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Wednesday: Treadmarks
posted at 2007-09-12 23:25 | Last modified 2007-11-14 10:38
I had a story this morning on the debate over the Goodyear incentives bill - if you missed it, it’s here. Plus an interview with SOT’s Frank Stasio that aired last night – the link for that one is here.
The N&O's Jonathan Cox and Lynn Bonner had this rundown, including some interesting background reading on Goodyear, courtesy of David Ranii.
And Speaker Joe Hackney’s press guy Bill Holmes sent out this summary of the bill, courtesy of Canaan Huie, the staff counsel who drafted it.
There was, as you’d guess, no shortage of reaction outside Jones St., little of it positive. Chris Fitzsimon at NC PolicyWatch called it the beginning of an era "no one should be proud of." At the other end of the political spectrum, the Locker Room called it a “complete and utter fraud.”
Somehow, I get the feeling we’ll hearing a lot more about this one - pro AND con - on the campaign trail…
She’s (almost) in
The (not-yet-) campaign staff of (not-yet-) Dem gubernatorial candidate Lieutenant Governor Bev Perdue is taking a page from Fred Thompson’s playbook. They’re announcing that Perdue is (finally) announcing her official candidacy at an Oct. 1st event in her hometown of New Bern. She even called her “hometown paper” to talk about it.
But really, what’s the hurry? Perdue has managed to raise $4M as an unofficial candidate. Not to mention that NCAE endorsement. Plus, once she declares, things get trickier in terms of travel, appearances, and state money.
You know, it says a lot about the changes in politics that the press (me included) has been giving her a hard time for waiting till 9 months before the primary to declare. Remember when six months was the norm, or three? Not coincidentally, those were also the days when you didn’t need to raise 4M in earnest money to get into the governor’s race.
RIP, little red recyclers
Bad news today for the legislature’s two-week-old venture into composting. State worm wrangler Brian Rosa says most of his 50 thousand or so red wiggler worms went to the big compost bin in the sky. Oh, the humanity.
Scott Mooneyham at The Insider told me legislative workers accidentally mixed food scraps from the legislative cafeteria into the compost layer, where the worms couldn’t get to them. When the scraps decomposed, the heat that that generated (plus the heat outside the bin) thoroughly cooked the would-be compost specialists.
Rosa says their replacements - another $400 worth of worms – are due tomorrow.
I take this as proof of at least one of the following:
- Sooner or later, legislative cafeteria food will kill anything. (Think Super-Size Me.)
- If folks on Jones St. can't keep worms alive in a garbage pile, why are we letting them write legislation?
Slugger
One of the few places radio reporters get to express our sense of humor (aside from blogs, of course) is in the “slugs” we put on our stories.
In wire- and broadcast-ese, a slug is a working title - a short, pithy story description the audience isn't meant to see or hear. It’s an abbreviated headline that indicates what the item's about.
As you might imagine, we broadcast folks who have to do multiple versions of the same story tend to put some creative energy into our slugs. Puns, sarcasm, and such aren’t at all unusual, at least in radio. The AP folks tend to be much more circumspect about theirs.
Which explains why I got such a kick out of this Dome item on today's AP slug-o'-the-day, “Mary Easley Drinking.” No, it’s not celebrity gossip about the First Lady – it's about her participation in the unveiling of a new underage-drinking prevention program. But it's enough to make you wonder whether someone, somewhere, at the AP actually might have a sense of humor.
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