channel. I've been hearing from cable subscribers who emphatically state that they know that they can get guide information from the TV screen, but they just don't want to. They want to lay out the paper and plan their viewing day.

Traditionally, the general interest newspaper has provided a wide variety of informaton. However, with revenue declining, we cannot continue to absorb the high costs of content that is not essential to our core mission of providing in-depth local news, and for which the audience is shrinking.

We now provide by subscription only a weekly guide to readers who get the paper at home and we have reduced the daily guide a quarter page.

In choosing the channels for the reduced guide, we gave priority to the local channels and listed what we had indications were the most popular basic cable channels.

Many of you are unhappy. We hear you and appreciate the depth of your disappointment at having something you personally valued taken away.

We cannot restore the full-page guide. Reducing the size of the type to include a lot more channels will hurt readabilty.

However, we are re-evaluating the mix of channels we offer. We may eliminate a few channels with content similiar to other channels on the list in order to add channels with a different type of content. We may be able to make a small adjustment in the type size to increase the number of channels to 30, from the current 29 channels.

Thanks for your responses.

Linda Williams

Senior Editor/News

Deceased reader: N&O needs edge

jdrescher — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:48:00 -0400

Two faithful readers passed away recently with The N&O on their minds near the end of their lives.

The first was Sen. Vernon Malone of Raleigh, who died in April. Malone, 77, died on a Saturday after mowing his lawn and relaxing with his daily newspaper. That prompted various jokes when his friends and family gathered to honor him. "Saint Peter reached out and grabbed Vernon's hand, and the last thing he saw was The News & Observer," Gov. Beverly Perdue said during a service honoring Malone. Perdue said that image made her "just guffaw." Insert your own joke here (actually, insert it below). Read more about the Malone service here.

Another loyal N&O reader, Russell Buxton III of Cary, died 10 days ago. Buxton, 74, had been ill in recent years but was determined to make it to his 50th wedding anniversary on June 21, The N&O's Ruth Sheehan reported. He made it. He died June 24.

When his children were younger, Buxton used The N&O to stimulate debate at the dinner table. He would clip out an editorial or opinion column, especially those opposing his children's views. Then he would ask his son and daughter to argue the other side.

His wife, JoAnn, told Sheehan: "Russell was always willing to share his views but he was particularly vocal during the last six months." Which might explain the note he wrote me about three weeks ago. He said The N&O was soft. "The N&O used to be a hard-hitting paper on Democrats as well as Republicans on exposing where money goes when it shouldn't go there, abuses of power, etc.," he wrote. "I wish you would get back your edge."

We're working on it, Mr. Buxton. If you have a good tip, please send it our way.

--John Drescher

NC Waterfalls

danbarkin — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:31:39 -0400

Photojournalist Chuck Liddy's Western NC waterfall project kicked off with help from multimedia guru Lamonte Garrett. It was the cover of our Arts & Living section Sunday and you can see the online version here.

Weather changes - feedback wanted

danbarkin — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:38:59 -0400

We're shrinking the size of the weather info in the paper from a half page to a quarter page. Times aren't easy - you know that - and we're having to make choices about how to save money. So when we have to reduce the number of pages we print each day, something's got to give. What we have tried to do is eliminate some of the space-consuming visual elements while keeping information.

We have put a prototype of the what the weather information will look like and what it will contain. We'd like to hear suggestions about what info we should include and what we should leave out. There are a lot of different ideas about what's important. I have heard from the dew point lobby, the humidity lobby, the moon phase lobby, etc.

Go here and leave your comments. We're shooting for making the change around July 7.

Dow 20,000

danbarkin — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:01:08 -0400

A few minutes ago I glanced up at the TV and there was Ralph Acampora on CNBC, predicting where the market would go. He said that stocks were going to go down for a spell. Maybe he's right. He has a 50-50 chance.

I hadn't seen Ralph in 10 years. Last time I saw him, we were sitting in an empty hall at the Sheraton Imperial. At the time, Acampora was a star technical analyst for Prudential Securities. This was May 1999, and I was the business editor of the N&O. I asked him: Where do you think stocks are headed.

Here is what he told me: "For me, I'm maybe talking 20,000 in five years, something like that - 2006 maybe."

As we all know, that didn't happen. When we talked, the Dow was at 10,559. By the next January, it had risen to 11,723. Acampora looked prescient. Then the dot.com meltdown occured. And 9/11. By early October 2002, the Dow was down to 7,286, or more than 30 percent below where it was when I interviewed Acampora. He's not looking so good.

Then it started climbing back up, peaking at 14,164 in October 2007. Acampora is starting to look prescient again. Then the subprime mortgages start going belly up, taking the banking system down, and the Dow craters, losing half its value by last winter. Again, Acampora's 20,000 looks like a mirage.

Since then, the Dow has gone up, gone down, gone sideways. It is now 8,322. I have no idea where it's going, but one thing is for sure.

When I watch CNBC and hear analysts make predictions, I am reminded of what screenwriter William Goldman once wrote about Hollywood: "Nobody knows anything." What he meant was that none of the smart guys in Hollywood who lunch over beet salad at Spago in Beverly Hills had any real basis for knowing how well a movie would fare commercially.

I think that's true when it comes to making predictions about the stock market.

Acampora is now teaching future market analysts in New York how to read the tea leaves, when not making bold predictions on CNBC.

He actually comes off looking better than James Glassman and Kevin Hassett, who jointly authored the 1999 book: "Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market. It is available for 96 cents (used) on Amazon.com.

Cost of living adjustment for baseball salaries

danbarkin — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:50:22 -0400

When I see unadjusted comparisons of salary figures between today and decades ago, I always want to take out my calculator. Today's example was in our Sports section, on page 6C. The AP reporter, writing about the retirement of Don Fehr, head of the players' union, was trying to make a point about how salaries had increased during Fehr's tenure.

He noted that the average salary when Fehr took over 26 years ago in 1983 was $289,000 and by last year it had risen to $2.9 million.

That seems like a meteoric rise. But when you adjust it for inflation, the 1983 average is more like around $624,000. I use the cost-of-living calculator of the American Institute for Economic Research. Different calculators will give somewhat different results, but you get the idea.

Now, going from an apples-to-apples average of $624k to $2.9 million is nothing to sneeze at, but it's not as dramatic as the 10-fold increase suggested by the article.

But forget about averages for the moment. There is no question that the baseball stars of today - as opposed to the journeymen - are making hugely more money than the stars of yesteryear. When Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale of the Los Angeles Dodgers staged their famous battle to get better contracts before the 1966 season, they eventually got around $125k for Koufax and $110k for Drysdale. These were arguably two of the best pitchers in baseball history. In current dollars, Koufax ended up getting around $800,000 a year and Drysdale $720,000.

If they were playing today, they would be making between $15 million and $20 million a year. Apiece.

There is no question that star ballplayers were way underpaid before the era of free agency and the quarter century-plus of Don Fehr at the helm of the players union. Can you imagine getting both Koufax and Drysdale for around $1.5 million, combined?

A Father's Day blog post

danbarkin — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 13:52:52 -0400

A little while ago I was sitting in church enjoying a Von Trapp Family moment. On the stage were my son, who was playing backup guitar, my son-in-law, who is the music director and lead guitarist; his brother, who was the drummer; and my wife and daughter, who are in the choir.

And, because this is a summer weekend and people are on vacation, they actually were the choir.

I, lacking any musical talent, was in the back of the church.

During the sermon, they sat back down and my son came over to sit with me, and he put his arm around me.

It was a good Father's Day moment.

He is a big lug who now towers over me. I remember when I used to be able to carry him on my shoulders, but that was a long time ago.

A couple of years ago, when he turned 18, he talked me into getting a tattoo with him. I wrote a story about it and they ran it in the paper on Father's Day in 2007. Here it is.

A couple of weeks ago, my daughter marked her first anniversary. In October 2007, when we were in the early stages of preparing for her wedding, I wrote a story about what it was like to be assuming the role of the father of the bride. Here it is.

Growing old

danbarkin — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:06:55 -0400

The last couple of days I was thinking about getting old. I taped a Headline Saturday show over at WRAL, and the subject was the coming rise in the elderly population.

I taped the show because John Drescher, who usually does it with David Crabtree, was on vacation this week.

Also on the show with me was Tommy Goldsmith, who covers aging issues for us, and the guests on the other side of the table were Ran Coble, exec director of the N.C. Center for Public Policy Research, and Dennis Streets, head of the division of aging and adult services.

Coble's outfit just released a report looking at the coming surge in the number of seniors as the Baby Boomers start hitting 65, and also the rising number of people in their 80s and 90s. If you want to see a summary of it, go here.

The show airs 7 p.m. Saturday.

If you watch it, you will see that in the beginning of the show, Crabtree turns to me to ask the first question. At that very moment, I blanked. I faked it for a few seconds, stole a desperate glance at my notes, saw my question and saved myself. That will explain why my question had a slightly long windup. This is why I am not in television, aside from the obvious lack of good hair. It is also a good idea to write down your questions in case your mind goes blank.

Questions wanted

danbarkin — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:26:30 -0400

I'm taping Headline Saturday tomorrow, which airs on WRAL 7 p.m. Saturday. The show will be on the issues surrounding the growth in the elderly population, and how we're going to meet the needs of a rapidly increasing group of seniors. If any of you have any questions you'd like me to ask, email me at dbarkin@newsobserver.com. The show tapes at 9:30 a.m., and I'll check my email beforehand.

Father's Day gift guide

danbarkin — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:19:28 -0400

Alex Webb and Mike Zlotnicki have put together a Father's Day gift guide that will run in our Outdoors section in Sports Thursday. This will be good for anyone who's trying to get a last-minute gift for the dad who hunts or fishes.

Webb's day job is chief technology guru here at the N&O. He keeps stuff running. Mike, our Outdoors editor, has been in Michigan at an outdoors writers conference, a gathering of guys who talk about things I have no knowledge of. He's been blogging on it.

John Wall's so last year

danbarkin — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:04:56 -0400

Tim Stevens, our preps editor, had an interesting post on his Preps Now blog about Rodney Purvis, a local basketball player who has justed finished up his eighth grade and is getting wide notice for his skills. I'm expecting that recruiting sites on the internet will eventually start scouting promising third graders with exceptional crossover moves and quick first step.

This is the skinny from HoopsReport.com: "Rodney Purvis-I can’t believe he is only an 8th grade. Nice looking prospect."

There you have it. Rodney Purvis, projected high NBA draft choice in 2014 or so.

Seriously, one of the things Tim always tells me is that you can never, ever, tell what's going to happen to some promising 14-15-year-old. Some kids just develop earlier, but then plateau, and don't amount to anything special. Some talented kids don't want to work hard and fall by the wayside, and never make it to college because of poor grades and a bad attitude. The guys who eventually make it to Division 1 programs and to the NBA are not always the most talented basketball players on the planet. The playgrounds are filled with great players who lack the discipline and the mental toughness to stay in school, follow the rules and keep away from trouble.

So making any kind of projections about 8th graders is a dicey proposition at best.

Smile, Mr. President

danbarkin — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:39:16 -0400

Bill Clinton, in town for the John Hope Franklin tribute, was eating dinner at Sullivan's, as was a group of graduating seniors from Leesville Road High. They asked him if he would pose for a picture, and he did. Go here to see the photo.

Data Centers

danbarkin — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:35:18 -0400

Want to learn more about those server farms and data centers that North Carolina has been recruiting? The New York Times has a long story that will be going in its Sunday magazine. If you have an inexhaustible appetite for stories about these things, this is for you.

The Price Book

danbarkin — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:40:54 -0400

Last weekend we went live with the Triangle Price Book, which is a way to comparison shop for common grocery items. This is the brainchild of our retail reporter and coupon gury Sue Stock, who developed this in conjunction with David Raynor, who is the database expert in our News Research Department. Sue has given the Price Book a good start by filling it with items, but one of the strengths of this is that anyone can post their own price information about products. Check it out and see if you want to help.

Here is what Sue wrote on the Price Book page:

"Many shoppers keep an individual price book to track the prices of items they buy regularly. This allows them to get a good idea of what a good price is for those items. It also helps them figure out how frequently those items go on sale . . .
The goal for the Triangle Price Book is that we will all benefit from pooling our information to create a community price book that covers all of the stores in our area.
By participating, you will help other shoppers. And you will be able to see how prices on items you want to buy vary by store over a long period of time."

Garner guy makes good

danbarkin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:41:33 -0400

Mark Puente, who lived in Garner while he attended UNC several years ago, is the subject of a nice story in Cleveland Magazine. Mark covers the police for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Before he was a reporter, he was a truck driver. His stories about funny business in the Cuyahoga County sheriff's office led to the resignation of the sheriff and a state investigation.

I had a shot at hiring Mark but lost out to the Plain Dealer. You can read more about Mark here. There's also a video of Mark talking about one of his stories.

A familiar byline

linny — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:00:30 -0400

Long-time readers of the N&O may have noticed on the cover of Sunday's Arts & Living the return of a familiar staff byline.

Elizabeth Leland was the author of "You are the gift", a feature article about the concept of acknowledging a kindness by "paying it forward." The subject of the excellent piece was a Charlotte woman who paid it forward all the way to Cambodia after she was involved in a wreck on a Georgia highway and was cared for by a stranger.

Elizabeth, an award-winning writer at The Charlotte Observer, was an N&O staff writer covering courts and politics some 20 years ago. Among her recent state and national honors are a Green Eyeshade Award from the Society for Professional Journalists, a Women in Communications Award and recognition for her work from the National Association of Black Journalists. We are pleased that a merger of the News & Observer and Charlotte Observer features staffs returns Elizabeth to the N&O pages under a staff byline.

Under the merger, features writers in both cities contribute content for features sections published daily by the N&O and the Charlotte Observer. We have a similarly merged state Capitol Bureau and a sports staff for the two McClatchy-owned newspapers.

The combination of the features staffs is our latest effort to maximize for readers in Raleigh and Charlotte the benefit of more reporting resources and writing talent.

Linda Williams

Senior Editor

The Commerce trip to France

danbarkin — Fri, 29 May 2009 10:30:52 -0400

We had a story in today's paper by Jon Cox about the N.C. Commerce Department's plans to spend $137,500 on a trip to the International Air Show outside Paris to recruit businesses to bring jobs here. Much of the cost will pay for having an exhibit at the show, more than $107,000.

Whether this is a good idea depends on whether you think European CEOs are likely to decide on building a plant here because they went by the booth, picked up some brochures, smacked their foreheads and said "Zut alors! We must go to Kinston!"

I don't know as it works that way. I think that foreign CEOs probably know where North Carolina is and how it would fit into their global logistical and marketing network. But I could be wrong, because I have never personally tried to recruit a business to come here.

I am reminded that one of the biggest companies to set up shop here, Cisco Systems, found us just fine without going to a trade show.

Back in 1992, the head of Cisco at the time, a guy named John Morgridge, came here from Silicon Valley and met with folks at Centennial Campus. He was very secretive; basically, the folks here knew he was a technology executive from California interested in opening up a facility here. He also met with then-Gov. Jim Hunt for about an hour, a meeting that was supposed to last just 10 minutes. One of the great things about Jim Hunt was that if you were a businessman interested in setting up shop here, he'd meet with you. The man took recruiting seriously.

A couple of years later, after a lot of work by state and local officials, Cisco announced it was opening a regional headquarters in RTP that would employ hundreds of people. It has become an important part of the local economy.

This is how a lot of recruitment happens. Some company needs an East Coast facility, or likes something about our workforce, and gets in touch with the state. Big companies have people on staff who are constantly scouting new locations, or they hire people who do that for them.

It would be interesting to know how many of the companies who have come to North Carolina found us, and how many had the idea planted by state or local business recruiters. Commerce put out a fact sheet noting that from 2001 to 2008, European companies invested $1.1 billion in North Carolina, creating 5,800 jobs. What's hard to know is whether this would have happened anyway, even if no state recruiters bought booths at air shows or flew across the Atlantic to pitch North Carolina to foreign CEOs.

Answering that question would require a lot of analysis, but it's an important question to answer before we can say whether paying for a presence at an air show in Paris is a good or bad idea.

It is also worth noting that some of the best companies here were started by local people. Nobody wined and dined them when they were professors at N.C. State (like Jim Goodnight) or UNC (like Dennis Gillings) with an idea for a business that would eventually employ thousands.

The surest path to job creation is not to cozy up to some French CEO. He may open a plant here, but he'll close it in a hurry if he can get a cheaper workforce somewhere else. He doesn't care about North Carolina. The surest path is to have an educated workforce and smart entrepreneurs who live here, have roots here, and want to stay here. The only incentive they need is the prospect of getting rich.

How we got the scoop on the RDU goop

jdrescher — Wed, 27 May 2009 13:34:03 -0400

In the last seven days, the most read story on newsobserver.com has been Bruce Siceloff's Tuesday article, "Corrosive goop mystifies RDU." Siceloff reported on mystery goop that has occasionally splattered and damaged cars in the Raleigh-Durham International Airport parking deck since the deck was completed in 2003. The airport has hired an engineering consultant to explain what the gunk is.

Siceloff was tipped off a few weeks ago by an aggrieved traveler. He phoned Siceloff, who covers transportation for The N&O. "He flies every week, his nice car had been messed up several times, this never happens in other parking decks and he was upset about it," Siceloff said. But he declined to give his name. Siceloff made a public records request from RDU, which revealed internal memos, e-mails and claims from travelers. Several of those who filed claims were quoted in the story.

Siceloff's weekly column, "Road Worrier," runs every Tuesday in the print N&O and online. You can read his blog, "Crosstown Traffic," at newsobserver.com.

--John Drescher

Katherine Fritsch

danbarkin — Tue, 26 May 2009 08:45:52 -0400

N&O photojournalist Chris Seward usually spends his time in the RBC watching big lugs bang into each other on the ice. Several days ago, he photographed a somewhat smaller subject, Katherine Fritsch, the 10-year-old girl who sings the National Anthem before Canes games.

You can see his photo gallery and also hear her sing the anthem on our multimedia channel. You can also read Matt Ehlers' story about Katherine.

Naturally, this being the playoffs, a fight broke out in the comment section below Matt's story, provoked by a Pittsburgh fan's snarky comment. Jeepers, guy, it was a great story about a sweet, talented girl. Fortunately, another Pittsburgh fan jumped in and apologized, saying "I wish he would just shut up and quit giving Pittsburgh people a bad name."

Chelada

danbarkin — Thu, 21 May 2009 08:43:12 -0400

Two things jumped out at me about the story on Rep. Cary Allred in today's paper, by staff writer Ben Niolet.

First was my discovery of the chelada phenomenon. Allred, whose behavior on the House floor triggered an investigation, said that he had consumed one chelada on the day in question. The story describes this as a mixture of beer, tomato juice and clam juice.

It is not often that you find out about The Latest Hot Trend by reading legislative stories, but when I subsequently Googled chelada, I found out that I am way behind, as usual, on the buzz. Everyone is talking about cheladas on the Web.

Evidently, it packs a kick. One chelada and the sergeant at arms of the N.C. House of Representatives is assigned by the Speaker to write a report about your activities. So it says here to stay away from a quick chelada if you have to, uh, function.

The second thing was the statement in the sergeant at arms' report that Allred said to a colleague at one point: "I am 62 years old, and I'm worth $2 million. People ought to show me respect."

It's not clear whether he wanted respect mostly because he was 62, or mostly because he has $2 mill, or both. As I get older, I think people should give you respect, regardless of your financial situation. Life experience makes one wiser. Yeah.

And if you are 62 and have a high net worth, people should absolutely give you more respect, because, as we have seen, rich, aging Baby Boomers are, on the whole, prudent and clear-thinking, especially when it comes to running large, highly leveraged financial institutions. I think we can all hoist a frosty chelada on that score.

Mary Easley's decision

danbarkin — Tue, 19 May 2009 09:01:18 -0400

Yesterday, three top leaders in the state's university system urged Mary Easley to resign her $170,000-a-year job at N.C. State. It was our lead story in today's paper.

As of this morning, there is no word that she has done so.

The leaders were Erskine Bowles, president of the UNC system; Hannah Gage, chairwoman of the board of the UNC system; and James Oblinger, chancellor of N.C. State.

Here's the problem they face. The former first lady signed an $850,000, five-year contract last summer. Bowles has indicated he's not interested in buying her out.

But a contract is a contract. If Bowles doesn't want to pay her to go, and she doesn't want to quit, then someone may have to show that Mary Easley has not fulfilled the terms of the contract, and that such a breach gives the UNC system or N.C. State the right to declare it void.

What we don't know is the appetite on either side to go through a protracted lawsuit. But I'd imagine it's hard to walk away from the remaining $700K of a deal with no go-away money, if you're Mary Easley. She's a lawyer and her husband, former Gov. Mike Easley, is a lawyer, and they both took Contracts in law school, I'll bet. And Mary Easley may have taught it at N.C. Central when she was a professor there, before she went to work at State.

The Republicans in the state legislature say they are prepared to offer budget language to cut Mary Easley's position, but it's not clear whether that would take N.C. State off the hook as far as her contract is concerned. And the Republicans don't run things, so it's not clear that this will go anywhere.

If Bowles and Co. want to try to make the case that Mary Easley was not performing up to the terms of her contract, then the obvious question is: When did you discover that, and why didn't anyone do anything about it before the N&O published its Executive Privilege series earlier this month? If they can't prove a breach, and the former First Lady decides not to quit, then what?

Canes photo gallery

danbarkin — Mon, 18 May 2009 08:20:27 -0400

Kevin Keister, our sports photo editor, and Rachel Carter, our sports producer for online, have collaborated to create a useful photo gallery of Canes players. If you are coming late to the Hurricanes' playoff party, this is a good way to become familiar with the players.

The pictures are game shots of the players. Kevin added in a photo of what each player looks like when they aren't wearing their helmets or goalie masks and when they were smiling for the camera as opposed to slamming an opponent into the boards and the like. You forget, when you see them on the ice, how young these guys look.

Kevin and Rachel put this gallery together over the weekend, in the aftermath of the Canes' Game 7 victory over the Boston Bruins. We wanted to have it up today, before the Canes play Pittsburgh in the first game of the Eastern Conference finals tonight.

This was a tight window, made even tighter because we wanted to be able to promote it on the front of the special Hurricanes section wrapped around Sports. Once we knew that the photo gallery was going to be ready, Jessaca Giglio, our Sports designer, was able to get the promo onto the front of the wrap.

The Canes wrap came together largely through the hustle of writers Chip Alexander, Luke DeCock and J.P. Giglio, (Jess's husband, btw). And a lot of work by the copy editors in Sports last night - Teri Boggess, Kip Coons, Mike Farrell, and Bill Woodward. You don't see the names of the copy editors and designers, but you see their work every day, and nothing happens without them.

Goobers 3, Bruins 2 (OT)

danbarkin — Fri, 15 May 2009 08:04:08 -0400

After last night's huge win by the Canes in Boston, Dan Shaughnessy, the Globe columnist, did not back away from his previous dissing of us-all.

"Chalk one up for Carolina and their fandom of Goobers." That's what he wrote in his column. He also had an obligatory Tobacco Road reference.

My, aren't we rednecks amusing.

Now, on to the Eastern Conference Finals wherein we will find out whether the folks at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette have mastered their stereotypes as well as Shaughnessy. And Shaughnessy, you can go back to covering Big Papi's struggles at the plate.

Dan, we hardly knew ye, and you hardly knew us.

About us goobers

danbarkin — Thu, 14 May 2009 09:11:29 -0400

It does not surprise me that when the Carolina Hurricanes play a team from the higher latitudes, such as Michigan or Massachusetts, in the Stanley Cup playoffs, that newspaper columnists from the north make fun of us.

We are Mayberry. Or, as Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe recently put it, we are "goobers." Same thing.

This is what some writers do when they have no clue about what's south of Foxborough, or they are hurting on deadline for something to say.

I have lived south of the Mason-Dixon since 1971. I came down from the suburbs of Boston to attend college. I have never once regretted it.

Boston is a terrific place to live, but it is a very provincial place. If your whole concept of the South is derived from watching the Andy Griffith Show, then I guess you can't fathom how this region has changed in the past few decades because your worldview doesn't extend much past Hopkinton, where they start the Marathon.

Boston's nickname is the Hub. As in Hub of the Universe. I am not original with this observation: There's an old joke that if a celestial rock obliterated Los Angeles, the Boston Globe headline the next day would be "Hub Man Perishes/As Comet Devastates LA.

I'd like to take Shaughnessy over to Cary's SAS, one of the biggest private software companies in the world. Or over to Research Triangle Park. Or over to Centennial Campus at N.C. State. Or the American Tobacco Campus in Durham. Or to Red Hat.

I know, I know. I'm starting to sound like the folks at the chamber of commerce who, every time there is a slight to this region in an out-of-town newspaper, begin reciting all its cutting-edge companies, its swell amenities, etc. etc. Stern letter to follow.

Truth is, we don't have to defend ourselves. People vote with their feet. Between 2000 and 2006, the population of Boston was essentially flat, up 0.3 percent. It would have dropped, no doubt, except that the Hub's world-class technology companies and universities draw in lots of folks from all over the planet.

During the same period, Raleigh's population grew by 25 percent.

People didn't come here because they made a wrong turn on Route 128 and kept going until they saw "For Sale" signs at Wakefield. They came here because this is where you can get a house for less than $785,000 (the price of a falling-down shack in my home town of Newton), because they can get jobs, because they have grown tired of cranking up the snow blower every third day.

Some of the folks who came to Raleigh, no doubt, have Southie (not Southern) accents. To them, I say, wicket cool that you are heah.

Night games

danbarkin — Wed, 13 May 2009 07:30:00 -0400

It's Tuesday night, and the Canes game just started around 7:15. If the game is over in regulation, it will be over sometime between 9:15 and 9:45. This is actually pretty good, because usually the games haven't been starting until 7:40 or so.

Night games are a challenge for us, because we have to have our last page to the press room by 10:30 for the State edition. Sometimes we can get a few more minutes, but not a lot, because the State edition has to be printed by 11:30, so the press room can move on to the Final edition. The Final, which goes to most of our readers, has to start up by 12:20 most nights and be finished by 3:30 a.m. We're trying to give our carriers enough time to drop the papers on driveways before the sun comes up.

Here's what happens with night games. Our reporters and photographers don't wait until the horn ends the game. The writers are putting together a running account of the game, which they then top with a lede (not a typo, that's how it's spelled) when they have a result. So Chip Alexander pretty much has his State edition story written when the game ends, and he sends it from the RBC to an editor downtown. Our photographers, like Chris Seward, are sending photos to Kevin Keister, the photo editor, throughout the game, and he's looking for the right shots to put in print. After the game ends, the stories and columns are edited and a page designer, who has a couple of holes in her layout reserved for them, finishes her pages and sends them to the press room.

Actually, they aren't actually in the press room yet. First, the pages have to go through imagesetters, which convert the digital page files to full-page films. These films are then put on a plate burner, where they are exposed to a very bright light and the page images are burned onto flexible plates. The plates are carried into the press room, put on the press cylinder, and the the press is cranked up.

Meanwhile, our writers' game accounts go online at newsobserver.com. Barely after the horn blows at the end of the game, our web producers are posting the stories and photos. This happens very fast, and over the next hour or so, the stories are updated and more photos are added online. Frequently, Chip will post to his blog, Canes Now, and we will put a link to those posts on the newsobserver.com home page. Same for our columnist, Luke DeCock, who has a blog called Talking Points.

Update: Game ended at 9:30 last night. Thurday night's game starts at 8 p.m. officially, but more like 8:10 or 8:15, so we'll be right up against it if it ends at 10:30.

As a Triangle resident, I want the Canes to win, but mostly I want the game to end in regulation. If I were just a fan sitting at home, of course, I'd love a 3-overtime Game 7 thriller win a Canes' win on a breathtaking slap shot by Eric Staal.

What would we do if that happened? Well, probably by the end of the first overtime, we'd make a decision to consolidate the State and Final into one edition and start up the press as soon as the game ended, so we just have to plate up the press once.

We go with what we had in terms of stories, and then, after the press cranked out enough papers to send the most distant carriers down to the coast, we'd shut down, put on new plates with updated Sports pages, and start her up again.

This is called doing a "put on." The only problem with doing put ons is that any time you stop the press, you run the risk of a web break, which is when one of the sheets of newsprint running through the press breaks.

This is a major pain in the neck, because you have to reweb the press, and that takes time. On a bad night, this can happen a lot and makes our lives exciting.

Easley reporting: Why now?

steveriley — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:02:33 -0400

Many readers have written or called to compliment J. Andrew Curliss' two-part series, "Executive Privilege," which was published Saturday and Sunday. A few of you have wondered, however, why we were just getting around to running such stories after former Gov. Mike Easley left office.

The simplest answer is that the records that unlocked a good portion of the stories just became available. The Easley administration had closely guarded the secrets buried in the records of the governor's private flights, consistently claiming security as a reason for denying requests, even when the travel in question was long since done.

State law allows that, though it's often a dubious claim. That Easley flew to, say, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., on McQueen Campbell's plane in 2005 is hardly a legitimate state secret a day after the trip is over, much less months or years afterward. But it's a hard argument to win when you don't know anything about the trip.

After Easley left office, we appealed to Gov. Bev Perdue, who ordered the records released.

Once we knew that Campbell, chairman of the N.C. State Board of Trustees, had flown Easley on many occasions, we knew to ask more questions about Campbell's friendship with the Easleys. That led us to Mary Easley's job at N.C. State as well as to Campbell's many intersections with state government through his various businesses.

Often, these sorts of stories develop over time. They aren't evident at the moment that certain events are taking place, no matter how vigilant reporters may be.

Meanwhile, we will continue to work the story. Today, Curliss reported more about the various versions of Highway Patrol Capt. Alan Melvin's visit to Easley's home. Melvin was there in February, just as the patrol was getting ready to release the first batch of Easley travel records to us.