RTP-area local music and culture

[Jeffrey Herrick <herrickjeffrey AT yahoo.com>]

The N&O has a blog on the story.. 
  
  
http://blogs.newsobserver.com/editor/index.php?title=the_mine_story_from_good_news_to_bad_1&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
  
Apparently.. They started their presses before 2AM and the papers were 
already leaving on delivery trucks before 3AM..

AP claims they got their info from the WV Govenor himself..
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/3564919.html

Its a terrible series of events and a really bad timing for newspaper 
deadlines.
I'm sure the football stories was mostly written before the game ended and 
they weren't gonna change the score after it ended.

Jeff

>They managed to get big write-ups on the Penn St./FSU game in. And that
>ended at 1 A.M.
>The media has gotten slack. Look at all the urban myth that sprang up around
>Katrina. People drop kicking puppies at the Superdome and whatnot.
>The press will print anything. TV is worse.


> From: grady <grady at ibiblio.org>
> Reply-To: RTP-area local music and culture <ch-scene at lists.ibiblio.org>
> Date: Wed, 04 Jan 2006 15:12:24 -0500
> To: RTP-area local music and culture <ch-scene at lists.ibiblio.org>
> Subject: Re: Goodbye Clyde Cooper's? (Progress Marches On)
> 
> Local decision to get it wrong, or to run the story at all? The
> incorrect news came out at midnight+something, and the correction didn't
> come out until 3:00-something, and I guess at that point it was too late
> for the N&O to "stop the presses," as it were.
> 
> The question is whether a local editorial board needs to be suspicious
> of an AP wire story sourced only to "family members" who said they had
> heard the news 2ndhand from a mine foreman; the entirety of the sourcing
> for the wire story appears to be as follows:
> 
> "A relative at the church said a mine foreman called relatives there,
> saying the miners had been found alive.
> 
> Neither the company nor the office of Gov. Joe Manchin III immediately
> confirmed the news."
> 
> The Baltimore Sun had a longer version under its own reporter's byline,
> which used sentences from the AP wire & also added an apparent 2ndary
> source, "state officials," who seemed to imply without confirming that
> there were multiple survivors, as I'm not sure it's necessary to assess
> the condition of a corpse much beyond the initial diagnosis, as it were:
> 
> "A relative at the church said a mine foreman called relatives there,
> saying the miners had been found alive.
> 
> One by one, about a dozen ambulances arrived near the mine entrance.
> State officials last night said they were assessing the miners'
> conditions as they were brought to the surface but would not confirm
> that all 12 had survived.
> 
> Neither the company nor the office of Gov. Joe Manchin III immediately
> confirmed the news. The first ambulance left the mine at 1:13 a.m. to
> cheers and applause from those gathered."
> 
> I dunno. How would *you* have called it? Rewrite the AP wire story to
> add the word "apparently" a bunch of times? Run nothing at all & have a
> giant hole on the front page where everybody expects to see some news
> about the miners? I have no idea what I would've done, although I
> suspect a rewrite to emphasize the tenuous sourcing would have been
> logical. But that depends on when they put the paper to bed; I have no
> idea when the go/no-go point for the N&O is, other than apparently
> earlier than 3:00a.m.
> 
> Ross
> 
> James Hepler wrote:
>> I wonder, did every paper owned by the same company
>> get it wrong, or is that a local decision?
>> 
>> --- John I <not at hotmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> James Hepler wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Speaking of the N&O.  Ouch for them, getting it
>>> wrong
>>>> on the headline.
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> If you're talking about the miners: yeah.
>>> 
>>> I found out about the mistake this morning reading a
>>> few weblogs and went to
>>> the N&O site to see what they had said.  I could
>>> find nothing current about
>>> the mine accident so I guessed that they had gotten
>>> it wrong in their print
>>> edition and had scrubbed the story from their
>>> website.  It looks like I might
>>> be right.  
>>> 
>>> A similar thing happened in the past few weeks with
>>> a story about Tom Delay's
>>> request that Texas Court Criminal Appeals hear
>>> DeLay's money laundering case.
>>> The court agreed to consider hearing it, but it was
>>> widely reported
>>> (including in the N&O) that the court had decided to
>>> hear it (from a
>>> statement made by Delay's lawyer).  I tried to
>>> confirm what the N&O had
>>> printed on the subject by visiting their website,
>>> but lo; the story was
>>> missing.
>>> -- ch-scene: the list that mirrors
>>> alt.music.chapel-hill --
>>> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ch-scene  
  

                        
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From: "Todd Morman" <tmorman AT nc.rr.com>
To: "RTP-area local music and culture" <ch-scene AT lists.ibiblio.org>
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Subject: Miner story in the press
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 18:22:48 -0500
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It's worth noting that the Charlotte Observer ran the same AP story as the
N&O, but headlined it accurately: "Miners' families cry: They're Alive". The
N&O ran with "12 miners found alive," a dumb, overly credulous mistake. A
number of other east coast papers got it right as well. You should read exec
editor Melanie Sill's justification at her blog
(http://blogs.newsobserver.com/editor/index.php?title=the_mine_story_from_go
od_news_to_bad_1&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1); it's pretty defensive in its refusal
to offer an apology. My fave bit is where she says, "But the governor said
it! He's credible!" as if credulity in the face of statements by government
officials is a plus in journalism.

todd it's certainly a hallmark of the N&O that's for sure morman