Monthly Archive for October, 2006

Digging deeper into the real estate slide

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Peter Baniak
on October 26, 2006
in News
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In the last few years, the real estate market in Lexington and Central Kentucky has been on a near-constant upswing. New homes have continued to pop up throughout the region. Prices for existing homes, particularly in older neighborhoods, have soared in many parts of town. So when business reporter Jim Jordan reported on Oct. 17 that housing sales in the Lexington area were down for the third straight month, it was hard not to take notice.

Jim reported the news in a front-page story that day. Then, as often happens with interesting local trend stories, editors and reporters began talking about what more we could tell readers. Such conversations often take place in our daily news meetings. The first of these is at 10:30, when daytime assigning editors and others get together to talk about what’s on tap for the next day’s paper, and to discuss how we did in that morning’s paper. We get back together at 4 p.m. — along with page designers and night-shift editors — to check back in on the news of the day and to see how things have changed. At each of these, we always try to ask what stories we might be missing, or what threads of stories we need to follow deeper. The conversations are usually wide-ranging and free-form, with ideas tossed out and tossed aside just as quickly. Sometimes, though, ideas stick.

After Jim’s initial story ran, the subject of Lexington’s real estate downturn came up more than once during these news meetings. So Acting Business Editor Jim Niemi and I got together and talked about ways we could dig deeper into the story without taking a lot of time. We decided to focus on two angles: 1) How are home builders and developers trying to keep the market hot, and what kinds of incentives are they offering to lure buyers? 2) How is the downturn affecting the highest end of the market, homes that sell for $1 million or more?

We tapped Jim Jordan and Beverly Fortune, the Herald-Leader’s growth and development writer, to explore these angles. The results of their reporting started running today. First up is Jim’s story about the tempting incentives now being waved in front of Bluegrass home buyers. Friday will bring Beverly’s story on the unique challenges of selling a million-dollar home. Both make for interesting reading, especially if you’re one of those people who grab the real estate listings with the fervor of a baseball fan reaching for the line scores.

I’m sure there are plenty of other angles we can explore on the local real estate front, especially if the slowdown continues. If you have a great real estate story idea, I’d love to hear it.

- Peter Baniak

metro editor

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It’s like “March Madness” for political junkies

Published
by
Peter Baniak
on October 24, 2006
in Uncategorized
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Many of us who eat, sleep and drink the news live for this time of year. With an election two weeks away, the newsroom takes on an all-hands-on-deck mentality, and almost every reporter and editor in the news department gets involved in covering or tracking the most interesting election races. For those of us who see politics and government coverage as one of the most important contributions newspapers make to democracy, late October in an election year is sort of like late March for a college basketball fan.

This year, in addition to daily coverage of key campaign developments, the Herald-Leader is offering readers and prospective voters lots of additional options to follow the fall "silly season." On Sunday, we’ll publish a special 10-page section that will be heavy on candidates’ biographical information and comparisons of where they stand on the issues. The section will cover everything from Congressional races to state legislative contests to the most competitive local contests, including Lexington’s mayoral race. Also included will be the local ballots from most of the counties in the Herald-Leader’s coverage area, and a guide on how to use those new electronic voting machines that will be in most polling places. Information in the section also will appear on Kentucky.com starting Sunday.

Meanwhile, we’ve added an interactive election map to Kentucky.com so voters can find the key Congressional, state House and state Senate races in their county. Our Election 2006 page is a great resource for tracking all the stories that have appeared in the Herald-Leader and on Kentucky.com about specific races. Did you miss the full profiles we ran in May on the candidates for Lexington mayor, or the question-and-answer sessions with the candidates that ran earlier this week? They’re archived on the election page. What has political Ryan Alessi been writing about lately? It’s on the election page. What has the Herald-Leader written about county judge-executive races in areas around Lexington, or about key judicial contests? All of that — and more — is there, too.

And finally, the newest addition to our election coverage is Pol Watchers, the Herald-Leader’s political blog, which started up a few weeks ago with this election season in mind. On the blog, the Herald-Leader’s team of political writers regularly updates campaign developments and breaking news from the campaign trail. This blog is a bit of an experiment for us. Kentucky.com has several other blogs that are produced primarily by one person, usually a beat writer blogging about the subject he or she covers. Pol Watchers is truly a team blog, with multiple reporters all contributing items throughout the day. News may be posted to the blog from the Herald-Leader’s Frankfort team (Jack Brammer, Ryan Alessi, John Stamper), or Andy Mead covering the water referendum in Lexington, or Michelle Ku and Sarah Vos on the mayor’s race, Jim Warren on the Fayette council-at-large contest, or courts reporter Brandon Ortiz on the high-profile Supreme Court race between John Roach and Mary Noble.

If you love politics like many of us do, the Herald-Leader, Kentucky.com and Pol Watchers all provide a great source of updated information, and a variety of ways to feed the late October madness.

Peter Baniak
metro editor

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Equal questions, unequal answers

Published
by
Peter Baniak
on October 23, 2006
in Uncategorized
. 2 Comments

As part of our coverage of the 2006 race for mayor, we decided early on that we would run extended question-and-answer sessions with Mayor Teresa Isaac and challenger Jim Newberry. What better way, we thought, for voters to hear straight from the candidates about the key issues in the race?

After Herald-Leader staff writers Michelle Ku and Sarah Vos conducted the interviews, however, we were left with a fairness issue to weigh. Both candidates were questioned with the same basic list of key issues — growth, sewers, water, taxes, the police, the airport. But their answers to similar questions were by no means equal.

As has become her trademark in office, Isaac generally stuck to short answers: yes, no, a phrase or two. Sarah Vos asked several follow-up questions to draw out more detailed responses, but those generally led to short answers as well. In all, the interview took 12 minutes. On the flip side, Newberry, as is becoming his trademark, offered lengthy answers in paragraph form. His responses to Michelle Ku were more nuanced, often in line with the lengthy platform issue papers he released in the spring, and sometimes repetitious. That interview took 53 minutes.

Which left us with a question about how we should present these interviews in the paper. We had not given the candidates a time limit, and we had told their campaigns that the answers would run in a verbatim, Q-and-A format. Because of the candidates’ contrasting styles, Newberry’s interview would obviously take up more space when transcribed in the newspaper (more than double the space, in fact). If we ran his interview in full, would some readers see that as unequal treatment? But if we edited his answers down to match the mayor’s, was that fair? From a practical perspective, would it even be possible to determine what he was talking about if we did that?

After much discussion among newsroom editors, we decided to add a little space to the Monday newspaper so we could run both interviews with minimal editing. Yes, this means that Newberry’s interview takes up more space. More importantly, though, it means that readers and voters get to see both candidates in full, and to judge for themselves. We also decided to post audio of the interviews, for those who want to hear for themselves. In many ways, the interviews are as interesting for what they show about the candidates’ styles as for what the candidates actually have to say.

- Peter Baniak, metro editor

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Trial coverage on trial

Published
by
Peter Baniak
on October 20, 2006
in News
. 0 Comments

The Herald-Leader’s coverage of a high-profile trial came under fire today from Fayette Circuit Judge Gary Payne, who criticized the newspaper for a story that ran on the first day of the trial of Taquan Neblett. Neblett was convicted of killing a Lexington music store employee, and the jury recommended the death penalty. After that conviction, things got messy, and a juror came under scrutiny for whether she was truthful in court about her knowledge of Neblett’s previous murder conviction. At a hearing today, Payne sentenced Neblett to life without parole for 25 years after Neblett’s defense attorneys withdrew their motion for a new trial. Payne also found the juror, Gayla Webb, to be in contempt of court, fined her $250 and ordered her to perform 60 hours’ community service.

During the hearing, Payne took issue with a Herald-Leader article that ran on page A1 on the first day of Neblett’s trial. The Herald-Leader often runs stories previewing high-profile murder trials. In this case, our story ran on the front page because four murder trials were scheduled to take place simultaneously downtown. This was a rare occurrence, and one that court reporter Brandon Ortiz and I thought was worth special notice. That article appeared under the headline “Stake out a courthouse parking space: More than 400 potential jurors will arrive for 4 murder trials.” The story then included short descriptions of each of the four trials. The Neblett trial was mentioned first because it was the highest-profile of the four. The story included the following lines of background information about the case:

“A special panel of 140 potential jurors was called for Neblett’s potential death penalty case, according to the court administrator’s office. He is accused of robbing Sami’s Music on South Limestone Street, shooting owner Sami Hajibrahim and killing employee Derek Elam on July 2, 2004. Neblett was paroled in 2003 after serving seven years in prison for murdering Louisville cab driver Russell Gilbert.”

It’s that final line that became an issue after the trial ended. And it’s that line that Payne, who did not mention the Herald-Leader by name, criticized during today’s hearing. Here’s some of what Payne said:

“There is freedom of the press, that’s why the judge did not get involved in the article because they can write about what goes on in court. However, i think the press has some responsibility. I think the court reporter for the press … should have known, and he probably did know, that should not have been mentioned about the previous conviction…

“The press, apparently, not only believes in the freedom of the press  — but what bothers the court in certain situations is the irresponsibility that goes with that. They have a responsibility just like everyone else. They ought to try to protect the integrity of the court. They should try to let the system work. They chose to put that one sentence in there, which they should not have. But I can’t stop that. That’s why we’re here today.”

Before Neblett’s trial, the juror was asked by Payne whether she had seen any pre-trial publicity or read the entire article. “No, ’cause it was too long and I didn’t have time,” Webb said at the time. “Just the part about find a place to park.” At a hearing after the trial, Webb testified that she did not read the entire article, but “skimmed” it. Defense attorneys for Neblett said that if Webb had answered truthfully that she read the entire article, she would have been struck from the jury.

At the Herald-Leader, we try to be sensitive when reporting on any story.We don’t always include information in stories about every previous conviction of a criminal defendant. But we do include such information when it is relevant or important. That was the case here.

The information about Taquan Neblett’s previous conviction was not new. It had been mentioned in Herald-Leader articles and editorials before, as well as in heavy TV and radio coverage of the crime and Neblett’s arrest. Along with the circumstances of the crime (a double shooting in the middle of the afternoon in a busy area near UK), the fact that Neblett had been convicted of murder before — and that he committed the shooting at Sami’s music while on parole for that previous killing — made the story, and his trial, especially newsworthy. That fact raised questions about why he was out on parole and how he so quickly found his way back into the criminal justice system. In other words, it was deeply relevant to this story.

It is impractical and unreasonable for courts to expect a newspaper to censor every shred of information that could possibly prejudice a jury pool. Of course, a defendant has a right to a fair trial. But the public also has a right to know what’s going on in the community and the criminal justice system.

Peter Baniak
Metro Editor

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