thoughtsignals

G.D. Gearino, a columnist and longtime N&Oer is leaving that newspaper for self-employment. Newspapering is best left for younger folks, he says, and newspapering is getting tougher.

For a long time, newspaper owners had a sweet gig: Money rolled in and their papers had a voice-of-God authority. These days, the money is harder to come by, and that authority is under siege. I still believe newspapers are important, but the job of adapting to the new information age needs to be done by people wiser than I.

So he’s freelancing, apparently, working on another novel and writing a daily online column here.

N&O Editor Melanie Sill outlines the difference between what her paper is reporting on the Duke lacrosse case compared to at least some of what has appeared on blogs before the N&O reported it.

We heard all kinds of rumors and tips, but we don’t publish unattributed rumor and we almost never quote unidentified sources. Much of this gossip went right up on blog posts, but we used such leads and rumors as initial information that had to be fleshed out on the record or through independent verification.

She does a nice job calmly laying out the difference between what the N&O is doing in the name of traditional journalism compared to what some bloggers have done. And I think she manages to avoid re-opening the whole “blogging vs. journalism” hobgoblin.

Also, she notes that Roy Cooper has (apparently) refused interview requests from N.C. media but jumped at a chance to go on 60 Minutes.

Cooper is North Carolina’s attorney general and has a responsibility to speak to the local community, including reporters who work to inform people here. It’s ironic that after condemning Mike Nifong’s play-to-the-cameras actions, Cooper gave exclusive access to a national television program.

Link.

Almost as soon as N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper announced that he was dropping all charges against the former Duke lacrosse players, the News & Observer had a promo up announcing a five-part series on the case beginning Saturday. The screenshot below is from this morning.

Mainly, this demonstrates that most people, including reporters, involved in the case were expecting it to be dropped. And it suggests, at least to me, that the N&O has been working on a big project about the case in anticipation of it being dropped. I imagine they have most of the stories written and ready to go.

Business Leader magazine, based in Raleigh, plans to go national. I used to freelance for that magazine from time to time.

Link.

From The News & Observer, a story that’s pegged on veteran lawmaker Howard Coble of Greensboro. It’s all about the power North Carolina’s U.S. House delegation doesn’t have:

WASHINGTON - U.S. Rep. Howard Coble piles into the members-only subway car in a tunnel of the U.S. Capitol, all grins and how-are-ya’s with Republicans and Democrats, chatting up a storm on the way to cast a vote on the House floor.

Coble, North Carolina’s longest-serving member of Congress, has all kinds of friends. But Coble has little real power in Washington.

Really, no one in North Carolina’s House delegation does. None of the state’s 13 members can march into the House and make things happen on a broad, national scale.

Link.

I’ll be at ConvergeSouth today. I wasn’t at the famous Dave Hoggard barbecue last night, but there’s a set of photos up on Flickr.

The Bynum General Store, the last store in the tiny former Chatham County mill town of Bynum has closed. The N&O, justifiably, has given the town a nice Sunday story:

They still call Bynum a mill town, even though the old textile factory burned up a long time ago. These days it’s more of a 250-person village, held together by a few twisting streets and an impossibly quaint neighborly spirit.

I used to live just a few miles up the highway from Bynum, and I’ve visited the town once a year or so the last few years for the annual Haw River Festival. The story of Bynum is the story of a lot of North Carolina towns, especially in the last couple of decades. These communities, once driven, for good or bad, by the state’s textile industry are fading into the history books.

Up-and-comer country star Tift Merrit has written about the town, where she used to hold regular concerts in “Laid a highway.” (The N&O story quotes several verses from Merritt’s song, but in the online version they don’t do a very good job of distinguishing those quotes from the rest of the story.)

They laid a highway a few years back
Next town over by the railroad track
Some nights I’m glad it passed me by
Some nights I sit and watch my hometown die.

Link. There’s an audio slide show here that accompanies the story. Also, there’s a short clip of Merritt’s song accompanying the story (look in the column immediately to the right of the story for the Flash player). You can listen to the entire song on Merritt’s web site (click on “music” in the menu).