Yearly Archives: 2007

Two Editors, Two Decisions on Naming Duke Accuser

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Once the former Duke lacrosse players were proclaimed innocent by Attorney General Roy Cooper the media covering the story had a choice to make: do they or do they not publish the name of the woman who accused the men of rape?  The Raleigh News & Observer decided to and The Winston-Salem Journal decided not to.  What’s interesting about this to me is that the editors explained their reasoning on their blogs.  First from Melanie Sill the N&O‘s executive editor:

During the year since Mangum told police she was assaulted at a
lacrosse team party, The N&O followed its longstanding policy of
not naming claimants in sexual assault cases. This policy is accepted
practice among most print and broadcast media in the United States.

The
N&O has upheld this approach, which the newspaper has followed for
at least 15 years, to avoid discouraging victims of rape and sexual
assault from reporting such crimes. The N&O’s policy regarding
sexual assault claimants has rarely been challenged and we saw no
reason to abandon the policy in the midst of a case.

In recent
weeks The N&O’s senior editors consulted a number of people with an
interest in these issues, among them advocates for sexual assault
victims, defense lawyers, current and former journalists, a district
judge, journalism educators and ethics experts, in considering whether
and under what circumstances to identify Mangum. No consensus emerged,
but the conversations helped us consider essential questions about
precedent and impact.

With the decision of the state attorney
general’s office to drop all charges against Reade Seligmann, Collin
Finnerty and David Evans, no charge of rape or sexual assault exists.
Mangum’s claim has been vehemently denied by the three men indicted in
the case and by their teammates, who believe they have been damaged by
a false accusation. Attorney General Roy Cooper said his office
concluded that the three are innocent.

Mangum also has been
widely identified on the Internet, including on mainstream sites such
as Wikipedia. Because of these circumstances, and in order to more
fully report on the case and its aftermath, we decided to publish her
name. Additionally, we will review our standing policy.

And this from Ken Otterbourg, the Journal’s managing editor:

Yesterday, we had an important decision
about whether to name the accuser in the Duke Lacrosse case. She is the
college student/dancer/mother who was hired to dance at the party and
then made accusations that led to charges that were dismissed by the
Attorney General.

Most news outlets don’t name the accusers in rape cases, although
there are exceptions to every rule. Several newspapers that I respect,
including the News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer, both
decided to name the woman. Her name was widely available prior to this
decision. Here’s the explanation of the N&O’s exec editor, Melanie Sill.

We decided not to. Here’s what our rape policy says, in part:

In the event that an accused rapist is acquitted or released
after being charged [and that charge was reported by us], we will make
significant efforts to detail the story behind the defendant’s success.
In these narrow cases, we may choose to name the accuser if there is
competent evidence that the charges were deliberately bogus. Even in
this event, however, we will not use the names of any victim under 18
years old.

I think the key word here is “deliberately.” To my mind, what AG
Cooper said yesterday is key, that the accuser may actually believe her
stories. I’m not sure her charges were deliberate lies.

While reading about the papers’ internal deliberations is interesting in and of itself, it’s also interesting to read the comments in the posts.  Well at least at the N&O, since as of this writing there’s only one comment at Ken’s and it’s just a small quibble with verbiage.  Some people feel that publishing the name of the "victim" will deter future victims of rape and sexual assault from coming forward. Others argue that it is only fair that the woman’s name be revealed since the mens’ names had been dragged through the mud for a year based on false accusations.  And of course there’s the "liberal press" charges and other vitriol.  All in all, it’s far more interesting and educating than what you read in the papers themselves.

Venting Ye Old Spleen

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Maybe I’m cranky because this is the most stressful time of the year for me at work.  Whatever it is I’ve had it with some of the crap that passes for news and public dialogue these days and I figured what better way to blow off a little steam than to spell it out for the three people who read this thing.  So here we go.

Item #1: Forsyth County Commissioners and the ACLU re. Sectarian Prayers to Open Public Meetings

A while back the ACLU sent a letter to a bunch of municipalities in western North Carolina threatening to sue them if they didn’t end the practice of opening public meetings with sectarian prayers said by preachers invited from various churches.  All of the municipalities were told by their lawyers that they didn’t have a leg to stand on and some came to the decision to either open their meetings with non-sectarian prayers or with moments of silence.  Of course my county commissioners aren’t listening to their lawyer and are considering going to court to fight the ACLU even though there is a ton of case-law, i.e. precedents, that have held against prayer at government meetings.  The commissioners are also getting a lot of vocal support for fighting the ACLU from local citizens with only a smattering of dissent. (For a taste check out the letters to the editor of at the Winston-Salem Journal).  What really gets my goat, though, is that the arguments put forward in support of sectarian prayer are downright obtuse.

One rationale that the sectarian prayer supporters use to argue their point is that the establishment clause should not be interpreted to allow a small minority to deny the majority their right to sectarian prayer.  This is as dumb an argument as you can make for this reason: Not allowing a government meeting to open with a sectarian prayer is not denying anyone the right to pray. If you feel like it you can go and sit in the meeting and pray to anyone or anything you like, but the government can’t invite you to come and pray as their representative.  What’s being denied is the government’s "right" to sanction any one religious group or sect.

Another argument being floated is that denying Christians the right to invoke Jesus is also barring Jews, Muslims, etc. from praying to their God.  No one, including the ACLU, has said that the prayer before a meeting can’t invoke "God", they’ve only said you can’t invoke a specific deity like Jesus or Buddha.  I’ve mentioned that to a couple of people and they think I’m lying.  Whatever.

The Forsyth County commissioners and sectarian prayer supporters consistently point out that the commissioners invite representatives of different religions to open their meetings and so the current policy is fair.  I’m left to wonder if they think that inviting Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Lutherans and Moravians qualifies as different religions?  Exactly when was the last time a Pagan was invited to give the opening prayer?  How about a Muslim or Buddhist?  Heck, what about those Mormons that scare the crap out of your average Baptist?

Finally, I’m willing to bet that the commissioners know this is a losing cause.  They’ve been hemming and hawing while they try to come up with a resolution that protects them from the vocal choir of voters who want to fight the ACLU. It looks like they might have found a way out of their jam by deciding to fight if, as todays Winston-Salem Journal reports, some Christian-folk get together funding to privately finance the legal fight.  That would mean that the commissioners wouldn’t have to worry about any political fallout for spending public dollars on what everyone knows is a losing battle.  In other words they can pander to the vocal Christian majority of their constituents without risking anything.  Cowards. 

The county commissioners have been elected to represent all of their constituents, not just the majority who are Christians.  Every single one of them has an atheist, agnostic, and other non-Christian in their district but instead of looking out for this small minority’s interest they’re pandering to the majority.  They seem to think that their job is to do what the majority wants them to do, but if that’s how representative government worked then we could run our government like American Idol.  Their job, first and foremost, is to uphold the law for all of their constituents and if they fight a battle that their own legal advisors say is wrong then they all deserve to be canned in the next election.  And for anyone who doesn’t know me, I say this as a life-long Christian.

Issue #2: This Whole Imus Thing

What’s to say that hasn’t already been said?  Well, I’ll just add a couple of thoughts. 

Number one: How did Al Sharpton become the black community’s "representative"?  That’s like the white community being "represented" by some strange hybrid of Pat Robertson and Donald Trump. Sharpton’s an opportunistic gas-bag who’s cause is his own wallet, period.  If there wasn’t any money in it he wouldn’t be "representing" anyone.

Number two:  Sharpton’s antics took Imus from being a has-been listened to by a couple of million people who lost half their brain cells while dropping acid in the 60s and 70s to being the most prominent person in media. And it happened in less than a week.  Sharpton would argue that Imus is hurting because he lost a bunch of sponsors and has lost his simulcast on MSNBC (viewed by the tens of thousands!).  Of course now even my kids know who he is so when he starts streaming his schtick online, putting out podcasts, writing his autobiography, etc. he’ll make a gazillion dollars.  But Sharpton doesn’t care because he’s reaping the benefit during his own show’s sweeps weeks.

Number three: Imus and Sharpton both know that they’re going to get even richer off this thing and they literally have a symbiotic relationship now.  I imagine that in a month they’ll be toasting their success with a glass of Cristal at a restaurant in Harlem.  They’re playing us for suckers and it’s working.

Number four: Who thinks that by Monday we’ll still be engaging in the productive "discussion of race" that this episode supposedly opened up? If you raised your hand I know of a bridge in Brooklyn that Sharpton would love to sell you.

That’s it for now.  I do kind of feel better.

A Tale of Two (Allegedly) Drunk Local TV Guys

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Several weeks ago a local TV morning anchor, Tolly Carr, was arrested and charged with drunk driving and allegedly hitting and killing a pedestrian in Winston-Salem.  Carr is employed by Winston-Salem based WXII 12 and the day after the accident the station released a video statement from GM Hank Price and covered it as a straight news item.  This past weekend an entertainment reporter for WKRN in Nashville, TN was pulled over and arrested for drunk driving and WKRN’s GM, Mike Sechrist, announced it on his blog.

To me these two cases offer an interesting juxtaposition of two local news outlets that are using online media in fairly different ways.  The video statement from WXII is old school, one way information flow.  WKRN’s blog allows for comments which means that you have the new school "dialogue" happening.  If you read the comments on the WKRN post, and there are lots of them, you see a pretty strong debate break out about drunk driving in general, and even accusations that the station is giving their man special treatment by not putting his mugshot on the air.  Because that debate is happening on his site Sechrist can address those comments directly.  Even though WXII did put Carr’s mugshot on the air they (and the rest of the local media) were accused of favoritism in their handling of Carr’s story, but since it was on local blogs and not on their site and WXII was absent from the debate.

In a strange twist to the Carr story a rumor started floating around that he had commited suicide.  The managing editor of the Winston-Salem Journal wrote about it on his blog from the perspective of a newsroom that was inundated with calls asking if the rumors were true.  Again, nary a word from WXII to be found.  I have the feeling that if similar rumors were to crop up in Nashville you’d hear about it directly from the GM on his blog.

WXII is putting its toe in the water by hosting three or four blogs, but some of them don’t allow comments and with the exception of the sports blog they aren’t updated very often.  More importantly the blogs are merely an extension of their on-air personalities (anchor, weather, sports) and don’t give the audience a look behind the camera at the station.  I personally think that the power of blogs and of most new media lies in the ability to draw an audience in and make its members feel like part of the "family."  While GMs, managing editors, and publishers traditionally view themselves as behind the scenes bosses they are in fact the true representative of the organization.  They represent the entire organization and are in the best position to articulate the goals, concerns and direction of the station, paper, magazine, etc.  By communicating consistently with their audience they draw them into their world, make them feel like they have a stake in the station/newspaper/magazine’s future and ultimately keep them as a viewer/reader.  And when bad things happen they have a line of communication directly with the audience, which means they can deal with the fallout without having to go through intermediaries and they can nip rumors in the bud.

The bottom line is that all media organizations are businesses, and the GM is kind of like a CEO.  That’s why a recent article in Wired titled "The See Through CEO" is applicable to them.  In the article the author cites cases where companies have benefited from their leaders communicating directly with their customers, writing openly about all things related to the company including the good, the bad and the ugly.  In each of those cases the companies have grown and prospered and the CEOs attribute that growth to their openness. 

Because media companies are already so visible, and because local TV news folks are uniquely intimate to their audience (more than a few people think of local news anchors as a part of their extended family), then it stands to reason that more openness could be particularly effective for them.  They put food on the table by selling advertising.  Advertisers are interested in audience size and demographics, and if by embracing online tools that encourage dialogue they also increase loyalty, then GMs are doing what they’re paid to do: increasing their bottom line.

In defense of Mr. Price at WXII there aren’t many media types who are doing this yet. If he needs a first hand account of a blog’s utility he need only walk down the street to talk to Ken Otterbourg at the Winston-Salem Journal or pick of the phone and call John Robinson over at the Greensboro News & Record.  While I doubt they would be able to give him quantifiable numbers showing that their blogs have contributed directly to the bottom line, I’m fairly certain they would tell him that their guts tell them they’re doing the right thing and that their efforts will pay off in the near future.  And of course that’s the other thing GMs are paid for: their gut instincts. 

The People, Yes. Yes!

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A friend of mine in Greensboro, Sean Coon, has been working diligently to get a new venture called The People, Yes off the ground.   Sean has entered The People, Yes in a competition at Netsquared’s Technology Innovation Fund that could result in funding for his effort.  Take a moment to check out Sean’s post about it here, and then go to Netsquared and vote for five of the proposals that you think deserve funding.  Of course I think you should vote for The People, Yes, but I’ll trust your judgement.

FYI, here’s The People, Yes mission statement:

Our short-term mission:
To reach out to our neighbors on the other side of the digital
divide and provide the necessary training and logistics for enabling a
new online community of voices via blogging, podcasting, vlogging, etc.
We plan on directly engaging with the homeless community and folk
living at or below the poverty line, but will work with any Greensboro
resident who would like to publish their point of view.

Our longer-term mission:
Once the collaborative blog platform gets legs, we plan on
creating meshed communities of local resident’s topical interests,
while focusing on engaging both individuals and local businesses to
sponsor individual media creators. A large percentage of sponsorship
revenue would be funneled back to the content creators themselves, with
the remainder going back into programs that support the local homeless
community.

More background about The People, Yes can be found here.

Tell Us What You Think Rick

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An old friend (and boss) of mine, Rick Biehl, recently had a letter printed in the Washington Post sports section.  Let’s just say he doesn’t think highly of the team the Nationals is putting on the field this year:

It’s unfortunate that, with the weak attendance the Nationals are about
to have this season, you already raise the issue of whether the D.C.
area deserves a Major League Baseball team, noting [last Sunday], "the
game is here now."

The 2007 Nationals are not a Major League Baseball team, and no city in
the country would support the kind of game this crew is about to play.
The Nationals are not only the worst team in baseball, they could be
the worst team since the 1962 New York Mets. It’s unfair to judge the
Washington region if it fails to go crazy for this team, which in
addition to being horrid, also plays in fan-unfriendly RFK. The test of
whether D.C. is worthy of a Major League Baseball team should await the
day when it actually has one.

Rick really needs a blog.

Mr. Flow, I’m Throwing My Hat in the Ring

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As part of its Davis Cup coverage the Winston-Salem Journal revealed that Don Flow, the local businessman who spearheaded the effort to bring the Cup to Winston-Salem, is also pursuing the US Men’s Clay Court Championships.  From the article:

Flow is trying to
acquire the rights to the U.S. Men’s Clay Court Championships, which
will be held in Houston for the final time next week and is now up for
bid. If successful, Flow would bring professional tennis back to
Winston-Salem on an annual basis, with a week-long tournament that he
hopes would become a springtime celebration involving various factions
of the community.

The U.S. Men’s Clay
Court Championships is a sanctioned ATP International Series tournament
and has been operated by a private group in Houston for the past seven
years. But it is actually owned by the United States Tennis Association.

So Flow has been making his pitch to USTA executives this week while they are here for the Davis Cup.

It’s an innovative
pitch, too, not just a promise to write a check for the USTA’s $250,000
rights fee. It involves the creation of a non-profit organization to
run and oversee the tournament, with the profits going to local
charities. It involves a commitment to build a tennis complex on the
Dixie Classic Fairgrounds next to Joel Coliseum, with a stadium that
could be used year-round for other community activities ranging from
outdoor concerts in the summer to other non-sporting gatherings.

As a lifelong tennis fan/player and someone who’s spent a large part of his career in the non-profit sector I can tell you that this would be a dream gig.  Mr. Flow, if you’re looking for help I’m here to tell you that I’m throwing my hat in the ring for consideration.  You can find my contact info here.

Winston-Salem Did the Davis Cup Right

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Img_0815I spent much of this weekend over at the Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum watching the Davis Cup quarterfinals between the US and Spain.  While there are a lot of things I could write about (and will) the one thing I really took away from the weekend is that the local folks who organized the Davis Cup experience did a great job.  The Joel holds about 14,500 people and the place was sold out for the entire weekend.  The picture above/to the left shows the crowd for the Saturday doubles match and I can attest that there were very few empty seats on Friday or Saturday.  Even more impressive is that the crowd on Easter Sunday for two matches that didn’t count (the US clinched the win on Saturday) was probably about 80% capacity.  The atmosphere was just amazing.

Throughout the tournament the winning players were interviewed after their matches and all of the US players went out of their way to thank the crowd and talk about how great it was to play in front of such a large, vocal and enthusiastic home crowd.  We were told on several occassions by the announcer that this crowd was the largest US Davis Cup crowd since 1990, and US team captain Patrick McEnroe told the crowd that he and the players were especially pleased because the last time they played Spain in the 04 Davis Cup in Seville the Spaniards had 25,000 fans and they really wanted to see what it was like to play on their home turf with their own large crowd.  In an interview after his singles match on Sunday Bob Bryan said that the players loved it here in Winston-Salem and if they make the finals and end up playing the finals at home then they would be pushing to come back here. 

I was a little critical of the USTA with how they handled the ticket
sales, but in retrospect it looks like they were thoroughly and
pleasantly surprised by the interest in tickets for the event.
Hopefully they’ll take some lessons from this experience and apply it
in the future, number one being that they should limit the number of
tickets per person so that more people get a shot at prime seats.  Given the short turnaround time they have for these things they did a
pretty good job.  And like I said the local folks, led by Don Flow, did a bang up job in drawing the Davis Cup here and then putting on a bang-up show.  Hopefully the Cup will be back in December and then you’ll see a really rowdy crowd.

Free Lawn Edging from the City!

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RoadcrewedgingAs you may recall the road in front of our house has been worked on for the past few days (I first wrote about it here).  I’m pleased to report that the road crew did re-plant our mailbox, although they didn’t put it in concrete as it was before so now it’s a tad wobbly.  An added bonus is that they edged my lawn for me with an industrial sized grader.  I don’t usually remove 18 inches of lawn when I edge it myself but beggars can’t be choosers.  Aw, who am I kidding?  I never edge the thing myself so they kind of did me a favor.

On a completely different tangent can someone please explain to me why my dog, Arthur, prefers to poop right next to the road?  My theory is he’s an exhibitionist of the strangest order and in addition he likes to feel the cool breeze of passing cars as he takes care of business.  Here’s a pic for those of you who don’t believe me:
Arthurtakingcareofbusiness

Sears, Your Subcontractors Are You

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Newstove_070402That spiffy new oven/stove you see to the left was just installed in our kitchen.  Our old stove (and I mean old) was a Jenn-Air style that had inserts you could put in to do things like grill indoors.  A neat innovation for 1942 but it meant we had a small oven compartment because a grease trap took up the left quarter of the oven space.  You’ll notice that our air vent in the new stove is in the middle of the cooktop, or in other words is a down draft.  Our old stove had a similar set up, which means the ventilation runs beneath the oven, between the floor joists and through the wall to the right of the stove.  When we decided to replace the stove (the stove top started spontaneously heating) Celeste did some research and found out that unless we wanted to completely re-do our ventilation system we had exactly two stoves to choose from, both of which were Jenn-Airs.  For those not familiar with stoves, as I was, let me tell you that "Jenn-Air" = "four times the cost of your average stove."

So early in March we went to Sears to buy our new stove and a new dishwasher (our old dishwasher couldn’t clean a nun’s conscience). Celeste knew that if we waited long enough one of the stores that carries Jenn-Air would run a special and if we were patient we could take advantage of it.  It just so happened that Sears had a special "12 months with no interest" financing deal on newly opened Sears credit cards in early March, and since she knew they carried one of the second mortgages, er, stoves that we needed for our kitchen we needed to steer our mini-van to Hanes Mall.

At Sears we were told by our salesman that we would get the dishwasher within a week but the stove, of course, had to be special ordered and wouldn’t be in the store until March 12.  We said "fine" and went our merry way. Some time around March 15 we began to wonder where our stove was and Celeste called the store and talked to our salesman.  He looked it up and said, "Huh, the stove’s here so I’m not sure why the installer hasn’t contacted you.  I’ll get hold of him and have him call you."  A couple of days passed and we heard nothing.  Celeste called again and the same thing happened, so when she called the third time she talked to a different salesman and he gave her the installers name and number so she could talk to him directly.  She called on March 23 and 25 and both times he promised to call back and never did.  I finally called on the 27th and he said he’d install it today (April 2).  He also said he’d call yesterday to get directions to our house, which he did. 

Unbenknownst to me Celeste had called Sears on Friday and asked to speak to a manager.  She filled him in on the situation and he promised to talk to the installer himself.  I’m not sure if the installer reacted because he was talking to a man, which would be ironic since anyone who knows our family would tell him he that when he talked to me he was NOT talking to the person who wears the pants in the family, or because he got a call from the manager.  Either way we finally got our new stove.

My message for Sears is this:  Your salesman’s customer service left something to be desired and your subcontractor, who is you as far as I’m concerned, left a lot to be desired.  Thankfully the installation went well but that cannot undo the ill will bred by the lack of responsiveness from your representatives.  Five calls to get something like this scheduled is plainly bad and honestly we’ll not be shopping at Sears again any time soon.

It’s Called Communication People

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MailboxroadexpansionWe woke up this morning to find that the road crews who have been working diligently to add a narrow shoulder to the road that runs in front of our house (Concord Church Road) had reached our block.  We also found that our mailbox, as well as some of our neighbors’ mailboxes, were in the way so they were removed.  That’s our mailbox in the foreground of the picture to the left.  I don’t have any complaints about the removal, yet, since they didn’t break it, yet, but they could have let us know they needed it removed and given us the option of doing it ourselves.

It’ll be interesting to see if they re-plant it, and even if they do I doubt they’ll give it a concrete footer like we had before.  They’ll likely just stick it in the ground which means that if we don’t add the concrete ourselves it’ll literally tilt over in a stiff wind.  Ack.