Anybody else have "Cujo" for a dog?

Sometimes my cock-a-poo is the kindest most gentle dog in the world. Then, there are mornings like this morning. I was loading up my youngest for school and the dog jumped in the car. Normally I'm able to quickly shoo her out, but this time the dog WOULD NOT MOVE! It took my 15 minutes of cajoling, yelling, prodding with a broom, bribing with food, etc. to finally get her to move.

Other times, lately, she just growls or even snaps for no reason.

Any advice?

Panthers trades

Trades made during the NFL draft don't receive nearly enough attention. To wit, the Panthers made two terrific trades during the draft this weekend.

1) First, the Panthers moved back in the second round 9 spots (from No. 45 to No. 54) and, in return, got a fourth-rounder from the Seahawks.
2) Then, the Panthers traded two OTHER fourth-rounders to the Packers for a third-rounder (Pick No. 89)

If you put those two trade together ..
The Panthers gave up:
Pick nos. 45, 115, 126
The Panthers got:
Pick nos. 54, 89, 121

In other words, they moved back 9 spots in the second round and moved up 26 spots from the fourth to the third round and another 5 spots in the fourth round. And even more beautiful is that the Panthers were clearly targetting Eric Shelton in the second round -- a player they still got at No. 54.

Those kinds of trades can make the difference between a contender and a pretender.

Had any school papers come back recently with purple ink?

This excellent column by George Will discusses the new trend to "protect the feelings" of children by never having them lose or be subject to anything upsetting. Question: What happens when they grow up and enter the real world?

Had any school papers come back recently with purple ink?

This excellent column by George Will discusses the new trend to "protect the feelings" of children by never having them lose or be subject to anything upsetting. Question: What happens when they grow up and enter the real world?

Had any school papers come back recently with purple ink?

This excellent column by George Will discusses the new trend to "protect the feelings" of children by never having them lose or be subject to anything upsetting. Question: What happens when they grow up and enter the real world?

Had any school papers come back recently with purple ink?

This excellent column by George Will talks about our new "sensitive society" where there are no losers, only children with feelings who need those feelings protected at all costs and never harmed. Question: Then what happens when these children grow up and enter the real world?

Terrific column on the new pope

Lot's of simplistic talk about Pope Benedict XVI being "conservative" and "right-wing." But columnist Michael Novak writes in the National Review that Benedict's fight against relativism is much deeper and much more complex.

The REAL problem with newspapers?

This is former Durham Sun editor John Ham's answer to that question, in a column he penned recently.

I'm not sure I go as far as Ham does in blaming circulation declines on this mentality, but I sure do agree that the mentality exists.

Rational Risk Assessment

This is a fascinating term which I've learned about at some conferences. A loose translation of the term is this: What are the REAL chances of something bad happening?

I've heard it applied in two main areas -- terrorism and child abduction. Doing a rational risk assessment totally quantifies the ACTUAL risk of the typical person being affected by one of these things.

Here is a paper (PDF) on the the real threat of terrorism done by the Cato Institute.

One sentence that sticks out:
"Even with the September 11 attacks included in the count, the number of Americans killed by international terrorism since the late 1960s (when the State Department began counting) is about the same as the number of Americans killed over the same period by lightning, accident-causing deer or severe allergic reactions to peanuts."

Now, think about HOW MUCH MONEY we've spent "fighting" terrorism just since 9/11.

I'm going to try and find a rational risk assessment on child abductions.

Crystal ball column writing?

Many of you might have heard of Mitch Albom of the Detroit newspaper. He's an award-winning columnists who wrote "Tuesday's with Morrie" and other books. He appears on ESPN's "The Sports Reporters and other TV shows.

He's in hot water.

Albom wrote a column on a Friday to be published in the Sunday paper. Nothing wrong with that -- I often write my Sunday "this and that" column ahead of time since the section in which it appears prints Friday night.

But Albom made a big boo boo when he assumed things were going to happen and included them in his column.

Here is the column. Here is his apology. And here are a bunch of journalists taking him to task for both.

My view: Albom's explanation falls short. Note in the column how he described how the players traveled to the game. Not good.

Firing offense? Probably not. But he should be disciplined somehow.

Guns at Thomas Jefferson

I've had a few inquiries over the past weeks about our coverage of the gun incident at Thomas Jefferson Classical Academy.

Police say a boy brandished a weapon in a classroom. It was a major deal.

It happened late in the week and we didn't have anything until the following Tuesday.

Why?

Quite simply, we didn't know about it. While we make daily -- sometimes multiple times a day -- checks of police reports in Cleveland County, we do not make those checks in neighboring counties, for obvious reason (the cops reporter would spend her entire shift driving and wouldn't get any work done).

So, unless we are tipped off about something in a neighboring county, there is no way for us to know. What makes this situation unusual is that we are dealing with an out-of-county school that is attended by a number of "in-county" students.

Anyway, the first I heard of it was late Saturday night at the Heart Ball.

We got on the story Monday, but by then it was old news and it didn't seem right to have a screaming headline on 1A four days after the fact.

Some have juxtaposed our play on the TJCA story with the story about the parent complaining about her sons' suspension. I don't see the connection. They were totally different issues, one in a school in the middle of our coverage area, one in a school outside the fringe of our coverage area.

If we had known about the TJCA situation when it happened, it would undoubtedly have been a top-of-the-fold 1A story. But it wouldn't make sense to downplay a compelling story about the boys' suspensions just because we were out of the loop on the other matter.

By the way, I'm not sure I follow those who accuse us of being sympathetic to the family affected by the suspensions. We just reported what they said and gave the schools a chance to respond.

Today's paper critique

1A: Nice job on "Blue Heaven -- the score and all looks good. In hindsight, the baby blue box doesn't work so well. I think some nice, clean, unobstructed white space would have had even more impact. Also, that would have bought us a precious pica or two to help get Williams' face more above the fold. The intersection of the two photos, two refers and a cutline was confusing for me. I think we needed to simplify there, probably by losing the second picture. Nice job, Joy, on the gas prices package.
3A: Good solid page of interesting and varied wire news.
5A: The pope story seems like an odd fit on this page of obits and local news. Maybe some state news instead. Also, had a story further back in the paper on Bush going to Pope's funeral
6A: Good job covering the Grover meeting -- that's a story the whole county will be interested in. In fact, this is just a really nie page. Good local news at the bottom, the reader snapshot is nice as is the Relay for Life rail. Nice job.
7A: Good package on autism, Jackie. CUTLINE: Excellent information in this cutline. Perfect.
1B: I wonder if readers will see "Blue Monday" and think we were suggesting it was something other than a good thing that UNC won? Nice use of big art, but I would have played this even bigger -- six columns with the local stuff at the bottom. It's historic and we only treated it as a somewhat-bigger-than-normal centerpiece. Good to have Star view. Also, nice hustle to get the Jolly story in while shorthanded.
10B: Had a chance to use some dramatic pope picture on this page, instead of what we did on 5A.