Our new ideas don’t eclipse old

I traded notes this past week with several readers, including some esteemed Triangle writers, to assure them that The N&O isn’t abandoning books coverage.

I’ve responded to a few other readers worried that we’re pushing out all our columnists (we’re not), giving up on in-depth reporting or otherwise taking a big belly-flop down the slippery slope to newspaper mediocrity.

These concerns surfaced as readers heard about some staff moves and picked up rumors, some unfounded, about changes that might result from The N&O’s steady push into new endeavors.

Critics see a zero-sum game. If we push harder on breaking news, we must not care about in-depth work. If we praise shorter stories, we must devalue long pieces. New assignments for talented staff members must mean their past success isn’t valued.

None of the above is true. These are not either-or choices. The N&O’s vibrancy comes from its willingness to try new ideas.

The people who wrote me last week care about books and writers. So do we, but we expect our coverage to evolve along with our Sunday Features sections in the year ahead.

Invention brings risk that is usually easier to recognize than the hazards of failing to change. Yet change itself is not our goal.

Our aim is to improve The N&O and keep it moving, as the rest of the world keeps moving, so that our coverage serves readers as well in five years or 10 years as it does today.

Staff aims for excellence

No one has to take my word for The N&O’s commitment to journalistic excellence. It’s demonstrated every day by a news staff that I would put up against any publication’s in terms of talent, drive and results.

Lynn Bonner, for instance, reported a Page 1 story last Sunday that offered a remarkably clear and cogent description of a state psychiatric system in which patients are being admitted, discharged and readmitted faster than ever.

Columnist Ruth Sheehan, who has closely followed one patient’s stumble through community care options, anchored a Q section report exploring through wildly varying viewpoints whether North Carolina can solve its many struggles with mental health reform.

A week earlier, our staff did great work fast in covering a huge fire in North Raleigh, a smaller but more deadly fire in Durham and an explosion that killed three people in Raleigh -- all the same day. Our online work was quick and compelling, including video by photojournalist Jason Arthurs of firefighters at work (smoke literally moving across Arthurs’ viewfinder as he shot the scene).

The next day’s paper reflected aggressive reporting by a few dozen journalists over several hours, led by an aerial photo by Chris Seward and offered in a front page that won national recognition. We used the print edition for what a newspaper does well: giving people a sense of how the three incidents unfolded and what they meant in human terms.

“Mae Lillian Smith had just stirred her pot of red beans and settled onto the couch for her afternoon soap opera when an explosion lifted her soda off the floor, knocking her on her back,” read a Page 1 sidebar by Mandy Locke and Sam LaGrone.

Luke DeCock recently reported on what happens in a hockey player’s life when he gets traded. I’ll long remember a scene DeCock described of Carolina Hurricanes’ center Kevyn Adams’ first few hours after learning he had been traded to the Phoenix Coyotes:

“After calling his wife, Stacey, from the players’ lounge, Adams met briefly with the media at the arena before heading out to a more important meeting. He went to pick up his 5-year-old daughter, Emerson, at school, pulling her out of class to tell her what had happened. Adams asked if she wanted to stay in class or come home and help him pack. She chose to come with him.”

Listing examples is dangerous because I run out of space without mentioning so much other fine work, but my point is this: The only slope we’re on is a steep learning curve to find ways to remain vital and relevant in a new information age.

The N&O at its best is both a mirror and a window onto this place. We cover the things peculiar to our region and state, about character and characters, about politics and books and growth and newcomers and gardening and food and so many other subjects that occupy people here.

As I’ve said to some of our loyal readers, to excel in the future we must look forward, and we must move ahead. Some of our new ideas might not work out (many of our old ones didn’t, either).

The proof will be read not in these words or critics’ doomsaying, but in the pages (electronic and paper) of The N&O.