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June 29, 2005
Burden of the past
I have tried to avoid the “another Vietnam” syndrome in thinking about the Iraq war. I am always suspicious of historical analogy in the first place. Time marches on. Historical context is ever changing.
And yet we are all prisoners of our own past. When I hear our leaders talk about the strategy of turning things over to the Iraqis – a wonderful thought on the face of it – I can’t help but recall Vietnamization. This was the way we got out of the Vietnam War, by teaching the Vietnamese to fight for themselves. But, of course, everyone knew that once the Americans withdrew, resistance to the North Vietnamese would collapse and South Vietnam would fall to the Communists.
Lots of things are different in Iraq. This is not a proxy war between two great world powers, as Vietnam was. There are not two competing armies representing distinctive geographical areas, as there were in Vietnam.
But, in fact, there are a lot of similarities between the two American interventions. We are trying to plant democracy from the outside in a culture with no tradition of democracy. Both societies have social customs and religious and ideological traditions that we Americans poorly comprehend. Insurgents gather and stage actions from just beyond the borders. Sometimes the enemy is a mere child with a bomb. And then there is the crucial question: Are the native forces we are training really loyal to the new regime?
A china shop warning sign has often been used as a metaphor for the U.S. obligation in Iraq: You break it, you own it. Even many who did not support invading Iraq now believe we own it and must stay the course. That’s my opinion, too.
I just hate this nagging Vietnam hangover. We broke South Vietnam, and we owned it. And then we stayed the course at great cost in blood, treasure and social and political unity. The way out, we decided, was to turn ownership back over to the Vietnamese. For whatever reason – a commitment that was too weak, a country that was too broken – it didn’t work.
Maybe things will be different in Iraq. It is hard to see it, but I hope so.
Posted by Mike Pride at 06:25 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 27, 2005
Yum
On Capitol Street on Saturday, we went to the farmers’ market for fresh lettuce and left with much other good stuff. A quick stop turned into longish one during which we chatted with friends and neighbors.
We were late, but we got the lettuce – one of the last heads in the basket of a vendor who gave us the good news that he’ll have fresh peas next week. It was also our good fortune to buy absolutely the last loaf of cinnamon-raisin bread from Abigail’s Bakery of Weare. We bought bay leaves, chives and oregano from the spice lady.
Then our impulsive buying spree brought us to a table lined with bottles of wine. The winemaker was Jewell Towne Vineyards on the Powow River in South Hampton. Two college students, interns at the vineyard, stood behind the table. One was a student at Emory University in Atlanta, the other a senior-to-be from the Whittemore School of Business at UNH.
We’re no connoisseurs, but we have made a few vineyard tours over the years, and we worried that the product before us might taste like vinegar. But the marketing major sounded smooth and not too dry when she broke into the wine lingo, so we took a chance on a bottle of white and a bottle of red. Saturday night, we chilled the Cayuga White American Table Wine and drank it with dinner. Excellent. May the red be just as fine.
Possibly the most fun we had at the market was when we ran into several friends, including Kay Sidway, godmother of the Children’s Place in Concord. Kay’s a neighbor, but it had been much too long since we caught up with each other.
I’ll spare you the details, but consider this a plug for farmers’ markets. Concord’s runs from 8:30 to noon on Saturdays adjacent to the State House lawn. There are farmers’ markets throughout the state. There are many reasons to support one (or more) near you: to help local food producers, to chat with old friends and, of course, to eat well.
Posted by Mike Pride at 06:30 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 24, 2005
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
You may have read in last week’s Sunday Monitor about personnel changes in the newsroom. If you’re like me, you probably wondered about the story behind the story: What’s really happening?
Sorry, there's no juicy hidden agenda. But after watching several colleagues try out their new roles for a week, I thought I'd share a little more about our aims.
In case you missed it, we moved Managing Editor Ari Richter to the new position of Opinion editor and Sunday Editor Felice Belman to Ari’s job. Ric Tracewski switched from features – mainly the daily D sections – to news editor. Danielle Kronk became deputy city editor and Jen VanPelt feature editor.
Nearly two years ago, we set out to evaluate our content and to redesign the Monitor accordingly. We found much that needed improving. We also realized we had embarked on a never-ending challenge: We could remain true to our mission only if we were constantly adjusting our content to meet changing reader needs.
The new newsroom lineup will help us achieve several aims during the next few months. For example:
– Better story planning. For some time we have liked the idea of news-feature centerpieces for the main hard-news pages – A-1, A-2 and B-1. We’re counting on Belman’s planning skills and Tracewski’s design talent and news judgment to help us improve in this area.
– Better integration of daily and Sunday content. Kronk and City Editor Hans Schulz have taken on this task.
– New typography. Look for this in the fall. Most of the editors have been working on it, along with some reporters and Charlotte Thibault, the newsroom artist.
– An improved report on area towns. This is also a work in progress, but I have confidence in our reporting team and the leadership of Kronk and other editors.
– More opinion content on state and local issues. We identified this as a goal early in the redesign process. I’ll be working with Richter and Editorial Page Editor Ralph Jimenez to make it happen.
– New feature content and design. We’re in the early stages of developing this. When we hatch a plan, VanPelt will lead the effort. We have brought in a new design editor, Vanessa Valdes, to help.
Please stay tuned. As usual, we’ll be bouncing major ideas off readers before deciding how to proceed. And we’ll do our best to see that the coming changes are pleasant surprises, not the other kind.
Posted by Mike Pride at 03:43 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 23, 2005
Then and now
My pal Michael Birkner, a Gettysburg College history professor who was editorial page editor of the Concord Monitor years ago, visited us last week. While researching Sherman Adams, Dwight Eisenhower and the New Hampshire political culture of the 1950s, he ran across a couple of letters from Jim Langley to Styles Bridges. He shared the letters with me.
Langley – James M. Langley – was owner, manager and editor of the Monitor for more than 30 years beginning in the 1920s. Bridges was a U.S. senator from New Hampshire from 1937 until his death in 1961. The excerpt below is from Langley’s April 28, 1954, letter to Bridges. Bridges, it appears, was feeling him out about a possible assignment in the Eisenhower administration and Langley, though interested, was letting Bridges know how much he already had on his plate.
I have long known Langley was involved in many activities outside his responsibilities at the Monitor. To name three big ones, he was publicity chairman for Eisenhower’s 1952 campaign in New Hampshire, helped negotiate the Laurel-Langley trade agreement between the United States and the Philippines and served as ambassador to Pakistan.
This excerpt shows the range of local activities in which he also participated:
“I am willing to do public jobs for which I believe I have any talent and the subject of which interests me. I have, at this particular time, quite a few obligations of this sort here at home . . .
“I really have to see the hospital building job through, at least until it is more nearly finished and the new director has become completely familiar with it. . . . I also am in the process of getting a local regional industrial development job done. . . . I am president of Blue Cross. . . . I am chairman of the Bow school board, where we are building an addition to be completed in September. . . . I am president of School Union 19. . . . And I am chairman of the interim tax commission and feel that up to the point where we button up a report I could not quit. Besides these chores I have others, such as service on two bank boards, etc.”
Journalism has changed so much. I cannot conceive today of an editor taking part in any public processes that his or her newspaper is covering. But obviously a different ethic governed the behavior of editors half a century ago.
Posted by Mike Pride at 08:44 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 21, 2005
Or else
Tomorrow’s Monitor editorial will be on a possible lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the latest school funding plan. Again.
The Legislature has been ignoring the law since 1997, when the court said it is the state’s responsibility to pay for an adequate public education for all New Hampshire children.
So if you and I have to abide by the law, how can the Legislature get away with breaking it? For 7½ years and counting no less!
The reason seems to be that the court rendered a ruling that it cannot enforce. Usually when the court says what the state constitution means, you and I obey the ruling or pay the consequences. There is an “or else.”
In year 8 A.C. (After Claremont), we have a governor who was elected on a plan that is just as unconstitutional as the last few the Legislature has passed. His plan failed not because the Legislature wanted to do the right thing but because it wanted to stick it to the governor.
The “Gatsas plan,” which is about to become law, is just as unconstitutional as the governor’s plan. From Gatsas’s perspective, it has one great virtue: It gives more money to Manchester, which Gatsas represents.
It seems likely that school districts that Gatsas does not represent, and that thus fare poorly under the Gatsas plan, will sue the state. This will send school funding back to the Supreme Court. Unless it has become sick of the game and overturns its own Claremont decisions, the court will have no choice but to strike down the Gatsas plan.
But so what? Won’t we just enter yet another round of politicians pretending the constitution does not say what the justices say it says?
Here’s an alternative. Call it the grand “or else.” The court could ditch Gatsas and give the governor and Legislature one year to craft a constitutional plan, or else . . . the court would seize state liquor, toll, lottery and business-tax revenue until it had enough to pay for an adequate public education for all New Hampshire students.
Of course, the court might have a problem determining just how much that amounts to since the Legislature has never even defined adequacy. But the total spent on public education in 2004-05 is a good starting point for adequacy, so the court could just use that figure.
Then we’d be getting somewhere.
Posted by Mike Pride at 04:09 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
June 20, 2005
Quiet on the Cape
We left Concord early Saturday morning for Cape Cod, giving ourselves an extra hour for traffic. We reached the circle and bridge at the entrance to the Cape by 10. We had perhaps a one-minute jam-up there, but otherwise it was easy going. Coming back early Sunday afternoon, the wait to get off the Cape was no more than 10 minutes.
We were happy to escape heavy traffic, but we wondered what was up. The weather wasn’t the best, but there was no rain forecast (and none fell). Some high schools were still in session or holding graduation, so the summer season wasn’t in full swing. But everywhere we went, people worried about the small crowds.
Everyone blamed the red tide. Local clams and oysters are inedible, and of course these are famous fare on the Cape.
We stayed with friends in Wellfleet. We could see a few people tending the oyster beds and mud flats arrayed beyond the beach, but the ban on eating mollusks kept them from their real work.
At 6:15 p.m. on Saturday, our host went out to the local seafood restaurant to pick up boiled lobsters for our supper. The restaurant employs several people full-time for the season. “I don’t know if they’re going to make it,” he said when he returned. He had been the only customer.
He and his wife told us people were wary of all seafood even though the red tide affects only mollusks. It is safe to swim, but some people are even afraid of that.
The Cape depends on tourism, so livelihoods are at stake. It is as though during early October in New Hampshire, the leaves all turned an ashy gray instead of orange, yellow and burnt red.
Maybe things will turn around for the Cape. Several people expressed hope that the red tide’s effects would dissipate by August and part of the season might be saved.
On the other hand, if you’ve long wanted to walk the national seashore or visit the sights on the Cape but have been scared off by the horrendous weekend traffic, this might be the summer to go. Just don’t expect clams or oysters.
Posted by Mike Pride at 01:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 17, 2005
Waiting
The editorial we didn’t write this week was on Iraq. The subject came up during our informal meeting on editorial topics, but we couldn’t agree on what to say.
The Monitor’s basic position is this: We opposed the war, doubting both the wisdom of it and the evidence used to justify it. But now we hope the occupation succeeds in restoring stability and setting Iraq on the road to a sound constitutional republic. Whether we agreed with going there in the first place, Iraq is our problem now.
Obviously, the Monitor has no reporters in Iraq. Like the rest of the public, we depend on the wire services, the national newspapers, the wire services and television and radio for information. Still, we feel obliged when there is a major story or a shift in circumstances to render an opinion.
But just a skim through the week's news on Iraq conveys a sense of how confusing the situation there has become. Some members of Congress want an exit strategy for U.S. troops, and they aren’t all Democrats. U.S. troops act aggressively to stop the insurgency, but they are still far from making the country safe for Iraqis or for themselves. Suicide bombers hit their targets. Marines die. Innocent people die. Insurgents return to areas that were cleansed of them just weeks ago. On the front page of today’s New York Times is a story about Sunnis and Shiites reaching a compromise on how the Sunnis will be represented in the new parliament. On the front page of the Wall Street Journal is a story about long Sunni-Shiite friendships that have been shattered by the conflict.
We couldn’t figure out what was meaningful from these conflicting reports, so we waited. No editorial this week.
Maybe next week, we will settle on some observation we trust, some observation that we think is constructive. Iraq is a huge test of our country, much as we might like to close our eyes to the whole mess. A local newspaper's job -- on both the news pages and in its editorial columns -- is to work against this natural tendency.
Posted by Mike Pride at 05:44 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
June 14, 2005
Not guilty or innocent?
A reader responding to "A note on standards" asks why newspapers often use "innocent" rather than "not guilty" when a criminal defendant is acquitted. He suggests that "innocent" is inaccurate because the acquitted defendant may well have committed the crime. In other words, journalists can't know a defendant is innocent just because a jury finds that defendant not guilty.
What I know about the tradition of using "innocent" instead of "not guilty" is what I was told when I became a journalist a few decades ago. We were instructed to use "innocent" because just a typo or a dropped word could turn "not guilty" into "now guilty" or "guilty." I had the same objection then that the blog reader expresses now -- that the terms should not be interchangeable because "not guilty" does not mean "innocent."
I was a city editor (boss of the local reporters) in 1974 when computer editing in the newsroom replaced mechanical type-setting in the composing room. In that newsroom, we began then to use "not guilty" instead of "innocent." I can't say we didn't slip now and then -- we were creatures of habit working on daily deadlines -- but we tried to be consistent.
But old habits die hard, especially convenient old habits. For one thing, "innocent" fits better than "not guilty" in headlines -- a count of seven vs. eight under the obsolete system of measuring headline length.
As the blog reader suggests, however, we should not call an acquitted defendant "innocent." In today's wire coverage of the Jackson verdict in the Monitor and elsewhere, the terms used were "cleared," "acquitted" and "not guilty." Perhaps the absence of the word "innocent" suggests that the journalists involved had some doubt about Jackson's innocence in spite of the "not guilty" verdicts. Viewed less cynically, perhaps journalists, for the sake of accuracy, are finally retiring the fiction that "not guilty" means "innocent."
Posted by Mike Pride at 07:52 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 13, 2005
A magnificent sight
As is my habit when we stay at our summer camp, the first thing I did when I got up Saturday morning was walk out to look at the pond. The camp is on the northwest shore with a view of the west slope of Mount Sunapee. It had rained hard during the night, and mist hovered above the pond. I stepped out on the porch and said something to my wife, who was behind me.
Suddenly I heard a flutter from the boulders a few feet to our left. This is not uncommon. A great blue heron often fishes from the rocks. This heron, unlike some others I have observed, is wary of humans and ever quick to flee their sounds. But as I turned toward the flutter, first my ears and then my eyes told me the bird taking flight was far more substantial than the spindly heron.
I saw the white head on the dark body and knew instantly it was a bald eagle – an adult male. I watched it rise from the rocks on powerful wings and saw its white tail bob as it pumped into the mist and across the pond. Just before it reached the trees on the other side of the pond, it turned right – south – and sped off and out of view. The whole sighting took perhaps 20 seconds.
Years ago, my friend and colleague Jim Graham took our family on a canoe trip to Lake Umbagog, where we saw the nesting bald eagles. They had been brought there in 1989 in the hope that they would mate and lead to a resurgence of bald eagles in New Hampshire. Although the species remains rare here, bald eagles have been sighted relatively often in recent years. But I had never seen one so close by.
Later, when we went down to the pond to swim, we saw the blackened, dried-out head of a horned pout on a flattish stone six feet from the pond. I surmised that my morning entrance had interrupted a meal, but I can’t be sure.
I left the fish head on the stone, hoping the eagle would come back for it. Next morning we rose at about the same time. The only thing on the boulder was the fish head.
Posted by Mike Pride at 02:31 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 10, 2005
Honor the flag
Newspaper editors do not write letters to their members of Congress. But if I were writing such a letter today, here is what it would say:
Dear senators and congressmen:
You will soon have a chance to vote on the flag-burning amendment, which would make it a crime to desecrate an American flag in protest. Please vote no.
Old Glory is America’s special symbol. One of the most important things it stands for is the right of free expression. This is embodied in the First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech, a free press and free worship.
Burning or otherwise desecrating the flag in protest is a vile act. Fortunately, it is also a rare one. But when it does happen, it is almost always an act of political expression. Especially during a time when we are trying to show the rest of the world that America remains the great beacon of human liberty, it makes no sense to erode our freedoms.
Proponents of the flag-burning amendment may have good intentions, but they are supporting a bad idea. If Congress passes the amendment, it will weaken, not strengthen, the flag and what it stands for.
A vote against this amendment is a vote for one of our dearest rights as citizens. The way to protect the flag is to foster freedom, not limit it. Please vote no on the flag-burning amendment.
Thank you for considering my point of view.
Posted by Mike Pride at 11:56 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 09, 2005
The absent face
On the way back from a trip north of the Notches today, I stopped at the Old Man viewing area to see what I could see. Or couldn’t see.
It is the same 600-yard walk as ever from the parking lot to the viewing area. But two years after the demise of New Hampshire’s symbol, some of the signage reads as though the Old Man is still there.
At the viewing area, two new machines have joined several old coin-operated binoculars. The old ones blink open for a few seconds for 50 cents a pop; the new ones cost only a quarter and offer a before and after perspective.
Whichever way you point the new one on the left, you see an enhanced photograph of the Old Man of the Mountain. A bit cartoonish, it reminded me of the pictures in the old ViewMaster cardboard discs of historic places. The machine on the right gives you an impressive high-powered look at the empty spot on the shoulder of Profile Mountain.
This was my first trip to the viewing area since the Old Man’s demise, and it made me think.
It’s a good thing the committee charged with deciding what to do at the site took a minimalist approach. As much as I admire the Old Man’s profile on road signs and toll tokens, our state’s symbol is gone and nothing people can do will bring it back.
Even without the Old Man, Franconia Notch State Park is a lovely place. Sheer rock cliffs, jagged peaks, mountainsides carpeted in green – there are lovely sights everywhere you turn. Look closely and you’ll surely see rock formations with craggy noses, foreheads and eye sockets.
Like anyone else from New Hampshire, my family took many visitors to see the Great Stone Face. Much as they enjoyed the visit, most were surprised at how small it was. In the imaginations of those who visit the spot for the first time now, the Old Man can remain larger than life.
Decades hence, no one who stands where I stood today will have an experience similar to mine – and yours if you ever visited Franconia Notch during the Old Man’s long reign. I didn’t need the two new binocular devices to compare what was with what is (or isn’t). We who actually looked up to the Old Man have something the visitors of the 22nd century will never have. Our loss is our gain.
Posted by Mike Pride at 06:08 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 06, 2005
One-two punch
Some nights after my wife falls asleep grading papers on the couch, I watch old fights on television. My wife loathes boxing. She sees the sweet science merely as one person trying to hurt another, and what’s to like about that?
But on Friday nights when I was a kid, my dad and I watched Carmen Basilio, Gene Fullmer, Bobo Olson, Emile Griffith and scores of others feint and parry on our black and white TV. Now, some of those fighters, along with replays of the Johanson-Patterson trilogy, Clay-Liston I and II and many others that were not on TV at the time, are prime-time regulars. I’ve lost touch with today’s boxing world, but I like the old fights.
And I’m a sucker for boxing movies. I couldn't wait to see Cinderella Man. I’d breezed through James J. Braddock’s biography at a bookstore coffee shop a month ago, so I knew the story. I had also seen reviews of the film, including one in which a cynic poked fun at Renée Zellweger’s line to Russell Crowe: “Jimmy, you’re the champion of my heart.”
Indeed, the schmaltz is thick. Crowe’s Braddock is good, his opponents evil. While other men grow surly as the Depression leaves half of New Jersey without food, heat or electricity, Jimmy Braddock never gives up on the American dream. He’s the perfect father, Zellweger the perfect mother and wife.
This is no Million Dollar Baby, with its mid-script detour into real life. Cinderella Man is a boxing movie from start to finish. That means the boxing isn’t really boxing; it’s movie boxing, a la Rocky. The actor-fighters constantly throw haymakers and expose their jaws to them. The flurry sequences would leave Sugar Ray Robinson wheezing.
Plus, it costs too much to go to the movies, even to a Saturday matinee. Fourteen-fifty for popcorn and two soft drinks! Can you imagine?
But forget all that. If you can overlook a manipulative plot twist here and a half-baked subplot there, Cinderella Man is good old-fashioned Hollywood escapism. If you worry that this cynical age has destroyed the last shred of your sentimentality, Crowe, Zellweger and their raggamuffin kids will put the question to the test. If Jimmy Braddock doesn’t become the champion of your heart, well, what can I say?
My wife closed her eyes during the ring scenes, but she liked the other 90 percent of the movie a lot.
Two thumbs up.
Posted by Mike Pride at 08:38 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
June 02, 2005
A note on standards
We’re still getting letters objecting to our handling of a rape arrest in Hopkinton in a May 25 story. I answered one letter in the paper. The writer had criticized the reporter of the story. I defended the reporter because it was not she alone who had decided what details to include, and I thought readers should know that.
Otherwise, we have simply let readers have their say. That’s what letters to the editor are for.
But since we did not deviate from our standards in the coverage or play of this story, I thought it might be helpful to readers to explain just what those standards are.
This is an adult felony charge, not a juvenile case. That is why we identified the alleged perpetrator. Some readers have suggested that we should wait until after a guilty verdict to report the name of a person accused of a crime. Such an approach would be neither realistic nor healthy in an open society. The public needs to know who has been arrested for what.
We have not identified the alleged victim in this case because the allegation is sexual in nature. That is a near-universal standard in journalism. It is often revisited and debated, as it was most recently in the Kobe Bryant case, but I think it is the right standard.
Our May 25 story included several details from an affidavit in the case. Readers’ most basic questions in a story like this are: What happened? Why did it result in charges of aggrevated felonious sexual assault? The details we published provided the best answers we could to these questions.
When a crime of this nature is alleged, we also try to tell readers what we can about the person charged. This is standard journalistic practice. We followed it for this story, publishing the details the reporter could find out by deadline.
We played the story on page one because it was big news, not just in Hopkinton but throughout our circulation area. Fortunately, rape charges are rare among local high school students. What is rare is news. Although we knew the story would be widely read, we played it at the bottom of the page. Reader interest is an important factor in story placement, and we probably would have sold more papers on the newsstand had we made this the lead story on page one. Because the charges were sexual in nature, we decided not do so.
Posted by Mike Pride at 09:27 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack