Hey, Rick —
Got a question about your front page today, Friday. Anything seem a little off to you?
We have a big lotto package, lotsa art and color and I guess it goes there. Fine. Then we have a happy ending to one of those attractive white women in peril stories, this one with an NC angle. Does not do much for me, but I get that one too. And Ken Garfield must get automatic bumps this time of year to get the bishop foot-washing expose A-front play. Decidedly odd, but given the market and the atmospherics, I’ll roll with that one too.
Then we have the screaming 22 inches of copy above the fold on the Duke lacrosse incident, with another 36 inches after the jump. That one I just do not get. That’s two days in a row of three reporters filing massive inches on this out-of-town and still murky story.
The Duke story’s play looks downright bizarre, in fact, when you look at what leads the Local section today — news that a Demo legislator has broken ranks and is calling for Speaker Jim Black to step down. This story would seem to have all kinds of immediate impact for Charlotte area readers from the purely political to the now real prospect that Black may not be in the Speaker’s chair for the short session, which in turn may impact plans for General Assembly approval of a hike in the car rental tax which is supposed to fund the $150 million Uptown arts complex. See, lotsa stuff there just to tease out briefly.
Accordingly it seems to me that the Black story merits the 50-inch A-front play and the Duke story, an important regional and continuing story to be sure, should’ve received the 25-inch B-section treatment. Now it is true that The New York Times has decided to cover the lax story, but that should not sway the decisions in your newsroom. In fact, given the Times’ track record, it is only a slight reach to say that NYT coverage of a story should be taken as prima facie evidence that the topic is not news worthy.
Further, we’ve heard an awful lot lately on the importance of good news judgment and how that can sometimes be sidetracked by other agendas, like corporate balance sheet considerations. Well, here is a case where the objective news judgment criteria seems to conclusively point toward one story yet the scarce news hole goes to another. What other agenda is at play here? It does not seem to be a matter of resources.
Thanks for any light you can shine on this matter. I am easily confused, but I really do not think I am alone on this one.
JAT
Update: Rick, the timeline on this Durham thing is now quite shaky.
Update II: Same deal on Saturday’s B front — Duke above the fold, Black at the bottom. Plus we get a background package on Durham to look forward to tomorrow. Yippee!
