THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 21, 1996 TAG: 9607200016
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LYNN FEIGENBAUM
LENGTH: 94 lines
Sitting here on a sunny weekday morning, it's hard to believe that only last weekend, Hurricane Bertha was still breathing down our necks. Huffing and puffing, actually.
Thanks to Bertha, the hurricane season made its local debut much earlier than expected - even before the newspaper got around to publishing a tracking map. You can find one today, wrapping the comic section.
But if you had your own map for Bertha, The Pilot did run coordinates as the storm made its uncertain way toward us. John W. Miller was grateful.
``For us who track hurricanes,'' he e-mailed, ``let me give many thanks for the tracking info . . . by Steve Stone. It was excellent and sure saved me a lot of time looking up the latitude and longitude figures.''
Staff writer Stone is the eye of The Pilot's hurricane coverage. When bad weather breaks, much of the newsroom is gathered around his desk, watching him track the storm on his computer (via Utopia's Storm Tracker), call up the latest satellite pictures and radar images or contact the National Hurricane Center on the Internet. He also makes regular INFOLINE updates.
``Is the storm gonna hit us, Steve? Huh, Steve, huh?'' is the general newsroom mantra at times like this. (Hey, journalists are just like everyone else.)
As a storm nears, more of the newsroom is recruited. About a dozen reporters and photographers were in North Carolina to await Bertha's arrival.
The Outer Banks was, fortunately, spared the worst, but at least one reader was impressed by the newspaper's stormy prose. ``It almost read like an Ernest Hemingway novel,'' said Al McGilvray of Chesapeake.
He was referring to a July 13 account that had such lyrical descriptions as:
``Everything was in motion - everything except humans. Trees genuflected. Sailboat masts swayed like metronomes. Flapping flags gave evidence of the strength of the wind.''
Nice to find good writing in breaking news. But we also heard from readers who had problems with our before-and-after coverage.
Brian J. Hodson, an instructor of educational technology at Old Dominion University, targetted the large centerfold flood map that ran Friday, July 12.
The map was ``quite informative, providing a lot of useful data about potential flooding,'' he said. However, it did not include a fairly major thoroughfare in Virginia Beach - Dam Neck/Landstown Road.
``Inclusion of this road would have made it much easier for some people to orient themselves and evaluate the risk of flooding in their particular area,'' he added.
In fact, the map was pretty skimpy on any street names - I couldn't find my own neighborhood. Tom Warhover, the editor who coordinated the hurricane coverage, said the map is on top of the list of items to fix.
``We are taking the Bertha coverage and basically tearing it apart to see where we can make changes for the next time around,'' he said. ``We want to be in a position to improve by 50 percent - including a more detailed map for readers.''
This time around, delivery apparently wasn't a problem - Joanne Brausewetter of Norfolk was amazed that, storm and all, the paper was in front of her house when she got up at 5:20 Saturday morning. My own paper came double-wrapped in plastic bags.
But our weather stats were something else. The most frequently heard question had to do with The Pilot's color weather page, which has a space for the previous day's temperature and precipitation.
Roy Irlam couldn't understand how this chart could record zero inches of rain for that Friday and only .32 inches of rain the next day, storm and all.
As Steven A. Kasmauski of Norfolk put it: ``Is there a twilight zone in your data where the rain that falls for that day or night is not included in the daily figures yet shows up in the monthly column?''
The answer is yes, there is a twilight zone. The numbers are correct but they don't tell us, for instance, that on Friday the 12th, total rainfall from midnight to midnight was 2.37 inches. The totals in each day's paper are for rainfall up to 5 p.m.; lots of water can fall after that.
Randy Jessee, the newsroom systems manager, said he hopes to remedy that by adding a line for the previous day's total rainfall.
And while we're at it, Curtiss Peterson of Rescue would like to see some other improvements to the weather page.
``This section has no pressures, cloud forecasts or other interesting stuff,'' he wrote. ``Most important for a coastal area, no indication that the Atlantic Ocean has any effect on our weather.
``This would be no problem in Omaha,'' he continued, ``but when one cannot tell a hurricane is approaching the area from a half-page weather section, something ain't right. I am sure that the paper can do better.''
Suggestion passed along.
Nancy Parker of Norfolk thought our Bertha coverage was very good, but gave us a lesson in enunciation. She asked me to tell our INFOLINE weather person that Gloucester is pronounced GLOSS-ter, not GLAW-ster. (Well, it's better than GLAW-chess-ter, anyway.)
I'll give the last word to Matt Yeager of Chesapeake, who thinks we're getting too punny in our headlines.
He spotted ``Bertha nibbles at farmers' ears'' in Tuesday's MetroNews section.
``You know,'' said Yeager, ``that one's just plain corny!''
MEMO: Call the public editor at 446-2475, or send a computer message to
lynn(AT)infi.net by CNB