Former Speaker Jim Black tells you he is quitting politics, do you: A) Write a story focused on that news, or B) Throw the new info in the last graf of a story on Black’s “life after speaker.”
If you opted for B, then you are fit to report on politics in Raleigh for the Uptown paper of record. And not much else.
Seriously, I don’t get the kid glove treatment Jim Black receives from most of the Charlotte media. And don’t forget the bizarre case of the Observer asking Black about any personal relationship with former aide Meredith Norris and then failing to report, for several months, either the question or Black’s denial of any affair with Norris.
Here’s the big picture the Observer is evidently afraid to relate to readers: Jim Black has been driven from North Carolina politics under an ethical cloud. A federal grand jury is still investigating corruption in state government. The state is being run like a banana republic and all anyone in power at the state or local level can talk about it how government must get more money from taxpayers.
No matter your exact views on the proper size of government, that’s sounds like news to me. But the status quo reigns, even as McClatchy’s stock tanks and circulation for daily papers nosedives. Simple self-preservation seems to argue for a change away from apologizing for and coddling government and its insiders.
Not yet. Not with Jim Black.
