Madison Taylor

I hate these kinds of stories. Lots of readers don’t believe that, but it’s true.I’m talking about when the Times-News — or any other newspaper for that matter — reports on cases involving child molestation. Add rape and  incest in there, too.I absolutely hate it.

Covering cases such as the one involving the former Graham police officer, which we dealt with over the past two weeks while Kevin Hopkins was on trial and ultimately acquitted, is a no-win situation for the newspaper, its reporters and editors. I wrote more about this in my column this week. This is why we don’t routinely report these cases when they come to court. It happened here because the person charged was a police officer. And so people know, publishing stories like this one don’t sell any extra papers.

But I didn’t feel good about it and no one else here did either — including our reporter Keren Rivas.

Lots of readers felt the same way. One who lives in another town sent me an e-mail asking how I could justify our tabloid style journalism used in this case. I wrote back that the only other option was to not cover it at all.And when I spoke to a group at the Village at Brookwood, a few questioned the placement of the story on the front page day after day. I explain in the column that we based that decision on where the story was placed in 2006 when Hopkins was originally charged. Whether that was the right decision or not was a moot point by now. To remain consistent, we kept the story on the front page – all the way through to the finding of not guilty.

One of our readers over this period was Mr. Hopkins himself. He sent me this e-mail after a story we published just before the trial about new evidence in the case.

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   I would appreciate it greatly if you would get all the facts before printing an article citing “new evidence”.  That makes it sound like there is more evidence that just came forward and that is not the case at all.  It’s nothing new, only evidence that wasn’t originally released to my attorneys when we filed for discovery a year ago.  I also would like for a front page article when (not if) my name is cleared since anyone can make an accusation and it can make headlines (truth or not). Don’t get me wrong.

I’m not angry with the Times News and I understand you are just doing your job, but you have no idea what the whole story is and how it affects not just my life but the lives of my family.  Especially my son’s life.  I can handle the attacks because of my strong faith in God and my large support group that’s behind me every step of the way.  Other members of my family aren’t as able right now to handle these misleading articles and the rumors that follow. They have been through enough.  I’m just glad the end is finally drawing close so I can clear my name and move on with raising my son in peace.

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One man at the Village at Brookwood also cited our “tabloid-style” placement of a large photo of Hopkins in our paper the day he testified in court. We had a reason for this, too. That was the first time Mr. Hopkins had the chance to speak in his own defense. It was his day in court after being profiled on TV news and in print for years. We felt it only fair.

Did we err in this case? I’m still not sure. We didn’t set out to cover this matter as a New York tabloid might. But what we are trying to do is develop pages overall with a more bold style, a design that we will use on lots of stories, not just the ones about crime, courts and punishment.

Just as I did in my column I’ll end with this e-mail sent to me by Kevin Hopkins after he was found not guilty this week. This tells me a lot about what our role should be.

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I wanted to thank you and Ms. Rivas for the opportunity to clear my name and say my peace.  You both were very professional. I am glad to see people like you are willing to help clear things up in the end instead of only bringing it to the public’s attention in the beginning when I couldn’t talk to anyone.  You did more than Fox8 and WFMY2 were willing even though they didn’t have a problem with plastering my mug shot on TV every morning.    

 OK, I wrote earlier this week that a new interactive feature would begin on our Web site that would alter how online comments are posted, create new blogging opportunities for our online audience, create virtual happiness among our critics, change the course of human history, find a suitable away out of Iraq, figure out a way to beat Tiger Woods at Torrey Pines and find some use for cranberries on days not related to Thanksgiving.

Yes, it sounded, well, impossible.

And so it is, at least for this week.

The launch of our new format has been delayed. I do not know exactly why – it just is.

But what I will do is put the whole deal in the words of movie character Barry Champlain, the protagonist of “Talk Radio,” a movie by Oliver Stone that starred Eric Bogosian. Here’s what shock jock host Barry Champlain told his audience after he was told minutes before going on the air that his show wouldn’t be going national as scheduled.

It’s classic.

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“I’ve just received some terrible news. Night Talk will not be broadcast nationally tonight…due to the usual corporate, big business, inefficiency, sloppiness and bureaucracy.I’ve just been informed of a scheduling problem. Nothing personal, nothing logical, just business as usual. Maybe the show will go national next week, maybe next month. No one seems to know.I’m sorry. I feel I’ve let you, the listeners, down.But I’ve been in this business long enough to know you can lose the battle… and still win the war.

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OK, so I’m not quite as angry as Barry Champlain.  He’s a fictional character after all. Nobody in real life could be that angry, unless it’s our very own Homegrown Snob.

Anyway, here’s a copy of the story I was set to publish tonight about our new system, which we’re told really will premiere next week. I’ll keep my fingers crossed. I’ll reserve any future options on my breath 

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The words of another editor in our company speak volumes.

“Punctuation is back,” Jeff Thomas wrote in November when his newspaper began a new online system for logging comments on stories while also creating a virtual community.

We couldn’t say this any better ourselves.

This reference is aimed at online readers and commenters on TheTimesNews.com, the online edition of the Times-News. Many have expressed frustration with the commenting tool now in place which forbids question marks, semi-colons and quotation marks. The system was put in place to filter out spam, Web addresses and profanity.

(Next week) that changes. TheTimesNews.com introduces Community Voice, a new application online that offers visitors to our site the ability to blog, establish networks of “friends,” and comment on every item published on the website.

It’s a system built specifically for you, our readers. It’s meant to be interactive and engaging — the kind of place folks might like to hang around for awhile and swap ideas and debate.

The biggest change for current users will be in the comments function on our stories. Community Voice gives administrators of TheTimesNews.com better tools to banish those who hijack worthwhile discussion with venomous words, taunts, personal vendettas and racism. Those types of comments violate our user agreement  and under the old system the online community was considered the cops for wayward traffic.

Now we can do it ourselves and even ban repeat offenders. We can do it by requiring  registration that includes a valid e-mail address. You’ll need to sign up once, and then log in each time you return to  TheTimesNews.com if you want to use any Community Voice functions.

The whole point of online discussion is to debate the issues. We hope users enjoy our new format and will enjoy becoming part of our virtual community.

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We’ll try this again next week, promise.

A couple of readers popped in with comments over the weekend. Now I’ll spread some of the credit where it’s due.
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And at the end I’ll tack on a letter to the editor with a timely message for drivers. I couldn’t post it as a letter because the reader didn’t want a name used. It’s a shame because there’s nothing in this letter that’s in the least bit embarrassing.
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On with the show …
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Got this message Sunday night from Jeff Tudor of Graham who wanted to talk about the candidates forum we co-hosted with WPCM radio last week. He was also commenting on  about it published in the print edition Sunday.
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I had been meaning to contact the Times-News to congratulate and thank you for the commissioner candidates forum this past Tuesday night. Your column in Sunday’s paper gave me a contact person.
My wife and I are lifelong residents of North Carolina, but have lived in Alamance County only about four years and knew little about the commissioner candidates. The weekend before, we had been discussing taking advantage of early voting and I had expressed my concern about voting with any confidence for any commissioner candidate. Then, I saw an article in the Times-News about the forum and we knew we had to go.
This forum was a terrific public service. I expected more people to be there Tuesday night, but the radio broadcast surely reached many more. I agree with you that the evening would have been better without those few candidates for other offices making speeches instead asking questions, but I was still very pleas ed to have had this opportunity to listen and learn.
I voted on Thursday and my wife on Friday. That’s two fewer people for the poll workers to deal with on May 6.
One other thing - I’m glad to see that you have kept the mutual fund quotes in the paper, but I have questions about the first column heading for the quotes. Every day it reads “3 year return” even though the key to the table says Tuesday is 4 wks, Wednesday is 12 months, etc.
Looking forward to the “tweaked” forum for the general election. Thanks again.
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This is the kind of response we were hoping to see from the forum, which included candidates for the Alamance County Board of Commissioners and those for and against liquor by the drink in Graham. I want to thank the Tudors for taking advantage as others did last Tuesday.
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The credit for putting on the show goes to several people. Bill Whitley, John Brockwell and Byron Tucker of WPCM played huge roles as did Times-News city editor Brent Lancaster. While the newspaper had hosted similar forums before, we hadn’t done so with the radio station. We enjoyed the partnership and hope they did too. Brent’s experience with forums was a key to our success and I thank him.
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The idea for a mixed media forum actually originated with John who contacted me last fall about doing a forum during the elections for city council and mayor. By the time John and I hooked up it was too late for the city races but I promised we’d work together in 2008. I called John in April and we began to set things up.
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I, too, look forward to the fall.
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The next message had nothing to do with elections but about remembering a respected leader in the community who passed away. In this case, Anita Bryant.
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Thank you Madison for the beautiful article on Mrs. Bryant, it was not hard to do because she was such a kind and beautiful lady, thank you so much.
Delacie Jacobs
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I sent thanks back to Ms. Jacobs, of Burlington, on this one. When we found out that Mrs. Bryant, the matriarch of Hargett and Bryant Funeral Home, had passed way we wanted to do a story about it. Mrs. Bryant was a pioneer in Alamance County and among the first black women in business. In life, however, Mrs. Bryant was modest and never wanted a story done about herself — even though we tried. When she died, we had very little information in our archives about her and no obituary was immediately available from the funeral home.
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Ms. Jacobs contacted us asking why there was no story right away. I explained our situation and she agreed to take be interviewed. When the family supplied more information we were able to put together remembrance of this important woman</a> in our area. Ms. Jacobs in no small way helped make it happen. Our reporter Isaac Groves wrote a great story. Sadly, we’re losing Isaac this month as he leaves for greener pastures.
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Readers like Ms. Jacobs are critical to the work we do every day. We hope our readers will contact us and participate in the stories we do.
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Thanks again.
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And here’s the letter to the editor as promised. The reader is from Southern Alamance County.
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Here it goes …
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Like many of you, within the last week I have been through a random license check and have passed a parked patrolman checking speeds via RADAR. As you know, such practices are not uncommon. The local police department, the sheriff’s office, and the Highway Patrol all conduct these types of checks. My concern is with the average citizen. I’m not sure how the tradition of blinking your headlights at oncoming traffic to warn of a speed trap ahead began, but it is something that we all need to think about.
Years ago it was done out of common courtesy for your fellow motorists, and for the most part this is still true today. However, times have changed. Years ago we didn’t have terrorism or gang activity to worry us to the degree it does today. Crime is rampant. Reports of robbery, drunken driving, illegal drug trafficking, assault, murder and illegal immigration flood our televisions and newspapers. When we send out a warning signal by blinking our headlights, we could unwittingly be aiding and abetting a criminal in his or her escape by giving them time to turn around and avoid capture.
All that I am asking is that we, the proud citizens of this great and blessed country, give this practice careful consideration and allow our fine men and women in uniform the opportunity to do their jobs in trying to keep us safe. So the next time you go through a license check or a speed trap, please “Think Before You Blink.” It could make a difference in getting a dangerous person off the streets … and after all, if I am speeding, I probably deserve a ticket anyway.
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I hope this reader reconsiders supplying a name for publication. I love letters to the editor and personally think we can’t print enough of them.

Post-mortems, Post Toasties and post-hypnotic suggestions after digesting the print, video and audio from Tuesday’s forum of candidates for the Alamance County Board of Commissioners which was held at the Paramount Theater in beautiful but otherwise deserted-at-night downtown Burlington.
Maybe a margarita from the nearby Mi Casa restaurant would’ve helped.
Welllll … probably  not.

So who won?
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Since it wasn’t a debate, nobody did really. In gauging a forum like this one I’d say it’s sort of like the adage about the Saturday round during the Masters golf tournament. A player can’t win the Masters on Saturday but they can sure lose it.
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By that standard two candidates — one Democrat and one Republican — fared poorly. This was likely caused by either a serious case of the jitters or a lack of command of the issues at hand. In truth, it was probably a little of both. I won’t name them here — or ANYWHERE ON THIS POST, if you get my drift.
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Any surprises?
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Right off the bat I’d say Democratic candidate Tristan Patterson was a revelation mainly because at age 23 he’s by far the youngest candidate in the field and seemed to have good command of his facts and the issues. He was very poised for someone of his age and experience.
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Overall I thought the vast majority of the candidates in both parties more than held their own. It was, on both sides, a conservative lot and there was almost no discernible sharp disagreement. The only point of contention was between incumbent GOP Commissioner Bill Lashley and everybody else on the matter of taxes. Apparently no one in the field is as opposed to them as Lashley is. This is Lashley’s point of view anyway. From his perspective, there is nobody in the free world more opposed to taxes than Lashley himself.

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Anything else on Tristan Patterson?
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Well I found it interesting that he now identifies himself not as a businessman but as a full-time candidate for the Board of Commissioners. Hope he understands the pay ain’t that great for this gig. That’ll change of course when he gets to be president.
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Did anybody really understand state Rep. Cary Allred’s question?
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Not really. Well, perhaps a few did but since Allred never really asked a question it’s almost impossible to know for sure. Democrats Eddie Boswell and Linda Massey weren’t the only ones one who had  puzzled expressions. Republican Hayes Teague offered to speak with Allred about the issue at greater length later to more fully comprehend it. And Incumbent GOP Commissioner Dan Ingle admitted to spending 45 minutes talking on the phone with Allred on a recent night. Allred then engaged in a loud discussion — on his end anyway — with Lashley about it outside the theater when the forum was over and innocent bystanders were trying to get safely to their cars, or to Mi Casa for the previously mentioned margarita.
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And people say running for president is a grind.
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Laughs of the night … GOP
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Lashley — and his opponents for that matter — got lots of mileage out of Lashley’s remark that on his current board he’s surrounded by a few what he called “Country Club Republicans” who make cutting taxes more difficult because they spend money like there’s no tomorrow and mentioned others on the forum panel. Commissioner candidate and school board chairman Tom Manning got the line of the night when he responded by saying “Thanks for sharing Bill.”
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But nearly every other hopeful weighed in, including Lashley’s colleague Ingle, who prefaced by saying “I’m not a member of the country club but …  .” Larry Lee, Lee Isley and Teague all did the same.
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It makes for good theater but not really accurate discussion. Sadly this kind of politics and labeling work together like Rove and Atwater. But it don’t make such statements necessarily so.
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Take, for example, the abundantly weary tag “Tax-and-Spend Liberal Democrat.” There may be such a thing but there aren’t many left — kind of like mastodons of yore. In my experience, Democrats and Republicans both greatly enjoy spending money — but they really disagree about what to spend it on. The truth is, if Washington politics is any indication, the far more prevalent species these days are the “Spend and Spend Some More Republicans.” This seems to be President Bush’s personal mantra.
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Now if Alamance County government operated like the Bush Administration this would happen: When the GOP is in charge the sheriff’s department would be outfitted with Hummers, LCACs, Howitzers and V-22 Osprey aircraft that would be based at a prison facility the size of Sing-Sing. After blowing $4.5 billion there, the board would announce a tax cut.
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When the Democrats are in charge the newer high schools would be modeled after Duke University combined with the Taj Mahal. The shrubbery would be the largest single expense but there would also be gourmet meals, exhibits of art by Monet, high-speed internet and HDTV in each and every square foot and a graham cracker and chocolate milk machine in every classroom. After blowing $4.5 billion there, the board would charge a user fee to take art courses.
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Cast your ballots!
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For the record
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<blockquote>
From my perspective I’d like to offer a correction to a statement made by Massey on the subject of open government. The former mayor of Haw River answered a question on the subject by stating that sometimes governments are bound by law to meet behind closed doors. This isn’t exactly true. The North Carolina Open Meetings law only states that local governments CAN meet out of public view to discuss certain issues such as personnel, land acquisition and legal matters.
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But they don’t have to.
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Local governments in North Carolina can, in theory, talk about any of this stuff in open session and be within the law. They could also release more information on these issues and still be within the law.
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They choose not to.
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This is a dodge local governments use to keep information from the public. To be fair, in some cases it’s wise to avoid releasing some information to avoid potential lawsuit, especially in some sticky personnel situations.  That doesn’t mean, however, that the public should be completely in the dark about why, say, a department head is fired at midnight by the county commissioners.
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And the argument that closed meetings are the best ways to conduct business when it comes to luring industry or buying land are flat wrong. These are things people need to know so they can determine whether government is making the best decisions possible or if something  potentially troublesome is coming to their neighborhoods. Sometimes it’s to make sure government leaders aren’t making sweetheart deals for themselves, friends of family members.
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We’d like to see state law changed to something more in line with what’s used in Florida — where very little can be conducted in secret.
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A farm, or not
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On the subject of land-use planning the matter of farms came up. From my experience there seems to be some confusion over what constitutes a farm, which is why land-uise planning is worth talking about.
The topic of hog farms was casually broached Tuesday night. It’s easy to be so dismissive in the Piedmont where there aren’t any hog farms to speak of. In eastern North Carolina, where I lived from 1992 to 2007, calling such operations “farms” is a wholly inaccurate characterization of what we’re talking about. In Duplin and Sampson counties these so-called farms are actually industrial areas where tens of thousands pigs are raised in places with waste treatment facilities large enough to take care of a small city. Hog lagoons are actually massive craters filled with animal waste — many of them thousands of square feet in size and located near rivers and streams.

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When I lived in Jacksonville one of those lagoons ruptured and 25 million gallons of hog poop spilled into a river there that flowed from Richlands to the ocean. That’s 25  million gallons enveloping a shrimp you might eat later.
And try watching an orange plume of hog excrement travel down a river through the middle of town killing fish along the way and then tell me it’s not an industrial incident.
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Good luck on Tuesday. And if you need a margarita, you know where to get one.