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Confessions of a Watergate baby

May 17th, 2013, 12:56 pm by madisontaylor

There are only a handful of reasons why people of my generation decided to go into journalism.

1. To see the world.

2. To meet interesting people.

3. To get free stuff.

4. To help people.

5. To cover sports.

6. Watergate.

For me, put the check mark beside No. 6. Yes, I’m a Watergate baby.

The truth is, my interest in news actually predated the famously third-rate break-in during the summer of 1972 at the Democratic headquarters then based at the Watergate hotel in Washington. The break-in itself wasn’t that big a deal. In fact, it was barely worthy of a cop news item in the Washington Post, which was picked up by a new guy it had on staff at the time by the name of Bob Woodward. He was the nighttime reporter, hardly a big name . . . yet.

But all the unraveling that happened thereafter is the stuff of journalism and political legend.

Almost from the start, I was fascinated by the Watergate business. The truth is, I was always drawn to big news. My mom recalls that following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, I watched all the TV coverage — and she would emphasize all. At age 4, and nearly blind as a bat, I stood right in front of the black and white television. Mom said I was particularly riveted by the coverage of JFK’s funeral. My only personal recollection is of the white horses pulling the flag-draped casket that day. I thought it would never arrive at its destination, which was Arlington National Cemetery.

But during the years in which I was ages 12 and 13, this Watergate deal lassoed my attention in a way few non-baseball-related things had before or since. I read everything I could find about it — and there wasn’t much because in those days the Washington Post couldn’t just be picked up in rural Stokes County. Still, I monitored Watergate on network news and when the hearings began in Congress, I saw it on TV — even when we were on vacation in Myrtle Beach.

Yes, I gave up skee ball at the Pavilion to watch North Carolina Sen. Sam Ervin’s jowly queries of President Richard Nixon’s constipated-looking henchmen.

Ultimately, of course, Nixon resigned but not because of the break-in itself. No, that was just the cracked manhole cover into a fetid sewer of cover-ups, payoffs, illegal use of campaign contributions, enemies lists, IRS audits, break-ins into the offices of doctors, illegal wiretapping . . . the list goes on and on. The guilty even included agencies like the U.S. Department of Justice. Nixon got off lucky. Nearly everyone else who worked for him landed in one country club prison or another.

And all because of some newspaper reporters who wouldn’t take no for an answer, lost sleep tracking down mind-numbing amounts of paperwork or leads that often went nowhere and endured threats from the highest levels of government. They drank a lot of stale coffee, too, I suspect.

What I learned then and there is how important journalism can be. Sure, reporters work on significant stories, gut-wrenching stories, even amazing stories from time to time, but there is a much larger picture. Journalism practiced professionally and thoroughly is an obstacle to unfettered corruption, a guardian of freedom and a line of defense against government authority run amok. If it exists for no other reason, it’s to stand up to the powerful and pursue questions others can’t.

That’s how this deal was set up in the Constitution. It’s what the people who founded this country had in mind. Doesn’t really matter whether people in authority like it or not.

But it only works if the government is not allowed to throw up random roadblocks to public information, harm whistleblowers, seek retribution upon those who report the news or investigate news organizations without cause.

As a result of all this, of course, I decided to pursue a career in journalism. I brought along a finely honed sense of cynicism. I don’t have much faith in authority figures and trust relatively few in public life. I like to get answers when reporters pose questions and have no patience with government agencies that want to withhold any public documents — no matter the reason. I want to be able to write accurate and fair stories. When someone in government gives us a sound reason to hold an item, we usually listen. For example, we never want to publish a story that would harm an important police investigation.

Most reputable news organizations conduct business the same way. I know the Associated Press does. In fact, if there is a knock on the AP, it’s that it is too mild-mannered in its reporting, a hazard of being a one-size fits all type of operation.

So word this week that the U.S. Department of Justice secretly obtained the telephone records and other items from the AP and its staff because it was fishing for information about the source of a story the government didn’t like sent the journalism world into a collective Richard Nixon flashback. And it should have. The act is indefensible, even though the Obama Administration appears ready to try rather than reprimand the DOJ and call for the ouster of Attorney General Eric Holder. It’s standard operating procedure for an administration that isn’t even media-tolerant, forget media-friendly.

Sadly, for a president who ran on themes of hope and change, this all looks very 1972.

Posted in: Column collection • Past imperfect • Strange but true journalism stories | Post a Comment »

The branches of Mike’s life

May 16th, 2013, 5:54 pm by madisontaylor

Only a moment or two after the untimely and ultimately stunning death of our reporter Mike Wilder in April — just a month after he was diagnosed with cancer — folks in our office were planning a memorial for the Relay for Life, which starts Friday at City Park in Burlington.

And I can’t thank them enough.

Suzanna Chriscoe on our advertising staff came up with the idea. Suzanna, a graphics artist, asked for contributions to purchase a torch in Mike’s memory that will be part of tonight’s relay, a nationwide benefit for cancer research.

Then Suzanna, with her advertising colleague Debbie Frazier, came up with a capital idea. They decided it would be wonderful to decorate the torch using a “tree of life” motif.

“What we want to do is take some sticks and spray paint them bronze to match the torch and hang colorful personalized leaves off the branches with different things Mike would have liked, quotes he would say and fond memories you have of him,” Suzanna wrote to all Times-News associates this week.

Suzanna printed a bunch of leaves on eye-catching paper. Folks were encouraged to go to the break room and make notes on the branches of Mike’s life. On mine I wrote something he used to tell me all the time when he thought a joke might rise to the level of semi-marginal.

“That’s sort of funny,” he would say.

The torch / tree will be displayed at the Relay for Life Friday (it starts at 6 p.m. and lasts until Saturday morning). We will also have a recording of Mike’s voice, discovered in some old video footage by our photographer Scott Muthersbaugh. It’s a recent find. We tried to track down something like that for Mike’s memorial service last month, without luck.

See you there.

Posted in: Inside the Times-News • Mike Wilder | Post a Comment »

Through the looking glass

May 15th, 2013, 11:23 am by madisontaylor

Let’s face it, the people we elect to office aren’t perfect. Far from it. Intellectually we know this the day we cast a ballot. Despite campaign cycles that seem to last forever, by the time Election Day rolls around voters have no true idea who or even what they might be voting for or against.

It’s a crapshoot, really.

But it’s a safe bet that locally and nationally, anyone we vote for these days is pretty far removed from the great thinkers, adventurers and warriors who helped found this nation. I haven’t cast any ballots for the next James Madison lately, have you?

So I tend to view elected officials with a certain amount of skepticism and cynicism as they take office. I can’t help it really. That’s an occupational hazard. Besides, the loyal and partisan opposition to elected leaders are basically cartoons, when you think about it — like the movie scene in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” where the human figure tells Roger Rabbit “no” in order to make him eventually yell “yes.”

But what I try to do is give anyone the benefit of the doubt as they rise to a political office. They all deserve a chance to either succeed or fail without being badgered to death with criticism or overwhelmed with praise. And while I might not always agree with what a political leader does or says, I wait until they really screw it up to get too mouthy about it. George W. Bush, for example, didn’t really get my blood boiling until he sent troops into Iraq. What a bonehead play. From that point, it was all downhill.

And Barack Obama? Well, I’m not a fan of how health care reform played out — but something needed to be done and no one else was willing to step up to the plate. And he seems preoccupied with being a celebrity in chief as opposed to a commander in chief. Other than that, though, I wanted to see what he might accomplish.

But recent events: The bungling of the Benghazi aftermath (just spit out the story and get on with it); the recent revelations of how the IRS perhaps targeted opposition political groups for extra attention when Obama-friendly groups did not receive similar scrutiny; and most especially the Department of Justice’s unwarranted search of telephone records at the Associated Press, all paint a disturbing image of an administration lurching perilously out of control and willing to steamroll anyone who dares voice opposition or raise a question. The matter of investigating a press organization is particularly troubling. Who, if not the press, is going to record and report actions taken by government on every level? That the press could be targeted by a law-enforcement arm of the government is a downhill ski run to government-controlled media and the end of any truth in our nation.

If we’re not there already.

I’m interested to see where the Obama Administration goes from here. It has to hold itself and its branches accountable on some level. And the Department of Justice must rethink its role and how it goes about its business. What is clear, is that it’s become an agency that believes whatever end it seeks justifies any means necessary — even trampling the rights of a free press. It’s time to clean house there. Well past time, perhaps.

Let’s see what unfolds.

Posted in: Just thinking out loud • Politics too complicated for politicians • Strange but true journalism stories | Post a Comment »

My New Food and Drink Plan: Final Report

May 13th, 2013, 12:41 pm by madisontaylor

Saturday, I shopped for clothes.

Needless to say for millions of Americans this isn’t a stop-the-presses kind of event. But in my world, well, it’s huge.

And in more ways than one.

Now usually I avoid shopping for clothes like most do encounters with copperhead snakes or elected officials. I simply hate doing it at all costs. I try to get new clothes for birthdays and Christmas — then wear whatever it is until the shirt or pants in question simply disintegrate at about wash No. 1,000.

Really.

But Saturday I decided it was time to update my wardrobe to match the size I am today, which is noticeably smaller. Since January when I began what I called here my “New Food and Drink Plan” I’ve lost 35 pounds — give or take a pound or two on a given day. It was better than I had hoped and a little more than I planned. But so far, that’s OK, too. In January I weighed 192 pounds. Today when I woke up, the scale read 157.8. It’s about the size I was on the day Roselee and I got married in 1997. Sunday, by the way, I weighed 160.

So at Christmas 2012, I wore size 36 pants and shirts in the process of speeding past large into XL territory.

Enter the Dukan Diet, only I don’t call it a diet. This is because diets fail. I have no immediate plans to fail. Or so I hope anyway.

I’ve written about it before. A physician from France developed this hybrid diet that’s part South Beach, part Atkins and part common sense. It’s meant not just to cut pounds, but change eating habits toward a healthier lifestyle. Lots of lean meat — and I stress lean. This is no all-the-bacon-and-hot-dogs- without-bread artery-clogging fest. That particular diet never made any sense to me at all.

I have now completed all phases of the Dukan Diet and can say I liked it quite a bit. There is very little measuring (what is 4 ounces of steak anyway?) and clear guidelines (no points, no calories). It was easy to follow and relatively simple not to cheat. In the process I gave up a lot of bread (for a little while), pasta, cake, pie, cookies, corn chips, potato chips, pretzels, sugar, potatoes, pizza, burgers and beer.

But that still leaves a lot of stuff to eat and with my spouse’s help, it was tasty stuff: Grilled chicken, fish, shrimp, steak, London broil, turkey, vegetables of all kinds and a little pumpkin desert that really helped beat back the sugar craving.

Now, with a few exceptions, I want to eat this way all the time.

Over the past month or so, people have stopped me in public to ask how I dropped so much weight. “Did you just stop eatingf?” is the most common question.

The answer: Hardly. I get to eat plenty and hopefully will continue to do so.

I’ve been wide open to return to my normal pre-Dukan diet — with some really, really minor modifications — for a couple of weeks. My weight has remained stable at 156 to 161. Three things I have to continue doing: Drink a liter of water or more a day; eat two of the oat bran pancakes my spouse cooks up each morning; and have only protein one day a week. Otherwise, I can eat or drink whatever I want.

But the upshot is, I’m making better choices, staying out of the office snack machine, only having a beer on the weekends and not taking that second cookie. I’ve also learned that 2 ounces of spaghetti is plenty, a good thing to remember when in an Italian family.

Can I stay on this particular plan?

Hope so, after all I just bought some pants at size 32. I hope to wash them a 1,000 times.

Posted in: Admissions by the author | Post a Comment »

A job nobody wanted

May 11th, 2013, 8:00 pm by madisontaylor

The family of Lee Harvey Oswald at his funeral in November, 1963.

There are a lot of reasons to remember the Rev. Louis Saunders, a native of a small Eastern North Carolina town most couldn’t find on the map without a magnifying glass.

Forget that he studied theology at Duke University or received a divinity degree at Vanderbilt or completed chaplain’s school at Harvard.

And don’t even stop to consider that he joined World War II after Pearl Harbor, survived the Allied invasion of Normandy then wound up in the Pacific Theater. And then he up and remained in the Philippines after the war as a missionary and built the first high school in a remote province there.

Yes, all of that stuff is particularly noteworthy, but in this case, not really.

Because the Rev. Louis Saunders, a native of a town called Richlands who passed away at age 88 in 1998, was a key figure in one really big historic event. Most probably never heard of him.

He’s the man who buried Lee Harvey Oswald.

LEARNING ABOUT often astonishing tales is at least part of why the newspaper business is so addictive.

This Louis Saunders thing is like that.

I found out about him for the first time about 18 or so years ago when I worked for the Jacksonville Daily News. One of our reporters covered graduation night at Richlands High School. For those who don’t know, Richlands (pronounced like two distinct words rich lands), is a town steeped in a farming tradition and named for the quality soil found there. Up until a few years ago, travelers were greeted at the town limits by a sign that also hailed it as “The Town of Perfect Water.” Later testing proved this not to be exactly true, so Richlands leaders saw fit to take down this misleading piece of municipal advertising.

Anyway, our reporter came back that night talking about the graduation speaker, an alumnus who was the presiding pastor at the funeral for Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who killed President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963 — if you believe the Warren Commission Report.

“You’re kidding,” I said.

“Nope,” came the reply.

In November of 1963, Saunders was executive director for the 20-church Fort Worth (Texas) Council of Churches and watching events unfold on TV like everyone else. He heard on the Monday after Kennedy’s assassination that Oswald — himself gunned down on live TV while in police custody — would be buried in Fort Worth.

“I felt some responsibility for the religious community,” he told Daily News reporter C. Mark Brinkley in 1997, just a few months before passing away.

That’s how Saunders came to take ownership of what became a job no one wanted — saying a few words at the gravesite of the most hated man in America.

After contacting the funeral home about arrangements, Saunders said he was assured that a member of the local clergy would be there to conduct the service. But he wanted to make sure everything happened as planned so he attended the service at Rose Hill Cemetery.

And of course, it didn’t. The pastors who agreed to officiate did not show up. Saunders had been afraid something like that might happen and tried to line up volunteers just in case.

He got no takers.

”I got more and more anxious,” Saunders said in 1997. “I think there were hundreds of photographers — all lined up, maybe three rows deep.”

That’s when he was approached by Oswald’s mother, Marguerite, and asked to perform the service, the New York Times reported.

He couldn’t turn down a mother, even the mother of America’s biggest villain. And it was the Christian thing to do.

With neither preparation, nor a Bible, Saunders took on the chore nobody else would do.

”It’s easy to say something that can be misinterpreted,” Saunders said. “I didn’t want to do that.”

According to the New York Times, he read the 23rd Psalm and then offered one of the shortest eulogies ever.

“Mrs. Oswald tells me that her son, Lee Harvey, was a good boy and that she loved him. And today, Lord, we commit his spirit to your Divine care.”

THEY BURIED Tamerlan Tsarnaev on Thursday. It was at an undisclosed location. No media were there to document the funeral of one of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers, arguably America’s newest edition of most hated villains.

And it happened after a massive game of keep-away. No one wanted to bury Tamerlan Tsarnaev in their town. In all, officials in Massachusetts received 120 offers of graves from the U.S. and Canada. None worked out. Even a site at a state prison was rescinded.

People didn’t want the notoriety in their back yard.

“It’s not only Massachusetts that doesn’t want him,” a Worcester, Mass. funeral home director said. “Nobody wants him. And all these people who have donated graves, I’ve made some calls and said to somebody in the cities and towns where the graves were, ‘Hey, we would like to bury the guy there that was part of the marathon bombing.’”

The response? “You’re not gonna do that here.”

The problem prompted Worcester police Chief Gary Gemme to say, “We are not barbarians. We bury the dead.”

That’s when I thought of the Rev. Louis Saunders, who took on an unenviable and perhaps distasteful task in November 1963 because it was the Christian thing to do and the right thing to do.

He would’ve understood.

Posted in: Column collection • Strange but true journalism stories | Post a Comment »

Thanks for listening

May 10th, 2013, 6:01 am by madisontaylor

The newspaper is always asking government to open its hiring procedure to public inspection, especially when it gets down to crunch time for the highest-paying jobs that carry the most responsibility. Today’s editorial thanks Alamance Community College for taking us up on it in the hiring of its new president.

—-

For too many years to count, newspapers have made a fairly simple request of local governments preparing to fill their most important positions. And routinely the request has been denied, or worse, ignored.

Sort of like howling into a desolate and pitiless wilderness.

But predictably, we continued to ask the board of education, county commissioners, city or town councils or city and town halls to provide people in the community a list of the final candidates to be considered for jobs such as school superintendent, county manager, city manager or police chief. There is no law against releasing those names, governments simply decide not to do so — often citing confidentially for a candidate who would rather keep that information from a current employer.

So just as predictably, those names remained secret until one person was chosen for the job without taxpayers having much say in who might be selected or outside of any public or media scrutiny.

Thursday, that changed, at least in one case. Without our insistence or badgering, Alamance Community College submitted six names — with background information — to the Times-News and other media outlets. The persons listed constitute the finalists for the biggest job at the college, its president. One of those six will succeed current college president Martin Nadelman, who is retiring in October.

To this we say, well done.

Because the college authorized this move, people in Alamance County know, for example, that one candidate is from right here in this community — Gene C. Couch, who is executive vice president at ACC, a job he’s held since 2011. We also know he has experience working for another community college and a variety of degrees from Mars Hill College, Western Carolina and East Tennessee State University.

The list also reveals candidates from Arkansas and Oregon and three more from North Carolina areas ranging from near the coast to the sandhills to the Piedmont.

The time frame for choosing Nadelman’s successor calls for naming a replacement by July. The full college Board of Trustees will begin meeting with the finalists soon.

Meanwhile, college spokesman Ed Williams said in a press release that ACC staff, faculty and the community will have opportunities to meet the candidates. Informal gatherings will be scheduled and public notices issued. Meanwhile, reporters for print, broadcast and online outlets will have a chance to conduct their own research into those in line for a position that pays a six-figure salary and heads an entity that is among the county’s largest employers.

Thanks to the college for giving the public this important opportunity. Hopefully more local governments will do the same.

Posted in: Just thinking out loud • Why we do things | Post a Comment »

What to do about Tom Manning?

May 8th, 2013, 5:48 am by madisontaylor

Our editorial today about what will likely go on record as “The Manning Affair.”

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Alamance County Commissioner Tom Manning is far from the first politician to be caught in a personally compromising position and he will be equally far removed from the last. To a watchful public it seems like a near-constant pitfall of the politically powerful.

But the sad truth is, things like this trip people in all walks of life. It happens to doctors, attorneys, entrepreneurs, teachers, administrators and yes, even folks in the reporting business. Men and women from the fields of carpentry, policing, firefighting, accounting, computing, painting and plumbing are not immune.

The difference? People outside of politics, professional sports or entertainment don’t usually face media — and as a result — public scrutiny.

Manning, a Republican who leads the Board of Commissioners as its chairman, isn’t so lucky. Last week, after being presented with evidence by the local weekly newspaper The Alamance News, Manning admitted to having an extramarital affair. He also told the publication he would resign from office if the story could be held and spare his family embarrassment. Monday, the leadership of the Alamance County Republican Party leadership asked that Manning resign as a member of the board.

“We believe that Mr. Manning has created a credibility gap that damages his ability to lead our county in an effective manner. Therefore, for the good of the Alamance County government, and for the reputation and effectiveness of the Alamance County Commission, we request Commissioner Tom Manning consider what is best for our community and resign from the Alamance County Commission, effective immediately,” the statement said. The message also received endorsement from Manning’s four colleagues on the Board of Commissioners in a Times-News story Tuesday.

We wonder if demanding Manning’s resignation is the proper course.

From all appearances so far, the issue at hand had nothing directly to do with Manning’s role as a publicly elected official. The woman with whom he was involved is not connected to the county’s local government in any capacity. Whatever occurred did not happen while Manning was conducting the county’s business. County money wasn’t spent because of the matter. And he has not been charged with a crime of any kind. For Manning’s part, he said he has no intention of resigning.

How such an intensely private story became public isn’t really the issue anymore. It did. The Times-News refrained from reporting about it until there was a direct impact on how local government operates, which occurred Monday when Manning’s own party asked him to leave office before his term ends in 2016. A vote of no-confidence in Manning by his fellow commissioners speaks volumes. But that they did so via a newspaper story, and not during a public meeting in Manning’s presence earlier the same day, muddies the message.

To be clear, what Manning has admitted to is wrong on every level and deserving of scorn. But it’s difficult to see how the county has been damaged in the long term as a result. The harm has been to Manning and his own family, who must now find their own answers and solutions. That will be difficult enough in a small community when a private matter becomes common knowledge.

If Manning wishes to resign to avoid more scrutiny going forward, then that’s his decision to make. But calling for him to leave office because of this sordid matter seems premature and short-sighted. We agree, however, that it would be prudent for him to step down as board chair. A public censure by his fellow commissioners might also be appropriate. It’s a punishment that befits the act.

And then in 2016, the voters can offer their own referendum.

Posted in: Just thinking out loud • Politics too complicated for politicians | Post a Comment »

Who in the county GOP signed off on the Manning press statement?

May 7th, 2013, 3:02 pm by madisontaylor

Jim Allen, a reader and county Republican Party member, called me on Tuesday morning to ask who from the county party endorsed the press statement issued calling for the resignation from the board of Republican Alamance County Commissioner Tom Manning. Allen didn’t agree with the stance and said many others he has spoken to felt the same way.

It was an oversight on our part not to include that in the story about county GOP leaders responding to Manning’s admission of an extramarital affair in the Alamance News.

The following people’s names appeared in the county GOP press statement, issued by Chairman Justin Hill.

The Officers of the Alamance County Republican Party:

Justin Hall- Chairman
Larry Cook- 1st Vice Chairman
Ben York- 2nd Vice Chairman
Cathy Lawler- 3rd Vice Chairman
Barbara Brown- Secretary
Allen Page- Treasurer
Katie Dukeshire- President, Alamance Republican Women’s Club

Posted in: Inside the Times-News • Politics too complicated for politicians | Post a Comment »

Happy belated anniversary to me

May 6th, 2013, 12:44 pm by madisontaylor

An anniversary got past me last week. May 1 marked my sixth year as editor of the Times-News. I know it’s not one of the 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 kind of benchmarks, but in the newspaper business in this day an age we take what we can get.

So I’m thankful for every year they let me stay here.

Really.

That doesn’t mean my time back here in Burlington has been a path strewn with rose petals and glasses of champagne. The truth is, I returned in 2007 for a variety of reasons. One was to be closer to my parents, especially with my dad in failing health. I missed the Piedmont weather and four distinct seasons, which beat the heck out of the brutal humidity and nearly nonstop summers on the coast. And I left the Times-News under an angry cloud in 1992 and I wanted another chance to square the account.

I’ve not regretted it so far.

But it’s been an eventful six years, to say the least.

Some examples.

We did, indeed, lose my dad in 2008 after years of battling heart and lung problems, he eventually succumbed to kidney failure. I was able to see him a little more in his last year than I had the previous five or six combined.

A year later we lost my grandmother at age 95.

We lost my father-in-law to prostate cancer in 2011.

When I arrived at the Times-News on May 1, 2007, we had 28 staffers and a fleet of part-timers. Today we have 23 staffers and a handful of independent contractors who help out in sports.

When I arrived, Steve Buckley was the publisher who hired me.

Today, Paul Mauney is the publisher who puts up with me.

Our newspaper’s owners when I arrived, Freedom, fell into bankruptcy, emerged from bankruptcy, and was sold piece by piece.

Our newspaper’s new owners, Halifax, grew from one newspaper in January of 2012 to 34 newspapers now.

We’ve redesigned our website about a half-dozen times. My least favorite incarnation is the one now.

We lost advertising director Zac Creech to a unknown heart condition, in his 40s, in 2007.

Frances Woody lost son Andy to an unknown heart condition, in his 40s, in 2011.

Frances Woody lost husband Tom to esophageal cancer in 2012.

We lost reporter Mike Wilder to a breathtakingly short bout with cancer in 2013.

Our copydesk has completely turned over in the last six years. Current staffers there, R.J. Beatty and Lyndsey Hicks have helped turn around the appearance of our newspaper, with help from Linda Bowden.

My spouse, the lovely and talented Roselee Papandrea, took a job with the Times-News, won a slew of awards, then left to work for Elon.

Thankfully, we’ve had great longtime stalwarts who are the heart of what we do and continue to be.

I’m talking about Frances Woody, Jay Ashley, Brent Lancaster, Bob Sutton, Linda Bowden, Sam Roberts, Charity Apple Pierce, Adam Smith, Joe Jurney and Brian Rose.

Bob Sutton continues to be the hardest-working sports editor I’ve ever been around. He almost never looks for reasons not to do a story, but finds ways to make stories happen instead. Rare.

We’ve bulked up our intern program, with big help from Elon’s stellar School of Communications. There is almost never a time when an Elon student isn’t on our staff. We are the richer for this.

Two of them, photographer Scott Muthersbaugh and reporter Natalie Allison, are now on our full-time staff.

Reporter Molly McGowan wasn’t an intern, but she’s an Elon grad on our staff as is Conor O’Neill in sports.

I had the good fortune to bring back my longtime friend Steve Huffman, as a reporter. He knows more about writing stories about Burlington than I’ll ever figure out.

We’ve been fortunate when it comes to winning awards from the North Carolina Press Association.

We’ve done well in appearance and design, news section design and public service. In fact, we’ve captured something in public service nearly every year I’ve been here. That makes me very proud.

Michael Abernethy writes about courts like nobody’s business. It’s still the one thing we can cover in our newspaper that people can’t get much of anyplace else.

And Michael won an NCPA award for investigative reporting this year, the first one of those here in many years.

We have more than quintupled our online audience at www.thetimesnews.com. In fact, I can’t even figure out a word that accurately describes our online growth since 2007. Say this, when I got here the site got about 30,000 page views a week. Today it gets more than 500,000.

We have moved into social media with presences on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and Pinterest.

I’m still learning the hard way about all the trap doors that come on that landscape. Social media is fun, immediate, even a little exciting – but there’s a lot of black ice to navigate and online wrecks are only one of the consequences.

We are continuing to dedicate ourselves to mainly local news, but readers still want their national stories as well.

Did I mention that I miss the lovely and talented Roselee Papandrea on our staff?

Readers, for the most part, have accepted the changes we’ve had to make as a result of budget cutbacks. Most seem to appreciate my explanations when it comes to things we do, things we foul up or things we flat missed out on.

Do we cover everything we should be? Far from it. But our average is not too bad, and improving.

I wish there was some way out of doing the editorial page every day. It’s for ideologues that have big visions and opinions.

As I was just telling county commissioner Tim Sutton earlier today, perhaps the worst thing I can say about myself these days is that I’ve been in newspapers so long I no longer have much of an opinion on anything.

But I still like reporting news.

And what’s ahead? Well, I know that in a few more months we’ll be charging people to call up stories on our website. Not sure exactly what the format will be, but I certainly plan to keep readers here posted as the date draws closer. That’s been my habit up to now and I don’t plan to change.

Hope to see you all in six more years.

Posted in: Inside the Times-News • Past imperfect | Post a Comment »

Letting the kids have their say

May 5th, 2013, 9:44 am by madisontaylor

My print column this week reaches into the past to comment on the present — and future. For the record, and there has been some confusion, I’ in favor of putting a student on the Board of Education.

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A letter I might have written to a Board of Education in a county far, far away, ca. 1976.

Dear Board of Education members,

So, you think you know what goes on at high schools in this county? Well, I kind of doubt it. The truth is, you don’t know and probably really don’t want to know when it comes right down to it.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Maybe that should be the board’s slogan. It’s got a certain ring to it dontcha think? I’m sure someone will slap it on a commercial or something eventually. In fact, I predict a huge boom for this particular phrase down the road — before people figure out it’s total bunk.

This not asking, not telling and not knowing, well, it leads nowhere.

But what do I know? I’m just a 16-year-old kid. Nobody listens to a kid, ever. At least they don’t here in the 1970s. Maybe the turn of the century will become a time when the opinions of kids matter, at least a little.

But I won’t hold my breath on that one.

Yes, as a kid in 1970s America, it’s my job to just accept whatever happens. I’m supposed to say the shag carpet in the basement really highlights the exposed pipes in the ceiling; that avocado is a beautiful color for a refrigerator; who needs air-conditioning; sure I’ll drive a Ford Pinto; and dig that leisure suit! I’m also expected to shut my yap about My Lai, Muhammad Ali, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and “Deep Throat,” the movie.

But for some reason I’m expected to automatically know how to program this Betamax monstrosity to record TV shows no one wants to watch anyway. “The Love Boat” and “Fantasy Island” . . . I mean, come on.

And how much longer can I simply nod and agree that just another band out of Boston is worth listening to, even though they plainly aren’t. Disco? Who came up with that . . . junk?

OK, I admit, I’m way off the subject. But I wanted to offer up a little background because none of you board members has been in the game for a while. School changes. Fact is, it only has a passing resemblance to the schools you attended way back when, or even taught in just a few years ago. About the only thing in common is that you had books, chalkboards, erasers and teachers — and so do we. And I guess in your day, students were expected to sit down and shut up, too.

That doesn’t make it right.

You see, I attend a school where punishment is random. Some kids get it, while others don’t. Who knows why? I certainly can’t figure it out.

And one of the assistant principals . . . well, she just runs students out of school if she gets a mind to. Makes their lives so absolutely miserable there’s no other option. Want to look at the dropout rate, well, look at her.

Then they hired a second assistant principal, if you can believe that, and since you made the decision to hire him I guess you do. This guy’s sole job seems to be making sure girls don’t smoke in the boys’ smoking area and the boys don’t wander into the girls’ smoking area. Boys and girls smoking together — goodness knows what might happen. If the school system ever gets rid of smoking areas, kids might stop going to school at all.

And the driver’s ed instructor who’s also the football coach? We are his personal errand service to the trophy shop in Winston-Salem, the hardware store, even the post office. Must be nice to have a chauffeured car filled with gas courtesy of the school system at your disposal.

Temporary classrooms? They’re trailers, dudes. Trailers. We freeze in the winter, toast in the summer and watch ceiling materials flutter down to our desk tops. We all need Dramamine when the wind blows. What’s the expiration date on the word “temporary” anyway?

Better be thankful for Mrs. Lloyd or nobody in this school would know how to write a term paper.

Kids who get bullied have no place to turn. Who speaks for them at our school? Nobody, that’s who. They just get bullied some more.

And the principal? That guy’s primary function, by all appearances, is monitoring short skirts on girls, harassing black students and making an annual speech every spring over the intercom about “rising sap.” He seems to believe he’s a prison warden.

Look, I realize I don’t know squat about what courses we should take or how teachers might best be evaluated or what a principal is supposed to do. But I have a pretty clear idea of what they shouldn’t do, and I see a lot of that. Not learning an awful lot either, at least nothing that will mean much to me a year or two from now.

Can any of this be fixed? I don’t know. The best suggestion I have is to perhaps listen to a student every once in a while. At least that way you might have a wider idea of what happens on campuses. You might even appoint a student or two and have them attend your meetings regularly and offer suggestions. It probably couldn’t hurt, might even help. It’s worth a shot at least.

But I’m sure nobody’s listening. After all, I’m just a kid.

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