Saturday, December 24, 2005

Show and told

It must be wondrous cheap in North Carolina, this newsprint, that we may so haply throw it away on such as these:

Dec. 24
"I've seen people fight over parking spaces and kick cars," Lt. Wayne Embrey told the Observer on Friday, "but never get a gun and start shooting."

Property records list the Charlotte Housing Authority as the home's owner, but Executive Director Charles Woodyard told the Observer he isn't sure the agency owns it.

Dec. 22
Asked for comment, a Wachovia spokeswoman told the Observer, "We don't comment on those types of things."

Residents told the Observer in fall 2003 that suspicious sales, too many absentee owners and a rash of foreclosures had dramatically reduced property values.

Asked what changed, Beaver told the Observer Wednesday that he and minority owner Bill Allen decided they wanted to make the stadium happen.

Dec. 21
In a statement, Mangan told the Observer that he agreed to the settlement in order "to put this matter behind us and move forward with our business."

Earlier this month, Devine told the Observer that he'd give up his position as head football coach if he was offered the athletic director position.

Keith Rudemiller told the Observer on Tuesday that he and his wife had been driving home from visiting friends in Huntersville about 6 p.m. Sunday when they saw two vehicles in front of them swerve to the right.

Dec. 19
"There were a lot of shocked faces around. But I think for Erskine and I, it was not an uncomfortable thing because it was very natural for us to be there," the senator told the Observer.

Dec. 18
"Part of it will really require that we all admit we're part of the problem," she told the Observer.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I remember a movement way back then to do more of this in order to clarify to readers that so-and-so spoke directly to said news outlet as opposed to a press conference or wire service. I think it's related to the whole watchdog journalism resurgence. I'm not a big fan of it, per se, but when I worked at a small newspaper in Virginia and wrote music articles and reviews it came in handy to let readers know that I actually did talk to members of say, Wilco, where those kinds of stories might be questioned along the lines of "Why would Wilco talk to a reporter at the Bumbletown USA Morning Call Star?" We didn't go quite this over the top though. Just a thought.

6:15 PM, December 26, 2005  
Blogger fev said...

Agreed. I expect a lot of it has to do with the cyclical movement toward greater transparency in sourcing (which is generally good, tho I'd rather see less hair-splitting about quoting a lying weasel in a press conference vs. a phoner and more explaining of why we quote lying weasels in the first place).

I'm more persuaded by the need for it in a story that _does_ quote from press kfc and phoner, then works in some AP and some press release, than in a story where everybody's communicating in basically the same mode. Especially, erm, the three-graf variety. There, it's got too much of a Walter Burns touch:

"Doesn't the paper get any credit?"

"I did that, right there in the second paragraph."

... next?

5:22 PM, December 28, 2005  

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