Real journalism

Samiha Khanna shines a light on the backroom dealings of K&L Gates in this week's Indy.

The money quote?

The attorneys and their public relations team declined several requests for interviews with the Indy.

All their protestations to the contrary about how they believe their work is in the best interests of the community yadda yadda yadda vanish in a plume of smoke. They don't want to talk about it in public.

Durham - you've got a pretty clear choice ahead of you in the next two years, as we vote first on 4 of our City Council seats this year, and then all 5 of our County Commissioners seats next year. Do you want these land use attorneys pushing projects and policies that will turn Durham into the new Atlanta, or do you want a sustainable, organic growth process that allows us to become a new model for the 21st century.

That decision will be made in the next 16 months.

Continue reading Real journalism

Dear Rob Sneed

If supporters of the proposed 751 Assemblage rezoning are the majority, why are they so fucking silent?

Your friend,
Mr. Dependable

update: So i hear that the Durham News editor doesn't think that any part of Mr. Sneed's editorial contains "unbased facts or fallacious" material.

Such as this:

I am disappointed in much of the opposition to 751 South. It is rooted in a relatively small group of people who have a history of fighting progressive ideas, including the much-praised Southpoint.

Or this:

These people often attract disproportionate attention with blogs, e-mail blasts and various efforts to attract media support, usually without much connection to the real facts of a matter.

Or this:

Meanwhile, the huge majority of people who encourage the development of an innovative mixed-used development like this one (go to www.751South.com), stay mostly quiet on the subject.

Why? Because we assume governmental bodies are capable of making good decisions. Furthermore, we are too busy working hard at our jobs and actually helping with the progress of Durham County.

Christ on a cracker, is it still 1968 where all you need do is accuse people of being dirty fucking hippies and suddenly you've won the argument?

For the record, Mr. Sneed, i've been continually and gainfully employed in the same industry for damn near 30 consecutive years. There are plenty of people out there who are busy "working hard at our jobs and actually helping with the progress of Durham County," who disagree with you on this case, and probably even more people who are hard at work who haven't even given the matter 30 seconds of thought because their jobs are demanding, stressful, time consuming, or whatever, and getting on with their lives is a much higher priority than arcane development issues. You don't get to make shit up, publish it in a newspaper, and claim it as fact unless you can back it up.

And check your calendar.

Nixon resigned almost 36 years ago.

Continue reading Dear Rob Sneed

So, where's the retraction? - UPDATED

UPDATE - As Michael notes in the comments, the N&O published their story about the non-endorsement this afternoon at around 3:20. I was out picking blackberries, and missed it.

So, you all followed the shitstorm that erupted on local blogs and listservs yesterday after it emerged that Fairway Outdoor Advertising had misleadingly presented a member of the City-Wide Partners Against Crime to the media on Wednesday and claimed that the entire Partners Against Crime community endorsed their proposal to have Durham's current billboard ordinance overturned to allow them to install flat screen TVs on highways and roadsides all over town.

Turns out that City-Wide PAC didn't have a valid vote to endorse the proposal, as one of its supposed members didn't represent the PAC she claimed to be representing (see below). Turns out that one of Fairway's attorneys (we can only assume he was from the firm of K&L Gates until we hear otherwise) pushed the City-Wide PAC facilitator to hold the vote over the objections of several of the members because "there was not more time" available to discuss the issue.

Wanda Boone, who was the spokesperson presented by Fairway, has apologized for her role in the fiasco.

So how come there's nothing in the Herald-Sun or News & Observer about this yet? If you rely on those two organs for your coverage of Durham events, you're still thinking that Partners Against Crime wants digital billboards in Durham. And you'd be wrong.

Continue reading So, where's the retraction? - UPDATED

Congrats!

To my friend Kevin for hosting the best blog in the Triangle, as voted on by readers of the Independent Weekly.

Continue reading Congrats!

Bodice ripping winds to follow

Continue reading Bodice ripping winds to follow

Not with a bang . . .

But a whimper:

A 2008 Durham case marked by sensational accounts of Satanism and sadomasochism appears to have wound to a close with best-interest misdemeanor pleas by a man first charged with rape and kidnapping, and by a woman charged with letting those crimes happen.

Joseph Scott Craig, 26, and wife Joy Suzanne Johnson, 31, have entered Alford pleas, under which defendants do not admit guilt but concede that prosecutors have enough evidence to convict them.

Durham defense attorney Woody Vann said the pleas were entered and approved Nov. 17 in Superior Court. The action brought an apparent end to a case that included testimony that defendants and victims lived in the same house, brought together by a mutual interest in Satanism.

I guess the Attorney General's office didn't think this was a newsworthy enough event to warrant holding a press conference, sending out a news release, or even issuing a statement to the media. And it's been over a week since the pleas were actually entered.

Sigh.

h/t to Joe

Continue reading Not with a bang . . .

Your best entertainment value

Commenters over at Bull City Rising.

Pass the popcorn, this could be fun. (Full disclosure: one of them is me!)

Continue reading Your best entertainment value

Your best entertainment value

N&O commenters.

Sigh. A little girl is dead for no reason at all, and this is the best you morons can do?

Continue reading Your best entertainment value

That was then, this is now - updated

A few days ago i asked Durham PD spokesperson Kammie Michael to talk about the apparent discrepancy between Chief Lopez' statements about small signs in traffic circles being likely to lead to driver distraction and increase the chances of an accident, while large electronic billboards on our freeways, in his "professional opinion," would not distract drivers.

She replied that she had forwarded my question, and several others, to the Chief for his response. Here's the full list of questions, by the way:

1 - is the information about the PACE Car program accurate? did it have 1500 participants? i can't recall the last time i heard Eric Hester talk about it at
a PAC meeting.

2 - can the group legally raise money for you to re-implement the program? how much money was budgeted for PACE Car the last year it was operational?

3 - can you tell me the statute under which you think "By law, if a motorist reasonably believed that his or her property might be damaged, the person who posted these signs could be subject to criminal charges."? i've emailed the group, and they say their legal advice dismisses this possibility.

4 - Chief Lopez was recently quoted as saying that in his "professional opinion," electronic billboards on the highways would not be a distraction. Can you reconcile this with DPD's statement yesterday that "We fear that these signs could be a distraction to even the most law-abiding motorists and possibly cause collisions."

I'm obviously too small potatoes for the Chief to respond too. Maybe one day i'll be a respectable source of information like Stanley Chambers.

Continue reading That was then, this is now - updated

So long, and thanks for all the fish(wrap)

I've just learned that one of my favorite reporters, Matt Saldaña of the Independent Weekly, is heading back north to pursue a career as a legal advocate. We wish him the best. His coverage of the various Jordan Lake stories, both at the Indy and as a featured guest on our radio show Shooting The Bull, has been enlightening and comprehensive.

And it's good to learn that former N&O reporter Samiha Khanna is going to taking over his desk at the Indy.

Best wishes, Matt.

Continue reading So long, and thanks for all the fish(wrap)

Your best entertainment value

WRAL commenters.

. . . and it looks like our Angry Neighbors have a blog!

Continue reading Your best entertainment value

Your best entertainment value

Herald Sun commenters.

Although you gotta admit, it's a story that simply can't be ignored.

Continue reading Your best entertainment value

What's it worth to you?

I hear the N&O is telling its subscribers they need to cough up a buck a week (or 40 something for a whole year) if they want to keep getting the weekly TV listings with their paper.

Maybe they can start charging extra for the comics section as well. Somehow, i don't see this having a positive effect on circulation numbers.

Continue reading What's it worth to you?

Your best entertainment value

N&O commenters.

. . . and did the HS miss this story completely?

Continue reading Your best entertainment value

Herald-Sun knock knock joke

Knock knock.


. . .


Knock knock.


. . .

Knock knock.


. . .

Oh, well. Nobody home.

Continue reading Herald-Sun knock knock joke

Followup on N&O post

Just wanted to note this article in the Guardian, especially in light of yesterday's post about the N&O's execrable reporting on animal issues. The significance of the N&O's failure to actually investigate issues of animal production is heightened, i think, by all this swine flu stuff.

Since its identification during the Great Depression, H1N1 swine flu had only drifted slightly from its original genome. Then in 1998 a highly pathogenic strain began to decimate sows on a farm in North Carolina and new, more virulent versions began to appear almost yearly, including a variant of H1N1 that contained the internal genes of H3N2 (the other type-A flu circulating among humans).

Researchers interviewed by Science worried that one of these hybrids might become a human flu (both the 1957 and 1968 pandemics are believed to have originated from the mixing of bird and human viruses inside pigs), and urged the creation of an official surveillance system for swine flu: an admonition, of course, that went unheeded in a Washington prepared to throw away billions on bioterrorism fantasies.

But what caused this acceleration of swine flu evolution? Virologists have long believed that the intensive agricultural system of southern China is the principal engine of influenza mutation: both seasonal "drift" and episodic genomic "shift". But the corporate industrialisation of livestock production has broken China's natural monopoly on influenza evolution. Animal husbandry in recent decades has been transformed into something that more closely resembles the petrochemical industry than the happy family farm depicted in school readers.

In 1965, for instance, there were 53m US hogs on more than 1m farms; today, 65m hogs are concentrated in 65,000 facilities. This has been a transition from old-fashioned pig pens to vast excremental hells, containing tens of thousands of animals with weakened immune systems suffocating in heat and manure while exchanging pathogens at blinding velocity with their fellow inmates.

Last year a commission convened by the Pew Research Center issued a report on "industrial farm animal production" that underscored the acute danger that "the continual cycling of viruses … in large herds or flocks [will] increase opportunities for the generation of novel virus through mutation or recombinant events that could result in more efficient human to human transmission." The commission also warned that promiscuous antibiotic use in hog factories (cheaper than humane environments) was sponsoring the rise of resistant staph infections, while sewage spills were producing outbreaks of E coli and pfiesteria (the protozoan that has killed 1bn fish in Carolina estuaries and made ill dozens of fishermen).

Any amelioration of this new pathogen ecology would have to confront the monstrous power of livestock conglomerates such as Smithfield Farms (pork and beef) and Tyson (chickens). The commission reported systemic obstruction of their investigation by corporations, including blatant threats to withhold funding from cooperative researchers.

Emphasis added.

The N&O may have been inadvertently correct. Meat eating "as we know it" may be undergoing some profound changes in the future. But it will come about as a result of the failures of the meat production industry itself, not because a bunch of dirty fucking hippie vegans started lobbying the legislature.

Adding, this story is worth reading too. All the way to the end.

Continue reading Followup on N&O post

N&O

Holy shit! Is someone asleep at the switch over at the Old Reliable? How else to explain the sheer idiocy of Ruth Sheehan's paean to irresponsible driving in today's edition?

Here's a clue - your car is only your private property when it's sitting on your driveway. Once you take it onto a public roadway, where its 3000 pounds moving at 40+ miles per hour is more than capable of killing and maiming, the rest of us have the right to tell you what you can and can't do when you're behind the wheel.

Yeah, i know. N&O columnists get paid to generate controversy. It pulls in eyeballs. I didn't realize that they got paid to write Teh Stupid.

Meanwhile, my friend (and former N&O editor RH) alerts me to this story, which is almost a text book case of irresponsible journalism.

North Carolina's meat industries are battling a bill the Humane Society of the United States and its vegan president say is meant to protect puppies, warning instead that it is the first step toward ending meat eating as we know it.

First, here's the one piece of factual information presented in the article.

The House agriculture committee is expected soon to hear a bill pushed by the national Humane Society that regulates and imposes licensing for commercial dog breeding. Some dog enthusiasts oppose the bill but its proponents portray it as a crackdown on puppy mills, such as the one that was raided in Goldsboro in February because of unsanitary conditions. Officials from both Wayne County and the Humane Society of the United States removed about 300 dogs and puppies.

Somehow, from this and the fact that the director of HSUS is a vegan, the pork lobby is convinced that "(t)he public is very unaware that the Humane Society of the United States has a very direct agenda to eliminate the use of animals for food."
(emphasis added)

Well, actually, the reason why we're unaware of this, is that it's not true. But that doesn't stop staff writer Mark Johnson from making it the top quote in his article. He also misses completely when he writes "(Amanda) Arrington's arrival last year signaled the group's elevated interest in the state." Actually, Amanda's been here for a number of years, putting her money where her mouth is by founding and leading the Coalition to Unchain Dogs, a group we've been highly supportive of at DE. Her work in the local community far predates her position as director of the Humane society for North Carolina. But why let some facts get in the way of a good fear mongering session?

Finally, what the fuck does it even mean to say, "ending meat eating as we know it?" Does Johnson expect that we'll start growing synthetic protein in backyard fermenters? Or maybe he thinks that Soylent Green is going to be the next big thing.

Continue reading N&O

Headline irony

To their credit, the HS gets it right in the online version of the story. But still, how many copies of this got printed and distributed this morning?

Continue reading Headline irony

Memo to Keith Upchurch

From: Mr. Dependable
Re: Rick Soles article

Suggested followups - Perhaps you could interview some of Mr. Soles' tenants to gain their perspective on the kinds of properties he manages, or some of the neighbors of those properties to get a sense of his contributions to the greater community regarding issues of property maintenance and appearance, criminal activity in the units he manages, etc.

Get back to me, i might be able to point you in the right direction.

Continue reading Memo to Keith Upchurch

Herald-Sun misses the action at Palin's Elon rally

You wouldn't know it from reading the two articles the Herald-Sun published about Sarah Palin's appearance at Elon College yesterday, but all is not sweetness and light in "pro-America land."

I sidled up to one of the Obama supporters and asked why they were there, what they were trying to accomplish.

As he was telling me a large, bearded man in full McCain-Palin campaign regalia got in his face to yell at him.

"Hey, hey, " I said. "I'm trying to interview him. Just a minute, okay? "

The man began to say something about how of course I was interviewing the Obama people when suddenly, from behind us, the sound of a pro-Obama rap song came blaring out of the windows of a dorm building. We all turned our heads to see Obama signs in the windows.

This was met with curses, screams and chants of "U.S.A" by McCain-Palin folks who crowded under the windows trying to drown it out and yell at the person playing the stereo.

It was a moment of levity in an otherwise very tense situation and so I let out a gentle chuckle and shook my head.

"Oh, you think that 's funny?! " the large bearded man said. His face was turning red. "Yeah, that 's real funny…" he said.

And then he kicked the back of leg, buckling my right knee and sending me sprawling onto the ground.

But keep up the good work, HS. Republicans need more outlets to let people know how much they're being victimized by the "left-wing" media.

Continue reading Herald-Sun misses the action at Palin's Elon rally