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TV news bloopers
The video carries the title “Best Local News Bloopers of 2011,” but it’s quite a range on on-air mishaps, from accidents and flubs to anchors mocking interview subjects on the air (what the heck are...
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Crowdsourcing, social media and little pigs
The Guardian has a new advertisement for its “open journalism” (essentially the intersection of traditional journalism, crowdsourcing and social media) that is the most fun ad ever for a news outlet. I...
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I didn’t ruin that newspaper
A damp Wednesday morning in a small town in central North Carolina. People file into a tiny church (seating capacity approximately 100) for the funeral of a beloved writer, who was my wife’s mentor. A...
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What it was wasn’t Indiana
Now just a cotton-pickin’ minute here. Do you mean to tell me that someone is trying to move Mayberry out of North Carolina to some spot way up North? Uh-uh, naw sir, that won’t do. That won’t do...
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A timely tip arrives for avoiding Ebola
As I sat at the office daydreaming about a coming shipment of fresh, raw Liberian monkey meat – it’s Africa’s sushi, you know – a friend posted a link on Facebook to a list from Britain’s Daily Mirror...
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Misunderstandings can doom a romance
When the news came out last week that NASCAR driver Kurt Busch testified in court that his ex-girlfriend was a trained assassin, and he cited the things that made him think so, like a lot of people I...
View Article2019’s coming news
It wasn’t until a few years ago, when an editor friend who makes an annual address to a civic group elsewhere in North Carolina asked me for predictions of news in the coming year, that I realized I am...
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There is stupid, and then there is stupid
All of us make questionable decisions. I remember, for instance, the day in 1982 when I was driving my 1968 Mustang in Phoenix, Arizona, much faster than was prudent on a road that gradually curved to...
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What evil lurks in the hearts of peanuts?
They say only the good die young. I wonder, then, what sordid deeds Mr. Peanut must have committed in the nearly 104 years before his recent death. Yes, if you haven’t seen the TV commercial, Mr....
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No, the government didn’t admit aliens are here
A reader called me this past week and asked in an exasperated tone why the newspaper hadn’t run a story about a statement the Pentagon issued to the New York Times for a story that ran July 31...
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