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January 31, 2006

Sad premonition

Avery Blodgett was a wisp of a boy with stooped shoulders and a vague look on his face. He wasn’t much of a ballplayer, but no one on Bill’s Enterprises looked like a future David Ortiz. Often, John Fensterwald and I, who coached Bill’s in one of Concord’s T-ball leagues in 1990, looked out into the outfield at White’s Park and saw our outfielders standing with their backs to home plate.

But Avery was different. He didn’t care about winning or losing or baseball. He seldom spoke, had no friends and hid his emotions. The only time you really noticed him was when he was doing something mean or destructive. It might be as simple as jumping in a puddle to splatter a teammate with mud. Or he might tug on the shoddy chain-link fence behind the bench until a sharp stray wire was pointing out at chest level.

John Fensterwald, the Monitor’s editorial page editor at the time and my longtime pal, often sat on the bench speaking quietly and patiently with Avery. Many of the children on our team came from affluent families, and although we knew little specific about Avery’s home life, we knew he did not. But with a dozen or more other children to look after, neither John nor I felt like the time we gave Avery did much to compensate for whatever might be missing from his life.

I found it frustrating to talk with him. Five minutes after I;d tell him to stop poking another player with a stick, he’d be back at it again. More than once, John and I told each other that Avery was going to wind up at prison someday. And we meant it. A coldness in his behavior and our inability to connect with him gave us this sense.

And so, although my heart sank, I was not surprised when I read last week that Avery had been indicted on bank robbery charges. He already had a record, including the brutal 1999 home-invasion robbery of an elderly couple in Dunbarton.

I’m certain that in the years after that one season on our baseball team, Avery was the beneficiary of many second chances and special educational opportunities in Concord. And it was predictable that nothing worked.

I’m sure veteran local teachers pick up each day’s Monitor with a combination of hope and apprehension, knowing that they will see their own predictions for their students confirmed. Many former students will make productive adult lives for themselves, even after hitting bumpy patches as teenagers. And a few will wind up in trouble with the law. Of these, the teachers will tell you they knew way back when that this was going to happen.

On the basis of my experience with Avery, I now know how sad and bitter this feeling is. You do what you can for him when he is 8. If you live in community like Concord, you know that many adults more capable than you will try to help him find his way in the years to come. But you are pretty sure, even when he is a small boy in a Little League T-shirt, where his life is headed.

Posted by Mike Pride at 07:00 PM | Comments (0)

January 30, 2006

If it bleeds, it leads?

Ted Koppel, late of Nightline, had a terrific piece in the op-ed section of Sunday’s New York Times. It appeared under the headline “And Now, a Word for Our Demographic.” Koppel wrote that television news was in “decline and distress.” Gone, he wrote, were the days when “the audience for network news was made up of everyone with a television set” and networks protected their news divisions from the pressures of the market so they could do ambitious reporting. I can’t link to the whole piece because the Times considers it premium, meaning paid, content, but here are excerpts that convey its essence:

“Most television news programs are . . . designed to satisfy the perceived appetites of our audiences. That may be not only acceptable but unavoidable in entertainment; in news, however, it is the journalists who should be telling their viewers what is important, not the other way around. . . .

“Right now the main agenda is to give people what they want. It is not partisanship but profitability that shapes what you see. . . .

“Now television news should not become a sort of intellectual broccoli to be jammed down our viewers’ unwilling throats. We are obliged to make our offerings as palatable as possible. But there are too many important things happening in the world today to allow the diet to be determined to such a degree by the popular tastes of a relatively narrow and apparently uninterested demographic.”

The struggle Koppel describes has its counterpart in newspapers. More than ever, economic conditions press editors to give the readers what they want. What should be our lead story: new efforts to preserve open space in New Hampshire or the day’s testimony from a lurid murder trial? The governor’s State of the State message or the local teacher caught stealing money?

In each of those pairings, we know which story will attract more readers. We know which one, placed at the top of page one, is likely to lead to a slight bump in newsstand sales the next morning. But which has more substance? Which should – as opposed to would – matter most to readers?

We know which strories attract readers not just from intuition and experience but from a new tool: our online edition, on which we can track how many readers call up particular stories each day. Partly these numbers are driven by the display on the front page of the web site. Our online editors are not obliged to follow the choices we make on the actual front page. They generally give good display to what they think will draw the most readers and lesser display to stories like State of the State addresses and land conservation. Overwhelmingly the Monitor’s online readers choose mayhem, celebrities and sex over politics and policy.

Does this mean we should alter our news judgment on page one on the printed paper? Many papers are doing it. If you haven’t checked out the Union Leader lately, give it a look. The UL’s front page has gone whole hog into the “If it bleeds, it leads” mentality that guides local television news.

As editor of the Monitor, I’ve got my finger in the dike on this trend. Sure, we cover crime and fires – it’s the news – but it is important to resist the tidal wave of sensationalism in the news business. When I see a Union Leader front page with a story lineup that includes a rape, a murder, a police chase, a fire and a sex scandal, my first thought is that this page does not mirror the state I know. It’s probably wishful thinking, but I also wonder if the public really has an appetite for this and only this.

I hope you can find a copy of Koppel’s thoughtful commentary. His subject is television news, and in the piece he lays out an interesting short history of that particular institution. But Koppel’s concerns apply across the spectrum of media from which you get your news every day.

Posted by Mike Pride at 10:33 AM | Comments (2)

January 27, 2006

King of the blues

I celebrated Mozart’s 250th birthday a day early last night by going to see and hear B.B. King at Concord’s Capitol Center for the Arts.

Reading the program notes, it struck me that if King had died at the same age as Mozart, you might never have heard of the King of the Blues. He was in his 40s when he hit the mainstream charts. Mozart died at 35.

Because music is more peripheral in my life than I wish it were, the program notes told me several other things I was embarrassed not to know. I had no idea where the B.B. came from. Well, he originally called himself Beale Street Blues Boy, shortened it to Blues Boy and shortened it again to B.B.

I’m sure his show isn’t what it used to be. He is 80 years old, has diabetes and can’t stand up to play and sing. He’s a good talker, but my guess is he talks a lot more during shows now than he used to.

I saw Elvis Presley perform not long before he died. The show was a disappointment not because Elvis was bloated and slow afoot but because he never sang a song all the way through. Everything was a medley or a short version of a song that wasn’t all that long to begin with. King’s show suffers a bit from this tendency.

But hey, King has not lost his magic. Lucille, his Gibson guitar, still speaks his distinctive language, marked by his signature “sliding ‘bent’ note,” as the program calls it. In smirks and winces and grins, his facial expression dances to the music.

At the Cap Center, he sat center stage, a Buddha figure with a slice-of-moon smile and a shock of white hair. When he first leaned toward the microphone to sing, I wondered if age and wear would tell in his great blues bellow of a voice. No such thing. King was King, and the house was his.

It was probably his anyway. He could have belched and the audience would have whooped and applauded. I didn’t count how many times saxophonist Melvin Jackson shouted out that B.B. King was “THE KING OF THE BLUES.” That’s part of the show, I know, but it wasn’t news to the people who came to see him.

My guess is that if he returns next year, which, between Viagra jokes and frequent compliments to “the ladies,” King promised to do, he’ll fill the house again at 81.

What an inspiration.

Posted by Mike Pride at 05:12 PM | Comments (1)

January 26, 2006

Power vacuum

“The year of feeling powerless.”

That is the way a reader of my entry on the cancellation of The West Wing characterizes 2006. I am tempted to say, “Please, it’s only January,” but I know how the reader feels.

For those who see George W. Bush as a president leading the country in the wrong direction, and I count myself among them, hardly a day passes without depressing news. What makes me feel so powerless at this moment is that it is almost pointless to object.

Anyone out there want to write the editorial against the Alito nomination? What’s the point? Bush said Justice Antonin Scalia was his model for Supreme Court appointments, and a majority of voters gave him a new term – and a Republican Senate. It’s too early to be certain, but it is possible that the Supreme Court will soon have four Scalias, making center-rightist Anthony Kennedy the new swing vote. And who knows how long Justice John Paul Stevens, who turns 86 in April, will hold out? Among other things, I think Alito’s appointment is a giant step backward toward the days when abortion rights were afforded to only rich women and their daughters. But apparently this is what the electorate wanted, and any protest against it is a whimper in the wind.

Anyone want to write the editorial challenging Bush on his claiming of executive privilege to keep secret what the White House knew about Hurricane Katrina and when it knew it? Be my guest. Bush established a regime of secrecy in the White House at the start of his first term when his vice president met privately with energy bigshots to establish the administration’s energy policy. Five years into Bush’s presidency, it’s hard to believe the public would judge Bush’s energy policy a success. But the electorate gave him a second term, so secrecy it is.

Anyone want to write the editorial pointing out that this conservative administration has meddled to ill effect in local education and in big federal social programs? Or that these conservatives have abandoned fiscal responsibility? Or that the Bush White House’s claims of bringing democracy to the Middle East are inflated?

If you think these are partisan observations, I disagree. I see no leadership among the Democrats – no eloquent voice presenting an alternative that will turn heads. There is not the slightest sign that the November U.S. Senate elections will produce some check on presidential power. Instead the Democrats give us boilerplate opposition and ceaseless trimming.

The White House, its compliant Congress and its increasingly compliant Supreme Court are sucking up all the power. Those who oppose their ideology and their policies have every reason to feel powerless.

Posted by Mike Pride at 10:47 AM | Comments (2)

January 24, 2006

The end is near

I am a West Wing diehard. All television shows run their course, but it pained me to hear that NBC was canceling this one at the end of the season.

The reasons for the show's demise are many. Some characters ran out of gas, one literally died, and fans looking for romance surely gave up long ago on Donna and Josh.

Also, the series could not duplicate a vital aspect of the genius of America: the peaceful transition of power.

The West Wing isn’t ER. You can’t just plug in another doc or nurse. Once the Bartlet presidency began to wind down, the writers of The West Wing failed to create a quick and compelling transition to a new and interesting president.

Jimmy Smits and Alan Alda, two high-powered actors, have been running for president longer than an actual campaign, if you can believe that. If one of them actually won, the whole Bartlet White House would have to go. Same show, totally new cast – fat chance that would work.

I’ve enjoyed The West Wing for several reasons.

One is that Bartlet is from New Hampshire. This may seem parochial, but the real fun was watching for New Hampshire gaffes on the show – things about our state that the writers didn’t get quite right.

Another plus is plot complexity. The writing is excellent, and while I can’t follow every twist, it strikes me that the show is more life-like than some others because so many different things are going on at once.

Third, until the Bush presidency grew too pervasive to ignore, The West Wing created an alternative universe – a one-hour flight from reality.

In recent times, however, it hasn’t even been possible to guess when and whether The West Wing will be on. This seems to be the way of television these days – viewers are left to surmise because of spotty scheduling that a show is in its death throes. And the spotty scheduling can’t help but accelerate the demise.

Meanwhile, a pretender has arisen: the Geena Davis presidency. I like Davis as an actress. I think her show, Commander in Chief, is doing as much as popular culture can be expected to do to make the idea of a female president more plausible.

But by West Wing standards, the plots have been simplistic. The first few reminded me of the Roadrunner, with Davis as the roadrunner and Donald Sutherland as Wile E. Coyote. Of course, President Allen always overcame whatever Acme trick the cynical Sutherland had in his bag.

Now the show has changed tactics. The last episode I saw had Davis saving the world from nuclear war. A little subtlety would go a long way in the writing of this show.

At any rate, I’ll miss The West Wing. President Jed Bartlet filled a need I haven’t even mentioned. He lightened my psychic load, giving me hope that someday someone other than Franklin Pierce could actually be elected president from New Hampshire.

Posted by Mike Pride at 04:17 PM | Comments (1)

January 20, 2006

An "ordinary citizen"

Next Saturday is the 20th anniversary of the Challenger disaster, which took the lives of Concord teacher Christa McAuliffe and six astronauts. This morning I watched a tape of the program CNN will air in observance of the anniversary. Nearly all the images from 1985 and 1986 were familiar to me. I was present for some of them, and I directed the Monitor’s coverage of all of them.

The center of the CNN program is Framingham, Mass., the city McAuliffe came from, not Concord, the city where she lived and where her space mission became one of the biggest news stories ever.

CNN addressed the reason for this directly: Steve McAuliffe, Christa’s widower, wanted to live his life and bring up his children in privacy. The community respected his wishes and even, to a large extent, followed his lead. Framingham, by contrast, openly celebrates its first daughter. The film prominently features Christa’s mother and siblings, but Steve is present only in old clips and photographs.

As editor of the Monitor, I dread when these anniversaries roll around. There is little new to say, and it is a challenge to say the right thing. But there is no choice but to report on the anniversaries. Christa and the Challenger are still a Concord story, and the Monitor is Concord’s newspaper.

I respect Concord’s attitude about the disaster. Those of us who were here in 1986 all have our private memories and thoughts. The events of that time touch emotions that are at once deep and near the surface. The loss of Christa still seems unbelievably sad and senseless. For me at least, one of the dreams that propelled her – space as the last frontier – died with her.

But we are proud that Christa was such a great teacher, parent, humanitarian, feminist and communicator. She was so Concord – everything we strive to be, all the qualities we want to see in ourselves.

And yet the telling of her story, whether by CNN or the Monitor or any other media outlet, cannot help but portray her as a saint, a hero, a symbol. By contrast, much was made at the time of the Challenger mission of Christa as an ordinary person. Steve had these words engraved on her gravestone: “America's first ordinary citizen to venture toward space.”

Christa was ordinary in the best sense of the word: one of us, sharing and embracing our interests, striving to make the future better, but also human, with human flaws.

In one scene, the CNN documentary captures her attempt to retain her ordinariness despite her celebrity. This comes during her farewell address to Concord High: If I can do this, you can achieve your dreams, too, she tells the students.

Ordinary is how Christa McAuliffe was known in our community even before she was chosen as teacher in space. Part of the loss Concord still feels is in the way the events of 1985 and ’86 erased that part of the story.

(The CNN program, Christa McAuliffe: Reach for the Stars, is scheduled for broadcast Sunday night at 8 and 11 and next Saturday and Sunday at 6 a.m. and 3, 8 and 11 p.m.)

Posted by Mike Pride at 12:03 PM | Comments (0)

January 19, 2006

Question No. 4

In the Local & State section of today’s Monitor, you published a story about five Concord teenagers arrested for vandalism. Yet only one of those arrested was named and had her picture in the paper. Why?
As the story points out, the identified girl is 17 and the four others are younger – one 16, three 15. In New Hampshire, 17-year-olds are treated as adults by the court system, those under 17 as juveniles. In reporting criminal cases, it is the Monitor’s practice to name adults when they are arrested.

That said, we had a discussion at today’s news meeting about this story.

The story came in late yesterday. It was not on the news budget at our 4 p.m. news meeting. Thus I was surprised to see it in the paper this morning. I reacted to it as both a veteran editor and a veteran parent.

The picture in particular gave me pause. The story was about five arrests, but I thought the picture made it seem to be much more about one arrest. I appreciate that the police department gives us photographs of crime suspects. They add a great deal to our coverage. And I know the rules – 17 and older and the law considers you an adult, under 17 and you’re a juvenile. But experience tells me that a child’s 17th birthday does not necessarily confer adulthood on him or her. Some 15-year-olds are more mature than 17-year-olds, and even the brightest and seemingly most responsible teenagers do stupid things. It also seemed to me that, while destructive and perhaps even malicious, the vandalism was essentially a dumb prank.

All I have just written, I have written with hindsight not available to the editors making the decisions last night. When we discussed the issue at today’s news meeting, there were several opinions around the table. I think if I had had all the facts before me beforehand, I would have run the story as written – with the 17-year-old named – and as played – across the top of the Local & State section. It was, after all, a strong news story. But I would not have run the picture.

My hope after today’s Monday morning quarterbacking is that if something similar happens in the future, the editors will have a lively internal discussion of all the factors, call me or Managing Editor Felice Belman if they need another opinion and make a sound decision.

Whatever editors decide on such questions is a judgment, and thus open to criticism. We all learn from the process.

(Footnote: When we report on motor vehicle violations or accidents, the names of the drivers are public record even if they are 16, and thus we publish the names.)

Posted by Mike Pride at 06:00 PM | Comments (1)

January 17, 2006

Vendetta

Sometimes the best response to a really bad idea is to shut up about it. But sometimes not.

The effort to “take” U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter’s house in Weare is a really bad idea. Nevertheless, the nature of the media today assures that at town meeting time, the proposal will draw TV cameras and shock-talk yahoos out of the woodwork.

The anti-Souter crusade began in June after the Supreme Court upheld the decision by New London, Conn., to use the power of eminent domain to seize residential property for a commercial redevelopment project. Logan Darrow Clements, a California man unhappy with Souter’s vote with the majority in this case, proposed taking Souter’s home and building the Lost Liberty Hotel in its place.

If you’ve been reading the Monitor’s editorial and forum pages in recent weeks, you know that people in Weare who support Clements's idea are actually trying to wrest credit for this publicity stunt from him. Their fear is that Weare residents will deep-six the proposal if they think outsiders instigated it.

Never mind that townspeople will deep-six it anyway. Souter is Weare’s favorite son and most famous resident. If it had been entirely up to him, he never would have left the place. The vast majority of residents will support him even if they think he was wrong in the New London case. Judges make judgments, and judgments guarantee disagreement.

Besides, the grounds on which Clements and his local posse are operating are beyond foolish. The New London ruling upheld states’ rights and local control – values dear to libertarian hearts. The court did not approve the taking of residential property for a hotel; it approved local citizens’ rights to decide such questions for themselves without a federal bigfoot stepping in to stop them.

There is more wrong with the effort to seize Souter’s home. It is tinged with anger. It turns political disappointment into a personal vendetta. It is the height of phony populism. “If we are unable to acquire Souter’s property, the nation will see that the elite and powerful are exempt from the rules that govern the rest of us,” wrote one local advocate. And while purporting to advance the American dream, this effort ignores the bedrock on which that dream is founded: the rule of law.

The vast majority of the people of Weare will do the right thing when this issue comes before them. Even those who disagree with the New London ruling will see this grandstanding for what it is.

Posted by Mike Pride at 05:21 PM | Comments (2)

January 16, 2006

A winter's tale

When people weren’t talking about the Patriots’ demise today, they were talking about the weather. We’ve all heard the old saw that if you don’t like the weather in New England, just stick around for five minutes. Maybe outsiders don’t quite get it, so let me tell you about my weekend.

My wife and I decided to get a cabin-fever inoculation. We like art, and I saw on the web that the Clark Institute in Williamstown, Mass., was in the final two days of a Winslow Homer show. Because Robert Sterling Clark, the founder, was an avid Homer collector, we knew it would be a good show. We also wanted to see the modern art museum in North Adams, known as Mass MoCA for short.

We set out late Saturday morning in a drizzle. At some points during the 2¼-hour drive, the drizzle became a downpour. The rain sped the melt of the snow cover, and a mist hovered above the ground. It was a dark and gloomy drive through rolling country that is normally lovely. The car thermometer peaked at 53 degrees, a breathtaking number for mid-January.

We had a good time at Mass MoCA, spent the night at a hotel, and visited the Clark the next day before heading back to Concord in mid-afternoon.

By then, a big wind had swept in a storm that left three to six inches of snow. I had heard the storm whistling and rattling the window panes as I watched the Patriots late Saturday night on the sixth floor of the Holiday Inn in North Adams.

But what a contrast to the drive the day before! Saturday’s rain had frozen on the roads, making it difficult for the crews to clear them. The wind whipped the snow into clouds of bright white spray along the way. It also caused drifting, meaning uneven layers of snow capped the ice sheet. There was little traffic, but the going was slow. In the hilly backroads of Vermont, the temperature on the car thermometer never made it up to double digits, bottoming out at 4 degrees – 49 degrees colder than just the afternoon before.

On the other hand, the landscape was beautiful – quintessential northern New England. New snow weighed down the limbs of the fir trees and covered the fields, houses and barns. Plumes of wood smoke dulled the sky. In deep woods, the sun’s rays cut through leafless branches and splashed on the snow bed.

In only 24 hours, the place had been utterly transformed. This is one of the things I have come to love about my home, although it does not seem totally rational. I mean, it was 4 degrees, the wind was cutting, and a snow-shoveling job awaited me back in Concord. But somehow this meeting a northern winter on its own terms makes life seem dear.

Posted by Mike Pride at 07:08 PM | Comments (1)

January 13, 2006

Question No. 3

From a longtime (and careful) reader: In your Jan. 12 story on the arrest of Concord City Councilor Red Brochu, you reported that “neither Brochu nor his lawyer . . . returned repeated phone calls.” Why not the more neutral language “could not be reached for comment?”

As a city editor for many years, I always asked my reporters to use “could not be reached for comment.” In most cases I still think it is a good practice. The only problem with it is that it gives the reader no indication of whether the reporter called once and got a busy signal or was persistent in trying to reach a person named in the story. Particularly when the person is a public figure, as Brochu is, the more specific phrase “did not return repeated phone calls” is both fair to the subject and more informative to readers.

In a letter to the editor published in today’s paper, a reader complains that the story on Brochu’s arrest was sensationalism. I disagree. No matter how good a citizen or public servant Brochu has been, the arrest of a public official was news. The difficulties caused by potential conflicts of interest in prosecuting a city councilor made the story even more newsworthy, as did the apparent reluctance of public officials to talk about the case. The story’s play at the top of the Local & State section was just right.

Posted by Mike Pride at 10:17 AM | Comments (2)

January 12, 2006

It does take a village

Over the last three nights PBS stations aired a six-hour documentary following two teenage boys in David, Kentucky, through their high school graduation and beyond. It was a disturbing story – not at all the kind of coming-of-age tale that books and movies prepare us for. You know the ones I mean: stories where young men and women overcome the dark family secret or the traumatic event or the raging father and live happily ever after. Usually such stories are told long after the fact, after the protaganist has gone on to a productive life. In Country Boys, the young men’s futures remain daunting.

The boys are Cody Perkins and Chris Johnson. Cody’s mother died when he was young. His father remarried, but when Cody was a boy, his father shot his stepmother and himself. Chris grew up in a trailer with a nervous, unhappy mother and an alcoholic father.

Cody and Chris both attended the David School, where the faculty goes to extraordinary ends to help its struggling students through. Despite an overlay of Baptist morality in the classroom that plays naturally in Kentucky but would never play in New England, the principal and the teachers are the stars of this story. They are the last chance for wayward teens in a dead-end town. They provide Chris with direction, gumption and even a place to live. They give Cody a bright shining moment that propels him into the world.

To boil the story down to its essence, Cody has one thing Chris doesn’t: unconditional love. He lives with a reserved step-grandmother who gives him the combination of freedom and guidance he needs. He has a steady girlfriend who is solid beyond her years. And he has the church, including a pastor who takes a big-brotherly interest in him.

Although Chris often gives up school in frustration, he excels academically and even has a shot at college. But without a loving family to support him, he remains fragile. Once he leaves the David School, his first setback freezes him in his tracks. Perhaps something good will happen to revive his hopes, but as the film ends, his lack of self-esteem has landed him in a dead-end life.

The powerful story of these two boys left me with many thoughts.

One was how foreign life in the Bible Belt seems – at least as it is lived in this one small town in Kentucky. A teacher at the David School has no problem leading a class discussion to ludicrous ends to put down the theory of evolution. The class openly raises – and, of course, ridicules – the notion that Jesus was a monkey. During a discussion of incest in another class, one girl bravely raises her hand when the teacher asks if anyone thinks a girl should consider an abortion if her father impregnates her. The teacher responds with the assurance that there is a good chance in such cases that the baby will turn out just fine.

I do not mean to put down Bible Belt religion. Cody’s salvation from the demons of his childhood – the violent deaths of his parents – is his belief. God has vanquished Cody’s anger and replaced it with love. Without this belief, he would have little chance of escaping the dark hole in his past.

One final thought: Those who ridiculed Hillary Clinton’s assertion that “It takes a village to raise a child” should be forced to watch this documentary. Even though the epilogue suggests that Cody is on the right track, it is disquieting to contemplate the future these two young men face in this difficult world. But without strong institutions and caring strangers to support them during their growing-up years in David, that future, through no fault of their own, would be far bleaker.

Posted by Mike Pride at 10:11 AM | Comments (1)

January 06, 2006

More links

Here are two more links about the issues surrounding suicide coverage - in this case teen suicides.

The first is to Barbara Walsh's 2004 series on a teen suicide in Maine.

The second is Walsh's commentary discussing reporting and writing these stories.

Posted by Mike Pride at 05:56 PM | Comments (0)

More on Belmont suicide

Because of increased competition for readers' time and declining daily newspaper circulation, editors are under more pressure than ever to take advantage of opportunities to boost newsstand sales. Here is an internal memo from Mark Travis, a longtime editor here who is currently working with the staff to improve the Monitor's website:

Because Thursday's story mix had such stark choices between 'serious' state house and Medicare news and 'sensational' suicide and DWI mom stories, and because of Mike's blog on suicide sensationalism, I was very curious to see how readers voted with their website usage. As you probably noticed, I put the mom arrest and the suicide on our online front page yesterday, displacing the two wire stories we ran on the print front page.

Usage results from our daily stats:

1) Mom arrested for driving drunk: 4,079 readers
2) Man kills himself with guillotine: 2,996
3) Housekeeper swiped jewelry: 1,152
4) Truck bursts into flame on highway: 936 (and never on our online front page)
5) Beastie the cat is back: 920 (front page only after 5 p.m.)
....
13) Seniors going without drugs as plan debuts: 568 (our lead online story all day)
....
22) Session starts with ethics feud: 438 (lead print story, on online front page until 5 p.m.)

To those numbers I'd add this additional info: Yesterday's online readers spent the most time on the site (5.2 minutes on average) and read the most articles (5.2 page views on average) of any single day over the past month. Both figures were the highest we've seen in 30 days.

I'd never argue that reader interest should be the only factor in determining A1 play, and as someone whose life has been touched by a suicide I share Mike's concerns about how we play them. But based on these numbers I'd also say this: We had a paper Thursday with very strong single-copy sales potential, and that paper we put on B1 instead of A1. On the other hand, the B section was surely read like few others!

Mark

Posted by Mike Pride at 12:53 PM | Comments (0)

A reader responds

As a follow-up to yesterday's posting about our coverage of the Belmont suicide, here is the letter I mentioned from the victim's sister, Nancy Preisendorfer of Boscawen:

I am the sister of the deceased. I know you were not the first to print this story and only followed the lead of the others. I thank you for leaving out some of the details included in other coverage. I understand based upon the sensationalism of the story it could not be passed up.

Unfortunately, it will be how some of the relatives I have not yet had the chance to contact will learn of my brother's death. It would be considerate if the media would recognize the position of the victim's family and leave out names. The sensationalism would still be there.

I feel it is important for the public to know my brother was a talented, widely loved individual who suffered from severe depression. He was frequently alone even when he was with friends and family. He struggled for much of his life to be happy and kept himself secluded when he felt his sadness would infringe upon others.

I am troubled by the emphasis being on the way he died. I understand the media appeal. The focus must be put on making the public more aware of the signs of mental illness and of the treatment options that exist. People need to try everything they can to seek treatment for depression in themselves and their family members.

We all loved Dave and tried throughout his life to reach through to him and pull him out of the sadness. It just wasn't enough.

I regret that the Concord Monitor chose to point individuals toward finding online instructions for making guillotines. It might be a better idea to direct them toward internet resources for learning about and dealing with mental illness. It might be the lifeline they need.

Posted by Mike Pride at 10:34 AM | Comments (1)

January 05, 2006

Covering suicide

I winced at our news meeting yesterday afternoon when the local news budget included a story about the suicide of a Belmont man who had made a guillotine and planted explosives in his house.

It was a sensational story - as one editor said at the meeting, the one story that all readers would read. When I came in this morning, another editor told me it was the only story that he had read from beginning to end.

At the news meeting, I decided the story did not belong on page one. I said to the editors that we needed to be careful how we covered suicide and how and where we played it in the paper.

Boiled down, the reasons for this care are three: Suicide is almost always the result of mental illness. Sensational news play further injures the families of suicide victims. And suicide stories can lead to other suicides.

My position reflected a longstanding journalistic practice. We generally do not cover suicides unless they are committed in a public place or as part of a murder-suicide or by a public figure. There are other exceptions, and probably the bizarre nature of the Belmont suicide made it newsworthy.

But for the most part, I think we’re right to under-cover and underplay suicides even though doing so runs counter to our responsibility to portray life and death in our coverage area fully and accurately. Below I’ve attached excerpts from an article in The Oregonian of Portland arguing that newspapers need to revisit the issue of suicide coverage. (For the full story, click here.)

We gave the Belmont suicide story prominent play on page B1. If I had followed through in directing its placement, we would have played it even more modestly.

The Union Leader, by the way, led page one with the story under a large bold headline: “Man dies in grisly suicide.”

I often consider whether what we play above the fold on the front page will help newsstand sales. Any editor must do this in these difficult times for newspapers. But until someone convinces me otherwise, I’m still old-school on the subject of suicide.

(A letter to the editor from the sister of the suicide victim protesting aspects of our coverage will appear in tomorrow's Monitor.)

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Excerpts from the story in The Oregonian:

“Like newspapers across the country, The Oregonian is cautious in reporting suicides, typically writing about only those that occurred in public places, particularly if they drew public attention, or that involved a well-known person.

“The newspaper chose to report extensively on the death of a girl who killed herself in the parking lot of Yamhill-Carlton High School in part because the death was so public and caused so much pain to a small community. But the newspaper did not write about the death of a man who killed himself in the parking lot of Beaverton City Hall, partly because the death in a vehicle did not draw much public attention, despite its location.

“Suicide poses ethical conflicts for journalists.

“The privacy of individuals and families argues against stories about suicides. Also, research indicates certain suicide coverage might spur other deaths.

“But newspapers have the responsibility to reflect accurately what is occurring in the community and the potential to provide a public service in explaining what contributes to suicide. . . .

“A study of suicide rates and media coverage in six cities reaffirmed past research indicating that coverage can potentially influence other suicides, particularly among younger, vulnerable people.

“Dan Romer, director of the Adolescent Risk Communication Institute of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, says the research findings, which are to be published in 2006, also emphasize that the way suicide is covered is critical.

“That’s why he and other experts do not say don’t cover suicide; they argue for covering it with care and in ways that educate people about the causes. He says coverage should avoid glorifying or detailing the act and should not be sensational or prominent. Coverage also should recognize that most suicides involve people who are clinically depressed, and care should be given not to link it to a recent breakup or job loss.

“In reviewing hundreds of suicide stories, Romer says he has seen what readers of The Oregonian see – a skewed portrait that shows suicides occurring in public, as part of murder-suicides or with well-known people.

“A more-detailed portrait might lead to helping the public address suicide. More coverage might lead to more public discussion of the glaring need for mental health services, particularly for adolescents suffering from depression.”

Posted by Mike Pride at 03:42 PM | Comments (2)

January 04, 2006

A daily snapshot

Last night before I left the Monitor, I stopped by the news desk and suggested that the night editors keep an eye on the story of the trapped West Virginia coal miners. We didn’t have the story scheduled for page one, but I wanted the editors to move it out there if the miners were found, dead or alive.

At home, I was soon mesmerized by the Florida State-Penn State football game. I’m not sure why because I dislike the Seminoles. I’ve been a Florida Gator fan since the leather-helmet era. But this was great defensive football, with tenacity, athleticism and determination on display through three overtimes. During commercials, I usually flip to another channel to check the news, but last night I was reading a book, my favorite form of multi-tasking.

Early this morning my wife and I got up for our walk. The first thing I heard on the radio was news that all but one miner had been found dead after earlier reports that all but one had been found alive. I wondered aloud during our walk whether the Monitor had been caught in between on this story. In other words, had the story of the miners being found alive broken in time for the press run and the awful truth come later?

Sure enough, the lead headline in my paper read: “Dozen miners found alive, families say.”

I was glad the headline included the attribution “families say” and that the story, a combination of wire reports assembled by Monitor editors, pointed out that there was no official confirmation that the miners had been found alive.

I was also reminded that while many things have changed in the news business, an essential thing about the daily newspaper remains true: It is a snapshot of a day’s events. The last deadline – the moment the press rolls, or in this case, the moment a diligent editor replates the front page to get in the latest news – is the shutter snapping on the day. If something happens between 1 a.m. and morning to change events, so be it.

I’m guessing most readers could easily piece together the sequence of events that led to the outdated headline on today's page one. As for the editors, the final headline was anything but outdated when they wrote it. Even though I’m sure they groaned when they awoke to the news today, they made the right call and did a good job with a late change.

Some readers, incidentally, received an earlier edition of the Monitor with the headline "Miner found dead; hope for others fades." Ironically, this earlier story would have held up till morning.

Technology does not require the Monitor's other arm, our website, to be a daily snapshot. We posted the real story at the top of the site's front page first thing this morning.

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A couple of related points about the news choices we made for today's paper:

The mine story had originally been scheduled to go inside the paper. To make room for it on the front when the news changed, the editors moved the story of the guilty plea of Washignton lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Today’s other page-one wire story was about Dick Clark, who, despite the effects of a stroke, had hosted the ABC New Year’s Eve telecast from Times Square. Certainly the Abramoff story was bigger news than the Clark story. But having seen Clark myself Saturday night and winced at his slurred speech, I figured many people would be interested in the human story behind his TV appearance.

Four other factors made it easy to move the Abramoff story:

1. It had been in the news most of the day, thus many readers already knew about it.

2. The main new information the public wants about the story is which members of Congress and their staffs will be caught in the Abramoff web. Today’s story includes nothing new on that.

3. We could give the Abramoff story strong play on page A2.

4. With our new format, we could put a headline above the nameplate on the front page directing readers to the Abramoff story.

Posted by Mike Pride at 09:11 AM | Comments (1)